One of the many adoption blogs I read had a link to this family’s website. To be honest I clicked on it because the little girl and I have the same name. Then once I read the whole entry I realized I’d like to be a part of what they are trying to do for this family.

Princess Abby is fighting against leukemia and friends of her family are trying to help her keep her spirits up. They are trying to raise money to buy her a couple of wigs (which cost between $225-$500 a piece) and to send care packages to Abby (because what little kid doesn’t like random presents?!) to cheer her up when she’s having a bad day. So check it out and see if you want to help.

This Christmas, I’m going to try really hard to buy handmade for everyone’s gifts. Even took the pledge to buy handmade.

If you want to buy handmade but don’t know where to start here are some of my favorites:

Ten Thousand Villages. Everything in the store is handmade by artisans around the world. And it’s fair trade. Double bonus.

Etsy.com. About a zillion talented people who make just about everything you can think of. Plus, my sister-in-law has a really cute shop.

A couple of my favorite etsy shops: SewYummy, Flaky Friends, Project8256, Junk Posse

The Black Apple. Art work. Very Cute.

Global Girlfriend. Shopping here helps fund microgrants for women. All the products are hand made by women around the world. Another fair trade organization.

Happy Shopping.

Limor, Kevin and Jaime all posted their results. I was feeling left out.

You are a Social Liberal (75% permissive) and an… Economic Liberal (13% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid.com: Free Online Dating Also : The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Is this surprising to anyone? It wasn’t to me. I think it has a lot to do with my sense of fairness and my “what’s mine is yours” mentality. When I told Kevin my results, he laughed and called me a communist. In all seriousness, if there were a way for communism to work (without it turning complete corrupt) I’d be all for it. Although, maybe communism isn’t quite the right word. What I like is community. I like the idea of living in community with others. Benefiting from each others’ resources and talents. Helping people who need it without worrying about what I am gaining in return. I’ve seen it work on small scales. I’d like to see it work in a large scale.

(By the way, these are the results from round 2 of the test. This one I took without Lexi’s “help”. And I came down even stronger in the socialist camp.)

This is my favorite Market Place Money Story (of this week). Sean Aiken graduated from college but didn’t know what he wanted to do for a career so he’s trying 52 jobs in 52 weeks. He’s been working different jobs for one week each just to test them out. If the company wants to pay him he insists that they take his salary and make a one time donation to The One Campaign, so basically he’s volunteering for a year. He gets hired through a website he set up and you can also read up on his jobs so far. What I can’t find is how he’s affording to not get paid for a year.

(Be forewarned - the next few posts are all recaps of things I’ve heard/read on NPR’s Market Place Money. Aside from the humor shows on NPR Market Place Money is one of my favorites. I’m always sitting in the car an extra 5-10 minutes so I can hear the end of a story they’re airing.)

While I was poking around the website looking for the link to a different story I came across this article. Tess’ Trash Challenge. Tess is the host of Market Place Money and for a project series called Consumed and explored whether or not our consumer culture is sustainable. (I believe it aired last fall.) She agreed to carry around her family’s garbage with her in a trash bag. There were some rules involved (she couldn’t carry animal waste, really stinky stuff got double bagged, she couldn’t bring the bag into a restaurant because they may kick her out) but basically she hauled around the hefty bag containing all the trash she couldn’t recycle, reuse, compost, or in some way stop it from being part of a landfill.

The EPA says Americans generated 245.7 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2005. That’s 20 percent more than what we tossed away in 1990, and 102 percent more than what we generated in 1970.

She invited others to participate with her, even if it was for only 2 days (instead of her 2 weeks) and you can read about her experiences and those who joined in at the above link.

I copied this directly from Leah’s blog. Leah is the mother of Angela, who has Down Syndrome. Leah titled her blog post: If you love my kid, you won’t go! And although I probably wouldn’t have gone to this movie anyway, I do love Angela so I put this up on my blog as well.

I bet you’ve seen the trailers for the new movie opening this week “Tropic Thunder”, the new Ben Stiller movie. I’ll bet you thought the trailers were hilarious. I’ll bet you DON’T know what’s really in this movie!

Ben Stiller and his team put a lot of thought into this movie, trying to be very careful to not cross the lines on racial humor. They wouldn’t want to offend anyone of color or other nationalities in fear of loosing a lot of money in the movie.

But people who are intellectually disabled are fair game in the world of Hollywood. The word “retard” is the whole sub-plot for the movie. The term “Going full retard” has been coined and it’s been announced there will soon be a line of t-shirts appearing in your local stores with the term plastered across the front. If you take every time the word “retard” is used in the movie and replace it with the “n” word, or any other racial slur, the movie would be banned in the U.S!

And that, my friends and family, is what Angela has to look forward to when school starts. (Last year it was Napolean Dynamite pens that talked, with one of the phrases being “you retard!” which, after complaints, were quickly pulled off the shelves and banned by schools across the country.)

Yes, the movie is rated R, so young kids shouldn’t be seeing it. But they will. And their teen siblings and parents who DO see it will be coming home repeating what they think is a funny phrase, and kids will be coming to school with it. They’ll love the t-shirts as well.

I don’t understand how in the world it’s ok to to belittle this population of people, but if they were using the “N” word, or any other racial slur, it would be all over the news! Our countries schools have a zero tolerance policy against racial harassment, and you won’t hear certain words thrown around the hallways of your child’s school. But you WILL hear “retard” on a regular basis.

I know there are plenty of you who feel I’m overreacting. Well, apparently I’m with the 3 million other families in the country who are FURIOUS this film has been allowed to be produced the way it has. You can expect to see national and local protests about this film, as those of us who are overreacting demand that our children, brothers, sisters, cousins, and loved ones get the same respect that everyone else in the country gets, including illegal immigrants. That they aren’t set up for yet MORE harassment by teens who think it’s funny to mock our children because Hollywood has encouraged them to do so.

I hear the word by friends and family members all the time. I hear the “short bus” jokes. Most of the time I’ll call someone on the carpet about it, but sometimes I won’t. Sometimes I just get tired of constantly having to defend my child against the people who are supposed to care. Their lame responses of “I wasn’t meaning HER, it was just a joke!” Well, HELLO!!! Who do you MEAN then? Who are you comparing yourself or others to when you toss those words around? And my personal favorite “It just slipped out”. Funny…words that aren’t part of my every day vocabulary don’t “just slip out”!

My child, and millions like her, are intellectually disabled (that’s the proper term, by the way…”retarded” is going out the window because it’s become such a hateful slang term. School districts aren’t even putting it on their paperwork anymore!) Just as people of color don’t have a choice of what color skin they were born with, children with intellectual disabilities don’t have a choice but to ride “the short bus”, and so they become the brunt of your jokes. I’ve watched people who’s own children ride “the short bus” make the same jokes, without even realizing (or caring) that it’s at the expense of his/her own children. “Oh, but they think it’s funny too!” Do they really? Or are they laughing along while inside they squirm with discomfort?

These people don’t have a choice to have the medical term “Mental retardation” plastered all over their medical records. Those with syndromes such as Down Syndrome can’t even hide behind a “normal” appearance. It’s plastered on their face, leaving them open to hateful ridicule by their peers, and yes, even their family members.

So, if you’ve seen the trailers, and thought, “That looks like a fun movie to see!” Please don’t. My child…your grandchild, your niece, your cousin, your friend…. and those like her, deserve the respect more then Ben Stiller and his team deserve a few bucks!

I stumbled across this website a while ago and it just occurred to me that there are probably a lot of people who read my blog who may be interested in it. It’s called Mamas Like and it’s basically a blog filled with reviews of various kids’/family products. Their guidelines for reviewing something is that a) they need to like the product, b) it’s a small-business venture run by women and more specifically work-at-home moms c) your product is your own unique creation. They have a whole bunch of other guidelines, but those are the biggest.

Here’s my favorite part of the site - almost everything that they review they get an actual sample of and they almost always give it away. To win, all you have to do is leave a comment. I won a gift pack from Sophia Bean a few months ago. And I never win anything.

I want this.

And Lexi would like these. Size 9.

Thanks.

With our adoption getting closer and closer we get a lot of the same comments a pregnant women does in her 9th month:

“I bet you can’t wait for the wait to be over.”

“Not much longer now.”

“Wow, still no baby yet?”

“Do you have everything ready?”

“You must be really excited.”

And we are. We are ready and we are very excited and at the same time I am sad. I’m sad because some where in Ethiopia there is a women or family in a similar situation to this:

“Meanwhile, most of the poorest of the poor suffer silently, too weak for activism or too busy raising the next generation of hungry. In the sprawling slum of Haiti’s Cité Soleil, Placide Simone, 29, offered one of her five offspring to a stranger. “Take one,” she said, cradling a listless baby and motioning toward four rail-thin toddlers, none of whom had eaten that day. “You pick. Just feed them.”

(A New York Times report from last week on the worldwide foot riots.)

Someone is making the decision that they are too poor, too sick, too weak to care for their children and that the best thing they can do is hand their child over to a stranger in the hopes that they will receive the care that they need.

Recently, I’ve switched from using paper or plastic bags to bringing my own canvas bags. People making comments like this and this got me thinking about how ridiculous it is to not be using canvas bags. But what really pushed me over the edge was standing in line at Wal-Mart (so NOT a fan of that store, but it’s a great place for random teacher-type things) and watching the women in front of me fill her cart with about 25 plastic bags. I’m not kidding. She was buying tons of chips for some party and the cashier was putting one bag of chips per plastic bag. At that point I pulled one of the canvas bags off the rack and added it to my purchase.

Since then I’ve gotten 2 more canvas bags and I love having them. I’ve noticed several things:

1. The Target grocery people become skilled baggers when faced with the challenge of fitting a cart load of stuff into 3 bags (side note: Have you seen how terrible Target cashiers are a bagging groceries? Sometimes I have to look away it’s so painful to watch).

2. I buy less stuff because I keep thinking “will it all fit in my bags?”

3. They have longer straps so I can carry them over my shoulder leaving my hands free to carry Lexi. I can carry 3 canvas bags, Lexi and a 12-pack of soda in one trip.

4. Lexi loves to carry them around the store as her purse.

Seriously, if you have ever thought about switching, just do it, it’s not nearly the pain in the butt that I thought it would be. I’m really not sure why it took me this long to switch. In high school, I was a total tree hugger. I carried my backpack with me everywhere. I always declined the bag at the store and loaded everything into my backpack. I’m not sure why I stopped. Glad I went back though.