Carrot Top

Gosh, it really is getting to be a busy time of year, aint it?? It only feels like New Year’s Day was yesterday, and here we are already in October. There’s less than two months until Christmas, and I haven’t even started my shopping. What’s more important, I haven’t even started my own wish list! LOL! I need to start jotting down little hints on Post-It Notes, and stick them around my mom’s house. The refrigerator is my favorite spot to drop a hint… my dad is always opening the refrigerator door. He’s actually really silly about the fridge! He’s got this harmless little O.C.D. about refrigerators… no matter if he’s hungry or not, every time my dad is in the kitchen he looks in the fridge. Maybe I’ll start dropping Christmas hints in the lettuce crisper. HAHA! But who am I kidding? My dad would never voluntarily go for the lettuce… I’ll dop my hints on the ice cream in the freezer.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. While Christmas is coming, Thanksgiving is just a month away, and Halloween is at the end of this month. I sooo cannot wait for Halloween this year! I have had my costume planned for months. I’m going as Betsy Ross! :-) I have a cute, blue dress, white shirt and red apron for my hips, and I’m going to carry around a partially swen American Flag. And I really sewed the flag all by myself! Good thing I only had to fashion thirteen stars on that version, which they actually call the “Betsy Ross” flag… embroidering is a major pain in the badonkadonk! LOL!! And just in case you might be thinking about making your own flag, I’ll just tell you now that it’s much easier, and well worth it to just buy a US flag already made and ready to fly on your flag pole.

For the rest of this month, up until Halloween, I’ll be wearing pink every day I can, if not at least a pink lapel pin to symbolize I am recognizing it. I actually keep a pink ribbon magnet on my car year round! That’s because October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, or NBCAM. Breast cancer is such an important issue today. Well, all health issues are important… they really are… but breast canver is a big one because is affects so many people. It’s the number-one cancer in women, second leading cause of cancer death in women (after lung cancer). And, you might be surprised, but men can get breast cancer, too! I was really taken back when I found that out. It’s not really that common though, at least not as common as it is for women. Only about one percent of breast cancer cases are found in men. Still, though, that’s one percent too many, for anyone. Men or women!
Did you know that breast cancer is also the oldest known form of cancer? The earliest accounts date back to sometime around 1600 BC in Egypt. Back then it was documented that the illness was untreatable. Today that is far from the truth. We’ve come a loooong way with medicine and science since those days, and many forms of breast cancer can be treated and removed. Still, it has affected many throughout history, including the mother of our first United States President.

George Washington’s mom, Mary Washington, lost her life to breast cancer, and the daughter of John Adams, our second United States President, also battled with the disease. She was treated for some time, but medical treatments at the time were far too archaic, and she also eventually died. That was not the last time the disease affected the White House, either. Former First Lady Betty Ford, a breast cancer survivor and one of the first public figures to speak out about the disease, joined her daughter on TV to call attention to the importance of screening. Soon after that, a great wave of recognizable people, and those of influence, jumped onboard to raise awareness and funds to research a cure.

I’m not the first to blog about breast cancer, and i’m surely not going to be the last, either. Everyone needs to know about the devastation of breast cancer - at least I think they do - and everyone should be able to lend a helping hand to look for the cure. The smallest gesture of buying a pink ribbon lapel pin, or affixing a pink ribbon magnet to your car a just a couple of ways you can help. The couple bucks spent on those things help show your support, and maybe someday real soon, a cure will be found, and we won’t have to blog about it anymore. Wouldn’t that be great! YES! It would be WONDERFUL!

I can’t write about all of the things you should know about regarding breast cancer (because this blog would be, like, a million pages long). But if you’re reading this, and you don’t know much about it, I have included a few web pages that you can take a look at:

http://www.breastcancer.org
http://nbcam.org/index.cfm
http://cms.komen.org/komen/index.htm

Those are just a few of the sites on the web — there are many more, but it’s a real good place to start if you need information. There’s only a few days laft in October, but that doesn’t mean that your activism with breast cancer has to stop at the end of the month. Breast cancer is a year-round problem, and until a cure is found, awareness and education is a year-round mission.

Until next time! Lexi

So…I know I mentioned this before, but I am soooo ultra pumped up to vote this year!! This is my first time voting in a Presidential election . I’m a votin’ newbie! LOL! Seriously though, because this is the first time that MY vote will be counted, I’ve been doing tons of reading, kind of like doing homework on what is important to helping me make my decision: studying up on the issues, and getting to know as much about our candidates as possible. There really is no other way to do it. If you just pick one without knowing why, well, that’s like driving with a blindfold!!

This year’s Presidential races have been so exciting, mostly because of the history-making set of first-time events. Regardless of the outcome this November, there will be a new chapter that needs to be written to history books. We will be ushering in our first ever African American President, or our first female Vice President. You couldn’t even write this as a movie and have it be as fantastic and unbelievable as it has been.

Since this is my first time participating in our Nation’s electoral process, I decided to brush up on some of our political history. I found out some really interesting stuff! And its kind of important when you think about it, because they relate directly to this year’s election! First of all, everyone knows that it’s a right and a privilege to vote. Some people don’t do it, but it really is important. Some countries take voting so seriously that the people have to vote! It’s called compulsory voting. It’s a really weird system. People who are allowed to vote are actually forced to vote. If they don’t cast a ballot they can be punished with fines, or even put in jail! No Thanks!!!

Here in the United States our history went through all kinds of changes to get to where we are today. It used to be that only white men could vote. And not all of them! White men who owned land were the ones who were given the right participate in an election. The system stayed that way until the Fifteenth Amendment was added to the United States Constitution in1870.Historically known as one of the Reconstruction Amendments, the Fifteenth Amendment gave African Americans and other minorities the right to vote. Women? Fuggetaboutit! LOL! Seriously though, that was an even tougher fight. Women had to wait until 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was added, which states that a United States citizen cannot be excluded from the voting process because of gender. Before that time only a handful of states recognized women’s suffrage, and even then, it was still next to impossible to be a woman and allowed to vote in those states. There were all kinds of rules and stipulations; it was like reading blueprints in some states. The Nineteenth Amendment finally gave every female citizen of age the right to vote.

I think those two parts of our history are sooo relevant today because, without those changes to our Constitution, who knows where we’d be today? Now that I spent all this time revisiting my American History, I’m going to spend the rest of the month researching the candidates! This is so much fun! I did manage to put on a patriotic us flag lapel pin and gather up a few miniature American flags for when I go to a few speeches to learn more about the candidates. One thing is for sure that this time of year, and that is I really get to wear my favorite red, white and blue colors!!!

Oh just to nip it in the bud, before any of my nearest and dearest call to ask me who I am voting for, I still haven’t decided; but I’m getting close to making up my mind. I think. You know how girls can be! It’s like that new song by Katy Perry, “Hot N Cold” (which is practically my theme song!) I’m always changing my mind! Hee hee!!!