What to Pack for BlogHer: Your Etiquette

Zipper repaired on suitcase? Check.

Comfortable yet still somewhat fashionable walking shoes? Check.

Phone charger? [the good one, not the free one you got that gets hot enough to catch fire] Check.

Your manners? Ummmmm... where do I go to find my Social Conferencing Etiquette Checklist?

If you're headed out to a conference, like I am, then Lucky You and Lucky Day! Because the answers to your Conference Etiquette quandaries are right over HERE, where I'm featured today on BlogHer with my unofficial learned-by-my-own-error-of-my-ways etiquette checklist : How To Say The Right Thing at a Social Media Conference. At any conference, really.

If you're like me, you've let things slip out of your mouth because you just didn't know. It's a hard lesson to learn, but you make your mistakes, you forgive yourself, and you're grateful for the grace of others who let you try again.

See what I've let slip through without the filter of awareness, along with tips on Saying The Right Thing. And if you find yourself saying the awkward, realize we all learn through living.

Hope to see you August 4-6, at BlogHer's annual conference. BlogHer is the world's largest social media conference for women, and this year we're in Los Angeles! Come to network, be inspired, and be among other bloggers who find the world of blogging one of the most supportive communities in the world!

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The Secret to Beautiful Summer Hair

For those of you in my Day Late Dollar Short club, this week is the week we're getting to our End of School Year to-do lists. Yeah, the rest of the world got to it weeks ago, I know, but we are still in the month of June, so we're good.

As we reach in and tackle those 9-month-long neglected innards of our kids' backpacks, it's not all put your hand in and pull out a green tangerine that your fingers sunk into. There are treasures within those zippered compartments, to be sure.

Treasures like what I found this morning. My backpack haul grew into my Everything I Need To Be Beautiful this summer trove. Not really, but at least Everything I Need To Keep My Hair From Having Its Own Zip Code.

Want to know the secret to summer hair kept tame and free from interfering with your field of vision? Look no further than what you'll find inside your childrens' backpacks.

Here are the Top 5 Hair-Busters that with along with a little Frizz-Ease, came to my rescue:

Shown: The long-forgotten scarf my child took to school in November for a Titanic re-enactment project where he was the Ship Medic and needed bandages. 

Shown: Rainbow Loom wristband slash most awesome ponytail holder for thickest hair imaginable in a Milwaukee summer humidity wave.

Shown: From when son called 1984 and asked for his mom's scrunchy bands back.

Shown: Rubber bands from the secret inside zipper pocket behind the pencil case flap. Why did he need so many? He doesn't want to tell me. But I was in grade school once and I know what a rubber band shooting ammunition cache for the 7th grade looks like.

Shown: Drybar hair courtesy of the school auction gift certificate for the February event that was never turned in for the February event but which was found crushed at the bottom of the backpack and nevertheless had to be used before the expiration date of July 6, 2016.

Happy summer everyone. I wish you hair resourcefulness and smart backpacking unpacking. May the gods of hair hacks smile upon you. 

* * *

You Can't Hide Your Lyin' Eggs

Chickens lay eggs, people lie down.

I remember learning this, but then what about, “Now I lay me down to sleep…?”

Because I'm trying to get through a scene in this story I'm writing and I just need someone to be in a bed to rest, but what about chickens and eggs. And people needing to lie down. 

Wait! Never mind, I just looked something up, "In the case of  'Every afternoon we lay down and rest for an hour,' it is acceptable to use 'lay' as in 'laying' because it’s in the past.

But that would make us chickens. And I'm pretty sure that that no one wants my half-century-old eggs lain anywhere.

Stop thinking so much and get the scene down! Hold on hold on hold on, I think I found something: "The past participle of the verb to lie is lain. The eggs were lain."

But I remember this egg farmer that delivered eggs to my grandmother and he would say that his chickens just laid eggs.

Shuttup, brain! Memorize this now: Lie, lay, lain, is an intransitive verb that does not need an object.

Do you have any water? I feel like I need to be lain in some water. Or lay down in water. Whatever, I am light-headed and I just want to write a story about lying in bed and I need to say I laid down, or I lay down. And to show the action of  'lay down.' I mean, lie down. I mean, someone lay me down.

Ok, it's almost Saturday night already, we got to fix this, get this story at least in first draft. Repeat after me: lie is generally used to refer to things, but may be used to refer to a group or class of people.

Can we open a window, y’all? I seriously need to lay-lie my head down in a fresh breeze.

We're not done yet. People lie, but you don’t lie people, but you can lay people. Or you can lay people, I can't, I'm in a closed relationship. 

For a number of reasons, could you repeat that? Because first of all, are we 'not done' or 'not finished,' we're not bread. And second of all, sorry, but I didn’t hear you, I was on the phone with my therapist who just told me to lay down.

All you have to remember, is lie, lay, lain, lay, laid, laid. Let's get this chapter started.

I will, but someone needs to call my high school English teacher. After I apologize to her for not being more in awe of what she so readily knew, I need her at my side, because I am done-finished for the day and she's the only one who knows how to properly ask someone to place my body in a reclining position.

 * * *

Call on That Love

This isn't the post I had scheduled for today when I filled out my blogging calendar. But two weeks ago, I didn't expect to attend a funeral for an 18-year-old-child.

The most important thing I can share with you today, is this:

I just returned home from a funeral service for a child who passed away Saturday night. He graduated with my son from high school less than two weeks ago. The details of his passing aren't mine to share, but the reason for this post is the service that was held for him.

It truly was that: a service. The church was filled, upper and lower levels, for a bright and always smiling child. He was a gorgeous child, and had his mother's blue eyes and his father's easy laugh.

 I need to share the beautiful words spoken tonight by the priest, because I know, there is someone who one day may need to hear them:

"Never doubt your worth. The thoughts that tell you that you don't matter aren't true. Call someone, reach out to someone, when the darkness becomes too much, when the burden becomes too heavy to carry alone, when what you hear yourself saying becomes dangerous, reach out. No one is alone. The thoughts tell us we are, but they're wrong. Because there isn't a person who is here tonight who would not jump at the chance to help who we've lost. Feel the love in this room for him right now, that love isn't just here overnight, suddenly because of his passing. This love for him was always here. It's always been here. That love is here for us too. Believe in that love. Call on that love."
+++

Rest in peace, sweet child. We love you so.

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There's a Few Things in This House

So many square feet, and a few of them are used wisely. The house we live in is still standing ten+ years after we first inhabited it, and all that we've transported here from where we once were, there, isn't used much anymore.

Over a decade of family life within our home, and the thought of the days spent here brings me to spasmodic cries and hiccups against Father Time as he whacks away at the hourglass, reducing my days of my favorite thing to do: nothing but sit at the kitchen table with Play-Dough and magic markers all day.

But there are a few things in this house, that will always be in this house. And yes they do add to the clutter and diminish the ability to walk freely through without having to side step, but these items are going nowhere until I take them with me in my request to be buried with them.

Let's begin with my computer glasses. These are a thing, people. I learned about them at BlogHer and they reduce glare from the screen and cut down on blue light glare and have minimized my migraines from too much (Ha as if too much online time can even be) Now I don't have to get off the keyboard until I want to get off. So, get thee behind me, eyestrain!

What else will I have clutched in my hand until I'm physically removed from this house? My Jessica Simpson slippers. I don't have the budget for anything from Jessica Simpson which surprisingly is costy costly cost-y, but I have a sister who knows this, and splurges on my behalf. My Jessica Simpson fur lined slippers are on my Dress Me In This For My Funeral list (like you don't have one.)


I will cling to my childhood Golden Encyclopedia of Knowledge books. Googling has spoiled us with its Insta-Answer, but googling has also taken away one of my favorite childhood nerdom activities: being belly down on the living room carpet while turning pages of information on anything you didn't even know that you wanted to know about. From Nefertiri to Fort Knox, it was all there on a weekend afternoon. Google can't get you that. Well, it can, but you need my computer glasses for the hours you need to achieve my childhood nerdom status.



 Little Bear on VHS. My friends Owl, Emily, Hen, Lucy, kind Mother Bear and Father Bear. And my favorite, Duck.  I loved this Nick series more than, Ok, as much as, my kids did. The sweetest cartoon ever made and Mother Bear was the one who gave me my agenda for the day when I had no idea had run out of ideas was desperate for ideas, on what to do with three under seven. When Mother Bear made Birthday Soup, we made birthday soup. When Father Bear decided to hang treats from trees, we hung treats from trees. I needed no brain when Little Bear's family did all my thinking for me, which was perfect because there was a stretch in my life there where I didn't sleep for eight years.

My abuela's wooden spoon set, wooden cutting board, and wooden mortar and pestle. I don't feel lonely in the kitchen when my hands are upon where her hands were.

All three of their baby books. Dates of their well baby visits along with my notes on the doctor's exam, their tiny bitty height and weight recorded with a photo of them on the scale. These books help me ignore Father Time for awhile. Open to any page, and you'll see their first words, their first steps, their first tooth. It was there once, the days I thought would be there forever.

The shoebox of my grandmother's poetry . I see her writing, shaky but still clear though she was in her 80s, and I read the intimacy of her words, I think about how much there is in us that others never know. We are complex, with depth, we share our lives and still remain so much our own. I read her poetry and each time, it means something different.

My one and only Barbie Doll. When my children were little, one of them asked me if I missed playing with Barbies because all the toys we had in our house were cars, fire trucks, Legos, trains. I said no, since I never had a Barbie. That Christmas, with three children hanging around my neck so close I could hear them breathe, I unwrapped my first Barbie.

I hope she's not afraid of the dark and crowded spaces, because she's coming along into that pine box with me. 

* * *

You Can Sweep: Motivating Quotations for Housekeeping

You were made to keep things in place and within findability range. Deep down, you may doubt that are you able to accomplish much when the people you live with neither show nor share interest in your desire to stop losing shoes and house keys. But with some mindful reassurance and encouraging motivation, you will be that housekeeping winner you know is hidden within.

Here, let us together boldly go toward the lemon-scented path that is our domestic destiny, with a handful of motivational quotations for housekeeping:

1. FOCUS IS SPELLED Y-O-U.
Remember who you want to keep order for and why. Answer: for me. Why: tired of losing sh8t.

2. YOU ARE ON FIRE AND ORDER IS YOUR MATCH.
With some sexy music playing subliminally while you peruse Containers R Us sites, you can switch your brain to be turned on by everything in its place and a place for everything. Rowr, just saying that, is it hot in here or just me? 

3.  WHO ARE YOU? THE ANSWER TO THAT IS "I AM A CLEANING WARRIOR."
Cleaning is fun! Look at me! Putting all like items together in the same place. I mean, matchy matchy matchy! Kids? Come join mama in some fun!

4.  CLEANING IS A GIFT OF WHICH YOU HAVE NOT YET RECOGNIZED.
 Repeat 100 times a day until you start to consider that maybe it could be. You must fight the temptation to answer back with probably not.

5.  WITH BRUSHES AND IMPLEMENTS IN HAND, I RUSH THE SURFACES AS I AM CHARLES IN CHARGE.
This is my house. MY house. I say where things go, when they go, how they go, with who they go.  My house.

6.  I WILL AND CAN AND DO EXPECT SUCCESS.
Don't even consider that you won't spend some part of every day of the rest of your life, not accomplishing one small thing to bring order to your home. It can be anything - so set yourself up for success. Make a to-do list that says "remove empty water bottles from family room." Then pick up bottles, empty them, and you are so amazing.

7.  UNIQUE IS MY MIDDLE NAME AND I SHALL LEAVE MY MARK OF CLEANLINESS ON IT ALL.
And first and last because NO ONE can clean or maybe not clean, like you. Put your special stamp on the way to unload a dishwasher. Others try, but few can come close to stacking away plates in the way that you do.

8.  DARE TO BELIEVE IN THY POWERS THAT CLEAN.
Who's a good cleaner? YOU'RE a good cleaner. Dream it, be it: the one who gets that laundry d-o-n-e DONE.

9.  BE THE ONE WHO DRIPS WITH GRATITUDE.
 I am happy I have a home to clean. I am happy I have dishes that have had food on them to now clean. I am happy that I have indoor plumbing toilets that need to be swished. I am dripping with 409 gratitude for the house that I will clean.


10.  THERE IS A LEMON FRESH WINNER IN ME.
I just have to somehow figure out a way to pull her out, but she's there. Hard to see in this polka-dotted toothpaste-spotted bathroom mirror. But she is there, and she CAN and she WILL get one thing done today so that there is a corner of this house that brings visual peace when my eyes hit upon it.


But wait, it's summer, isn't it? So, yeah, just going to clear a spot here on this sofa from today's laundry and dream of how I will be all I was created to be, come September.

* * *

In the Pursuit of Happiness

I can't climb out of the heaviness of this weekend's mass shooting in Orlando. The LGBTQ community was specifically targeted and bulls-eyed for being who they are, for living as we all have been told we have the right to live: in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Or is this America's lip service?

Pursuit of individual happiness. Instead, when this community gathered to celebrate Pride, they were killed over this very act. But it isn't just one man's hatred, pay attention, because I know that I myself have heard, seen, read, and been where this is a hatred for the gay community. 

Why is my life different from the life of the killer's? I read of his stated revulsion toward the LGBTQ community. I can tell you for certain that there is no one reason that separates us, but I do remember moments in my life that I am sure he would never experienced. I remember being four years old and walking with my Spanish grandmother in a hospital's hallway as we went to visit a family friend. In front of us walked a man, loose-hipped and swaying down the corridor. I watched, too young and unaware to attach any significance to his movements, but when this man passed a group of two older boys, they hissed at him when he went past and lisped "Hello there," giggling as they shouted to him.

 

My grandmother tugged my hand and pulled me ahead, she moved to catch up to the boys, "No! That is enough! He leaves you be, you leave him be! Enough!" Her shouts were in Spanish but her anger was unmistakable, and the boys turned and hid back in the patient's room, where they were visiting.

 

That lesson stayed with me. Children watch, children learn. Children remember. 

+++

With the horrific deaths from this weekend, it is surreal that I am here, on this day, packing a lunch for summer camp and listening to my oldest get ready for work, all with the murmuring of my husband on a conference call. This is our pursuit of what makes us happy. And no one shoots us

 

My family is left to be who we are, no one seeks to harm us our spot us out. Other than a comment years ago, when someone questioned my husband, “You seem like a nice guy, why would you marry a Mexican?" we are able to move and do without worry of someone finding us to make us disappear.

 

I'm walking in my sundress and flip flops, ready to run errands, only one day later after reading headlines that made me shake my head and swallow away a lump in my throat. The news of 50 people killed for being LGBTQ and 53 injured, red-circled because of a murderer's rage against this community.

I cannot speak for the loss on a personal level, and it's not mine to crown myself knowing what it feels like to be part of something that people attempt to smother out of existence. But I feel the pain in my friends' posts and I know that I have many people in my life whom I love deeply who have been cut to their hearts with this mass shooting.

I have read every heartbreaking post that has been shared, and I have shared so that the voices that need to be heard, I can help with that in a small way. I know that while my world goes on, for the ones who lost the unimaginable this weekend, it doesn't. My eyes this morning opened to a day ahead filled with caring for the ones I love, while someone else's eyes stared into darkness, hearts frozen with the realization that their nightmare has no escape: today brings reality.

I don't know what to do, other than to stop everyone I know and grab their arm to listen to me. Teach your children to love! It sounds minimalistic, but we have to. Not that I think this will be a cure-all or the one thing to fix everything, but along the way, if we ourselves remember to do the same, we can maybe make things safer for everyone. If you hear someone belittle, mock, whisper or speak in any manner that ridicules or reduces – or hear and see the ugly, spitting hate – to our LGBTQ family, stop them. Teach your children to say something, help them by giving them the words to stand for what you stand for.

Teach your children. From the earliest days of their lives, be clear about what is not allowed when speaking about other human beings. And I don't mean with the use of 'comfortable' words of “tolerance” and “co-exist.” We tolerate those who are annoying, and we co-exist with a bossy co-worker, but we don't tolerate people we love and share lives with.

Toss out the words like 'tolerance' and gather everyone in who is already pushed to the sides and made to fight for being who they are. We are free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, aren't we? But this weekend shows that's not true for everyone. So we can work to help in our own small way, make it possible with our own acts, because nowhere is it written “only if people are like you.”

 

Your children see what you do and to whom you do it to. Don't think they don't watch, and absolutely don't think that they don't listen. They learn at home. Don't let them leave until you're sure they'll do this world right. 

 

 

I love you all. I love my friends who are LGBTQ, and are my family. My heart breaks with how this must feel for you and how this strikes at who you are.

I love you, and I hear and see you.

 

*  * *

So Glad They Told Me

It's an exciting day!

So Glad They Told Me, a collection of 60 essays on the truth of motherhood, is set to be released this August.

You can read of the contributors and find more details on what is sure to be a treasured collection, on HerStories Project.

"So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real About Motherhood. After Stephanie’s viral post I’m Glad Someone Told Me, we were blown away by the response to our social media campaign, #sogladtheytoldme, in which mothers shared the supportive, real advice they heard from other women about motherhood . . . or wish they’d been told, but weren’t. We realized how important this topic was, and how many mothers were eager to share their own experiences."

I am proud to be a contributor to this much anticipated anthology. Thank you so much for featuring my essay, HerStories Project! I am so excited and honored to have been selected to be a part of the newest book by HerStories Project Community! (Out on August 23)

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To Remind Yourself to Breathe

Since Sunday, I've needed to find a place to take a breath, and it's been impossible. For 18 years now, I've been the mother of this child you see here. When I took this picture, he had been riding a bicycle on his own without the steadying hand of either me or his father for the whole of two feet. I ran alongside while my son shouted, “Did Dad let go? Is it me alone?!”

“It's you alone!" I called back while he concentrated straight ahead. "No one's hanging on!" And with that, he burst into a fresh force of adrenaline, the wind behind him as he pumped with the exhilaration of doing what he didn't think he could do.

I remember the moment, forgetting to breathe then because I always forget to move air in and out of my lungs when I'm watching my children to make sure that the air they need keeps moving in and out. We had let go, and I held my breath as he took off on his own.

Since Sunday, we've had a houseful of people who came to celebrate this boy's high school graduation. Our house is filled, and there is not a corner anywhere for me to sit and be with this season that has come to an end.

 

I need to pause with the enormity of this next step for the both of us. It leaves me needing more oxygen than our atmosphere offers. My son, the one who was handed to me by a labor and delivery nurse, is now being handed over by me, to the world. I know all the blessings that come with this, and I fully am aware of the good fortune to have a child, to have him reach adulthood, to have him be healthy and of sound mind. I know that.

But he will begin his own life now, with the steps that I witnessed him take on Sunday as he marched to Pomp and Circumstance. And I remember his first unsteadiness as he took to the bike by himself, believing what he could do because we believed he could. 

You know what would help me with today? A new language. One that isn't slowed by the clumsy work of taking that which leaves us breathless and us, trying to give it volume.

How do you express yourself when it's all trapped in your heart?

I try here, because I need to lift the words up and forward, to push them along so that I don't feel this weight that sits in my chest. I am thrilled for my son, excited at all that waits for any young person after high school. I remember how much of an adult I felt when at this very same stage. But the current that runs underneath my joy at seeing his eyes spark and his voice grow louder as he talks about school in September, is one that I try to shake away. It remains suspended, and I need room for these new feelings that I knew would be part of this transition for me.

I see him in this picture. I recall the smile on his face, with the two bottom teeth missing, as he peddled and the handlebars wobbled too far over to the right for my comfort. But he rode his bicycle on his own, and then, he was the breathless one right along with me when he saw what he was capable of.

For the last 12 years, I've driven my son to school. Today was the first day that I didn't. My role now is the one that was in the picture above--letting go.

 

I stand back as they call his name. My heart pounds. I still my arms that want to rush forward and walk up with him. I step to the side as he comes off the stage, smiling when he looks at me though my eyes are shiny. I feel his adrenaline from making his way.

I see him and my heart cries, “You're doing it! It's you!” And we've let go.

 

   

* * *

Donald Trump is More Than Politics

These are the words from my older sister, Leonor Rosas, who has asked me to run her story on my blog. She has given me my family's life story, because "This country is more broken than I have ever witnessed it. We have to say something of the reason why immigrants are here and why we come to America. It is not because we do not want to work or be given things for free. We come because of what America is to us." 

 

***

 

My immediate family came to the United States in shifts. First my aunts came when they joined the convent in the early '50’s, followed by my uncle and I when we came in 1958. My mother, grandmother, my brother and sister came in 1960. My father arrived two years later.

The immigration process was lengthy and costly. We had medical requirements to meet. My parents had to document that they had the skills necessary to not be a burden to this country…. something that we have never been.

 

This is a country to be proud of, a place where a person can advance and contribute, worship in the way you feel most at peace, and raise healthy productive children.

We came here because that was not the case in Colombia, South America. When we left our country, there was a Dictator:

Generalisimo Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. He mounted a successful coup against the incumbent President, Laureano Gómez Castro. Pinilla imposed martial law and established a dictatorship style government in Colombia. I remember a reign of terror. I was 7 years old then and I saw Colombia being under martial law. At six 6PM every night, everyone had to be home. Sirens would wail and my Abuela(grandmother) paced the floor waiting for my mother to come through the door. At 5:30PM, my grandmother would get her rosary and begin praying that the bus from Bogota to Fontibon would not be late so that mama would arrive safely before the sirens.

I would hear my mother and my abuela talking about coming to America where we would not have to fear going out at night or gatherings with our neighbors to talk about the fear of our government.

 

Rojas Pinilla promised peace, unification, a bright future: but he began his own violence. He ordered the army and police against all opposition in Colombia. If you disagreed with him, you were jailed. Many disappeared. By the end of the Rojas regime, over 300,000 Colombians were dead, and Rojas, the self-anointed "peace-bringer" became known as someone else:  "a sadist … one of the most savage and venal and altogether incompetent administrators in the history of the nation." 

 

***

My family sought safety in America. Life was difficult at first for all of us when we arrived here. But the adults found work right away and the children went to school. My grandmother was learning how to shop without speaking English and my father and aunts and uncles went to night school to learn English. We worked, studied, grew. My mother and father had three more children in America.

We went to school, married, became productive citizens. Yes, we became citizens and took our civic responsibilities very seriously. My uncle served in the army and most of us became active in our communities. We loved this country and the freedom to work toward our dream of being part of America and contributing to this country.

It is my love for America that has pushed me to write to you today. I am in anguish over the possibility of Trump becoming President.

Trump has made statements about “rapists, criminals” about Mexicans. Trump's views on women, and plans for Muslims in the U.S are about banning a group based on religion. Some compare Trump to Hitler. I can compare him to a dictatorship.

When I was 12 years old, my Aunt Lilia took me dress shopping. We were walking along Milwaukee's streets and there was a group of young white men marching down the street in a demonstration. The signs they carried stated that the Holocaust never existed.

One second my aunt was holding my hand and the next minute her tiny 95 pounds 5’2’’ body was up against this tall white man in Nazi uniform! She shouted at him:” You don’t know, you were not alive when thousands of people were executed by Hitler, you don’t know how the whole world cried for the victims, you don’t know how we worried that the world would fall to this evil tyrant! We were scared!” I had never seen her speak up for anything before.

Because I was 12, I was mortified. How could she embarrass herself in that way? When she came back to my side and once again took my hand she was in tears. Her small body shook, and she wiped her mouth from the tears. She told me all she had seen as a child. Of what she remembered, of the news she had witnessed. The atrocities she had heard about from the newspapers and radio in Colombia during those terrible times, and she told me how the whole world was in panic that the monster and his criminal ideology would reach North and South America, Europe and Asia. “He wanted the world!” she said. I will never forget her strength as she looked up into the face of a male, two feet taller.

***

For the first time, I am telling this story. It is time now to talk about tyrants who abuse their power and criminalize those go against them and question their authority. Of what can happen when a person who is in power wants to shut down any dissent, any outcry of injustice.

It is time for all of us citizens of the world to come together regardless of party affiliation or preferred

candidate to form a cohesive effort to repel and stop the darkness that Donald Trump brings with him. He will not unify – he is tearing apart. He will not seek equality for anyone unless they are what he agrees they have to be. He will seek to eliminate, destroy, remove, vilify, and pit Americans against each other.

He wants what we have worked to change – his promise to “Make America Great Again” is different for those who remember the America of the 1950s, '60s, and before. America was great for one type of person: if you are who Donald Trump is.

We can come together and work for the reason so many come to America. With the hope of liberty of different points of view, and of justice for those no matter the country they come from.

***

Some people say they will not vote in this election. Some people have not seen what I've seen: when someone comes into the office with the highest power in the land, and has only one mission in mind: to have everyone think like them and with our past years of progress, vanish. We cannot lose the dream of what America is. We are not bad. Immigrants do not come here to take and destroy.

 

 

Donald Trump is not politics.

 

Donald Trump is not one party over another or a differing political point of view.

 

Donald Trump is a candidate who will use America for his own gain. As I have seen dictators do.

 

***

 

Thank you to my sister, Lee, for her words here. Thank you for sharing what you know and I am proud to do what I can, to have others read the story of immigrants in America. 

Thank You, Parenting Media Association!

 

 

 

 Parenting Media Associations Announces Winners of the 2016 Design and Editorial Awards for
Leading Local Parenting Publications and Websites. There were 645 entries submitted in the competition:  

Digital Media - Best Blog/Bloggers
Circulation 45,000 or more

Bronze: Sydney’s Child; "Child Mags Blog"

Silver: Chicago Parent; "Lollygag"

*Gold: Metroparent Milwaukee, Blogger Alexandra Rosas, "Mom Logic"

***

Thank you to Metroparent Milwaukee's Editor, Liz Paulsen, for her hard work and dedication, along with her kind heart. Liz is a dream to work with. And thank you, to Metroparent for the honor of being part of Metroparent Milwaukee Magazine.

You can follow my weekly columns on Metroparent Milwaukee here.

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