Vaccination Debate.

I am so tired of the vaccination debate blowing up my social media feed.

Parents are getting heated and opinionated, and let’s face it…kids are getting sick unnecessarily. Those are the facts that matter, people.

Kids are getting sick with illnesses that shouldn’t be around. That HAVEN’T been around in decades. Why? Because a generation decided it was a bad idea to vaccinate? What changed? Honestly…can someone tell me, because I don’t know.

If one person can tell me honestly with facts and data WHAT CHANGED…I will eat crow, which everyone knows I hate.

My primary concern behind this entire debate will be always be the impact on our kids. Shame on the parents who are throwing their children into the mix of this for publicity. 

It is not my place to say what parents should or shouldn’t do. If you’re going to vaccinate - great, and if you’re not going to vaccinate - great. But either way, be respectful human beings to the other parties opinion and don’t use your kids as a case study to fuel your opinion. They just need you to be a parent, not a lobbyist. 

Most of you know my advice on these types of debacles. Be informed. Educate yourself. But I have an extra step for this one…Be understanding.

Understand that immune-compromised children cannot be around unvaccinated children because it could be detrimental to their health. So if you choose not to vaccinate, think about the repercussions of sending your kid to public school. On the same note, if you are a parent with a child who cannot be around unvaccinated kids, you should do the same.

Understand that not everything you read on the internet is true. Do vaccines cause Autism? I don’t know. Some say yes, some say no. But here’s an article that might shed some light on what Autism Speaks thinks.

Understand that as humans, we all share this planet and regardless of opinions and differences, we need to be respectful to our fellow humans and their offspring. 

I don’t expect to change anyones mind on the vaccination debate. This is one that is going to define our generation…and is already starting to. My opinion and what I do for my kids is irrelevant for this post. But I can say, I have friends who vaccinate and friends who don’t. They’re still my friends. And they’re good parents.

Now. Please stop blowing up my social media. I love you all, but I’m ready to see fun posts again. Not heated debates. I’ve only got a year until election time rolls around - let me enjoy it. 

A Letter for a Single Dad, Not Currently Laughing.

 Dear Dan,

You don’t know me. You’ve never read my work or followed my blog. But I read yours. That’s the funny thing about writers, you don’t even have to know someone is reading your work – just putting it out there is enough.

So this morning when I woke up and stumbled for the first cup of coffee I thumbed through Facebook like any good Millennial would and I saw your post.

I don’t have the answers to your questions – they aren’t the questions you really want answered anyways. But I have some words for you, they’re not much but I hope they ease your mind.

A breakup, no matter how big or small, mutual or messy, starts a grieving process. Just like the grieving process you work through when death comes knocking at a door. Emotions are high, questions start being asked “What if…Maybe if I…” and all of that, no matter what anyone says, is ok. You have to feel those emotions, Dan. Let them in no matter how much they hurt to think about. Work through the grieving process.

So get mad. Get upset. Yell and write and cry. I won’t tell.

And when you’re done, at the end of the longest day of your life, know that you have a completely random stranger pulling for you.

As always,

Ashley

Dear Mom.

Those of you who know me, will know that I don't air my emotional baggage all over social media. But today, on the anniversary of my mom passing away...I'm going to. She loved when I wrote, no matter what the content was. Writing has always been, and will always be, my passion and she saw that in me and encouraged me to do it. I let it fall through the cracks a lot and life gets in the way...but today I'm writing for mom - to mom.

Mama,
Today is the day where I'm brutally reminded that my world is completely turned upside down and you're not here anymore.

I've been trying to write you a letter for two years, thanking you for all of the things you did for me and reminding you of how much I loved and still love you. But you know all of that...I know you do, I can feel it. I know you're still here with me because the magic of Birthday Week is still around even though I don't get a phone call at 5:25 in the morning from you. I know that you're here with the boys when they're hurt or scared because I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me I need to go be with them. That's you. You taught me how to be a good mom - I was made in your image.

Boy, was I made in your image. We butted heads a lot when I was younger. I kick myself for it now. You drove me crazy! And I know I drove you crazy too! But that's what we did. If I had only known that my time was limited with you...maybe I would have been more patient with things that I thought were trivial and time consuming? Who knows.

I know you know all of these things mom, because you were my best friend. My other half. My person. Even when we fought, I loved you. More than anyone or anything ever could. I always had this unwavering love for you. I needed you. I still need you.

Yes, I'm always sad that you're gone - but I've learned that sadness is selfish, at least in this case. You were sick and hurting, and I don't want that for you ever. Even if it meant one more day here with me. I know you're in a better place with Rose and Mater - I've finally accepted that.

But what I truly feel when this time comes around is guilt...and I haven't told anyone that. I'm sure you've figured it out by now. I feel guilty, Mom. Because you were always there for me. When I was sick or scared...you were there. That's what moms do. But when you were sick and scared two years ago...I wasn't there. When it was time for you to go, I wasn't there with you. I should have been. As your daughter, I should have been the one there with you to hold your hand, and tell you that it was ok if you wanted to let go now - that Pat and Chris and I would be ok because we're strong. Because we were made in your image. I wasn't. I had this gut feeling earlier in the day - I even texted Pat and told him that I thought something wasn't right. Every ounce of my body and every sign from the universe was telling me to stay, but my head made me leave....and then you were just...gone.

I remember coming to your house the next morning and holding your hand...and apologizing. God, I hope you heard that. Because I meant it...I still mean it. I am so sorry, Mom. You needed me more than anything and I was not there for you, and I am so so very sorry. I want you to know that. That I love you and I feel terrible for not being there with you, every day of my life. I am sorry for all the times we yelled and fought. I'm sorry for all the times I was ever difficult. I'm sorry that I couldn't give back everything to you that you gave to me.

My guilt will live with me forever...I know this because some mornings I wake up - this morning in particular - and it's the first feeling that courses through my body. But like all things, guilt is a phase. Most mornings I'm fine, and time heals all wounds...or so I've heard.

You should know though, that we are all fine mom, you don't have to worry about us. I figured out how to tell when hot dogs and lunch meat go bad without having to call Pat or Aunt Terrie...Sometimes I still have to call them and ask, just to make sure. You did such a good job raising us, even when we made mistakes or had bumps in the road you knew exactly how to help us through it. And look at us, we are all semi-functioning, well-adjusted adults.

So thank you mom - for teaching me how to sew, how to iron, how to cook. Thank you for teaching me that sometimes life throws you curve balls, but worrying about it isn't going to make it any better. Thank you for loving me at my best, and at my worst. Thank you for giving me all of the knowledge and power you knew I would need to succeed in my life.

But I think that the most important thing I could thank you for is this...Thank you for teaching me that love is always, no matter what, unconditional.

You will always be my best friend and my person. I love you, Mama. Unconditionally. Forever and always.
Love,
Your Baby Girl

Ashley "Breaks Sinks" Bacon

I break things. I would compare it to people looking into Medusa’s eyes…I look at things and they break. I also have this effect on plant-life…I think about growing it, and it choses suicide rather than the life of starvation I would inevitably give it.

Regardless, it is just in my DNA to break things. Luckily my husband is handy and he is typically there to fix whatever it is I have touched and/or thought about touching. 

So when he went to the store to buy me a lovely warm blanket that I had asked for because I have been feeling under the weather, I thought I would be awesome and do the dishes. 

Wrong.

I am not really sure why he was so surprised to walk into the kitchen and see that I had broken the sink by putting an entire pot of leftover cabbage down the garbage disposal. So contrary to what this particular blog post might imply, I am very smart and quite handy…however, my thought process was simple.

Soupy leftover cabbage + Trash = Smelly drippy trash

Soupy leftover cabbage + garbage disposal = Chopped up liquid cabbage that flows down the drain and doesn’t stink up my house.

Simple. However – my hubs did not agree with this thought process and after several swear words, throwing of kitchen items out of the way of the draining cabbage-water and half a gallon of Drain-O the sink appears to be fixed.

Although, when I asked him if I could drain my pasta for dinner he politely told me no, and I had to drain it in the bathtub. No biggie. 

The best part of this particular genetic-flaw that I possess are the nick-names that come along with it…I’ve earned quite a few, some that stick around for a while and some that pop and fizzle. Tonight’s nickname will definitely go down in the history books. 

As I was apologizing for causing the sink a slow and painful death-by-cabbage, Hubs just smiled and said, “It’s ok…It’s just what you do. It’s your middle name… ‘Ashley-Breaks Sinks-Bacon’.” Then he said that this incident caused me to lose my married name. Eh, it happens.

So basically I asked if that could be my mafia name, smiled and all was forgiven…and my sink gets to live another day.

Chicken Sandwich.

What better way to bring back a seemingly dormant blog than with a highly touchy controversial subject!

By now, I am sure that most of you have heard the Chick-Fil-A controversy…if not, go read up on it and come back…I’ll wait…

Are you done yet? Ok, great.

I have been seeing a lot of posts on my friends Facebook pages and Twitter accounts regarding this and I have also personally read a lot of the articles that have hit the media as well.

Here are my thoughts. And if you don’t agree with me, fine. Don’t agree. But don’t hate…hate is why we have a topic to discuss today unfortunately.

Chick-Fil-A. They make delicious chicken sandwiches, and I thoroughly enjoy them. When they revamped their desert menu, their brownies started to really stink, I’m blaming Splenda versus real sugar. The end.

Ok, seriously though – I have several gay friends. I love and support every one of them. They should be able to get married and have children, same as anyone else because sexual orientation doesn’t build a family…LOVE does. So when someone tries to stand in their way of living a full and loving life, and then tries to justify that ignorance by saying that type of ‘lifestyle’ goes against ‘family values,’ it makes my blood boil. Take a look around peeps – there are PLENTY of heterosexual men and women who don’t have the balls to be dedicated to their families and spouses these days.

While I completely agree with 95% of people who say that the CEO of Chick-Fil-A is an idiot and should be strung up by his toes and have his nasty artificially sweetened brownies thrown at his face…I won’t sit by and let ONE person’s thoughts affect MY views on a company. Not only should he have kept his comments to himself, knowing that something like this would go STRAIGHT UP Perez Hilton on his ass, he should have REALLY known better than to try and slough it off as a companywide belief. That act alone shows his ignorance.

I’m not going to speak for any of the other Chick-Fil-A chains that pepper the nation’s fast food industry, but I am going to give my opinion on ours that are here locally…and I have never been given reason to believe that any of the employees would act maliciously or inappropriately to ANYONE, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation.

IN FACT. I would be willing to take bets, that prior to this comment being made, the majority of people in NWA would say that the customer service at Chick-Fil-A’s (at least here in NWA) was 110% better than the other fast food restaurants that are here.

So now I’m seeing everyone boycotting Chick-Fil-A all through Northwest Arkansas because of ONE person’s comment. Don’t get me wrong I think you should totally stand up for what you believe in, in whatever fashion you see fit and if that means no more delicious chicken biscuits then so be it…But I believe that you shouldn’t condemn an entire company based on one ignorant person’s comments, isn’t that sort of what their CEO just did? Jusssst sayin.

At the end of the day I don’t want my personal views on highly explosive topics to be determined by where I choose to eat lunch one day, so I will continue to support the gay community to the fullest, and I will continue to eat my chicken sandwiches...it’s just a chicken sandwich – not a statement.

Facts are Facts. Chick-Fil-A is a restaurant. There is always going to be hate in the world. I choose to believe that love will prevail. I believe that God loves EVERYONE.

And I will eat chicken darn it.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter if you aren’t already! @JackNFishersMom

Peanut Butter Blogger Time! Peanut Butter Blogger...Werd.

So this is going to be a short, quick blog, because I have another hilarious blog that will be coming later on today…

Last night at Wal-Mart I needed to purchase some peanut butter, because at our house, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches might as well be freaking crack. So if we run OUT of peanut butter, the boys start jonesing for it hardcore.

Now for those of you who know me, I am cheap. C.H.E.A.P. cheap. What’s that you hear? A bird? Cheap. Cheap. Cheap? No, it’s me, being a tight-wad. So of course there is rarely any name brand stuff in our house. Great Value is a daily staple at the Price crib.

BUT!!!!!

Last night at Wal-Mart…they were OUT of Great Value peanut butter. OUT! Gone, vamoose. Non-existent. I was SO sad. Because that meant I had only two options. 1. Don’t buy ANY peanut butter and face the wrath of Jack or 2. Break down and buy the $4.18 dollar jar of flipping Peter Pan peanut butter.

WHY. Someone please explain to me WHY groceries are so flipping expensive? If I didn’t love eating so much, I would totally stop JUST to save money. Bull. Bull corn.

Of course, I broke down and bout the $4,000,000 dollar jar of peanut butter so that my kids and husband could be happy…but not before I stood there for at least 5 minutes contemplating my excuses of coming back WITHOUT peanut butter. Which, I probably wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale today if I had.

A day in my life, for real. :)

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby!

I already know that this blog is going to ruffle some feathers for several reasons, and frankly my dear I don’t give a damn, but I will gladly play Devil’s Advocate and take a look at them.

1.   I live in the Bible Belt, and I do NOT mean that in a bad way. God’s presence is everywhere in our house and in our lives…but let’s face it, there are some people out there who take judgment into their OWN hands and they don’t dish it out lightly.

2.   Sex seems to be the most awkward subject between a parent and their kids. I even feel awkward talking about it, so don’t worry – I get that.

3.   “Abstinence” Is all anyone around here knows to teach, and when you even think about bringing up sex education, you might as well go join the Lepers, because you just signed your own death warrant.

4.   Kids are a touchy subject. What should they hear? What do they already know? They’re our babies, we need to protect them. They’re our babies, but they need to know what the “real world” has in store for them.

These are all DIFFICULT decisions and situations to have to handle as a parent, and I completely understand that!

Which leads me to today’s blog post…SEX. The big nasty, the horizontal mambo, the dirty deed, whoopee, WHATEVER you prefer to call it. This is it.

I’m still a fairly young adult and I remember what I learned in my high school health class with Mrs. Bryant, and it definitely was not anywhere NEAR sex ed. We learned what foods were healthy, that STD’s were out there, and that babies came from your uterus. That was about the jest of it. How did those babies get there? No idea, of course we all actually KNEW how they got there…but aside from that, we pretty much had to either A. Ask our parents or B. Ask our friends about the P’s & Q’s of sex.

So I think it is AWESOME that New York schools are going to make sex education a requirement! And not only are they doing that, they are taking it one step further and requiring that students take it TWICE, once in 6^th or 7^th grade and again in high school. Of course, they have the option to “opt out” or “cop out” as I like to call it for those parents who just don’t want their kids “exposed”…I’m just like, “You live in NEW YORK! Take a look around, they’re exposed already, trust me!” But I think sex ed in schools is a great idea, and I think Northwest Arkansas is only being stubborn and ignorant if they don’t jump on this bandwagon. I think 6^th & 7^th grade is a PERFECT time to start introducing sex education, especially with everything that is going on in our world today and all of the information that is readily available to our kids. Anything younger than 6^th or 7^th grade seems excessive to me, and they probably wouldn’t listen very well, or take anything you say into account…But I agree with the officials in New York. Our kids need to be educated.

The statistics for teenage pregnancy are ridiculous! I’m sure shows like 16 & Pregnant and Teen Mom (Which I am completely guilty of watching) don’t help, they tend to glorify teen pregnancy in some ways, and since I was a teen mother myself, I had our oldest son Jack, when I was 17. I got pregnant when I was 16 and I can testify that it is NOT glorious. I had to work hard to get where I’m at in my life today, and it was not a simple task. I love my boys more than anything on the face of this Earth, and I wouldn’t change any of the decisions I have made in my life, good or bad, because I look at them as learning experiences…but teen pregnancy is not fun, and if it can be prevented, then we should be the ones teaching our kids how to do so. Everything turned out great for me, but there are babies being dumped in trash cans and dumpsters because the mothers are too young to know how to handle that and they were too afraid to go to their parents for help for fear of what they would say or think…and that my friends HAS to stop.

Here in Northwest Arkansas the message is Abstinence. If they don’t do it, it can’t happen. Well duh. I would be willing to put money on the fact that 100% of the teenagers attending high school along with the majority of the younger school aged kids could tell you that. But at the same time, I would say that even though the majority of those teenagers know that if they just don’t do it, it can’t happen…there is still going to be a surprising percentage that are still doing it.

So WHY are we not equipping them with knowledge and power? Why are we letting young girls go into these relationships and get pressured without having ANY idea on how to protect themselves? Why are teenage boys so painfully unaware of what a condom is, or what STD’s can do to them!?

Here’s the answer –because we as adults, are just too afraid to talk to them about it. That’s the bottom line, you can twist it and turn it and try to justify it in any way that you want…but that is the fact of the matter. Adult’s feel uncomfortable talking to their kids about sex…it’s awkward. Hell yes it is. No one wants to imagine that their young kids are thinking about or even having sex!!! I don’t! But I also don’t want my boys to lose any opportunities in their lifetime because they were unaware of the consequences their actions held. I will NOT let that happen. So if I have to have an awkward conversation with them telling them to keep protection on them no matter what, even if nothing happens or nothing HAS happened…then that is what I will do.

Do I want my kids to go out and start having sex at a young age? No way, Jose! I don’t even want them to know what sex is! They’re my babies, and I want them to stay that way. But as a sane, well-educated adult, I know better. I know what kids talk about at school and on the bus, and I KNOW what the television shows and songs on the radio are ALL saying, even if it’s subliminal.

So I am going to teach them, that sex is something special that you shouldn’t just do because everyone else is, or because you “think” you love someone after a week. And that once they do it, EVERYTHING changes. You change as a person, your relationship will change, it is not something to take lightly.

There’s no need to go into detail about the physical aspects of sex, trust me, they’ll hear all of that from their friends and the internet I’m sure…but they need to know the basics. What condoms are, what birth control is…and MOST importantly, they need to know that they can come and TALK to you. That is going to be the most important aspect of your kids growing up. Communication. They need to know, that even though you don’t want to know they are having sex with the girl next door when you guys are still at work, you are still there for them to talk to no matter what.

I think we should all face it. Some kids, NOT ALL KIDS, are going to have sex at a young age…You can tell them that they aren’t allowed to have boys or girls up in their bedrooms or over at your house when you aren’t home, you can set curfews and be strict and authoritative, but face it…kids are resourceful and if they WANT to do it, they will find a way. So they should be educated and prepared.

Even though our kids watch us drive a car every day and they probably KNOW the basic idea of driving a vehicle well before they are actually old enough and mature enough to drive, we wouldn’t just assume that because they have been semi-exposed to the information they need that they could take our car on the interstate and know how to correct a spinning car on black ice. So why would we assume that they automatically know how to protect themselves when it comes to sex? We shouldn’t. Period.

Talk to you kids, it could be a changing factor for them and their decisions.

Anywho, that is my rant. I know that I can’t change the mind of everyone in America, but if ONE person reads this blog and say to themselves, “Wow, maybe I should talk to my kids about sex education, they’re getting to be that age now…maybe they have questions…” That little glimmer of hope is all I need to know that I made someone think a little harder about one of life’s harder decisions.

The end. J

So NOW I want to know what YOU think! Should sex education be taught in schools? What about in Northwest Arkansas? Leave your responses and comments below!!!