Dear Mr. President

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” –Jimi Hendrix

Today marks a HUGE milestone not only in my life, but across America and across the world. I cannot explain in words, but of course will try…about how truly proud and excited I am. I guess this whole thing started with the gift of being born at the end of August, you see as I was about to mark my quarter century of living (yes, the big 25!) When Barack Obama took the stage…to announce he would be the Democratic candidate for this year’s presidential election. Shivers coursed through my body, for the first time in my life (in regards to the president), I just knew.
I was 20 when I got to vote for the first time, and it was for John Kerry (not the greatest, but NOT BUSH), we had this cute keg party where everyone got together and wore whatever color they were shooting for, and lucky for me that happened to work out since KU’s colors are blue and red…needless to say I own a lot of blue J Every time the T.V. flashed another RED state, my heart sunk. FOR THOSE WHO DON’T KNOW, I was born and raised in one of the biggest red states around, KANSAS. Not only do I get the joy of dealing with the bible belt, I also get the republicans…Lord help me (no pun intended.)
I guess I’m one of the lucky ones, since Lawrence is notorious for being the only BLUE county in a sea of red, I’m not lucky however that my vote was worth about as much as someone eating a shit sandwich. Which is what America was about to do…As CNN announced that G.W. would once again rein as our commander and chief, DISSAPOINTMENT was the only emotion I could feel, that and all that PBR sloshing around in my stomach. My philosophy on life is that if isn’t broke, then don’t fix it…if it is broke, duct tape only works so well so you might as well toss the son of a bitch out and buy a shiny new one. I don’t have room in my life for crap and don’t have enough duct tape to hold together all the stuff that G.W. broke.
Here comes the duct tape…part 2.
What do I know? I’m just like every 20 yr old college student who thinks she knows everything, but I was having a hard time grasping the concept that America was dumb enough as a whole to elect such an idiot, AGAIN. To each his own, I guess, but I had to count myself out on this one, I had officially lost faith in the country. I stopped caring (not like I really did to begin with) still part of me felt like somewhere I should feel a undying love for my country, and I couldn’t. All I saw when I saw the president was dollar signs, Texas, bad speeches and OIL. WASH RINSE REPEAT.
Fast forward 4 years, billions of dollars, thousands of deaths and the worst economy since the great depression and then enters my knight and shining armor…Barack.
I could feel the ground move as the republicans were shaking in their really expensive boots. The energy that surrounded this man was phenomenal. The things that he was saying appealed in every way, shape, and form to me…ME! And as Michelle Obama put it so nicely before being slammed in the media, “for the first time in my adult life, I was proud of my country.” It felt like for the last eight years America had been in a dysfunctional relationship with a really bad boyfriend who took all their money (wink, wink). Now stood before us the man who proved that all the other men who came before him might have been good, but he would be greater.
All differences aside, red vs. blue, black vs. white, rich vs. poor…we are all Americans, and if there is anything I learned is that America was built on the foundation that together we are the melting pot of the world. So suck it up people, a name is just a name not a threat, and color is just illusion. Here is a AMERICAN who is willing to take a stand for what should have been done all along, here is a AMERICAN who knows the difference between right and wrong and not just what is good for his wallet, here is a AMERICAN who I truly believe has our best interest in mind.
So today I did choose hope over fear, love over hate, and deep down the thought that rings true is that the only constant in this world is CHANGE!

Home is where your heart lives....

“Home is not where you live, but where they understand you.” –Christian Morganstern

First let me start by stating, every other day or so I get the privilege of going to the 7-11 off of Broadway (which is a very “eclectic” street for lack of a better word,) but our neighborhood none the less. Now, I have seen some strange things in my life, but nothing ever quite compares to the daily dose of crazy that lurks inside the city of Denver…a kind of crazy I have grown to love if not admire.
So, there I was at 6:30 in the morning waiting patiently in the car for my boytoy who is once again standing in line at 7-11. I have done my usual “serial killer/rapist” check, noticing a few questionables…and I proceed to lock all the doors while trying not to seem racist to the nice black man in the beat up car to my left. Wishing he understood that it was the other homeless man who is fighting with an imaginary person that I am really more concerned with. It was a busy morning. My attention quickly focuses on the man who is standing near the dumpster talking loudly on his cell phone, he looks like the usual dirty Denverite. I imagined that one of those cars belonged to him, and he was on his way to a gritty construction job…or perhaps he was waiting for the bus? As he hangs up, he turns and starts looking in the dumpster *a light bulb comes on (dim) but on, ah, he works for waste management, this is all starting to make sense! He then jumps into the dumpster with a hop in his step and a smitten little grin…I did a double take, as he roots around some more (now this is a man of about 6ft, so when he is standing in the dumpster you can see him from the chest up.) Then I guess he went back to bed, because he never did come back out of that dumpster? So many questions are running through my head, like who was he CALLING? Does he not get reception in the dumpster? House than phone? But, more so…what really makes a home?
A home is more than a roof to keep out of the rain, four walls to keep out the wind, and floors to keep out the cold- because on the outside the dumpster has all those amenities, but a home is something entirely different.
Home is the one place in the world I know that I can always go to, it’s a place where the amount of love and support outweighs any of life's problems. It’s the laughter and smell of my mom, its my dad’s cooking and the look he gives me that assures me that he would never let anything hurt me. It’s the place where mistakes are celebrated and learned from, where your soul goes to grow, and the one place where being me is an achievement within itself. It’s where angels are disguised as little brothers and friends are family, and family are friends.
So you can take the walls, floor, and roof out of my equation because no matter what I will always have a home…and when in doubt, I’m sure I could always have a dumpster J