So school has been kicking my butt lately, but for one of my education classes we had to read a book called Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol.

This book made me so mad that I felt the need to come and share with you the horrible things that are going on in the field of education right here in the United States.  Now I will say that this book was written in 1990 so the actual information in the book is almost 20 years old, but he has a new book out called Shame of the Nation that focuses on the same topic and shows that the situations that he wrote about are still true in today's society.

Basically Kozol went around to different urban areas in the U.S. and studied the differences between school districts in the city and school districts in the suburban and surrounding areas.  The differences were sickening!  I studied the City of Chicago school district for my class which Kozol talks about in his book and the graduation rate for 2008 was 50%.  There are currently over 300,000 students in the Chicago school district.  This means that over 150,000 of these current students will not graduate from high school.

Now that statistic alone made me sick, but then Kozol digs even deeper to try and figure out why this number is so low.  The buildings that these students are going to school in are horrendous.  Most of the schools do not have heat and air conditioning.  The facilities are unsafe and honestly the students probably should not even be attending the schools.  This next part is what gets me so frustrated though since I am getting my Masters in Education so that I can teach one day.  The school districts that Kozol studies are so poorly run that there are never enough teachers to teach all of the students.  There will be a classroom of over 40 students that will have at least 10 different teachers in one year because none of the teachers care enough to stick around and help these students.

They even quoted one teacher as saying that she was not going to try and help the students learn to read and write at the grade level that they should be reading and writing at because we will always need people to work at McDonald's and Burger King!  Seriously?!  Is that the dream that she has for these children is to work at a fast food joint?

Some of the other school districts that Kozol researches are the South Bronx, East St. Louis, San Antonio, and Southeast DC.  I live about 20 minutes from Southeast DC and so I have decided that I am going to do a fundraiser along with Borders to help raise money for the DC public school system.  These urban school districts need so much help and every little bit helps.  One of the things that schools need the most are books.  Some schools are still using books from the 1980s because they can't afford to buy new ones.

If you are ever looking for a good read (but one that will really make you think and even get you a little mad) then pick up Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities or his new book Shame of the Nation.  I haven't read the second one, but I will probably be purchasing it within the next few days.

So it has been FOREVER since I posted on here and I am greatly sorry about that.  I had to do A LOT of soul searching and believe me I am in a better place because of it.

As I posted in my last blog I had been doing a lot of traveling in the month of November and by the end of the month it caught up with me.  I was so stressed from traveling, school and just life in general that I went to the doctor and my blood pressure was 154 over 95!!  Needless to say something needed to change.

I went home the week of Thanksgiving and spent the entire week at my mom's barely leaving the house at all.  It finally got my blood pressure down but I still wasn't happy with things.  The month of December I went home to Williamsburg and North Carolina a lot.  I realized that when things have you down and out the people that are always going to be there for you is your family.  

My best friend since first grade lives back near my hometown so I hung out with her a lot as well and I realized that taking myself away from northern Virginia and school and the stress that seems to always appear when I am there was soooo nice.  I didn't realize how much better I was feeling until someone asked me one day how I was doing and I actually thought about it and realized that I was for once was doing great.  There was nothing in my life at that moment that was going wrong.

So I always like to have a point to my blogs rather than just ranting so my point from this one is when things really have you down or you realize that you just aren't happy with things the best thing to do is take a step back and remove yourself from what is making you unhappy.  And remember this, your family loves you and will always love you.  When you feel there is nothing left for you, your family will always be there.

So as I have mentioned before I have been traveling...a lot.  This past weekend was the first weekend I have slept in my own bed in 3 weeks and it won't happen again for another 3 weeks now.  As I enjoyed the comfort of my room and my bed it made me wonder how celebrities do it.  How do they constantly travel and sleep in cars, vans, buses, hotels??  I literally slept all weekend because I was so exhausted.  It is no wonder so many celebrities these days get hospitalized for exhaustion.

When did our lifestyles become so fast paced and so crazy/busy that we don't even have time to sleep in our own beds?  I mean don't get me wrong I absolutely love traveling and spending time with friends and seeing all sorts of new places and things, but is this healthy to finally have a day off and literally sleep all day??

Who knows.  This week I leave for Arizona then I get to spend Thanksgiving with my mom in Williamsburg, VA and then I will be in Nashville again!  So I may pass out from exhaustion again but I guess in the end it is all worth it. :-)

So this has been the week from hell and it is only Wednesday!

Monday - exhausted due to time change/traveling and the fact that my flight was delayed Sunday night so I got home at 1:30am.  I then woke up with an eye infection of some sort so I went to the doctor and she "thinks" it is pink eye but is not confident.  At this point my eye hurts, is really swollen and was so red it looked like I was high so all I really cared about was getting some sort of antibiotic drop into my eye.

Tuesday - woke up with my eye looking WORSE than before.  I had to babysit the 4 year old along with the 4 month old that I nanny for and the 4 year old needs A LOT of attention and I did not have the tolerance for her that day.  I normally get off at 5 at the latest but ended up not leaving until 5:45 and on my way out of the neighborhood I hit a pot hole and busted my tire.  People hit pot holes all the time, why do I have to be the one that busts their tire on it??

Wednesday - my eye is starting to feel a little better (I'm convinced that I do not have pink eye which is why the medicine is not helping as quickly as it should).  I checked my bank account online that morning and realized that a $500 check I deposited on Monday for some reason had been deposited and then the next day reversed and taken out of my account.  Weird.  So I went to the bank today to ask them about it since I have some bills/rent that will be coming out of my account any day and they apparently "lost" the check.  So that means that this $500 that is missing is THEIR fault, right?  Well get this, I have to go and try to find out of the person who wrote the check has duplicate checks or if they can track the check through their bank or see if they can write me a new check.  What the heck??  It is not MY fault THEY lost my check!  AND to make matters worse they won't even credit my account temporarily so that my checks won't bounce.  UGH.  I was not in a good mood.

I really need Friday to get here...

So I spent last weekend in Tennessee.  I have family in Nashville and have always gone out there to visit every year either for a week or weekend whenever I have a chance.  My uncle has season tickets to the Titans football games and so for the past 4 years I have gone out there for a game each fall.  Well this was my annual football trip so I got to see my Titans stay undefeated on Sunday...amazing!  And Jade went with me so that was awesome.

So not only do I have family in Nashville, but now I am some amazing friends there as well. (Which oddly enough as we were sitting around Jade and I realized that we all met somehow or another because of The Click Five seeing as that we are from all over, Oregon, Washington, Virginia and Kentucky yet we all somehow ended up in Nashville).  I was lucky enough to get in early enough on Friday to spend Halloween with them which you can see pictures on Caroline's blog.  It was a very fun and eventful night!

Needless to say the weekend was WAY too short and I wish I could have spent more time with both friends and family.  I am actually planning to move there when I finish school in June 2010.  I have always wanted to move there ever since I was a kid and now I have finally convinced myself that it is a definite possibility as long as nothing crazy happens between now and then.

AND since I miss it so much already I decided to go back.  I will be visiting again on the weekend of December 5th.  Hopefully my Titans will still be undefeated at that point HA!

I have been so busy lately so my apologies because I am sure this entry is going to be all over the place as I clear my head.

First of all, is everyone excited about Halloween??  I know I am.  At first I was kind of bummed because I realized that my trip to Nashville was going to be over Halloween weekend and I have been invited to so many parties this weekend that I keep having to turn down. BUT then I remembered that I have some awesome friends in Nashville who I haven’t seen in FOREVER but we are going to hang out for Halloween and that makes me very happy because lately I am beginning to realize who my true friends are. 

One of my good friends who I have known for over 3 years now just recently started dating this guy.  Now her and this guy have practically been dating since June (they spend like every day and night together), but they finally made it “official” at the very end of August.  Well when they were “just friends” we used to all go out together as a group or even just the three of us and hang out and it was cool.  I never felt like the third wheel or anything and my friend was also good about making girl time for us without the guys around.  Well ever since they made things “official” my friendship with her has been a battle.  If I want to hang out or even just talk to her I am the one that always has to make the call and even then she barely answers her phone or wants to hang out.  He boyfriend went out of town one weekend so I was asked her if we could have some “girl time” and she claimed she had too much other stuff going on, but that he didn’t have to be out of town for just us girls to hang out.  She said all I have to do is tell her that I want to hang out just the two of us and she would tell him he wasn’t invited….YEAH RIGHT! Like that would ever happen.  So then I decided I was tired of putting all the effort in and so I didn’t talk to her for like a week and she text me one day asking where I had been.  So we finally hung out again and things were okay.  Apparently she has been going through some tough times mentally/emotionally lately but yet she won’t tell me what is going on, but yet wants me to help her out.  I understand it is tough for someone to talk about their issues but she has no problem telling everyone at her work who she has known for like 2 months.  She invited me out to the restaurant she works at one night last week and so I went since she barely ever asks me to do anything and it was awful.  She knew that I didn’t know anyone there and so I get there and she doesn’t even introduce me to anyone she just runs off and leaves me hanging.  So after 15 minutes I found her and was like I’m not having fun, you aren’t even hanging out with me and so I told her I was going to go.  She got mad at me about the situation and was pretty much blaming it on me.  So I finally told her that I feel like I am putting all of the effort into a friendship that isn’t really there anymore.  She tried to turn it around on me saying that I never want to go out when she calls.  I’m so over trying to be a good person in this situation.  I was trying to stay close with her because of the problems she has been having lately, but at the same time I work over 40 hours a week, go to grad school and have other friends that I like to do stuff with so I am tired of putting so much effort into it.  Am I wrong for thinking this??

That was really long and drawn out but I just needed to get it off my chest.  I am the type of person that will bend over backwards for someone and yet I often feel like I get stomped on by people taking advantage of me.

On a happier note, I love traveling and this month is crazy full of it!

Last weekend I was in Richmond, this weekend I am in Nashville, the following weekend I am in Roanoke, VA and then 2 weekends after that I am going to Arizona for my cousin’s wedding!

I hope everyone is doing well!! J

So I'm not going to lie getting it on the top of my foot definitely hurt!

I chose the treble clef, first of all because I love music and second of all because music got me through one of my hard times in life. My junior year in college I went through a depression and without music and some amazing friends I would have never got through it!  So if you are ever feeling down throw on some good music and chill out :-)

So I have nothing going on this Saturday night and I have been sitting at home cleaning, rearranging my room and watching Desperate Housewives Season 2 dvd on my new TV. All day while I was hanging with friends and while I was babysitting I kept thinking of ideas to blog about tonight.  Now that I am sitting at home and am able to actually blog I have nothing flowing through my brain.  I have started 3 different blogs and none of them go anywhere. So I decided to blog about my struggles to write anything and wish everyone a happy Saturday night and hope everyone is having a great weekend!!  Halloween is less than 2 weeks away and that makes me very happy J

So I used to be a huge Jessica Simpson fan when the whole Christina/Britney/Jessica phase was happening, and I still like her now just not as much.  Well I was listening to my ipod the other day and her song “I Belong to Me” came on and I really sat and listened to the lyrics and that is such an inspirational song (at least for me it was).

I won’t normally talk about my relationships on a public place like this but in order for me to talk about how this song inspired me I need to give you a little background info.  So I have only been in 2 relationships in my life.  Both times I got dumped and I was the one with the broken heart.  Needless to say I don’t trust guys very much when it comes to relationships because I found out afterwards that both of the guys I was dating were pretty much cheating on me.  This summer I have had some guys that will show interest in me and then nothing ever really happens from it and lately I have been kind of bummed about those situations and then I heard this song.  I realized that I don’t need a guy to make me happy.  I am such an independent person that I don’t “need” anyone.

I don’t really know that there is a point to this blog, I just wanted to share this song in case you were ever feeling down about some guy situation.  We don’t belong to anyone but ourselves so don’t ever let yourself get down about a guy.  There are plenty more out there!!

*PS – sorry to all of our guy bloggers and visitors…I am in a I hate guys mood right now J

Have you ever had one of those days where everything is just going really crappy and then somebody does something really simple like holding the door for you and you realize that it isn’t such a bad day after all?

While I am going to grad school I decided to pick up a full time nanny job so that I have something to do during the day and also so I can afford to live in Northern VA which costs an arm and a leg.  The two girls I care for are 4 years old and 3 months old.  Lately the 4 year old has really made me stop and realize how important the little things in life are.  I usually pick her up from school around 3 and when we get home she always gets to have a snack.  Well she wasn’t feeling good the other day so when we got home I allowed her to have 2 cookies for her snack.  You would have thought that I just gave her a million dollars with how happy she got.  Who knew that giving someone two small cookies could turn their day around!

Another small thing that I was brought up as being the courteous thing to do is holding the door for people.  I hate how in today’s society we live so fast paced that someone can’t stand there for 5 extra seconds to hold the door for someone.  I grew up in southern VA and it AMAZES me how different the northern part of VA can be from the south.  I am the type of person that I will always hold a door for someone and in fact one day one of my friends who grew up around here asked me why I always held the door open for people and told me I was “too nice”.  Really?? Since when did holding the door for someone become “too nice”?  I never really thought too much about it until yesterday I went to pick up the 4 year old (Rachel) from school.  I always have the 3 month old with me when I pick up Rachel and so I am usually carrying a baby carrier with me inside the school.  It amazed me how when I tried to enter the school I had to wait for someone to come out of the door and then they didn’t even have the courtesy to hold the door for me!  Then as I was leaving there was someone standing in the doorway talking to another parent and so I said excuse me so that I could leave and she looked at me (still carrying the baby) and continued her conversation! 

Now that I am done with my little door holding rant I just want everyone tomorrow to do something small for someone because you never know, it may just make their day a better one!  If someone drops something on the ground pick it up for them, wait those few extra seconds and hold the door for someone, offer your seat to someone when in a crowded place, or even simply just smile at someone who looks like they could use a smile!

So as we should all know by now October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and I am a HUGE supporter of anything that has to do with it. 

Both of my grandmothers are survivors of breast cancer and unfortunately they already have my mom under close watch because she is at high risk of getting it.  This means that I more than likely will have a higher risk of getting it as well, which scares the living daylights out of me.  I enjoy telling my grandmothers’ success stories because they give me courage every day.

My grandmother on my mom’s side of the family is one of my heroes.  She had breast cancer before I was born and unfortunately that means that they did not have the technology that we have in today’s society.  She had to have a mastectomy, but she has never let it bother her to this day.  Two years ago we discovered a new technology that can detect whether or not someone is carrying one of the genes that causes breast cancer.  In my grandmother’s situation if she were to be carrying the gene it would be quite possible that my mother would be carrying the gene, which would mean I quite possibly could b carrying the gene.  My grandmother made the decision to pay to have her DNA tested to see if she had the gene and amazingly it came back that she did not have it.  That news was music to my ears.  Had she had the gene in her DNA my mother would have sent in her DNA to see if she had the gene.  This means that basically my mom was going to find out whether or not she would be getting breast cancer at some point in her life.  I then was going to have to make the decision at 21 years of age as to whether or not I wanted to send in my DNA to see if I had the gene or not.  Having to make that type of decision at 21 is something that no one should ever have to go through.  I give thanks every day that my grandmother’s breast cancer was just a rare occurrence rather than something that could have been passed down to my mom and I. 

My grandmother on my dad’s side of the family luckily discovered her breast cancer early and was able to treat it with radiation. 

As I mentioned I am a huge supporter in donating whatever I can to the breast cancer foundations since it hits so close to home.  It is amazing to see the discoveries that have already been made from the research and I pray that we will one day find a cure so that no one has to suffer.  My mom is a big advocate on trying out different research findings and she is currently taking a medication that is supposed to cut her chance of getting breast cancer in half.  Baby steps like this will hopefully one day lead to breast cancer being nonexistent. 

With that said, I love how TOL is giving simple tips that we can do to help with breast cancer awareness.  I would like to add one here…

I am a consultant for The Pampered Chef and for the month of October we have a promotion called Help Whip Cancer where we sell special kitchen products that are pink and $1 from each item sold gets donated to the American Cancer Society.  Here is the link if you would like to see the products and please feel free to pass i t along to anyone and everyone!! 

Pampered Chef

Like OMG I can’t believe I am like totally blogging on The One Love!

I’m just kidding.  I actually can’t stand when people talk like that, but now that I have your attention I shall introduce myself.

My name is Amber and I am currently living outside of Washington, D.C. in a place called Centreville, Virginia.  I am a graduate student at George Mason University (yeah NCAA Final 4 2006) getting my Masters in Elementary Education.  Which would be why I chose the Books for Kids charity!

So how you may ask did I become involved with TOL?  It is a long, crazy story but I will try to explain.  It all began on The Click Five message board where I became friends with Caroline.  I then discovered that Jade grew up about 45 minutes away from me in Virginia.  We met at a JMac concert at Kings Dominion and from there my life spiraled out of control.  A car trip later resulted in Jade, Cassie, Cathy and Leigh crashing at my house to go to a TC5 show.  A couple of weeks later a plane ride resulted in Caroline coming to my house where we partied to TC5 one weekend with Jade and Cassie.  Needless to say we all stayed good friends (yay for having family in Nashville) and now here I am.

It is exciting to see this project in action.  I heard so much about it before it actually began so the fact that I am now a part of it is super exciting!