Thank You

To Daddy, Grandad Bud, Uncle Sonny, Darrell, Joe, Chuck, Chubby, Santierra, Eric, Jean-Paul, Rod and all the soldiers and their families.

I love you & I love my country.

Peace
--Free

Getting Down To It

I am actually getting some writing done. With the insomnia I am having the last couple of days, I figure I might as well put the long waking hours to good use. The best time is between 11 at night (once everyone else is sleeping) and 3 in the morning (before D.J. gets good and wound up for the Morning Hollers). My niece has taken charge of making sure I get the writing done since I seem to listen to her better than to the men in my life. She has the nerve to order me around: "I need to see at least 3 pieces by____." She's 23 years old and forgets I can still kick her ass - if I could get to North Carolina, lift one leg and not lose my balance and manage to find her ass with my foot! LOL

It feels good to focus on something positive instead of brooding about bills and other crap I can't seem to control right now. Avoidance = good therapy...

I do have one distraction. I have been playing this game called "Millionaire City." It's my favorite thing to do when holding on phone calls. (Good excuse, huh?)  I must be such a child at heart because I have a weakness for all things Sims, and (formerly) Farmville. I haven't played my Sims game in ages. My computer is too old and crochety to keep up with all the graphics and the game is nothing without the graphics. Bummer. (Yeah, I know, I need to quit competing with Peter Pan for the crown of Child King.)

What's funny is that, as I write, I want so bad to share it all here on the blog. That's been tough - keeping stuff from these posts. You know how I get on my rants, but I've had to save them.

To be able to work would be ideal & my heart is breaking right now because there is a dream position in the place where I used to work. I just saw it this morning (because, for some reason I still look at the job bulletins) and forgot for a moment that I wouldn't be able to compete. Since I can't manage anything complex right now, writing is the next best thing. Writing is saving me.b  m,  n

Writing is such a calming thing for me to do. When I write, even though I am thinking about life and all the drama, I am not stressed by it all. It's almost like I am writing about someone else. I wish.

Well, not much to give you in this post. Just asking for your good thoughts and encouragement to keep coming my way. The letters from you guys have slacked this past two weeks, but I've gotten some good mails. Got a couple of strange ones also. Those folks have gone onto the SPAM list. I do worry about people and their compulsions sometimes. Maybe one day I will share some of the stranger, sicker, weirder and plain What-the-Hell emails. Maybe. Then again, I don't want to give you nightmares. I will give you a taste: there is one guy (?) who writes. Calls himself The Sheik. Says he is wealthy, kind of hot for me and will make my every wish come true. Perfect, right? You'd think I'd be mailing him my home address embossed on a pair of silk drawers, yes? Ummm... NO. He has one desire of his own: to lick my toes. First of all, that plain weirds me out. Second of all, even if it didn't gross me out, I have a thing about my feet. Stay the hell away from the peds, you freak.

Anyway.

I am going to get back to taking care of other chores now. I need to get stuff out of the way so that I can get back on the writing stool tonight. I have Kita watching over me to make sure I stay on the J.O.B. I can maybe get done:

Peace
--Free

For BFF "T"

I needed a smile right about now & this might have done it. I had almost forgotten about it, but remembered it while talking to two of the BFFs. Sent it to T via email and she said she snorted wine out her nose. (It's funny, but... really T? We might have to look into broadening your downtime activities, sis!)

Anyway, I saw it over at G+ and I'm pretty sure I kind of rolled my eyes or something, but it is pretty funny because of the caption:

"You're welcome."

Now, let's see a show of hands from all the guys that are rating this up there as #1

LOL. Whatever.


Peace
--Free

Oh, Whoa, Woe

My mother taught me many things and one of them was to never boast about what you won't do. I didn't quite get it back when she was teaching me this, but I do now.

I'm against the wall here. Looks like I have to make some super-tough financial decisions and one that is bugging the piss out of me is bankruptcy.

How the hell did I get myself to this place?

Right now, I am mentally kicking the shit out of my can't-be-ex-soon-enough. Not that this is all his fault, but... I should learn to listen more to my head than to my freaking heart.

All morning, this has been pattering on my mind like rain hitting a tin roof. I did laundry thinking about this, vacuumed, paced the porch, talked to two of the BFFs and Kita Kat - all with this hovering on the edge of every thought. I am pretty sure that this is how people go crazy a little tiny bit at a time.

What I hate most about the idea of bankruptcy is that, to me, it seems a whole lot like stealing. I mean, I did get goods or services for a price that I now cannot finish paying. Bankruptcy vs Stealing. Difference? Not much except intent.

 Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma. By not filing, I am only sinking deeper and deeper into a pit that, short of winning a lottery or a lost-lost rich relative finding and taking pity on me, is only getting an inch deeper every moment. The bad thing is, even my wealthy relatives are scrimping these days. (Is there humor in that?) By filing, I am signing off on a lot of self-esteem and throwing the towel right the hell in wherever thrown towels go.

I have a headache now. Think I am going to mull this some more - see if any bright ideas pop into my head. Meantime, I'm going to make some calls for advice and do some G+ therapy looking at shit like this:

Okay. That helped a little. Not much, but Number 7 gave me ideas...

Peace
--Free

*Sigh* Cravings

Not loving this whole vegetable juice thing, but I know that it's good for me. I know that because like anything "good for you," this diet sucks chunks. And are my sister & niece being any help? I don't know, let's see what they had for lunch today:

Some nicely seasoned wings from a really good Chinese place up the street.

Oh, and this is while I was downstairs fixing my lunch:

Rabbit food. Rabbit food that takes forever to turn into rabbit juice.

I was feeling pretty evil by the time I finished chopping and blending. Those gals must have forgotten I was an armed woman. Armed but still somewhat sane. I kept my violent tendencies in check & drank my damned juice, but...

This is the look I gave those bitches:

Yeah.

Damnit. Can't smoke, don't want to take up drinking & everything else is either illegal or should be...

This weekend, I'm having a Lucky Wishbone hamburger!

Peace

--Free

Today's Attitude Is...

 This

And/Or...

THIS!

Because, if you mess with me today, I'm gonna have something for your ass

Hell yeah!

Um, Peace?

--Free

LOL!!! Somebody's with me on this. This wasn't up but about 3 seconds & I got a message to add the version with the lyrics! Daaaang.... This must be a wrong day for more than a few folks.... SMH 

My Personal Weirdities

My family tells me often that I am a unique kind of person. What they mean (and what my sister and one of the BFFs will come right out and say) is that I have a lot of strange traits or ways about me. What makes me laugh is that some people think I should be offended to be thought of that way. Uh, I'm not, thank you. I'm good with the fact that I am a little out of the normal mold.

I flaunt my uniqueness. I say that I "flaunt" it, but when the BFF dared me to post about it, I did cringe a little. But I have this awful habit. If someone dares me to do something.... (Other than anything involving my phobias!)

So here goes:

Food: I don't like to eat in public. I will though. Of course, I will. Now that I am on prednisone, I'll sit at Queen Elizabeth's table and take food off Philip's plate. Are you kidding me? That's now. I'm less shy now, but when I was a teenager, I'd starve before I'd let anyone out of my close circle see me chewing. (I don't know why, except I read once where a rich chick said, no one looks good chewing or - I don't know what else, maybe she said blinking or something? shrug.)

Relaxation: I will sometimes sleep "ready-roll." That means in my clothes, not in anticipation of fire. My mother hated this when I was younger. She'd sometimes come and wake me up at a crazy hour of the night just to make me put on pajamas. My father didn't think it was all that bad. He'd tell my mom that I was saving her time on laundry. (I have this habit because I always go to sleep either reading, writing or watching TV. Unless I get to have sex. Then the Vicky Secret stuff comes out and goes on full parade. Before I got this fat, I sometimes wore cute stuff to bed just to feel cute. But since I'm fat and separated, no sex. No sex, no reason not to read myself to sleep. It's all good.)

Style: I will cut or dye my hair on a whim. I have no problem doing something strange to my hair because it's the one thing that always came back or could be purchased. Once, I asked a stylist to cut my hair so drastically short that she spent a couple hours trying to talk me out of it. As she put the razor to my nape, she was saying, "Are you absolutely sure?" Then there was the time I dyed my hair with some kind of streaking kit. I was in Texas and it was full-on summer. Between the dye kit and that sun, I looked like that crazy-assed demon spawn that is Nicki Minaj. Don't know who this fool is?

this is a relatively "normal" look for Miss Crazy

Keep in mind that I'm a tad bit more, shall we say chocolate-toned than she is. I'm saner, but darker.

Yeah. So. Moving along...

Mood: It doesn't take much to make me laugh, cry or get really, really pissed off. At Mach 10. (I'd like to blame this on Sarc or meds or hormones, but...) I have what one of my brothers calls a "mercurial" personality. In other words, I can be kind of a sweetheart, a softy or a bitch - with a short time lapse rotation. Usually, you can take a couple of deep breathes in between my mood changes. ("Mercurial." Hmph.) I prefer to think that I am just kind of sensitive and misunderstood & I think that my medical condition does make things worse. However, when I say this to my sister or any of the BFFs, they just kind of go, "Uh... yeah. All right." (I'll get some phone calls the minute I publish this post, watch.)

People: I'm very quick to either like or dislike someone. I think I have good judgement about people. I always pick up on a "vibe" when I meet people. Usually, I am right, but I have, at times, been really, really  wrong. Not often. (I absolutely loathed a woman who is now one of the BFFs, and let's not forget that I married the Permian Basin Pycho.) And I'm the kind that I make the people I like a part of my life forever. Good people are not disposable.

Fantasy Life: (This one is really the most embarrassing.) I once wrote a liar-letter to Michael Jackson so that he'd want to meet me. I was about 13 or 14 and I wrote a fan letter lying about how I was really sick and all I'd ever wanted was to meet him. How freaking manipulative is that? And it's not even very creative, shame on me. (Good thing they didn't have Make A Wish back then or I'd've have done something really pathetic like shave my head and pretend to have leukemia or something.) By the way, I got busted. The letter came back as "Undeliverable" because of a bad address or something. My mother found out what I did. I got my ass whipped with a switch she made me pick from the front yard and I was grounded for a couple weeks. (I think she even outed me in church, but I can't remember for sure.)

Another weirdity involving Mr. Jackson: I told people who didn't know our family well that I was related to the Jackson Five. My mother's maiden name helped with that little lie. I got away with this for most of my Middle School years. I don't know why people didn't wonder why, if I had such famous relatives, we didn't exactly live the lifestyle.

(I'm thinking about all this now and wonder why I was such a little tale-teller when I was young? Damn. I was like a politician under oath!)

You know what? I don't even want to play this game anymore. This thinking about things I've done makes me pretty sure I need to go and pray. Right now.

Peace

--Free

Them, They, Us

Now that I have told you about my "friend," I feel free to tell you about a conversation he, D and I had a few weeks ago. (We do this weird thing when Rick's in town where we call D to discuss life, politics and, of course, my book - which is coming along slowwwly.) It was a discussion that almost turned into a heated debated, but ended up being a learning experience.

The topic: Race and the media (or race in the media).

My friend (I will call him "Rick") was talking about some news article. He got all heated because it's his feeling that the media generally slants toward negative racial stereotypes. He is Indian (think Eastern not Native American) and has the brain of a researcher and the soul of a civil rights activist. (I do have such interesting people in my life.) D is multi-racial (black and asian/black).

Rick was so upset that I got a little uncomfortable. I mean, I know about the ignorance of racism. I've been a guilty party (when I was younger, dumber and hotter-tempered) and a victim (at times, not as often as could be). Luckily, my skin is pretty thick and my brain is sometimes slow to absorb. When I am in the presence of the extreme stupidity of a bigot, I either blow it off or (and this is a plus side to my medical issues) I miss that shit entirely. Sometimes, I am an hour past the situation before I go, "Oh! Huh? Aw, hell no, they didn't!!!" (LOL) Most of the time, I just don't let it rain on my mental joy parade. Age brings mellow.

That's me. Rick, though, doesn't let too much fly past him. He doesn't look for stuff to get pissed about, but he has a kind of radar for it.

In the conversation we had, I tried to cool it all out by telling him about an Indian comedian I recently heard. The comic said he wins the "rough life" struggle hands down over black people. "You grew up in the "hood?" I grew up in the Third World. You had rats and roaches in your home? I did too and we called it dinner. You had hand-me-down shoes? I made those shoes!"

Thank goodness that Rick didn't think I was being insensitive in repeating the joke. He didn't, but it didn't cool things out much. (D, however, thought that was the funniest shit he'd ever heard and for the rest of the conversation, he'd break out into insane giggles at inappropriate moments.)

Nothing is going to chill Brother Malcom X Ghandi, but he did agree with me on one point. (Thank goodness I had a very clear and coherent few minutes at just the right time.) Here is my whole stance:

Until we all get past the whole "Them, They and Us" mentality, there won't be much understanding. We are somehow infected with the idea of separating ourselves by race, class, gender, likes, dislikes, size of hands, feet, etc. I think it's just such a human thing to compare. (I am almost sure this happens about two seconds after we leave the womb and breathe air.)  It's fine to distinguish  or identify ourselves, but anytime we start comparing - something or someone or some group is going to feel superior or inferior. Since we can't change that mentality, we have to learn to respect (or disrespect) each other as individuals and not as groups. (One day, I'm going to be able to go into Walmart and not cringe with personal shame when I see some black woman popping and rolling her neck as she screams across three aisles for her bad-ass child to "get back over here NOW!" Yeah, I said it.)

I'm really happy to say that Rick gave me a high five on that one. I respect and value his opinion because where I have common sense, he has tons of "book smarts." (You all know I love my geeks, right? Well, he is to Geekdom what Adonis is to hotness. Helps that he's pretty damn hot himself.)

Anyway, even D was able to control his manic giggling long enough to say that I'd given him something to think about. I wish he'd have thought about how his girlish laughter made it hard to keep my train of thought.

Of course, we didn't solve any major world crisis, but we all feel better about the subject. (And if Rick keeps it up, I'm going to make him a freaking red, green and black flag even though I have explained to him that I am a black American and not African-American. Hell, Charlize Theron is more African-American than I am, but that is a whole other discussion...)

Whatever, I hope that one day, we can all just learn to be a little less racially-affiliated and a whole lot more human. That's really the only race that matters to me. Yes, call me Pollyanna & see if I care.

Peace
--Free

The D Man Is Coming Back!!!

Baby Deej will be home tomorrow. I haven't bossed my niece around since she was about 25 (lol), but she had one order when she left for the vacation: send me a pic of my sugar man every day! Mission accomplished...

Here are my two faves:

You're in love, aren't you? Yeah, he does that to all of us!

(I hope this works. I've never uploaded my own vid to Blogger before. It's D.J.s first 4 months.)

Peace

--Free

Busted! (But Happily So)

Um, remember this? Yeah, I got all gutsy and shot off my big mouth. That's easy to do over the phone or in an email. This is why you should never drink or do copious amounts of chocolate before taking on something serious.

I'm busted.

My crush has found me out (like most men, he's a little slow on the uptake). I think it's hilarious that all my dropped hints took a moment to sink in. The big jump I made apparently just confused him. How cute... It's all good, except we are now in that awkward phase of "talking." It was so different when we were just buddies. Now? Now there is that "knowing" thing.

It's cool. He's mature-minded enough (more so than I)  to have a plan in place should things not go as we'd like. His plan: always, always remain friends. I can get down with that. I'm not taking anything more serious than a happy mutual crush. We are both a little tied up emotionally - he's just coming out of a relationship & I'm in the Witness Protection Program for estranged spouses of crazy persons. Nothing going on here but a recognition of our affection. That's damned nice.

Of course I won't name him here, but he is someone I have done a lot of creative work with & my friend D (who lives out of state) introduced us (because we live - mostly - in the same state). Now you know why I adore D. The last several weeks have been tense. I thought I was being side-stepped. Now I just have to put up with D making little jokes when the three of us are on the phone.

This is nice & fun and stress-relieving. Just to have something, someone to smile about in the middle of the madness that is my life right now. He is probably reading this & I've said all I'm going to say about this special friendship for now.

I wanted to post this because I was worried about making a move. I did & it's all good. If you have been hesitating about doing the same thing, well, I hope this encourages you. Most of life is a lot about chances. Go ahead and take some.

Peace
--Free

P.S.: Another piece of joy today? The kids and Baby D.J. are coming home from their vacay tomorrow. I've been in sugar withdrawals without Little Man. See my next post for something beautiful!