Resolutions…

I was surprised to see how many people are excited to 2010 be apart of the past and 2011 be apart of the present - future. I don’t really agree with odd numbers and 2010 wasn’t like totally bad, (please see my 2007 to understand what bad is…), but I guess I should be excited for a new beginning also. Now, I don’t always make resolutions, because they tend to be hard to keep, but this year I think I have a few.

1.)    Something that I thought of recently was skincare and using Witch Hazel, which is like an astringent. It has a pretty awful smell, but it is really good for your skin. I was using it just about everyday and then I just stopped. Well recently it seems like my skin has decided to go on a rampage and what’s worse…I am a squeezer…I know, I know it’s wrong. Anyway I decided I will buy another bottle and begin a daily/nightly routine of using Witch Hazel for 365 days/nights and see if it makes a difference. I am pretty sure that it will because when I was using it my skin was doing pretty good.

2.)    Now I set my mind to it and I wrote a “book”. I proved to myself I could do it and now I need to prove to myself that I can carry out the next steps, which include editing and sending queries to publishers and I should do this before 2012.

3.)    Fix my prayer life. Prayer and loving Jesus shouldn’t coincide with the times that everything seem to be going wrong, so if I haven’t prayed in a month, because everything has been kosher, I don’t think it is right for me to pray when everything is not so great. (Although overall I should) It is sort of difficult to live according to God if you don’t pray, which Prayer is what he answers, so I will need to fix that ASAP.

4.)    Once my Prayer Life is back on track I will be praying on the steps I should be taking next as far as teaching goes and being that it could take a minute before I am certified I might want to apply for a para- position as I am working towards teaching, but I am still wondering if working in education is something I really want to do, therefore I need to pray about it.

5.)    Although my first step is to pray about it, I will take the Praxis I, which is a step towards becoming a teacher (or entering a teaching program)…I am going to sign up for April’s test date. PERIOD! I plan to pass it.

6.)    My friend went natural a while ago, and it’s cute, but please know that my resolution is not to go natural. Indeed not, I need a relaxer and there are no ifs and buts about it, but I do need to take better care of my hair. I sleep on my hair with out wrapping it, I don’t wash it like I should and the older I get the lazier I am about it; clearly the key to good hair care is washing at least every two weeks. This just happens to be easier in the summer because it’s not as cold. (Oh for non-African American readers, caring for African American hair is a tad different from others). I am always afraid I will get sick if I wash my hair frequently, not to mention how difficult it is for me to blow dry and flat iron, my thick fairly long hair. I prefer air dry, especially in the summer, but that style tends to be just as harsh as sleeping on it, so I’ll have to be like Nike and JUST DO IT.

7.)    With that being said I also plan on getting a haircut…not drastic like a bob, but hopefully enough that someone can tell it was cut…OH YEAH… I am so ready for a change like this J

8.)    Going back to trying to be a better person, I have decided to walk away from arguments. I have concluded that the more you talk in an argument the more you either look ignorant or say things that just make it worst. It is like I tell dudes…I’m not in to BS, so as an argument gets ready to travel to the BS level of furious-ness, I will just stop. Hopefully, I just won’t say anything and just let whoever it is win. I know that sounds push over-ish, but getting angry and raising your blood pressure is not worth it. I will pick and choose battles….DONE!

9.)    Lighten up (this is a toughie for me) I am a drama queen and extra sensitive (which is why number eight is in place). This is a fact that I try to hide, because people try to hurt others because THEY have chips on their shoulders or when they are jealous. This sort of goes with arguments except that instead of walking away, I’ll laugh it off.

10.)  To go along with number nine, I will lighten up and live life to the fullest. I think that this is a resolution that I make almost every year and it seems like I never really fully accomplish this feat. Every birthday I say to myself this will be the year that I will live a little and I never do…I never make my experience, I feel like I allow others to make it for me. I don’t want to give up my dreams, goals, and wishes, like love and family, yet I feel like those dreams stay on my shoulders. I feel like I put my life on a timer and I am watching it tic away as I just sit around and let it go by, and I don’t want to do that anymore. This is not “Sex in the City”, but damn if it is, Stranded in the Desert, or Death in Dover, or Kansas in black in white oppose to the Land of OZ in full techni-color, if you catch my drift. I am not Sarah Jessica Parker’s character or better yet that old cougar friend character, but I do want to live in color.

*Side Note: Ummm, I guess a quiet evening at home is not a good start to this Resolution...LOL*

I am just not going to lose MYSELF as I try to live like that…So I have got to find a happy medium. (I say this because many people act like in order to have fun you have to lose morals and principles or standards, and I refuse.)   

We are always trying to make a better self and New Year’s Day gives us a date that we should start, the first day of the year is the best time to proclaim that we will start something new during a new year. Now what I hope is that whatever the resolution (s) is/are can become a habit(s) of life.

2010…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…2011 <that’s silly huh>

Yeah I have been avoiding my blog.

Sometimes I get into these “funkedeefunks” and can’t write the words I feel. Plus, the beginning of December was rather depressing…as I tried to bring the Christmas Spirit to my home. As I said previously, I brought all the crap down from the attic and put it up hoping my mom would get all Jingle Belly, and in the end she did sort of, but it wasn’t what it could have been. It wasn’t what it had been. Maybe because we (my brother and I) are grown a$$ big kids, I don’t know, but overall everyone that I knew lack the holiday spirit. I mean there wasn’t even a Christmas Dinner at my church. (Odd to me.)

Then after I was asked what hours I could work in my library position I was given two days, January 3^rd and 4^th, so from December 13^th -January 2^nd I would be free, I also would be broke so I took all the substituting assignments I could before Christmas Vacation started for Schools. (Yes I do that too.) The assignments were with 5^th graders. OMG! You don’t realize how much the generations have changed until you are in the midst of 25, ten/eleven year-olds, who are disrespectful to the teachers and themselves. I mean sure we were ornery, but ask any teacher who had us (high school graduating class of 2002) and who is still working as a teacher or sub and they will tell you it is something very wrong with these kids today. Oddly enough I love them. I feel like maybe if I was a teacher I could make a difference in a child’s life and change them for the better or have them to have a better understanding of life. Or maybe they will just break me down and show me how they do it on the streets. Either way someone is learning something. Now the problem is that school is NOTHING like when we were in school (Class of 2002) Teachers had a greater freedom to teach and do it the way they want to, but with all the governmental ideas and laws a teacher’s freedom of teaching is limited. I don’t like that, but I have got to take a step towards growth. So I have been thinking of this for the pass few days since my last substituting assignment (which OMG the kids had me exhausted by the end of the day); the principal spoke to me about taking the Praxis and a teacher who had been around while I was going through my days in middle school who remembered me also talked to me about teaching. I decided I WILL take the PRAXIS I. Outside of that I will be praying. If you were to read my other blog I have said time and time again that I could teach or that I was thinking about teaching and then I’d back out of it. I have been so scared; about the students and handling them, being able to teach something, and having a responsibility for something of greater value than anything that I am currently responsible for, like myself and my pup. I don’t really have responsibilities and that makes me feel like less than a grown woman. That goes on the “pros” list for teaching. I feel so childish living in my bedroom that I have live in since I was in the 5^th grade; really since the 4^th grade. There is so much more I can say about it, but if you’re almost 30 and live with your mom then you already know. Now all I need to do is pray about it and listen for God’s answer.

Speaking of God I better make a few New Year’s resolutions. I have thought and thought, but I am just not sure what my resolution(s) should be. One probably should be getting the book that I wrote, edited and send out some queries to a few publishers before 2012. I have been told it is a great story, and being that I wrote it in hopes of it being published I should probably work towards that goal before it becomes another dusty bunch of papers under my bed. Outside of working on my “book” I should really have a few other resolutions. I have time to think of more before January 1^st.

Overall Christmas ended up being really great. We were very chilled out. Well, my mom and my brother chilled, I cooked. I cooked us breakfast and after that I cooked our Christmas dinner and I am so sure it was great. (Yes I am a GREAT cook.) Cooking has actually become a fun hobby for me. I told my mom I like to cook for people to make them happy and she said: “Well that is a good way to stay skinny, watch other people eat food.”

In the end everyone seemed pretty happy Christmas Day and that is all I really wanted for Christmas!

EX-mas Fail

Every year it seems like I have got to bring the Christmas cheer in the house. Once I go up into the attic and start bringing a bunch of the Christmas decorations down my mom finally gets in the mood for Happy Holidays. So I went up grabbed some boxes, (no tree yet, waiting for someone to move the furniture), and I find the box with all of our many different tree skirts. (My mom has a different theme every other year, as do I.) There is the one that is red with white tassel-like trimming, another red one with crème colored lace trimming, an all gold one, an old school cheap white one with glitter, and a plaid one (that is not actually a tree skirt but that’s what I used it for), but the best discovery of all the tree skirts were the stockings. Let’s see, there was my brother's, Mom’s, Dani’s and …. There was a stocking with my ex’s name on it and I was like WTF? First of all I forgot I made it last year, second why didn’t he take it, and third why did I make it to begin with?

It must have been a case of “2gether 4ever syndrome.”

 In  grade school when you had a crush or a boyfriend you’d spend all of one class period(in my case Math) to scribble that person’s name all over your notebook. It would look something like:  

In any case the notebook would be ruined, when you stopped liking them or the so-called relationship ended your notebook would look like:

This happens in adult relationships too, like when a woman thinks a man will stay 4ever when she has his baby. Often ladies fall victim to the “2gether, 4ever” syndrome.  Men don’t because they usually can’t imagine the idea of “2gether 4ever”; it’s fatal to them if they even try!

Maybe it wasn’t necessarily the “2gether 4ever” syndrome, maybe it was the simple fact that I enjoy Christmas, and I like to make people feel good regardless of their relationship to me. (Or maybe I am an idiot.)

The fail of the Ex-mas stocking goes further than just, “well we broke up”; in my household we make stockings with a name glued and glittered. Last year I found out you can shave glitter off of a stocking to put another name on it (don’t ask), but this time around I can’t shave it. I guess I can just give it to him for him to have this Christmas; it’s just too bad I can’t shave it.   

Unfortunately, (for the next “boyfriend”) I don’t think I’ll be doing that anymore. No stocking for you and if I do make one it will be those throw away kind; probably won’t have a name on it at all. I don’t even think a fiancé can get a Christmas stocking after this fail.

You may not think that this is not that serious and you’d be semi right, but you have to think about all the other things you may be doing outside of a stocking… is your favorite shower gel at his place (because you forgot it after the break up)? Is your favorite tee shirt, in his drawer that he designated for your belongs even though ya’ll stopped talking a year ago? Do you have one of his tee shirts in your room? Have you ever had a box of your things sent via mail from a disgruntled person?  If you answered yes to one or more of the previous statements, then you should take a second look at this blog. (I better read this one again.) 

Mothers...they know...

Exodus 20:12
 There is this one piece of advice that I have and it is probably not the most favorable and something that many people do not like to follow but,

“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you."

"Mother knows best!"

That doesn’t mean that she is right and it doesn’t mean that she is wrong, but in all seriousness 9 times out of 10 she is pretty much right on the money.

Let’s face it they know us better than we know ourselves… to a degree. I feel that mothers have a tendency to know us as children and teenagers and young adults; then are unable to see where we have grown up until we are faced with something and we actually avail through. (That tends to be one fault they have, and sometimes even when they see us get through it they still are mothers.)
Mothers just have something that makes them know. Girls we don’t listen well…






…Boys, ya’ll do. To a point that it can reek havoc on a relationship; when a mother dislikes a girlfriend and the son listens and really the mother is just afraid to lose her son. (It’s like that sometimes ladies.) There are FEW dudes who don’t listen to their moms and usually it’s not about women, its usually about stuff that has to do with trying to be a "man."

At any rate ladies don’t like to listen to their mothers and "I told you so," rings in our minds every time we were sure that mom was wrong about "a particular" situation and in the end she was completely right. Sometimes it is the very fact that mom was right that hurts us because we wanted to be right just once.

I have always listen to most of what my mom said because I felt like she would never lead me astray. She would never set me up for failure, but as I grew into a woman or at least got into the age of a woman, you know 20-23, I felt like I could make some wise decisions and although I didn’t you know get into a lot of trouble mom was still right about most of everything. There were some ideas about dealing with men that I should have put into use, that I didn’t.

Recently my mom has been saying some things, that someone else has also been saying, that I am like: "What the deuce?" Now I clearly CAN NOT say any of what either of these people have been saying, all I can say is it is completely beyond me that these people are saying  the same things around the same time. My mom must have a sense of something. Now I bet she can’t put her finger on it but she is feeling or sensing something. The funny thing about it is I think of this particular thing, but I am not trying to rush it so well see.
　
In the meantime, I will stay alert to what is happening and continue to listen to my mom’s advice ALTHOUGH I still have trouble following everything that she says cause like I said Mother’s don’t always realize how much you have grown up. I am a firm believer in the fact that if I listen to my mom as much as possible I won’t have too many troubles in my lifetime.
And I think that others should at least try to follow that advice because there are too many people that say: "I wish I had of listened to my mom, she was right."



Proverbs 1:8  Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction
   and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.

“You melted like butter…”

...I sure did. When I like someone I like them and that is just the way it is…and it is a long road to me not liking them.

I mean it is like a gradual reality;  I am a woman and I do have an intuition and sometimes it comes to me, but when it does sometimes I just don’t want to listen, because I’m a sucka for love, but not a fool. What I am saying is although I fall hard or think I have fallen hard, and I always usually have a special song to go along with that “love,” I don’t allow myself to be completely blind. I was lucky to have already gone through some things in life, not too bad, but bad enough that I learned and now I know to sleep with one eye open for lack of a better phrase.

A friend of mind told me in college:

“Don’t put all you eggs in one basket.”

And although I heard this over five years ago I didn’t get it until probably last year, or should I say I didn’t put it into play until about a year ago.

I just think it is so funny that when girls love, they feel their hearts surrounded by warmth, and fuzzy wuzzies, and when guys love they feel their penis surrounded by warmth, and fuzzy wuzzies. I know it’s the same ol’ conversation, but it is a reality in many cases.

For instance my mom and I were watching a "play" on DVD, there was an old couple that was like “nowadays girls don’t leave anything to the imagination and they don’t understand that when you act like a lady, men will treat you like one.” This statement is true and bogus at the same time.



It is very true that guys want to take a lady home to mother. I have heard this right from the horse’s mouth several times. Guys will treat a lady like a lady and treat the one who is not so much a lady like a…what she portrays, but in my experience with being a lady, some guys are still disrespectful, and looking at us like sex objects too, no matter how much you cover; as a matter of fact I think it entices a guy MORE when you are covered. Maybe it doesn’t help that I work in a library and that comes with its own cliché, but I know I am still a sex object. The difference is that I feel like I get more respect, not just because of my ladylike qualities, but also because of my age (since I work in a college where most guys are 17-23), and because most of them ask if I attend the school (where I work) and the answer is always “no I graduated from Howard in 2006” so then they think I am smart and also “uptight”. (ARGH, to the stereotypes of my life.)



But overall, guys have major mental disabilities. (I say mental disabilities because many times a guy leaves me utterly confused as I deal with them and I see as mental.) Mental disabilities because sometimes it is hard (no pun intended) for them to get their penises uninvolved in their train of thought in many situations. Some men, because they are men just think different in general.

I am not bashing, actually I think this is a reality that women have to face. Just like the instability of a female’s emotions is a reality that men have to face. Not that a woman should accept or settle for the mental disabilities of a man, (nor should a man accept or settle for some female issues) but when someone with little mental disabilities comes into your life you have to understand that there will be some issues; just like when he is sitting there with you after you curse him out for some miniscule thing he did that you don’t even understand your reasoning for being angry.

Or don’t be ignorant to his issues. If you see them (the issues) and chose (choose) to deal with it then that is what you better do because you are not going to make him change and it is not going to get better it is only going to get worst, in most cases, especially those where you are not married.

So the ending to the above statement was,

“…and I was hard as an axe.” 

A very unromantic statement that holds so many truths to our reality. 

We would like to inform you that…

you are denied, refused and rejected.

 

So I received like five rejection letters in my inbox today and I’m like: I must suck five times worst than everyone else. Seriously though, I am not even going to trip. Four of them were letters from this poetry contest I entered. That was already a one in a million type shot anyway. The other one was for a job, which they said they would call in a week to see about a second interview, well it’s been two weeks, so I already knew it was a no- no. 

Sometimes when I think about how many times I have interviewed at different places and have talked about the best answers to the normal questions, I get so frustrated with myself. The other night I was thinking may be I am like just regular, just average and had never been above average.

When I was in elementary school I was above average, when I was in middle school I was still above average, when I got to high school I was still an A and B student, math gave me some trouble and so did science, but I was still a good student, college not so much. When I was in college I worked HARD, but my grades were nothing like high school. Therefore I must be average or maybe even below average and when I interview it shows, but I know that this is impossible. I AM above average and the proof is the grade of B, I received in my Black Political Theory class. This particular class was the sort of class that people withdrew after the first paper was a fail. It was hard and the professor was hard and was looking for a specific answer that most students could not come up with on the top of their heads. You had to think differently.  I didn’t withdraw, (I couldn’t because it was part of my minor) I kept working hard and was dubbed a Philosopher, which philosophers can’t be below average. (Or so I think, lol)

   

(A couple of years after I graduated I actually helped a student at Howard with this same class after they came across my paper that I was published on this site that paid for college papers. They got a B too!)

I don’t know what exactly causes me to be rejected I just figure may be there is something out there that is better. I mean if you want to get technical the job I applied for is not what I interviewed for; I mean the guy actually said that the application is misleading. Now what does that say about things nowadays?

I have come to a point in my life where I can’t be too hard on myself about this kind of stuff. I mean sure it is disappointing but there are only more to come, especially with my new project in the works (Geeking at the thought of it, so psyched out) and with the fact that I am a writer who is always submitting my work, I know I will get rejection letters. One day I will get the accepted letter or the call that is someone saying “You got the job,” it’s just a matter of what opportunity is actually for me and what door God has opened for me, because that means it is open and only he can shut it. 

Revelation 3:8 (NIV) I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name

When I get that acceptance letter (whichever, whatever whoever might send one) I will act just I did when I got that one from Howard, the Real HU! *tears of joy*

Funny rejection letters: http://www.oddee.com/item_97151.aspx

The Other Side of the Street

As I watch divorce after divorce, between folks I know personally and the celebrities I see on TV, my belief in the concept of love is faltering like a leaf slowly turning yellow, then brown until falling from a tree in Fall. I have been holding on to a pinch of belief, thinking that just because so and so divorces doesn’t mean I am destined for the same fate. And if they aren’t divorcing they are unhappy, staying together for the children, financial reasons (it’s cheaper to keep her) or to save face as in acting like everything is honky dory in front of friends. Either way, “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore.”

I am ready to let love go because love already has one foot out the door. Not to mention past discrepancies that have left me somewhat damaged to the point that I already have doubts about their loyalties to me and it's not like I am thinking: “Oh he’ll cheat” or “I don’t trust him,” more like Saturday night he was in love and thought I was the sun, moon, and all of the rivers that flow through the valleys and Monday night it’s over. That is what is happening, people (especially celebs, but it happens in ordinary lives too) may date, then decide to get married, and 6months to a year later they divorce for irreconcilable differences. Sometimes it is so quick the marriage is annulled. It’s over Kapeesh Kaput. Ashes to ashes dust to dust…DEUCES.

So it appears that love is an EPIC FAIL. A lot of times as I walk my Mr. Cheezburger (the pup) I think about these things and I say to myself Love is over, there is no love, love is nothing and I should get over it, but it hurts me more to dismiss love, because God is love, and it is pretty hard to discontinue your belief in love, but continue your faith in God.

God is love, he made me; I am a hopeless romantic for a reason; what…He knows. Maybe it is the romantic trait in me that helps to keep Him in my heart, because without Him my heart would be hard as stone all over and all the way through, because trust me I try to forget about love, during those walks, I tell myself time and time again,

"forget about that love thing, block it out of your mind and forget about it, get use to a life with just your puppy and just deal,"

but by the time I get to the other side of the street, tears have built up in my eyes knowing that it is impossible for me to forget because I usually think of God immediately after those thoughts, especially since He surrounds me and reminds of His love. So…

…in the meantime, I’ll use my romantic spirit and the pain from so many disappointments of love to help me get through my writing project(s) to grow in the field of creative writing, leading to more published work and hopefully keep my heart open to the prospects of love.

Allow me to reintroduce myself…

…because I am not new to the whole blogging thing. I wanted to depart from Myspace and try to work on a blog a bit more professionally. (My idea of professional, which actually means I have to step my writing game up.)

In the past my blog was quite random. If I was dealing with a love crisis I would blog about that, if I was trying to be motivational I would blog and include scriptures, or if one of my favorite artists dropped a new album I would basically write a review. Somehow I will mesh all of that and become a little bit less random at the same time.

What I really want to bring to this blog is a look at a woman (ME) in her mid-twenties getting closer to thirty everyday, who is seeking full-time employment, would like to be happily married at some point or at living on her own, and to be a mother before entering her mid-thirties, while seeking Christ and to make all other dreams come true, before she dies; as she watches everyone else do all of the above twice.

“This Is NOT Sex In The City”, I don’t live lavishly, yet I am a Princess (the Princess of Delaware in fact), I am still at home, but I don’t have much choice, I have a degree in Journalism, but I am a Creative Writer, I have been trying to get a better job for about four years now, but I’m not complaining about my current position as a Library Assistant at a local college. I have been in serious relationships but I think I was the only one who was serious and sometimes I question just how serious. What sucks is as time progresses it seems like guys get worst in the fact that they are all losing their traditional values/beliefs, or are wanting to get married at an older age (even though you can turn 65 and still be immature or unable to commit), which causes a problem for someone like me who has very strong traditional values/beliefs. I’d like to be married and then have a child, but the older I get the more concern I have for my health and the baby’s. (FYI: raising a puppy is similar to raising a baby, they have similar needs, one just has four legs, LOL.) I get to thinking, Geesh I should just have one by myself (taking applications for sperm donors…j/k). My biological clock is ticking harder than a grandfather clock. It’s like I am racing with several clocks and I get close to the finish line and then some how it moves further away from me.

That is where God comes in, because as I try to live with all of the disappointments in life, Jesus keeps me upright and not fallen into a web of sorrow. If I have yet to die, if I have had such a struggle, yet I keep on going God has something he wants me to do and that is why I add scripture, because maybe my problems, revelations and solutions will help someone else and I can please God too. I can come off preachery, but the message is usually something I need to hear to fill my heart back up.

All in all I hope that in the end I find a way to just be totally content in what ever life has for me. If I get all the things I want great, if I don’t well….