I got… October 28, 2009

It’s impossible to convey the importance music holds in my life.  My artistic slumps almost inevitably lead to secular and emotional slumps as well.  In yesterday’s post, I discussed feeling disconnected, and I’m working to fix that.  But yesterday, while discussing music, someone posted a lady I enjoy calling “My Nina,” and it seemed to fit so perfectly in my life right now.

So, I’m chubby, I haven’t finished my book, I don’t own a home, blah blah, blah blah, blah BLAH! I’ve got life. I’ve got a day to become closer to whatever goal I fell short of the day before. I’ve got a SHOT. I’ve got a day to eat my veggies, write a new paragraph, and save a couple of dollars. I’ve got the strength to pray for wisdom and endurance. I’ve got the heart to admit I’m scared and the balls to slay dragons. I’ve got the eyes to seek that which encourages me. I’ve got the nerve to demand that people not waste my time and let them know that I call the shots on what I’m worth. I’ve got the clarity to count my blessings. I’ve got the sugar and water to turn lemons into lemonade. I’ve got bad ass shoes. I’ve got the ability to find the best pairs of $4 earrings. I’ve got good friends. I’ve got good family. I’ve got rhythm, music and daisies in green pastures. I’ve got the feeling that if Nina Simone’s voice can’t take you to a new place, then you’re missing major shit in your soul.

AND

I’ve got my boobies. *giggle*

“This ain’t no time where the usual is suitable” (c) Blackstar May 25, 2009

Finding my purpose has become a serious focus of mine.  Of course, I see the answer being in my writing.  Which is hard right now, because I find myself caught up in writer’s block.  I’ve been writing through it, and found myself with a bunch of unusable stuff.  However, I don’t believe in throwing away ideas, because there have been times where I’ve extracted ideas from less than perfect stories, and they enhanced the story.

I realized, however, that I was a woman who lacked hobbies.  I read, I write, I spin (we’ll get to that delicious torture momentarily), but I don’t have a tangible, calm my nerves hobby.  So, just for fun, I’m going to try my hand at making my own jewelry.  I also want to build a couple of book shelves.  I definitely need something to keep me out of trouble this summer.

Weight loss via spinning.  My weight has been never-ending battle for the past ten years.  So in effort to really take things up a notch, I’ve gone to the hard core activity known as spinning.  I think I’m gonna need a medic.  Doing this makes me remember how much I LOVE wearing myself out.  My thighs are sore, my calves are sore.  it’s absolutely intense.  When i leave the class, I feel like I’ve gone 5 rounds with Tyson.  One of my biggest shortcomings is that I don’t take care of myself.  It feels good to step outside of that norm.

I have several post ideas, however, I also have a few writing projects coming down the pike as well, so as soon as I figure out what will go where, I’ll keep you posted.

Love ya madly!

That bewitching Emerald Fairy April 23, 2009

When it comes to seasons, Autumn is like my committed lover, but Spring is that mysterious someone who casts longing glances at me when my man is away on business.  Naughty spring.  The smell of freshly cut grass awakens my restless wanderlust from hibernation.  My best writing takes place in the spring because I set Finge and The ‘Bug loose in the park and write for hours on end.  It’s alfresco happy hours with my girls, while appreciating the fellas showing their various assets (biceps and deltoids and pecs, oh my!), set free from bulky sweaters and long sleeve shirts.  How can you not love Spring?  This Sunday we’re going to our first cookout of the season and I can’t WAIT.  I’m searching for the perfect sangria recipe, so if you have one, please share.

So, here are ten reasons to love Spring:

1.  Linen – Can you miss with this fabric?  There’s something about it that looks crisp and fresh.  Whether you’re male or female, a simple linen outfit with clean lines has the power to make you irresistable.

2.  Picnics/Cookouts – I love the togetherness that eating outdoors fosters.  Even when it’s nighttime, and you’re all huddled around citronella candles to escape bugs, it’s just the best.  It’s relaxing, it’s familial, it’s perfect.

3.  Wifebeaters – Okay, now, not everyone has the body for this garment, but if you do, it’s smokin.  The Amethyst Rockstar (oh yes, she is in full effect) can not resist eyeballing a fine ass man in a wife beater.  Yes…he might rob me, but I’ll be able to render a full report to the police, because I promise he has been thoroughly examined.

4.  Rolling down your windows – I love wind in my hair.  I love the feeling of being connected to what’s going on outside, catching snippets of bus stop gossip or other people’s music.  I’ve spent all winter closed off from the cold, and in effect, other people, so by spring, I’m chomping at the bit to get in strangers’ business.

5.  Spring Ale – Do I have to elaborate on this?  Do I need a reason?  Refreshing beer. Mmmmmmm!  Maybe with a big fat orange slice in it.  MMMMMMMMM!

6.  Sandals – I loooooooooooove to let my feet breathe.  I kind of hate confinement, and this REALLY applies for shoes.

7.  Sundresses – One of the best creations ever.  Theyre comfortable as can be and men go crazy for them.  This is really win-win.

8.  Weekend trips – It’s not quite summer, so the kids are still in school, but you can still get that quickie teaser getaway in.  Leave out Friday night, and return late (late, late) Sunday night.  Of course Monday, you’re tired as all hell, but it was totally worth it.

9.  Fun school stuff – My kids’ school has all sorts of fun activites for the kids and families, including “Kids’ Night Out.”  This is a night where you drop your kids off, they get them hopped up on popcorn, juice, video games and maybe crack, and you go about your damned business for like 3 hours.  BEST.  SHIT.  EVER!

10.  Events – Outdoor concerts, festivals, fairs…I’m kicking my feet out of sheer joy just thinking about it!

I’m already there, I’ve just got one question:

“Who’s comin’ with me?  C’mon!  WHO’S COMIN?!

JAN!  THANK YOU JAN!!!”

Good Friends April 6, 2009

This past weekend, I brought my kiddies to Atlanta so that their dad and I could perform a kiddie hand off.  As luck has it, one of my oldest and dearest friends lives in the A, so I got the opportunity to reconnect with her.   For the purposes of this blog, I’ll call her “Charlotte” , since she puts me in the mind of Charlotte* of “Sex & the City.”

It was just beautiful.  Whenever I look at the people I consider my friends, I never think, “Did I choose well?”  We reminisced, had heart to hearts, danced, laughed, almost cried a little.  When you build a friendship, step away, and pick up where you left off, that, precious, is love.  First Puppy Love, now Charlotte.  I wonder who’s next.

*Charlotte’s reaction is precisely what my friend would have done in this situation:

The Luscious March 7, 2009

To say that this week has been tumultuous would be an understatement.  It started off with a snowstorm.  More specifically, it started off with me driving to the metro in a snowstorm, with my two children in tow.  Can I tell you that I almost wrecked the Hyundai with the butterfly doors?  I’ve had only a few butt puckering moments, but driving in that snowstorm with my chocolate treasures in the back seat definitely rank high on that list.

So Monday, I bring the babies to the gig with me; because if I’m going to be stuck anywhere in a snowstorm, it’s going to be with my babies!  We ended up staying at my job until 10 pm.  They watched television while Mama MADE THAT MONAAAAAY.  I came to the realization that part of the reason I go in to work is to get peace.  Lord, I had to hear “Mama” all day long.  it damn near took me out of this world.  I spent half the time suppressing the urge to say “Sit your monkey ass down and let me hustle up this video game money!”  Since I worked so late, not only did my children get to eat on the firm, but they also got the firm’s contracted car service to ride us to the parking lot.  They were really feeling like big shit.

Tuesday was another story.  I may or may not have discussed this here, but my sister was recently married.  now, I do not typically put too much of my business here, and I will afford the same courtesy to my sister.  However, I will say this.  Her husband got out of pocket in a MAJOR way.  I mean a way that has caused great concerns on several levels.  In my humble/royal opinion, the situation did not really “resolve.”  And the way it did come to a conclusion disturbed me greatly.  As much as I want my sister to succeed, I do not have positive feelings about this man, and I would feel like less than a sister if I did not express that.  She does read my blog from time to time, so I’m sure she knows that I’m coming from a place of love.  I’m also not saying anything here that I did not say to her.

Now, I can give him the benefit of the doubt, in that he knows neither me, nor how I operate, but I did have to provide a crash course.  I don’t like confrontation, and I don’t like conflict.  But there are times in your life where you have to pull out the bud nippers and sasy, “I want to give of myself, but you are encroaching on what is mine, and I need you to return to your corner.”  Because there are people who do not know what the boundaries are.  I’m sure that it had an impact on our relationship, but when something has to be said, it has to be said.  I carried that shit on my shoulders until last night, which also bothered me, because I pride myself on being the bounceback kid.

So last night, Artemis gave me a call, and i was SOOOOOO glad to hear from her.  It had probably been over a week since we had spoken. We chewed the fat and I came to a realization.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have returned to The Luscious.  For those of you who don’t know what the Luscious is, it’s a state of heart and mind.  It’s my walk, my talk, my aura and my swag.  The Luscious is how I embrace my friends, and repel what ain’t mine.  I told my sister, “You know, i’ve got a long way to go, but it’s hard for me to explain how happy I am.  And I know that whatever I’m feeling, it’s deep, because on the surface, I have no reason to be any happier than I would be on any other average Thursday.”  Yall, I’m smiling when I wake up, I’m putting on the colorful lipgloss.  I’m buttering my body to delicious softness on a regular basis.  The kid is BACK.  And I don’t know when I came back, but let me tell you:  TIME IS A HEALER.

And the reason I know that the Luscious is in full swing, the bees are buzzin around this honey.  And I just don’t mean men in a sexual manner.  I mean I’m on the page with my friends.  My kids and I are having some of our greatest times ever.  I’m even connecting with strangers.  Last week, I was reloading my SmarTrip card, and i got into a brief, but very friendly conversation, with a lady at the machine.  We laughed and talked as we waited in line and conducted our business.  As we parted, she shook my hand and said, “What’s your name?”  I told her, and that really touched my heart.  In that brief conversation, that lady felt enough of a good spirit in me that she wanted to shake my hand, and learn my name in the event that she would see me again.  I know some might think I’m crazy, but in a world where everybody and their grandmammy wants to get all in your shit, there’s somethign that did my heart good in knowing that lady just wanted to know who I was.  That made me feel very beautiful.

Part of this healing has enabled me to reconnect with old friends.  I’ve been in regular contact with two of my homegirls from high school.  One of my dearest friends and I have a promise to meet for lunch at least once a month, given we both live in the DMV.  But a funny thing is that I reconnected with a person that I believed would never again be in my life. I spoke to *gasp Him.

Oh yes, precious, “Him”.  My puppy love.  I once thought that the sun rose and set on his very ass.  I finally had the opportunity to apologize.  I don’t have a lot of bad karma under my belt, but the way things happend between he and I, yeah…he was owed a weighty apology.

But the beautiful thing about talking to him wasn’t that I was talking to my old boyfriend.  I was laughing and joking with my FRIEND.  Because you see, even without the relationship, this dude was my friend, and I lost that.  Have you ever lost a friend. I don’t mean that bitch that you sometimes get a drink with and fight over men.  I don’t mean that dude you play Madden with and you occasionally smoke up his weed.  I mean, have you lost the friend who KNEW you? Your idiosyncrasies, your fears, your buttons?  I lost my friend.  And the worst part is that it was really something I caused.  Joking with my friend is like finding a 20 in a hidden flap in your purse on a non payday Friday.

What’s my point?  Love, in all its forms, is a beautiful thing.  And The Luscious thinks that there’s nothing more delicious than love.  If I keep up with all this positive energy, The Luscious is gonna get fat.

Youth, wonderful youth December 11, 2008

The universe found it fitting to entrust me with living things.  Namely, my children.  The thing about children is that they’re always learning stuff, and they always have questions about stuff.  Periodically, they hit me with some stuff that I’m just not ready for.  “Why do people smoke crack?”  “What are pubes?”  “What does masturbate mean?”  These are all questions that I’ve had to field, seemingly out the blue.

I must say, my skills are pretty sharp, and any question they’re big enough to ask, I’m big enough to answer.  This comes from me being six, asking my pops where babies come from, he runs down the whole “Well, the dad has the sperm and the mom has the egg” jazz.  Yeah, I get all that, but I’m also knowing that we’re talking about two separate individuals, so how does YOUR shit get to HER shit?  He never answered me.  I finally got pissed and gave the six year old equivalent of “This is some bullshit!”  (Had this taken place when I was seven, I quite probably would have said “This is some bullshit!” as by then, I was a fluent cusser.)  My folks were dropping kids like first period calculus.  I needed to know what the hell was going on.

So, as I said, I like to answer my kids’ questions.  I do it in a manner appropriate for their age, and I try to keep it as simple as possible.  Despite this, I found myself unprepared for Monday night’s shenanigans.

The kids and I are watching wrestling.  Of course, it’s all contrived, so they’ve got the excessive drama for show.  A guy’s arm is pinned behind his head, but he had an obviously free hand, which annoyed my son.  Greatly.  His annoyance was so great, in fact, that he shouted out, “USE YOUR FREE HAND DILDO!”

Melanie = dead.

Now, he had obviously learned this new word, that he thought was REALLY cool.  The look on his face told me that every moment of his life had been lived so that he could experience this!  This greatness.  The utterance of “dildo.”

I look at my kid (thankfully, his sister was not around) with the strength of the ancestors keeping me from totally losing my shit and laughing all over the room, and I calmly ask, “Dude…where did you hear that word?”

“At school.”

“Wha?  At WHAT?”

“Yeah.  Everybody says it.”  (Really?  Everybody says it?  Everybody?  “Class, I’m returning your spelling test.  Study harder next time dildoes?”)  “You know, it’s like when someone is being dumb.”

“Dude.  No.  That’s not what it is.  And, it’s actually not an appropriate word for you to be throwing around?”

“Okay.  But why?”

“Well.” *long pause*  “It’s an adult thing.”

“What?  Mom, you’re confusing me.  What is a dildo.”

YES ladies and gentlemen!  This is the moment EVERY mother waits for.  To have to explain to her kid the delightful world of adult toys and, uh, marital aids.

This one is a doozy?  I don’t even know where to start.  “Well son, when a woman and a woman really care about one another…”  Yeah.  No.  So, I try to give him warning that I’m gonna drop something heavy on him.

“Well, I mean, I can tell you, but are you SURE you want to know.”

“Yes.”  I guess if someone did all that hemming and hawing, I would have to know too.  But then it dawned on me, “Stupid, you don’t have to give him a tutorial on how to use it.  Stop being a punk and tell him what it is.”

“Okay.  Yeah.  It’s, um, a fake penis.”

And the look on my kid’s face as he tried to figure out why in the fuck someone would want a fake penis.  Well, that just made the 15 hours of labor followed by a C-section ALL worthwhile.

A funny thing happened November 9, 2008

Every Sunday morning, I take a jaunt to the *Bux for a macchiato or latte of some sort.  It’s wintertime, so now they have all their delicious coffee flavors.  The egg nog latte puts me on the express train to Yumsville.  so this morning, I threw on my workout clothes and my hoodie, pulled my hair back, and dragged myself out the crib. Evidently it was wall to wall fine ass man day and I missed the memo.  And here I am, unplucked eyebrows and not even a dab of lipgloss.  No matter.  I’m on some spiritual journey of some sort.  But still.  You at least want to people to think you’re cute right?  So, despite that, I still maneuver because lipgloss or no, I am most definitely what’s hot in these here Rockville streets.

So after I leave the barrage of fine men in Starbucks, I head to my car where yet ANOTHER fine man is pulling up.  At this point, I accept the fact that I’m getting punked and get in my car.  He pulls up alongside me, and hops out his car, standing on my passenger side.  I figure he’s waiting for me to pull off, so I tell him to go ahead first.  So then he leans down and taps on my window.  To ask for my phone number.

Yeah.  That’s right.

Like I said…lipgloss or no…

Gettin’ Free October 17, 2008

The sun is burning off my fog.  That’s the best way to describe it.  It’s all a matter of perspective.  The trick is, you have to be ready to accept that perspective.  Today marks the beginning of a three day weekend for me, and I’m feeling good.  And it’s simply because I accepted that I have to change my perspective.

I started a new short story Wednesday night.  I’m not entirely sure that it will remain a short story, but I’m loving how it’s starting out.  I’m also going to be participating in NaNoWriMo, so I will be a busy busy girl.  i like it like that.

I’ve also decided that next holiday season, I’m going to travel.  By myself.  That’s right.  I’m a gutsy broad.  I think my winnings from the writing contest will finance this venture.

just b

No Effing Way! October 11, 2008

Last night I fell asleep.  And stayed that way.  No insomniac theater post.  Nothing angry.  I fell asleep, and woke up at 8:17.  That’s right.  I went to sleep at night and woke up the following morning.  How sweet is that!

Tonight I’m going to a friend’s house to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather with a cookout and beer.  yums!

Be well lambs!

just b

The Difference September 22, 2008

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- “The Road Not Taken” (c) Robert Frost

Whenever I read this poem, I catch my breath. It speaks of the spirit of the adventurer. Most of us spend our lives doing that to which we have become most accustomed. Rather than living, we adopt this existence of rote, and we look back, and realize that we haven’t really done much of anything. Every fall, as I get closer to my birthday, I ponder over this poem and wonder at its application in my life? What road have I chosen? How much of a difference did it make? In 32 years, what have I done? Am I even close to being who I intend to be? What has helped me grow? What has hindered me? I’ve thought of where my focus has been for the last year. The answer is a million different things that have absolutely nothing to do with what I should have been focusing on.

Here I find myself, another autumn, staring down these two roads, wondering which to choose. In addition to my annual reflection, I’ve found myself giving consideration to getting married and having another baby (or two). I then slipped into a deep funk, considering that remarriage and more children are about as likely as my sprouting a third boob. Then I received an email from a friend and fellow writer, critiquing my latest work. As his signature, he had the following invaluable quote:

“Life is not a rehearsal. You have only this one life. Make yourself one promise: that as from now, as from today, the rest of your life is going to be the best of your life!”

- Roelof Faurie

I read the quote. I read it over and over. I pondered both the significance of the quote and the poem. It was then I chose my road. i chose the one less traveled by – the road that leads to the endless possibilities of me, and I do so because I fully intend for the rest of my life to be the best of my life. I promise to prove my epiphany post wrong. I haven’t peaked at sexiness. My stories can only get better. My greatest adventure is yet to be had. My greatest love is yet to be experienced. I promise that my smile can only get bigger, broader and brighter. I promise that there is nothing walking this earth that can steal my joy; that can only be given away. With every tomorrow that I am blessed to be given, I promise to stand stronger than I did the day before. I promise not to worry about who may be prettier, finer, smarter, or a better writer. I promise not to be dissuaded by rejection letters. I promise to not be afraid to show my cleavage, but also not to believe that’s what defines my sexiness. I promise not to wait for emails or phone calls that will never come. I promise to always wish the best for all people, but not at the expense of my being. I promise to forget those who have forgotten about me, treasure those who treasure me and be smart enough to differentiate between the two. I promise to remember that every moment wasted on regret is a moment wasted.

I promise to be me. Unabashed.

b jack