Taking a "Break"

Picture it: Thursday night in Downtown Atlanta. A very chic young reporter and her adorable BG buddy Chrissy were at an invite-only event at one of the city's newest, hottest salons for the revealing of a fashion line. Ahh, the first 20 minutes was a blast. We had Vodka cocktails and fancy chicken on a stick. It was lovely.
Well, one of the perks of the evening was free services, such as manicures and massages. If you did not know, I am a sucker for a message, so Chrissy and I sashayed over to the message area for some complimentary back rubs. Here is where the story goes South.
I looked down at the massage chair, which did not look like it could support a woman of my...my...magnitude. So I politely asked the masseuse if the chair was fat people friendly. What does that mean? For my weight-impaired friends, it means is the chair sturdy? Will it support me? And the masseuse said and I quote, "Of course! It is people friendly."
So I cop a squat on the chair and it felt study. So the masseuse begins to press down on my back...hard. He said I was tense, which was no surprise, and as I close my eyes to enjoy the message, the chair broke! It simply snapped beneath my weight. Broke. I felt bad because the free messages was a big part of the event, and I was only the second person he'd done. The night was still young!
With the speed of light, I apologized, grabbed Chrissy, tossed my empty cocktail cup, grabbed my gift bag, and bounced. And can I say that Chrissy was the perfect getaway driver? I jumped in the backseat and she hit the interstate with no questions asked.
So why did I leave? Well, as you can imagine, I was embarrassed. I just really wanted to go before word spread around the shindig that I was the one that broke the chair, and since no one had seen it happen, I couldn't think of a better time to leave. Might I add that being fat embarrassed is NOT my style, but the crowd was very to-do like. Those gay designers in leotards would have been relentless!
We were halfway to my house when Chrissy suggested I look in my bag and see if I had all my stuff. I am NOTORIOUS for leaving things, particularly my phone. So I check my bag and notice that I am missing my tape recorder. Not only did I have three interviews on it that I needed, but it also hat my name and job title recorded on it.
Hearing this, Chrissy busted a U-turn at Six Flags and we were headed back to Downtown. By the time we returned the venue was packed, so I was able to slip in and slip out, unnoticed. However, I had butterflies the whole time. I just knew that my face read, "I am the fat bitch that broke the chair! Point and laugh at me!"
Sadly, this is not the first time this has happened. In the 7th grade, I broke my stool in the orchestra. Sophomore year of college I went to church and sat in a pew, breaking it instantly. The summer before that, I went to my friend Chloe's house and broke one of her dinette chairs. However, I was not sad about that. She got it from Ikea, and we all know that their stuff is not sturdy. Now this.
What did I learn from this situation? Well, I learned that I can not ask if something is fat people friendly. I thought that this guy may have been on my wavelength, seeing that he wasn't small, but no. As a professional fatty, I have to look at the situation and assess the fat people friendliness of the situation myself.
I have heard many weightloss confessionals where fat folks have said that breaking a chair or something had them running to the gym. But since I am already there, there was only one place for Chrissy and I to go to end our evening. You guessed it, Krispy Kreme! There is no better way to end a FATastic night that with three hot original glazed.

Man-O-Man

If you have not seen South African runner Caster Semenya you should google her. She is a real looker.
Her backstory? She is the athlete that has been kicking ass and taking names in track and field so some haters went and called the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) and told them that they think that Semenya is a man! So the IAAF is demanding that she take a "gender verification test."
What upsets me the most about this situation is the way that I have heard the news reporting on this. Instead of reporting on how...um...sexist and disgusting this is, even if the chick does look like a dude, they are belittling and insulting her! A loser on one channel was like, "Of course she is a man. She doesn't have breasts!" My jaw dropped! Many athletes, including gymnasts and swimmers do not have breasts. Hell, many average everyday women do not have breasts. Then they went on to discuss how Semenya has a hard face; that she is not attractive. I personally was not aware that if you were not a pretty woman than you were not a woman at all. The only thing that is not being taken into account when figuring out Semenya's sex is that she does is fact have A VAGINA! Isn't that all we need to know?
The insults have gotten so terrible that Semenya's father had to come forth and be like yes everybody, I was there when she was born and she is a girl! How insulting.
I did not want to go here people but I am going to pull a Ne-Ne Leaks and "Keep It Real." It rubs me the wrong way to watch White news figures dedicating time on their shows to talk about how ugly this Black 18-year-old is. Not cool. I also think the ploys that are being used to discredit Black athletes from imprisonment from shooting yourself to accusations of being a man are said. Furthermore, I don't like how male reporters are accrediting physical characteristics besides having a vagina to what makes a girl a girl. When we put these power in the hands of men and science, all women are in trouble. Hell, if half of these same men saw their wives' legs without being waxed, they would be labeled men too.
There are those that are saying that physically Semenya is a woman but hormonally she may be a man. Maybe, maybe not. I guess what bugs me the most about all of this is how they are treating this kid like a science project. If I were her, no matter if the test results said I was a woman or a man, I would sue for pin-pointing me and putting my business in the streets.
The only good thing that could come out of any of this is getting our eyes opened. It is not the old days anymore. Folks are taking hormones and getting surgeries that makes are definitions of gender gray instead of black and white. Whatever Semenya's outcome, re-defining/ addressing gender is something that is going to have to be dealt with on a legal and social level.
As for Semenya, I hope that she doesn't let the bad press get her down. All she needs to do is keep working hard, and take the negativity like a man...I mean, woman...I think.

Introducing B Cubed

So "Jail House Rock," a.k.a. "Margarita Man" had to exit stage left when I found out that he was married with kids. He's still fine, but a girl has got to have principals. Now, on to the next crush. I have named him B Cubed, for, you guessed it, Best Buy Boy!
Although he goes to my gym, I saw him for the first time when I went to Best Buy to buy my new Maxwell album hot off the press. He's tall and dark with a friendly, yet expressionless face. He doesn't strike me as a smiler or a talker, but his hair has a lot of character. He is one of those cats that gets designs cut into his head like boys used to do when I was in kindergarten. When I saw him the first time I was like, "Hey, that guy is fine."
Then I saw him again after the Great August Cell Phone Crisis. My little crap-crap Go Phone completely went south on me, so I had to break down and buy a phone worth something, and there he was, standing around at work, and I was like, "Hey, it's that fine guy."
So Wednesday I was pleasantly surprised when he held the door open for me at the gym. It's a small world...or just a small town.
I was watching him work out that day. He has man pudge. I am a fan or man pudge. You know, when a guy is the guy version of thick? He isn't built, but he isn't fat. He's solid, but not really. For some reason, I feel like you will understand this confusing description.
Anywho, he works out in normal clothes, not those weird garbage bag suits or cutoffs like the other ultra-buff dudes, which, is a big plus. He looks like he may be my age or two years older, and he has these tattoos on his shoulders. They are huge! I can tell that from the outlines. They are the type you have to step up on a guy to read because he is too dark. Yes, the best type of tats. Sidebar: I did not know I was into tats, but I have to say, I'm embracing them.
My spider senses are telling me that this guy most likely would not be interested in me. But as I have shared, I need crushes to survive. Plus, I am working on coming out of my dating shell and approaching men I like, even if I feel the guy may say no. I need to build up my tolerance for rejection.
OK, I will keep you posted. Hopefully he won't be married.

Sundays with Mony

I few posts back I mentioned a woman who came and prayed over me while I was on the treadmill. After having a few other encounters with her, I found that her name is Mony. She is a very adorable very fit little Asian woman, probably in her early 30s, that has a Southern accent. Something about Asian people with Southern accents tickles me.
Well, yesterday, during my tread from Hell, she came over to give me some encouraging words. Usually, I hate it when people cheer me on as I work out, but I did need the push. Ten minutes into my work out I wanted to cry and throw the treadmill up against the mirror in front of the machine, the lovely three-way mirror that documents the sweat, sadness, and strain on your face.
So Mony and I spark up a convo, and she invites me to her church on Sunday. Usually, I would decline a church invite, but Mony seems really nice so I accepted, even though my Aunty warned me that they are rumored to speak tongues at her church.
The last time I went to someone's church on an invite, the church ended up being creepy. It was one of those churches that you can tell used to be a car wash or something, and the members did weird chants that I was NOT familiar with. Truth be told, I have not had a stable church home since I lived in New Orleans. Many of my friends didn't like the church I attended there, primarily since the preacher didn't really...preach. I didn't care though. The people were nice. I liked to see everyone's outfits, and there was music. Don't forget the music!
Plus, I find that just going there every Sunday did something for my spirit. I was happier when I went to church. I did not feel as alone, whether I was really taking anything away from the services or not. Now, living at home and always being broke and annoyed has REALLY worn on my spirit. It is past due time to head back to church.
I will let you know how it goes. Hopefully, this church is normal. I don't know if I can be a member of a church where they make human sacrifices or use snakes or ask you for your W2s before you join. You never know these days in the A.

Holly and the Margarita Man

So yesterday I went to the gym and actually worked out and may I tell you that I got my ass kicked on that treadmill? To punish myself, I walked at a higher speed than I usually do and on an incline. That will teach me to slack! As my friend Dizle would say, I've got to get back to the money.
So while I am sweating and looking my grossest, who walks over to my machine but Jail House Rock, the nickname I have affectionately given the super-tatted, super-muscular possible ex-con that I had developed a crush on at the gym.
As usual, we started our conversation on the topic of Yoga. This was fine, because as I spoke about cobras and downward dogs, I was building up to my big break. Long ago, I had decided to ask him out for Margaritas at my favorite watering hole and after talking to my buddy Brownie, I got the push I needed to ask him. I mean true enough, Brownie would talk me off a ledge if he thought there would be a mildly humorous outcome, but what are you gonna do? I needed someone to co-sign on this ridiculous idea.
Before I could even wet my lips to ask him he goes, "I don't know if my wife would even want me going to a Yoga class so early."
Once he said wife I just wanted him to go away. But he didn't of course. He went on to talk about his four kids, one being 21! I was thinking damn, how old are you brotha? And when did you have time to create all these kiddies and tie the knot while serving time?
Of course, he has never told me he went to jail. I just assumed he had, with the tats and the teardrops tattoed under his right eye. I don't know what disappointed me more: his having a family or he possibly not being the thug that I had painted him to be in my mind. I do this all the time with my wild imagination, create what people might be like based on their appearance. This idea is usually fantastical. Then, when I get to know them and they are not what I had dreamed them up to be, I am disappointed.
So long story short, another crush bites the dust. I'm not too sad though. I didn't really have the cash to splurge on Margaritas.

Under Control

I was just watching TV and saw one of those law firm ads alerting the public that if they were a female that ever took Yaz or Yazmine that they were in danger of more side effects than they were aware of. I can not remember all of them, but the one that stuck in my mind was sudden death. Funny, in this commercial, there were no women doing synchronized swim routines in the pool or kicking an animated red ball down the streets of New York in the rain. Interesting.
My personal views on birth control have been the same since I was like thirteen. NO THANK YOU! I just don't understand, besides menstrual regulation ( and I have never bought that explanation by the way. I personally believe it's just a plot by pharmaceutical companies to get teen girls on the pill) why I would have to take a pill with side effects like blood clots and kidney failure when a guy could just wear a condom, or when I could just not have sex. I don't know. The whole idea has always been fishy to me.
Plus, I have seen birth control at its worst. When I was younger, my Aunt Alice had this friend who kept having babies. Prior to her getting on the Depo shot, I could not recall a time from kindergarten to fifth grade when she was not pregnant. She had to be about my age now. Well, two months or so after taking the shot she got so big that she had to walk around her own thighs! I have a mental picture of her just sitting on my aunt's couch with a baby in her lap sweating. She didn't have to worry about pregnancy after that because I am pretty sure she was no longer having sex. I mean, she had to stop to take breaths walking to the kitchen to get her formula bottles out of the refrigerator.
Rings in your vagina. Little tabs with a string that stay in for five years. Pills that stop your period. Cups in your jay-jay.Then they get you by focusing on how some of these pills or products can make your nails grow and your skin pretty. I know that I do not have sex, but is the thrill of it so awesome that you are willing to put yourself in danger of terminal illness? I am overweight and Black. I am at risk for enough without adding to the Pu-Pu platter of illnesses that could take my young life voluntarily.
At the end of the day, it is every woman's choice on how they want to shield themselves from unwanted pregnancy. I choose to take my grandma's advice and keep my ankles crossed.

Taming the Beast

I am going to be honest with you and say that I have pretty much fallen off of my workout regimen. It was like I was afraid of my progress. Every time I stayed on the treadmill a minute longer or lifted a pound of extra weight on the arm curl I would reward myself by going to the pool...until all I was doing was going to the pool. What is the consequence of this? Well, besides feeling like crap and being disappointed with myself and having to get totally reacquainted with the equipment, I now have to see results in women who started working out at the same time as me that are now like 50lbs lighter. I hate not sticking to things.
So yesterday, I went to the gym and decided to workout for real for the first time in like two weeks. But I went there with one goal in mind: to do at least fifteen minutes on "the beast."
"The Beast" is the nickname that this beefed up lady that I met in the gym has nicknamed the Stair Master. She competes in fitness competitions and can stay on that thing for hours at a times at high speed, burning over 1,000 lbs. She filled my head with stories of being able to lose major weight in like two months if I got on the Stair Master instead of the treadmill. So I tried it once and fell off. Literally, I hit the floor from the top step. Luckily, my head landed on a stray yoga ball, or I probably would have cried.
Yesterday, I marched into the gym ready to get on "The Beast." This time, I was determined not to fall because there would have been a huge audience. So I asked one of the trainers, Ms. Bernice, to help me. No exaggeration: I was on the machine for a minute and forty-two seconds before I was pleading to get off. And in that minute, which was the hardest minute of my life, I burned 41 calories. I burn that in fifteen minutes on the treadmill! Clearly, taming the beast is the key to my workout...if I stick with it.
Why am I not at the gym right now? No good reason. I am sitting at home, eating Peanut Butter Cup Keebler Chips Deluxe Cookies, buy one get one free, with some cranberry juice. I felt so crappy about my crappy workout, I fell into bad, old habits. No worries. I will go tomorrow. Promise.

Cell Detail

A couple of days ago I got a new phone, and can I just say that I love it! The last two phones I'd had were the same and went cuplunk for the same reasons. Finally, readjusting my budget for the month, I decided that I had to get a more current phone; one that actually played ringtones and didn't embarrass me.
So I danced on down to Best Buy and got this adorable little palm phone that looks a lot like a Blackberry but isn't of course. I raced home to play with it and went through my contact list. Most of the people listed don't call me, I don't call them, or I don't remember. So logically, seeing that I got this phone, I decided to start off clean and clear out some of my dead-weight contacts.
I couldn't.
Out of 211 contacts, I could not erase one. I still have the phone numbers of girls I had horrible friend break-ups with that I have no intention of ever calling. There are still numbers for dudes I met at greasy New Orleans bars that I never called. I have even managed to hang on to the old numbers of friends who have changed their numbers. I don't know. Somewhere in the back of my mind I feel like they are going to change their numbers back or something.
After going through the contact list about four times I took a deep breath and decided that I was being stupid. I had to get rid of some of the numbers. But all I kept hearing in my mind was, "Don't erase her! What if you have to call her for something?," or "Don't get rid of him! What if you go back to that side of town again and want to go have dinner of something?"
In all honesty, it boils down to me not being able to let go. I have discussed it with you guys in other posts. I cling to everything from mementos to trash, usually afraid that one day it will become of use. Another big issues is that if I get rid of all the useless contacts, I will have to come to terms with who my real friends are. If I did the type of SIMS card cleaning I need to do, I would have less than a hundred contacts. I don't know. I like feeling like I know a lot of people, or like a lot of people know me.
Still scrolling down the contact list, I became irritated with myself. Deep down, I knew having all these numbers was stupid. Half of the people I could not even remember meeting. So after a small pep talk, I erased one number. Immediately, I felt refreshed and liberated. I was only 99 contacts from having a clutterless life!
Unfortunately, that number was the only one I erased that day. But it felt good. Perhaps this is something I will have to accomplish in baby steps.

The Crushed Crush

Recently, I made a vow to let go of some of these boy crushes I have been harboring. Some of them I have had for nearly five years already, and not only have they long ago begun to get boring, but I hadn't revealed my feelings to the guys in question, so they are beginning to get draining. So I figure hey, it's summer! I'm working out, I'm feeling good, I've got a tan, and I'm in my twenties. Why not chuck the boy crushes for man love possibilities, or at the very least, some new replacement crushes.

Well, one of my crushes is getting married. This crush was one of the deeper ones that I have always felt low about. While in college, I formed a crush on this guy nearly instantly. He was smart. He was funny. He was cute, and he knew how to do things the sad girly men I was around at the time did not know how to do, like fix a car and work. But I knew he could not return the feelings. He had a girlfriend for Christ's sake, and I clearly was not his type. However, somehow, my crush became obvious, and he began to detach himself from me. Not totally, but enough for me to get the drift. It was a song and dance I am more than familiar with. But, dare I say, I thought he was different. Gross right?

Anyway, shall we fast forward two years? He is getting married to the girlfriend he had while we were in school. This I have known for about a year now, even though it was just recently confirmed. And since I have not spoken to him in a year, I thought I did not care. However, I went to his wedding site, and can I just say, I spazzed out!

It was crazy! All of a sudden, the reality of the whole situation just hit me like a ton of bricks! But I am not sure why I was so surprised. Was it because all along I did not believe that they were going to get married, or because I am so disappointed in myself for not saying anything all this time? Primarily, I think my initial devastation came from me thinking I was over him.

So again I pose the question, as I have in previous posts, do you ever really get over someone, or do your feelings for them just harbor themselves in the back of your mind or the bottom of your heart until you are FORCED to confront them?

The latter is what happened to me; however, I am not sure if this is the universal way that things work. What I do know is that I have my eyes on a couple of dudes, and hopefully these fresh feelings for them will send my old interests packing. Hopefully, I am more mature now at 24 than I was at 22, and when these men come and go, the spazz cycle will not repeat, fingers crossed.

Crosses to Bear

My friend Dizzle is talking to a guy who essentially does not want to go to college. He works two minimum wage jobs, which he hates, but apparently, they are better than putting one front in front of the other to apply to colleges. This is clearly a problem for my buddy, seeing that she is a third-year medical student.

I have advised her to leave it alone, for you can't make a grown person do what they do not want to do, even if it would benefit them in the long run. But Dizzle is determined. She has done everything in her power to get this guy into undergrad, including practically applying for him.
For the most part, he seems uninterested, assuming that since people like Bill Gates did not go to college, he doesn't have to get an education to do what he wants to either. I guess that is one way of looking at it, even though I wouldn't want to chance my future.

Anywho, Dizzle has stressed herself out about this dude for long enough, but she is not the only girl I know who has tried to point a brother in the right direction...with resistance from the other end. I knew a boy in undergrad named Andrew who once said, in a nutshell, that if you wanted a Black man, his lack of drive is just something you would have to deal with. Is trying to make a Black man a better man to the point of exhaustion one of the many crosses that a Black woman has to bear? One, by the way, that you will get little to no recognition for?

I would say off hand that the answer is yes; however, this bugs me, because when I have been low on octane, it was left up to me to fill up my tank. There has never been a Black man, from a father to a boyfriend, who has ever been there to push me across the finish line. Any strength I needed to do so I needed to draw from inside myself. I feel like I was raised to have to do this.

So if I was a brought up as a Black woman to have to get my own life together without help, why were Black men not taught the same thing? And why should it fall on my lap to pick up the ball for a brother where someone else dropped it, and why should I be jumping at the chance to do so?

Now this I can not answer. All I can say is that at this point in my life, I am consumed with trying to get my own life together, but I do not feel that I am exempt from what my friend Dizzle is going through. I will probably be writing a similar blog when I am thirty and a magazine publisher about my fiance who refuses to find a job.

Dating in the Jungle: The Sad, Sad Conclusion

Recently I had a conversation with my girl Haynes, one of my few friends in a happy, committed, long-distance relationship. We got to talking about the Girlfriend's Code of Conduct, you know, that unwritten list of things that girls just did not do to other girls. I swear, by the third grade, I knew its primary principles: return things in better condition than you borrow it in, don't tell secrets, and jump in a fight if someone attacks your girl. As we got older, the rules matured: don't snitch, return money within a month of borrowing it, and oh, by the way, do not take your girl's man! Back then, the girl did not even have to be your best friend. You just had to know of her relatively well to decline advances. Boy, those were the days.

Today it is finder's keeps, baby, finder's keepers. The man in question could belong to your literal sister and in the eyes of the jury, he would be up for grabs. Maybe I spent too many nights watching the old black and whites with grandma, but I have to say, there is no dignity in dating today ( for reasons mentioned in Dating in the Jungle: The Situation).

All the women are desperate. They have a tightly stitched career and educational plans that only allow a certain amount of time for dating before they have to get married and have babies. You no longer look at your friend and her beau and hope that the same will soon happen to you, you look at you friend and her man and think that the same thing is going to happen to you when you take him-a complete disregard for and disrespect of The Code.

Sad to say, I feel that I am slowly falling into this horrid way of jungle thinking. There are a few girls that I am just waiting to have a tiff with their men so I can swoop in like a crane and snatch them by their necks. Quite a few.

It has just become easier to take someone else's somebody than take your chances on finding your own and he be a loser. And since men have no code of behavior, it is usually easy to lure him away from your pal with promises of sex before you have him on your arm.

As hard as it is out there being single and finding Mr. Right, I have made a decision to follow the code. That is, unless my girl dumps her man. Everyone knows that if she dumps him, he is fair game.

Dating in the Jungle: The Situation

I think that it would be fair to say that since I was partially raised by my grandmother that I had a conservative upbringing, especially when it came to the laws of being a lady. Sit with your ankles crossed. Never leave the house with your hair a mess, a rule that I have completely disregarded at this point. Make sure your skirt is pulled down in the back, say please and thank you, don't speak with your mouth full, and always use your indoor voice, another rule that I have tossed. These were the rules of womanhood that a good Methodist young woman did not break. But these were social rules. When it came to the rules of relationships, grandma said nothing, probably for the same reasons that she hid my Seventeen Magazines when I was eleven; she did not want me to start wearing makeup or get pregnant. When I probed her once when I was too young to see how uncomfortable my questions were making her she spat only one thing, "Carry yourself like a lady!" And that was that.

But now as a young single woman on the dating scene during a time where men have gone crippled due to the loss of their backbones, balls, and dignity, I find myself having to play the role of a tiger, not even a tigress, willing to rip the flesh off of the bones of any female that has her eyes on the brotha that is just a wee bit less disgusting than the others.

And of course, I am losing, big time, for it is survival of the fittest out here in the dating jungle, and I feel that if I were really in the wild, the other tigers would have left me to get eaten or trampled for being dead weight. I consider myself a feminist, but am I going back on the work of all the women who have asked for my rights by asking for gender roles to be more defined: for men to be men and women be women?

What do I mean by this? Well, back in the day, when my grandparents met, grandpa approached grandma. He did not stand to the side grabbing his crotch because he knew that as a college educated Black man he was a commodity. Hell, he was even more of a commodity than brothers are today! He approached her because that is what men did, even though he was five years younger than grandma.

Sadly, my grandma has Alzheimer's, but she would lose her mind anyway if she saw the state of things today. Women fighting over men. Men living off of women financially. Women in the club wearing next to nothing to get attention. Women having sex before marriage to gain a commitment, not as a result of one. She would probably shake these women, after she roller set their hair and applied their lipstick correctly of course.

It scares me that women, especially young ones, have silently decided that since they now bring home the bacon that they no longer deserve to be treated like ladies and now have to be men. And this is in other facets of society, not just the dating scene.

When I finally get a man, I am going to take him to my grandma's nursing home with my hair wild, dirt under my nails, and claw marks all over my back. When she asks me why my hair isn't together, as she undoubtedly will even in her state, I will have to explain that I could not just sit around with my ankles crossed any longer; that I had to stop carrying myself like a lady to get a man.

Thug Love

There is a man that goes to my gym that I am pretty sure has killed someone. He has one of those tattooed teardrops on his face and hundreds of tattoos on his body. With huge muscles and a face that automatically gives off attitude whether he means to or not alerts me that he has probably been in prison. Dare I say that I think I have a crush?
I have only spoken to him once about coming to the Saturday morning Yoga class. The convo was going well until I noticed the teardrop and blurted, "Oh my God! Have you killed someone?!" He didn't get mad, even though, for a split second, I was sure he was going to punch me. He also didn't answer.
OK. Crushes with beaus. A beau with a baby on the way, and now an ex-con. I know it seems like I am going from bad to worst. But he seems nice! He waves to me when he sees me. Plus, minus the tear drop he has beautiful skin and minus the tats he has a nice body. Besides the whole prison thing, he is hot!
What is it about bad boys that is so alluring? Maybe not even bad guys, but the idea of "the wrong guy;" the man that has nothing you are looking for besides a body and a nice car. My guess would be that they are just more fun than the guy with the formal education and the kid-ready minivan.
I say that I am guessing, because I don't know...yet. I have been toying with the idea of asking this 36-year-old gang-banger out on the town. Maybe to Applebee's for a Mangorita? Now I know that I said that I had sworn off men and the idea of dating. But he's cute and I'm young. Plus, I hear that bad guys like good girls. You can't get any cleaner than I. Who knows, this could be the "one." If not, I could at least get some time out with a cute older man and a Mangorita.
Let's just hope his former lifestyle is just that. I'd hate to be the story behind his second teardrop.

The Mother Load

I think that it is safe to say that me and mother have problems sometimes with liking each other. We love each other, but I do not think we really like each other at times. Our relationship over the years has been, for lack of a better word, shaky for tons of different reasons. We have gone from Roseanne and Darlene to Norman Bates and his mother in the course of the past three years, coincidentally correlating with my graduation and move back home.

With her birthday coming up, I find myself wondering what she was like when she was a young woman. Seeing that she had me when she was 21, I can not envision her as a young woman minus being my mother. So I also find myself fantasizing about what it would have been like if we went to the same high school or something. She probably would have thought me to be a spoiled snob, and I would have thought her to be rude and obnoxious. I am betting that she would not have voted for me for class office and I would not have sat at her lunch table.

We just argue all the time and rarely agree with each other. Is it like this with every mother and daughter, for I feel like my friend Tiesha and her mother are so close that they wake-up in the morning to skip through their front yard hand-in-hand. Or do some mothers and daughters just pretend to get along while the rest of us don't know how?

As I think more about it, I have come to the conclusion that this is why it is important to graduate and NOT go back home. You want to live your own life, free of critiques and remarks, minus the idea of a mommy, which will cause conflict at home, but your mother will undoubtedly try to rear you, even though you are CLEARLY passed rearing age. In my opinion, this causes the Norman Bates effect, even though he technically only left home when he was escorted by they state to the nut house; however, I feel this further proves my point.

Also, riddle me this: at our age, our maternal relationships worth repairing or molding into what we have always wanted them to be? I wouldn't mind arguing less with my mommy, but I can't imagine us being the mother and daughter team that joined church fashion shows or sat around the kitchen table drinking green tea and he-heing about menstrual cramps. I can not say that I would want that.

Madonna, the singer not the deity, once said that she better understood her mother once she had her own kids. Maybe one day far far from now when I am with child, I will understand where my mother has been coming from.

But until then, she will probably still be on my last nerves.