On being catty. With some Method Man mixed in

There is nothing worse than a catty woman. I try my darndest not to be catty, and not to be bitter, to just live and let live. But if I were to be catty, I might mention a few things like:

-How I ran into my ex at the store the other day, and got my first closeup view of him and his homely wife

-After all I've heard about her, I thought that she'd at least be beautiful on the outside. But hey, she is not.

-How he and I nodded a hello, but he was breaking his neck trying to look at me

-How I couldn't help but feel like I was living that infamous Old Spice commercial: "Look at your wife, now look at me. Look at your wife, now look at me. Now, she is NOT me."

-How I looked at myself in the mirror the next morning and shouted "She's ugly!!!" and then laughed and danced my way through the rest of the day

-How I got a text from him and I thought about all the ways I could blow up his spot, but instead I just blocked his number

-How I thought about his new found girth as I weighed myself at the gym, and realized that I am just four pounds away from my goal

I'd say all those things, if I were a catty broad. Thank goodness I'm not.

Now, about Method Man. He is on my LIST. He's that guy that could point to me in a crowd, shout "COME HERE!" and I would go running. Of course, if he yelled something ignant, like "YO BITCH COME HERE!", I would roll my eyes. Yeah, I'd still run to him, but not real fast. (jokes) I used to love this song back in the day and they played it on the radio recently, so I thought I'd share here. Enjoy!

The Spin (**I suppose this is called stress)

1. Yeah, I've been a little stressed out lately

2. So much so, that I've gone into work at my part time job on a day I wasn't scheduled to work

3. But I must say, it was fun being able to just go home, without anything to do, without anyone to answer to

4. Soon, I'll have to write about how my spin class is getting gangsta

5. And how much I've been digging Terry McMillan lately (as if you hadn't noticed)

6. I will post my vacation pictures soon, I promise

7. But for now, I'm going to continue with my sleep therapy, which means that when the going gets rough ... I'm getting in my bed.

Have a wonderful week everyone


(**Tweet from Terry McMillan at 1:45 a.m. Aug. 24)

The Sunday Spin (**'I'm finding it difficult to find a good sleep position while nursing and trying not to mess up this mohawk .')

1. This has been an EXTREMELY stressful week

2. Between work driving me crazy, negotiations for a condo falling through and trying to keep my past in the past, I was pooped

3. All I could do was sleep and sleep and sleep, which sometimes helps things get better, or makes me feel more drained

4. This time it was all drain

5. But I'm better now and I know this week will be more bearable

6. I planted the seeds for another side hustle this week and if all goes well, I'll have three jobs .... *whew* .... and three incomes! *hooray*

7. I'm trying to increase my investment knowledge and most recently I signed up for a Roth IRA. I'm also finding some valuable advice here. We'll see how this goes.

Bonus: I miss hot yoga. I must go back next week. I need a detox!!!

Have a good week everybody!

(**Tweet from Erykah Badu at 12:10 a.m. Aug. 11)

Right Brain Vs Left

I’m spending the summer working on my thesis. My professor has me on a strict plan of handing this research project to her in sections over these warm months, so I can spend the year just revising, and hopefully taking advantage of some financial rewards that come with being a grad student novelist. (Fingers crossed)

Dr L has received about a third of my work and we’re going to chat soon about what I’ve written so far. That makes me nervous and excited. Nervous because Dr L is an intimidating presence. I mean, she’s got the kind of soft voice that can make you feel like you’ve done a really good job. But she also has this look in her eyes that let you know that she can immediately turn into Angry Black Mother at any given time. Thankfully, she hasn’t gone ABM on me.

The biggest struggle I’m facing with this whole process is my rebelling Left Brain, my creative side. Thankfully, my thesis is part research and part novel that I’ve previously written, so I mainly have to focus on the research portion. At the same time, I’m revising another fiction novel that takes up a bit of my time. So it’s hard to go from my analytical Right Brain to my rebellious Left Brain on a daily basis.

I managed to set a schedule for the NIP (Novel In Progress). The goal is to write at least 1,500 words a day, five days a week. I have index cards for each day of the week, noting how many words I should reach by any given day and I check each number off once I’m done. Sometimes I wake up at 5 a.m. to write. Other times I’m up till midnight. And there are some weekends where I’m in front of that computer trying to catch up on the writing that I didn’t get in during the week. But it gets done. By my calculations, this latest draft of NIP will be complete by September. Do you know what happens then?? More revisions. Sigh.

But I can’t say that I’ve established a regular schedule with the thesis. I read my books on black masculinity and recovery, and also offer analysis of other pieces of fiction that I'll be comparing to novel #1. Still, no matter how much I do, I feel like I'm not making any progress.

I'm gonna keep plugging away at both projects, just cause that's what I do. And if it doesn't work, it just doesn't work. I'd be more than happy to throw everything away and just go back to one of my childhood dreams -- to become a rapper. You may laugh, but a wise man once told me that metaphors will keep me out of the projects. We'll see.

Choosing A Road of Passion & Pain (with apologies to Lauryn Hill)

We talk about a lot of interesting things at my job, and most recently the topic turned to passion marks. If I recall correctly, we were talking about the Twilight craze and how there were kids being faux vampires who ran around biting each other to show their love. Kids these days don’t even know how to give a proper passion mark.

Back in the day, I was quite naïve, if you could believe that. I once thought a hickey was a bruise you got after hitting your head really hard. So that caused some confusion when a classmate tried to describe a ‘Who’s The Boss’ episode to me, the one where Samantha’s boyfriend gives her a hickey. I just couldn’t understand why Sam’s boyfriend wanted to beat her up. He seemed like such a nice guy. Duh.

Fast forward a few years and hickeys/passion marks were still a mystery. I’d gotten a few, but I still hadn’t gotten the logistics down of how to give them. I have fond memories of when I first met mother’s boyfriend, now husband, and he ratted on me for having a hickey. (Why does no one ever believe that it’s a bug bite??) Then there was my job at the bagel shop. I was talking to a coworker when a customer loudly referred to “that big ass hickey on her neck” in front of a line filled with customers. Fun times.

The first and only hickey I gave was to an old boyfriend. We were both teenagers, so it took a bit of strategic planning to get us to spend the weekend together, but it was accomplished. I was determined to leave my mark and I guess I did, in the tackiest way possible. That hickey was so huge, it was nasty. It looked like someone beat him in the neck repeatedly with a baseball bat. For weeks, folks were either teasing him about it, or asking if he’d been in a fight.

From then on, I decided to use my mouth for good and not evil.

The Only Friend

I’ve known Kate for a few years, ever since I started graduate school. Our program is small, so everyone knows each other and tends to take classes together. Yet Kate and I became close when we struggled with a challenging research class (with challenging classmates), and I later discovered that she teaches in the community that I live in. As we continue to battle through the thesis process, we’d get together and chat about various things. She mentions her woes of being a teacher and not getting a raise this year, and I would politely tell her to STFU since she makes more money than me and I can’t even remember the last time I got a raise. Then we’d laugh and talk about other things.

The last time I saw her we had one of our hilarious dinners at Olive Garden. It was hilarious because we had the worst waiter in the world. The poor thing meant well, but he gave me spaghetti in meat sauce when I clearly wanted spaghetti and meatballs and her order for ravioli also got messed up. Everytime we go out to eat, something crazy happens. She told me she was going to have surgery for her knee and that she was pretty nervous about it. I told her to calm down, things would be fine.

And they were. She sent me an email after the surgery, saying that things went well and that she was recuperating at her brother’s home. I promised her I’d come see her once I returned from vacation. So I went off to the beach without a care in the world.

Then I get a phone call yesterday on Kate’s cell phone, but it was Kate’s mother talking. I’m kind of morbid, so as soon as I heard her mother’s voice I immediately panicked and thought that something horrible happened to Kate, that she was on the road dead somewhere. I was close. Her mother told me that she developed a horrible blood clot after the surgery. She woke up in the middle of the night and had trouble bleeding, then immediately called an ambulance. The doctors said that if she hadn’t called for help, she would have died in her sleep.

The whole story was jarring. But I was touched when her mother told me about how Kate thought of me as a good friend and how much our outings meant to her. Kate is from another state and it seems like I’m her only friend in this area. So today I’m going to round up a card and my game face before I head out to the hospital this evening to wish her well. I hope she can recover quickly from this.

The Post-Vacay Spin (*"Have a great day everybody. Be the sunshine. Not a cloud.")

1. I just got back from a fabulous three-day trip to the beach

2. It was good lounging with friends and meeting new people

3. The food was also great, forcing me to cheat on my vow of No Sweets Until Aug. 16

4. But I only had one slice of apple pie, so if I can get through the rest of this month with no other desserts, I'll consider that an accomplishment!

5. I'll soon post pictures of the vacation, I promise

6. Yet now I'm busy getting out of vacation mode, which means I have to work on my thesis (UGH) and clean this messy apartment (UGH UGH!)

7. In the meantime, I made an offer on a condo a few days ago. Still waiting on an answer. Sigh.

Have a great week everyone!

(*Tweet from Terry McMillan, 11:51 a.m. July 27)