My Personal Blog from 2003 to 2011
Damn…
Um…God?
Yeah. Well, I’m over here wondering about something.
You actually made me the way I am on purpose, right?You sure you ain’t mess up nothin that you forgot to mention?
What the hell is wrong with me?
I ask you that all the time but you never answer.
Why do I do the stupid things I do? >
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>:lOh…I know. To learn powerful lessons.And finallyMoveOn…
Livin The Life
What a LONG DRAWN OUT weekend.
My weekends are always super long and super relaxing. Hmm..Maybe I should clean up or something but I usually just lounge around and cuddle with my boys. But not this weekend because my boys were away- AGAIN- with their Daddy. So I cuddled with myself…
I got a call from my girl Kenya this weekend.
Yeah.. Remember her?
She was that chick from college that everyone knew because she was the only one on campus with a monstrous afro before it was fashionable.
So many years later she has traded those soft curls for dreads and she’s living in Brooklyn pursuing her fashion design career.
“What’s up Ms. Tee?!” she says into the phone.
“Kenya?”
“Yes girl, it’s me.”
I scream. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! What’s up girl!?”
“Girl, I called to tell you about my new job.”
I raise my eyebrow. Kenya has been putting in long hours at small companies, but always maintaining. Things have been slow but steady and I had been hoping for a breakthrough for her. You ever feel like that? You’re hoping and praying for one of your friends to make it BIG so that you can share in that excitement and somehow feel successful by association? I do that all the time. It’s as if the realization of their romantic, career and spiritual goals make my life goals more tangible. And to a degree, once you’ve seen your friend do something, you know it’s attainable for you.
“So I lost my job sometime in March, “she reminded me. “And I had been looking around working on projects and trying to keep my head above water, you know?”
I sigh. Hell yeah I know.
“I get a call from XYZ design company and I go in for an interview for an associate designer position. Girl, I didn’t know WHAT kind of salary to ask for so my friend tells me to ask for 75k. I looked at him like he was crazy. How could I have the audacity to walk into a company and ask for that much money?!”
I laugh.
“But girl, I didn’t even have to ask, they offered me a salary of ABC!”
“ABC what? A year?” I ask perplexed.
“A YEAR!”
“Damn! That’s damn near 6 figures Kenya!!!!!!!!!”
“I know. FINALLY I’ll be able to live life how it’s supposed to be lived. I’m not going to horde my money because what if I die tomorrow? I want to see places and do nice things for people so I’m excited.”
“Shit. I’m excited too.”
“And guess what? I met a great guy. I’m really feeling his conversation, his vibe and everything. But…He’s white.”
Hmm… Something new, huh?
Well what do you know. If she can do it. I know I can.
We WILL live our dreams!
Out Of The Box
I Was Right
It was too good to be true…
I walked into the meeting with the publisher feeling confident about my presentation. I informed them that I had a powerpoint presentation but they did not make arrangements for it. That’s okay. I had printed out my presentation just in case so handed out copies to the publisher and her her assistant.
As I went through all of my points I could tell they were not expecting so much detail. I wasn’t long winded, just thorough in my explanation of the role of a freelance editor and my goals for the position and my vision for the content of the magazine.
After I was done, the publisher sat back and folded her arms. “Well,” she said. “That was a great presentation. After seeing all of this I have a better picture of what this position entails. But…looking at both positions that I have offered you, I think it would not be wise for you to take both since the editor position is obviously your area of passion and knowledge. Your ideas are excellent and you are on the money with your themes and story ideas so let’s have you concentrate on that.”
I shrug. “I’m sure you know what’s best for your company.” I tell her.
“Now for the editor position. How much do you think you should earn?”
I give her a number that is WELL BELOW the average for editors in this area. She looks surprised.
“Ma’am. This is a management position. Managing and recruiting writers, creating the direction for content and filling up the entire magazine with interesting information is a lot to do and takes time. This is not a simple 9-5 job. This is a lifestyle. I’m willing to put my heart into this.”
“Hmm.. Well that’s not in my budget this year. Maybe you could write a few articles for us and then write for other people too.”
“Sure,” I say and I understand. I walked into the meeting with two solid job offers and she has now rescinded on both of them.
I don’t get upset. Well, just a little. The office is 45 minutes away from where I live and I wasted a lot of gas riding up there.
At the end of the night I look at my missed calls and notice that her number is there. I call her phone the next morning.
“Hello, I just can’t seem to get you out of my spirit, ” She says. “I know you have the qualifications that I need to help get my office up and running. And we really need someone to do all of those things you talked about in your presentation. I was hoping you could come in for a couple of months as an admin assistant and do both. Just to have some income coming in and then you can go off and do whatever…”
“Are you offering me BOTH jobs for the admin salary of $25,000 a year?”
“Just for a few months. Just help us set things up.”
Wow. The old bait and switch. She first offered me two different positions with totally seperate salaries and NOW she wants me to work like a dog on BOTH jobs for only 25k.
That is more than 10k less than my last salary. PLUS I’ll be wasting all kinds of gas driving 45 minutes each way, EVERY DAY with only a promise of 2 months of employment, no benefits and being her personal assistant, her office manager and the editor of her magazine.
Sigh…
Black women business leaders. It happens everytime.
I tell her I’ll think about it and call her back. I email my friends explaining the whole situation and then I call my Mama for her opinion.
“That bitch tried you!” My Mama hisses into the phone. “If I were you I wouldn’t even call her back.”
I called her back and said, “Sorry, that salary is not beneficial to me.”
“Ok,” she said and hung up.
I saw her number on my caller ID yesterday. She didn’t leave a message and I didn’t call her back.
So…back to sqaure one for me.
Still looking and waiting for my chance to do what I was placed here to do. Sometimes I feel like an eskimo in the Bahamas, but I’m sure I’ll find my place one day.
“Some of the most wonderful people
are the ones who don’t fit into boxes.”
Tori Amos
Oh, so did you really think we were going to lose?
Excuse me. Let me get something straight. I come from the baddest muthafuckin city in the country. 
We do not lose. Miami-Dade baby! ALL THE WAY BABY!
It’s a Florida thang. You may never understand. 
CHECK THE HEADLINES
Pop that thang!
Shake that thang!Shake it Mama!
I think I’ll take the day off tomorrow to celebrate…
Steady Preparations
I’ve been running around all morning. My boys and I woke up late and we went to eat at BK before I took them to summer camp. Food is running low at the crib so I stopped by the grocery store to get the essentials for survival, you know, milk, bread, cheese, lunchables, fruit and ground turkey (I’m making spaghetti tonight).
Then I went on over to the flea market to see Jonathan and get my haircut. Today he was playing the Steve Harvey comedy show called ‘Don’t trip: He’s not through with me yet’. I don’t really like Steve Harvey as a comedian. He curses too much. I hated Kings of Comedy and I wouldn’t even give Queens of Comedy a chance. I prefer comedians who don’t use so much profanity. It burns my ears.
But this comedy show was different. Apparently he performed in front of a crowd of Christians because he promised there would be no profanity. I could tell he was grasping at straws as to what he would joke about. It was painful to watch him as he strayed away from his usual raunchy style of comedy at one point admitting, “You all will get your money’s worth tonight. I promise you that.” LOL!
Last night was pretty special. I saw an old, OLD friend of mine that I hadn’t met up with in more than four years. He looks great and speaking with him always makes me feel successful because he grew up in the projects in my old neighborhood and he is doing so well for himself. We actually talked late into the night as he explained to me the foundation of the unrest in the middle east.
Our conversation was prompted by a scene in a movie I watched called Pretty Persuasion. While the critics tore this movie apart, calling it dumb and pointless, I have watched this movie about 4 times since I rented it and I never get tired of watching the young Kimberly Joyce deliver memorable lines like, “Of all the races I’m glad that I was born white” as she attempts to manipulate her friends, her teachers and community to gain celebrity.
There is a Arabian character that Kimberly befriends who also becomes a puppet in Kimberly’s own quest for stardom. Always a fan of teen comedies, this one combined plenty of middle of the road sexual references (for the freak in me) with the underlying desire of a teen with ample intelligence as she seeks to gain some sense of acceptance. I felt sorry for her. Being rich and pretty just wasn’t enough to erase the fact that she had no one in her life who truly loved her.
~stretches~
Anyway, my lil sister’s wedding is two days away. I’m at my Mama’s house dying my hair. The color I’m hoping for is a crimson red. The bridesmaids are wearing red hair so I must conform. LOL!
My Mama just finished getting her dreads re-twisted and her honey blonde locks now reach just below her bra strap. Her hair is so pretty! Don’t tell her that though, she thinks she’s all that already.
As soon as I wash this stuff out of my hair, we’re on our way to get pedicures and pick up our dresses. Then I’ll go get my handsome sons and head to Walmart for new white tees and sun visors for all of us to wear to the HEAT PARADE tomorrow. There’s supposed to be about a million people in downtown Miami tomorrow afternoon and my boys and I will be among them hoping to catch a glimpse of our WORLD CHAMPION basketball team. My boys are excited and I am too. If I had a camera, I’d post pics but…oh well.
I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.
Have a beautiful day!
Later
I am trying very hard to pretend like everything is okay, but it’s not.
I will be back when I can smile for real.
For You I Will
I was trying to hide from you but hiding from you is like hiding from myself.
I feel so much better. I had to face one of the biggest demons in my life today: depression.
It comes on every blue moon now. Not like when I was a teen and everything was so damn serious and life threatening. ~smile~ I used to make lists of reasons why I should continue to live. They were always very short. I know why I’m like this. It’s not because I’m weak or stupid like most people would believe. It’s because I have inherited a spirit from my ancestors that is trying to take over my life. The spirit of depression.
The spirit of depression much like alcoholism and cancer flows freely through bloodlines, ravaging families and devastating lives. My own maternal grandfather killed himself when my mother was just 11 years old. It’s no wonder I have the same thoughts during times of frustration.
Today was one of those days. I reached out for help- again to the wrong person and was berated for my feelings. So I reached out again and got it right. I turned my ringers off, picked my sons up from school early and wallowed in self pity for a bit, fantasizing about taking the easy way out. Then there was a knock on my door and they walked in.
“Mama. Can we have lunch now?”
“Boy, it’s dinner time.” I laughed.
“But we want peanut butter and jelly. You don’t have to cook tonight.”
Is he saying he doesn’t want me to cook? “No, I’m cooking. You need hot food.”
I had to get up. I had to shake it off. I had to stand up and give them big hugs and take care of them. Looking around my beautiful duplex, it’s just me and them. No one else would do it. I had to.
As I watched my sons scamper off into the living room I realized that I can not allow this spirit to touch their lives. My Mama grew up without parents because of depression and my childhood was ruined because I did not know how to fight it. I can’t push my children away to indulge in my own selfish pity party. An afternoon of pouting is enough. I can’t let it last a minute longer.
I made dinner, we ate it and showered and watched a movie together. We laughed and laughed and the world seemed right again. My sons are the best part of me. They are who I am without all the baggage from being hurt and belittled all of my life. They have the compassion and consideration that I have and I am amazed everyday by how thoughtful they are.
I can not kill that. I can not be the ghost of a Mama who they will always remember crying and locked up in her room because things weren’t going her way. I will not give up on them. I will not give up on me.
I will not let this beat me. I will not waste years of my life wondering what’s wrong with me. I KNOW what’s wrong with me. It’s a generational curse. God has already predestined that certain curses will end with me and I believe this is one of them.
I didn’t escape the curse of being on welfare or single parenthood but I’ll be damned if my children don’t understand what it is they are up against. Happiness is a choice. Survival is a choice. It’s easy to give up and freak out. It’s easy to pout and cry.
I don’t choose that for myself or my sons. They will have a Mama who laughs and plays with them. They will grow up with a Mama who cares enough to remind them to make the right choices in life. Along with love, I offer them accountability. Once I make them aware of the spiritual battles that have been fought and lost in our family, I will encourage them to be responsible and to choose life.
Today I realized that although my Mama couldn’t help me because she didn’t know how, I can help my sons. God gave me full authority to speak into their lives and help shape them into the men He has called them to be. I will not be the cause of their unfruitful lives. As much as I want to write and heal and be healed through my words, my greatest gift to this earth will be the two young men I will send off to impact and change lives.
For them, I will rise.
This situation is only temporary, but my sons will remember my reaction to it for the rest of their lives.
I will not teach them to give up.
Naked Boy
My 5 year old loves to take his clothes off. I bet he’d sleep naked if I let him. He once said, “I want my whole body to be cool.”
This morning I woke up to the sound of his little brother saying, “Mama, he’s naked again.”
I laughed and said, “That’s okay. He can be naked in the house. It’s his house. As long as he doesn’t go outside naked it’s alright.”
“It’s my house?” he asked me while nibbling on his breakfast bar.
“Yes, it’s your house.”
“All of it?”
I laugh. “Yes, everything in it.”
He seemed to think for a second and after wiping the milk mustache from his toffee colored face he asked, “Then why are you here?”
Terrorists in the projects?
In what wasn’t necessarily a unfamiliar scene in Liberty City, a fleet of cop cars and FBI agents swarmed a warehouse on 15th and 62nd avenue near the Pork-N-Beans projects yesterday.
They arrested seven men for being alleged Al Qaeda supporters using information gathered by an FBI agent who infiltrated the group. Police officials say that the seven men planned to blow up the Sears tower and attack the FBI building downtown among other targets. The men were found with no weapons and were deemed incapable of pulling off their alleged plans.
He Didn’t Even Speak
Wow.
My little sister’s getting married today. Yesterday we spent some time together doing last minute preparations for her wedding. Last night we met at the church for the rehearsal and encountered the most disturbing situation.
Ofcourse everyone was late, except me. I have this thing about being late. I was the first to arrive so I wandered around the empty church looking at everything, playing with the microphones and pretending to give a sermon. When my Mama got there we walked to BK to get a burger and when we got back the other bridesmaid and flower girl and ring bearer were there. None of the groom’s family showed up for the rehearsal. I found that a bit odd.
But what was even more odd was the fact that the pastor stepped in quietly, didn’t introduce himself to anyone and didn’t say a word until it was his time to speak during the rehearsal. He didn’t even invite any of us to church on Sunday. He didn’t even give my sister or her fiance a hug before he left. His demeanor was more business-like than anything. I felt so uncomfortable. As if I was unwelcome there.
The rehearsal went fine. Me and the other bridesmaid joked that we would do the snap dance on our way out of the church. My hair came out alright. It’s not bright or anything but it’s nice.
After the rehearsal I came home and I all I could think about was how her pastor barely spoke to her and how he didn’t even introduce himself to our parents or any of the other new faces he saw. It would have been the perfect opportunity to win a few souls for Christ, assuming we hadn’t been won already, but he didn’t even seem interested.
How can you be a pastor and not be interested in meeting the family of two members of your congregation? I guess since it wasn’t Sunday he was “off” and couldn’t be bothered with making us feel welcome in his establishment.
I called my sister late last night and spoke to her about it and she said that he is very much like that. Even during their marriage counseling sessions he was stand offish. For some reason he runs his church like a business and is very impersonal with her and her fiance. I asked her why he acts that way and she said she didn’t know. She hadn’t paid the fee for his matrimony services yet and she asked him if she could pay after the ceremony and he seemed upset.
This hurts me so much.
Now I wonder about their spiritual state because my sister is very religious and is one of those people who constantly says, “God told me to…” But how can she be totally in tune if she has a spiritual leader who is not interested in connecting with her as a father? Church is not supposed to be a business. You don’t marry someone just because they paid you.
I believe the spiritual well being of any church going Christian is a direct reflection of the spiritual leadership that they are under. We learn from our leaders and fashion our lifestyles from their example.
I am extremely dissappointed with him and I think that I will probably say something about it to him today. I’m trying not to let it get me down but I realize that you can depend on no man to love and nurture you.
My little sister’s getting married.
As headstrong as she is, she will make a way. No matter what comes, she will handle it. I made sure to tell her that I believed in her ability to make the right decision.
Let me go pick up these shoes and accessories.