Greetings from Getting Back to My Groove?

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything here. A parent recently told me, during a school trip to Costa Rica, that she found my blog and enjoyed it. I decided I would start writing again. Since we've returned however, I tore some muscles in my shoulder and bicep and so I haven't been able to do much. To kick off my reintroduction to blogging, I decided to start with a reposting of a FB post, celebrating moms. And since I am also a teacher, this is still very fitting. Ignore the dates, remember, this is a repost.

"Hear Ye! Hear Ye! (In my best non-existent British accent)
I henceforth declare from this day forward, we will refer to summer vacation as the “Summer of Mom” (SOM). Let it be known that no longer will I make weekly, expensive trips to the grocery store and return home to have the food devoured by the fearsome “ItWasntMe” monster. No more will every Popsicle fall victim to premature death while the fruits and veggies grow blue fur from old age and neglect. No more will I take young people to the movies while cotton mounds grow from each corner of the bedroom floor. I vow the villains from Planet IDontKnowHowThatHappened will never more put holes in newly untagged shirts. I promise that flip flops who have lost their homes, will go flying through the air into the abyss of bedrooms far smaller than mine. My electric bill will decrease while the turned pages increase.  The clarinet will again play joyous sound as it knows I am paying for it every month (plus insurance). There will be no more sleepovers, carpools, and tagalongs while the dishes are crushed by their own mounds. No more will I intervene in trifle arguments between the “Turd” and the “Troll.” The twin T’s will have to hash it out between themselves while I relish in my “Mommy Smut” (Hellooooo, Mr. Grey). While they wear holes in the tile stomping and pouting, I will admire my freshly pedicured toes. I will meet every grunt and groan with a creamy, dark chocolate reward. I proclaim July 6th through August 16th to be the Summer of Mom. Unite and join in my cause, Mothers! Let’s take back our summer! Rejoice in the summer sunshine that should belong to US!
#SOM

Feel free to repost and tag a mom who will fight for our cause!"

Now, off I go to purchase a tiled backsplash for the orthodontist (AKA let's go get braces for the little one.)

Greetings from Laughingatmyself-ton

Update from my last post:

As we enter the hump summer break, this is where I am on my summer to do list:
1.  Learn to make an Asian dish – DONE (I learned to make Vietnamese summer rolls!
2. Get back to my blog – DONE (See, you’re reading it! Again! Again!)
3. Buy an iPad – DONE and hubby jealous (bonus points!!!)
4. De-Clutter my life – My bathroom, fridge, freezer, dressers, night stands, laundry room, medicine cabinets, dining room created even more bags of carbon footprint and I’m still waiting for a packing party (Bueller? Bueller?)
5. Go to Boston – Not gonna happen any time soon. I have four weeks left until I return to work and have NO idea when/where I'm moving (I <3 mortgage companies!)
6. Read 3 books – DONE Purchased “50 Shades of Grey” for my new iPad. I was going to read something else but then purchased and read the whole 50 Shades series, read "Glimpse" (#1) and am now reading "A Family Affair."
7. Added: Lose weight - I'm down 5 pounds!  I've been power walking, Just Dance 3-ing, Wii Zumba-ing and watching what I eat a little more. More to go but stepping in the right direction!

Writing is definitely a part of who I am but sometimes I burn the candle way too much in other areas of my life and I never get to finish things that are personal to me. Evidence? Today I was cleaning out my night stand and came across a journal I started a few years ago. I was so excited to open up and reflect on my feelings/emotions/thoughts of the past and was saddened to only see one short poem.  I remember writing it but as I reflected on it, had no idea what my feelings/emotions/thoughts were at the time I wrote it.  I had to laugh at how dramatic I was that night (I always write at night); must've been mad at hubby (shocker!). Well, I might as well share my masterpiece here since I obviously won't be filling my journal.  Here it is:

When... by F. Olowu

I talk to you
I become the listener

I smell you
I become filled

I taste you
I become hungry

I see you
I become lustful

I dream you
I become enlightened

I touch you
I become naked

I make love to you
I become at one with you

I love you
I become lonely


Hahahaha!!!!!! That is the most Twilight-brooding-teenager crap I've ever written but I like it anyway.  Again, I don't know what was going through my mind when I wrote it but it's a good thing I don't drink and have a good sense of humor about myself.  That could have gone a completely different way.   

Final thought - Between the new Staples policy on teacher purchases and the Viacom/Directv "talks," I don't know who is the worst of the Evils!

*follow me on twitter @mardeea1

Greetings from Fatgirlshateskinnygirls-ville

So let’s start with an update from my last post:

As we enter our 3^rd week of summer break, this is where I am on my summer to do list:

1.  Learn to make an Asian dish – DONE (I learned to make Vietnamese summer rolls!

2. Get back to my blog – DONE (See, you’re reading it! Again!)

3. Buy an iPad – DONE and hubby jealous (bonus points!!!)

4. De-Clutter my life – My bathroom, fridge and freezer created 5 bags of carbon footprint and I’m still waiting for a packing party (Bueller? Bueller?)

5. Go to Boston – Still on hold until I can figure out when and where I will be moving (I <3 mortgage companies!)

6. Read 3 books – Purchased “50 Shades of Grey” for my new iPad (complete trash but I promise to read something less trashy afterwards, maybe a horror/thriller)

I have lots on my mind but I will focus on one thing today.  I don’t really talk about this much to anyone and it’s really hard for me to get this out but, I’m tired of being fat.  So hard to say out loud! I worry all the time about my health and what would happen to them if my children lost me.  Lord knows daddy would only feed them microwave popcorn, Chinese takeout and Happy Meals and no one would ever do homework, get to school on time, match their clothes, read a book… and don’t even let me get started on their hair! You see where I’m going.  In order for me to get this out, I need to make several out loud confessions/excuses:

1.       I like food! I’m not one who eats when I’m upset. Just the opposite. I find it hard to cry and chew at the same time.  Besides, I suffer from achalasia and swallowing is hard enough for me.  I don’t need to try to chew, swallow and cry at the same time.  My problem is I like comfort food and many times the only time I get to see my friends is over a meal.

2.       I don’t hate to exercise; I hate to exercise alone.  Yes, my children are great but those who know me know I get very little time without them and live more like a single parent with little outside support, than a married parent.  So while I try taking them on walks or doing some Wii dancing/exercising, I usually end up a referee over fights for my attention or which song to pick and end up more annoyed than relaxed. I have little free time before 9 pm because again, I have very little time alone.  By 9pm, I’m ready to curl up in a corner and hide or I’m working on school/Girl Scout stuff.

3.       My breasts are just too damn big! I look at these women running, all happy in their little bra tops and think, “Damn, I would have two black eyes by now!” Stick two cans of yams in a bra and try running. That’s me.  I love when people tell me to get a sports bra.  No sports bra is strong enough to hold down D-cup canned yams; I don’t care if NASA makes the damn Lycra! And PS, I am not running by myself in this neighborhood!

4.       I am not sweating my wig out!  It’s hard enough to catch up with my cousin to get my hair braided.  Do you know what this head smells like after it’s been sweating? When you can smell you own head under your wig, it ain’t pretty.

So why am I saying all this?  Because I want help.  I don’t want to be fat, but I want to be able to exercise and eat better without people looking at me and scrutinizing every damn thing I do.  I can’t stand when women get the Exercising Holy Ghost and all they can talk about is counting carbs and reps and ordering everything on the side. Poor things have completely lost the ability to hold a normal conversation without counting how many calories were burned while they were moving their jaws up and down. I look at them and want to slap them with a cheeseburger, or open a can of cheesecake on their asses! There has to be a place between being fat and being obsessed with being fat.  I seem to know too many people on either end of the spectrum and none in the middle.  I want exercise and healthy eating to be habit changes, not a new religion.

I’m not sure where to end this but I felt the need to say it so I’m saying it out loud.

Final thoughts:

“Stressed spelled backwards is desserts. Coincidence? I think not!” – Author unknown

Greetings from Lemon County

Ok, so I’m back.  It’s been a long time and I apologize.  Life has been sending me lemons faster than I can make lemonade so I’ve been too mentally drained to write.  Bad idea. I realize that sitting and looking at the lemons is more stressful than just squeezing the crap out of them, so I’m now juicing.

Lemon #1 – This school year has been hard.  Between the new administration and the changes that come with that, dealing with the ramifications for our school “grade” going down, and implementing state and county changes to align with the “performance based-pay,” this was a rough school year.  The kids were the least of my problems; it was the adults making things hard.

Lemon #2 – We are now close to $120,000 upside down on a house we can’t afford to keep up, in a neighborhood we no longer want to live in.  I thought we would squeeze that lemon by doing a short sale on our home but thanks to the mortgage company, this lemon has been fermenting since March, waiting for an answer, leaving our life in homeowners’ purgatory.

Lemons #3-5 – I turned 40 last month and my husband and my 2 children forgot my birthday.  I have forgiven them all, except I still haven’t gotten the Schwinn Cruiser I wanted. Could I get it myself? Sure.  But the whiney, foot-stomping, entitled, only-child princess in me wants him to get it.  The princess needs Prince Charming to prove his undying love via a pink and orange cruiser from Target! Now, I’ll admit that this wasn’t really a lemon, more of a Lemonhead, but, dang it, I already admitted I have a little spoiled princess in me so I won’t apologize for it anymore.

There are some positives though.  After a lot of soul searching and self-talk, I have decided to move on to another school.  It was a hard decision for me.  It takes a lot to work in a school where children are more concerned with day-to-day survival and for some education may not make the Top 10 List in priorities. Though they often drove me crazy, they also made me laugh, taught me some things and allowed me to teach them some.  I will miss them.  I will be taking my sunny disposition to another school, one I think will be a better fit for my daughter who will be going to middle school in two years.  What kind of mother/teacher would I be if I did not take advantage of the opportunity to scar my child for life by working in the same school where she will be hit hardest by puberty?  It is my obligation as a mother/teacher to give her the stories that she will one day pass on to her therapist, and I will not fail her!

As we enter our 2^nd week of summer break, I have vowed to myself to do some things:

1.  Learn to make an Asian dish – DONE (I learned to make Vietnamese summer rolls!

2. Get back to my blog – DONE (See, you’re reading it!)

3. Buy an iPad – Mentally done (hopefully will be physically done in the morning) (Happy Birthday to ME!!!)

4. De-Clutter my life – Moving is helping, but it would go faster if my “friends” would join me for a packing party (Bueller? Bueller?)

5. Go to Boston – On hold until I can figure out when and where I will be moving (I <3 mortgage companies!)

6. Read 3 books – This would get done faster if I would stay out of Castleville

As I close out today’s entry, I will leave with this:

Don’t ingest bath salts. Cannibalism just isn’t cute.

Greetings from Proving-My-Blackness-ville!

So my first real reflection was brought to me by my students. Every year we start with the class asking, “What are you?” to which I sarcastically reply, “Human.” Why do I consider this sarcasm? Well, remember, PC is not my thing. Though I am biracial I consider myself to be Black.

I was raised by my black family and at the age of 14, I moved out of my sweet little multiracial corner of the world, to the “hood” in Boston.  My world went from being small and safe to large, mobile, exciting and consisting of mostly three groups of people, Black Americans, Black Caribbeans and Latinos. It wasn’t until we moved to “my side” of Dorchester, MA that I even thought I looked different from anyone else.  I didn’t think about my race at all and I don’t recall any of my friends ever questioning it before the move.  In Dorchester, I graduated from “Falisha” and became “that-Puerto-Rican-light-skinned-bitch.” In 9^th grade girls suddenly wanted to jump me (and one of them actually told me) because I had light skin and long, curly hair. 

Ok, let’s go back a little.  I wasn’t completely dumb about race. I remember when that lady in the Laundromat told me she could help me get a new mother when I grumbled that I hated mine for making me do some random task. I was about 8 and it scared the shit out of me. I knew I looked different from my mother in skin color but I never thought about it since my aunt, her older sister, was light skinned like me. Why then did I not know I was different? Have I mentioned my father? Oh that’s right, I haven’t. Since I don’t know him, he’s nothing to mention.  All I really know about him is that he was White, and only because my grandmother told me.  The circumstances around that little tidbit may or may not come later. That’s not really what this reflection is about tonight. And let’s be honest, if I told a White person I was White and didn’t add the Black, they’d look at me like I’m crazy.

So anyways, at the age of 14, suddenly everyone wanted to know what I “am,” and that since has become a major part of my identity.  When I moved to Dorchester, suddenly people were speaking Spanish to me (I even got cursed out at a bus stop by a Spanish-speaking woman who said I should be ashamed of not knowing my language). Boys liked me because light skin was “in” thanks to 80’s hip hop videos.  I even got a job once because the interviewer and staff assumed I spoke Spanish – suckas! As I got further into high school, proving my “blackness” became important to me.  My friends might recall my African T-shirts, necklaces and fake-kente cloth Hammer-pants. Suddenly I was all about proving myself and if my face didn’t prove it, damn it, my clothes would!

And just when I convinced everyone in my 3 different high schools (again, another story) that I was Black, off I go to college, where I have to start the “What are you?” routine all over again.  This time though, I decide to become the coordinator of the Black Student Center, not to prove my Blackness, but because I actually liked community service and thought it would be cool.  Except one thing…I forgot that in order to fit in with Black people I was supposed to look Black and sound Black too.  It’s hard enough growing up in Boston with that Bahston accent.  Of course, difficult me, I don’t have the Boston accent or the “Black” accent so no one knows what the hell I am. “She looks Spanish, but she talks ‘White.’ Why isn’t she working at Casa Latina?” I can’t tell you how many times I overheard that conversation. Suffice it to say, the only time I have not had to have the “What are you?” conversation, is the 2 weeks I spent in Amsterdam. The people there were more excited that I was an American and could care less about where I got my skin and hair.

I’ve definitely come to terms with who I am and instead of getting upset when people initially speak Spanish to me, I love the look on their face when I tell them I’m Black. In Orlando, I’ve been assumed to be Puerto Rican, Mexican, Greek, Chinese and Hawaiian. And now, having acquired my last name from my Nigerian husband, I even further confuse people. (I secretly laugh to myself when they tilt their head puppy-style, because apparently looking at me sideways makes it easier to see my Blackness.)

Flash forward to Orlando (my current city) and my classroom. I work in a Title I school, in one of the worst gang neighborhoods in the city and I love it. My school is 90% or more Black and my students have little exposure to people outside their community. So here we are on the first day of school, every year for the last 5 years, having the “What are you?” conversation again. I make it a game now and don’t tell the kids. Usually in the first two weeks, they either figure it out or forget about it all together. Until this week. This week someone brought it up again and half the class looked at the kid, saying, “Duh,” while the other half looked at me with the “duh” look on their faces. Someone tried to confirm this new information by asking me if I was “mixed.” One asked if I was “mulatto.” All were surprised when I told them my mother was Black and my father was White because they always assume the reverse.  While I laughed, because I do think it’s funny when they get it, it also reminded me that we are not as far along as we assume, as adults, we are on the issue of race, especially in the Black community. These kids, aged 12-15, have been embedded with the same stereotypes and beliefs about “being Black” that I grew up with over 20 years ago. It’s both amazing and sad that we are still stuck in this “what box do you belong in?” view of the world. Damn…

The Beginning

Okay. So I've had it in my head for a while that I should start a blog.  I'm not sure that there's an epiphanic source of this blog but there was a voice saying "do it." I've had several blog posts already written in my head over the last few months but in the last few weeks, I keep seeing that Nike swoosh saying, "Just do it."

So here it is. My first blog post from the lovely center of my life I call Crazyville. I know, you're thinking, "Crazyville. That's unique." I know, it's not, but when I was coming up with a name I kept hearing my kids saying, "Where are we going?" To which I almost always say, "Crazyville. And you're holding the keys to the car."

If you're going to follow this blog, we have to set some ground rules.
1. I am a firm believer that Chandler Bing should run the world.  If you don't know what I mean, you probably should stop reading now.
2. I try my best to be politically correct but the Chandler in me makes it difficult.  If you're looking for politically correct postings, stop here. I'm not saying I plan to offend anyone but I have been known to suffer from foot-in-mouth disease.
3. Not sure what rule number three should be, but don't we always seem to have at least three reasons for anything? Think about it.  When the kids get in trouble, we count to three.  When we tell some one about themselves, we have at least three reasons they get on our nerves. When was the last time you stopped at two when you were angry with someone? Two seems too few, four too many. Three just seems right.  Okay, so rule three is I can make up the rules when I want since it's my little piece of cyberspace and I said so.

Lastly, I hope you get something from this. Whether it's a laugh or some insight or even just a WTH look on your face (there goes that three again), I hope you find something we can both relate to.  Please feel free to respond, even if the Phoebe in you hates the Chandler in me.