Thursday, February 28, 2013

I’ve decided to just toss the obituary. I am moving forward and don’t want any hurtful reminders of my brother’s death, nor any drama with his brother. It is precisely the opposite of what Darryl would have wanted. He told me how strained his relationship w/ his brother had been growing up and even into adulthood, so what I am witnessing isn’t a stretch from what I was led to expect from that man. I should’ve known this when, even in death, he was still bad mouthing my brother. Like, really? Smh, I refuse to get that low. It’s simply a piece of paper and not worth my energy. I have honored my brother’s life in my own way.

In other news, the 50 year old texted me asking whether I wanted a relationship or just sex from him. 0_0 I swear, there’s never a dull moment around here.
I’m thinking of cutting my hair before I leave for New Orleans. I sort of want this hairstyle I saw Sally Richardson with on my friends’ hairdresser’s website. The guy who cut Sally’s hair works on Wilshire so I’ll check on prices and see about him.

I want a Studio Shed so badly

http://studio-shed.com/products/lifestyle-shed/ Some day my dream will come true.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The 50 year old texted me a picture of his naked silhouette. He's really quite taken with himself. And for fifty I cant really blame him, his body is pretty spectacular. Black certainly didnt crack in this instance. Unfortunately, he's not helping me with this long stretch of celibacy I've been enduring. It's kind of crazy, one day I just looked up and it hit me that I hadnt had sex in ages. AGES. And now I have an immature fifty year old taunting with spectacular pecs and abs, the bastard. He is such a tease. But aint nobody got time for that. I refuse to let a senior citizen work me up just to let me down. The hell does he think I am? So I'm refocusing on my master plan, which isnt complete until late summer. There are like so many things swirling around right now, I'm practically dizzy. Stuttering and then belting out all the wrong words. I lay in bed recapping the day like "smh, wth was I thinking?!" Ugh. I need a massage or a facial or something. I'm all out of wack.

I just want to run away today, crawl under a rock and wait until this feeling I’m feeling passes. I can’t really describe it, just that today sucks. It’s a bit of a carryover from yesterday when I received my late brother’s obituary in the mail. He passed away in December and was buried in St Louis. I chose not fly out there to attend his funeral because we don’t share the same family/loved ones. We are half siblings, although he’s always felt completely whole to me and the fact that we looked a lot alike and had the same caring heart just added to that feeling. We had the same father who we both shared an uncanny resemblance to. Anyway, I’d asked for an obituary from his mother, brother, and girlfriend back in January. As a matter of fact, his brother offered to send me one prior to me asking for it a month after not receiving it. His mother and girlfriend offered to send me one, as well. I honestly suspected all along that I wouldn’t be listed as someone he left behind, although his other siblings were – and they were half siblings as well (different fathers, same mother. Though neither of them resemble him in any way. It’s inconsequential, but still). Even his girlfriend of the last 15 months was listed in his obituary as someone he’d left behind. So after I read his obit and my suspicions were confirmed, I simply placed it back into the envelope from wince it came and let it slide off the table onto a chair. I’m considering sending it back, since after 3 months of waiting for it I’d told his brother “Never mind. Don't send it. It can’t replace him anyway. It’s not important that I get one.” Whoever sent it only listed their mailing address, no name. I think it came from his mother, though. It’s true that funerals are for the living. And since I wasn’t in a position to give my brother a funeral I wasn’t going to fly to St. Louis to attend someone else’s dedication to him. Someone I don’t know. Someone he’d told me not-so-great-things about. I couldn’t be comforted by them, people I don’t know, people who couldn’t see it in their hearts to list me as his grieving sister, knowing that I'm both grieving and his sister. So there was really no point. My brother wasn’t there.  And now, I no longer feel like I need to explain any of this to them.  It doesn't matter.

In addition to that happening yesterday, this morning I’ve been fighting the ridiculous fear of liking someone. It is so much easier to lock my heart away, only allowing it out in controlled environments. But I suspect I won’t be able to protect myself from heartbreak for the remainder of my life and that's scary. Here’s what a friend of mine recently had to say on the subject:
Claudine 10:59 AM
the reason why love is such a great thing
is because it's huge ROI
the investment you put in... reaps great rewards you can't imagine.
there's a saying
no eye has seen, no ear has heard, what the lord has planned for his children
something like that
if god is love
then that means no one has seen what love is truly capable of
Claudine 11:01 AM
yeah.. so it's basically.. a leap of faith
if you don't risk getting hurt, you won't know.
think with your heart not your head  

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

My favorite book is Their Eyes Were Watching God. When Oprah brought it to television I was a bit worried that the story would get overly diluted. And once I saw it I wasn't completely satisfied w/ the result, but I wasn't entirely disappointed either. I gave it a pass because how on earth could something so dynamic be translated into something for my television? Anyway, one of my favorite scenes in that movie was when Janie went to talk to Joe on his deathbed about how he'd spent the majority of their relationship pinning her under with his thumb, worried about her strength and threatened by her freedom, almost as though he resented her. She wasn’t allowed to wear what she wanted, she had to hide her hair and cover her head in a scarf, had to cook and clean a specific way, at a specific time, and couldn’t say what she felt. She was essentially a prisoner in her marriage. I could relate all too well to that. It’s one of the things that I am afraid of having repeated in my life.

Phoebe and Janie are having a conversation and Janie explains why she changed and left.

Phoebe: Joe gived you everything you could want. You're not happy because you expect too much.

Janie: Something fell off the shelf inside me. It was Joe. He tumbled down and shattered.

*Remembering the day Joe died

Joe (labored breathing): Doctor say that I'm dyin'. I guess you come to watch.

Janie: Jody. Maybe I ain't been such a good wife to you. But you gave me everything a woman could ever dream of havin'. And I thank you. But Jody, you and me done been together now for 20 years, and you don't know me half at all.

Joe: I know you.

Janie: You changed from that Jody I run off down the road with. I wanted to keep a house with you in a wonderful way, but you wasn't really satisfied with me the way I was.

Joe: I built a whole town for us. But that ain't good enough for you.

Janie: It was just that my own feelings had to be squeezed and crowded out of me to make room for yours in me.

Joe: Blame everything on me. I don't let you show me no feelin', huh? Janie, that's all I ever wanted.

Janie: Ain't nobody tryin' to blame nothing on you, Joe. But all this bowin' down and obedience, well, it just... It just ain't what I run off down that road with you for.

Joe: Shut up!

Janie: Shut up. Even now, you got to die with me bein' obedient. Instead of lettin' me love you.

Joe: I hope... that thunder and lightnin'... kill you. Now get outta here. Get lost! (gasps)

Janie: Jody?

Poor Jody... Sittin' in that rulin' chair was hard for you too.

(Now speaking again to Phoebe)

Janie: Whatever folks thought of Joe while he was livin', they turned out for his funeral, and cried over him. 'Cause whether they liked him or not, they knew he had been a good man, and that his passin' was a great loss. I felt the sadness, too. But alongside the sadness, I was feelin' something else. I was feelin' free.

Sunday, February 24, 2013


I've been meeting a lot of guys lately. Black, white, Asian, old, young, and with a rainbow of personalities. And now that I know how to spot crazy almost immediately, I'm able to enjoy chatting with the semi-sane ones. I know what I want in a man, so I'll know it when I spot it and so far, none of these guys seem to have IT. One has some semblance of it, so there's still hope for him. But the rest of the bunch has either been 86'd already, or will be soon. Theres really nothing too specific that I'm looking for; the rules can be bent a little in some areas. But character and heart are set in stone. In dealing with these guys and getting to know their varied personalitities and outlooks on things, one thing that I've known to be true for some years now, but has recently been solidified in my mind is that you cannot change a person, no matter what. Can they learn from you? Sure, but they are inherently the same and will always be hard wired that way. It's one of the reasons I gave up on my last relationship, after having worked hard at trying to make it better, more livable, for years. I eventually realized that I could no longer live with that man, he wasnt changing, no matter how much I tried. Now I'm seeing that same inability to change in a 50 year old I just met. Despite his age, he's immature, goofy as hell, lacks confidence yet is terribly vain. I'm willing to bet he was the same way at age 25. So, in all his years on this earth, and with all the people he's come to meet and know (and he's a pretty worldly guy), he has remained unmoved. The very first time he called me he changed his voice so that he sounded like Donald Duck meets Urkel. He kept this goofy charade up for a good five minutes and cut it out just before I was about to hang up on him. I knew who he was the entire time since his name and number was saved in my phone when we'd met and spoken in person. But these were the antics of a 50 year old man and father. And this wasnt even the worst of it. So what I gathered after having talked to him for roughly an hour is that, in a nutshell, he's a silly manwhore. And thus will always be a silly manwhore. He's not alone, though. Perverted old men hanging around bus stops and liquor stores were once silly manwhores. I have no doubt that he'll be in a retirement home someday, still being silly and trying to whore. But on paper, he's a dream: college educated, provides for the homeless and less fortunate, religiously, works with special needs children, foster children, and juvenile delinquents, is very attractive and in wonderful physical shape, and already has a 16 year old daughter. Yet he plays lots of games and doesnt know what he wants out of life...at age 50. Needless to say, he's not what I'm looking for, and I dont even believe I could tolerate him as a friend. Way too annoying. And I have TONS of patience, so thats a damn shame. Anyway, dating is starting to be fun again and I'm feeling more desirable than I have in years.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

There's nothing quite like the feeling of having a crush. Whether it's reciprocated or not, it feels great.  But I'm not here to talk about him tonight :) I'm not here to talk about anything, really.  Just shooting the shit on here, since I don't do it often enough. It's been a long day.  Getting up at 7am on a Saturday because you have somewhere to be can sometimes be cool, but today wasn't one of those days. It was quite a chore prying myself out of bed and driving all the way to Westwood this morning. I'm taking a class at UCLA and today we took a test.  I think I passed. I hope I did. I left feeling pretty good about myself.  It'd be a sad shame if I was wrong.
On a more serious and a bit more sobering note, there's been a lot of death around me lately.  I remember when my uncle once told me that one of the things he disliked about getting old was that so many people around him were drying. A lot of his friends, a lot of people he'd known for years, were passing away with a frequency he couldn't get used to. That's happening around me lately and I'm only 38.  It's putting my life and mortality in stark perspective.  It's making me want to live more, love more, and not take anything for granted.  Not my ability to get up and experience new things, nor my ability to just stay home and sit still.  I have no idea when my day will come so when it does, I don't want to feel like I have too much unfinished business.  I want to feel as though my life had been full and vibrant, no matter what age I am when that time comes. My grandmothers sister passed away last month at age 89 and she'd had dementia for the past 2-3 years.  That seems ideal to me.  89 years is enough time to do and see a whole lot, and then to have dementia and only be able to recall the good portions of your life, seems pretty great to me. Her passing was indeed sad but there was joy in knowing that she had lived a full, long life, filled with love, experiences, family - children, a husband, grandkids, great grandkids, and great-great grandkids, etc.  A few years before she passed, my son and I interviewed her about her life for a family tree project we were doing, and it was, indeed, a remarkable life.  If we all could be so fortunate. 
My brother passed away recently, too.  His time was cut short at only 42 years and with still a lot of life to fill.  Turns out it was a heart attack.  But at least it was sudden so he never saw it coming, never had time to stress over it, to worry about anything.  A family friend isn't so lucky, though.  He was just told that he has cancer and that it was detected too late. It has spread too far in his body to be helped with chemo so they're estimating that he'll only have 2 more years of life to fill up.  He seems to be taking it with stride, putting on a much better face than I could ever muster in his predicament.  I'm so sad for him, though.  I want to spend as much time as possible with him...but so far, my own life has gotten in the way of that.  I'm crying just typing about it. I have to find a way to change that.  Life can be so beautiful yet so cold at the same time.  So, in addition to New Orleans and Vegas this year, I'm trying to plan a trip to Jamaica to meet up with a friend, and India to meet Lotta Jansdotter, peruse the bazaars for vibrant fabric and other pretty things, maybe see a snake charmer, maybe stay in a palace hotel, and see and learn hand/block printing techniques.  It's lofty and dreamy and potentially very expensive, but I'm going to try my hardest to make it work. My life is worth it.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Not today!

It’s St. Valentine’s Day again and this year I feel pretty awesome. This year, I don’t suspect that any jewelry commercials will annoy me as they have in the past with their contrived and convoluted romance. I’ve come to accept their stupidity as well as their hustle. I pity the fools who can’t see the conspiracy. In addition to the awesomeness that I am feeling today, I have big plans for this spring and summer that I’m very excited about. Some travel, some Beyonce in concert in Vegas, some love and lust and happiness, some destiny’s fulfilled (finally!), some kicking up my heels... I am no longer a jaded, miserable, forlorn woman. Today, I am feeling myself. Can’t say for sure what I’ll be feeling tomorrow or the next day but I suspect I’ll still be feeling myself. Me, feeling myself seems to be a trend that is here to stay. I think it comes with age because even when I was 17 and shallow as hell, I wasn’t feeling myself nearly as much as I am today. I’m a grown ass woman, child, and I feel it. I’m walking it, I’m talking it, I get up every morning and I look in the mirror and give myself such a devilish grin. Damn, that b*tch is fly. I am in love with me and proud of it. See, because I wasn’t always this way, I’m ashamed to say. I couldn’t see and appreciate myself when I was younger. I was hoping somebody else could show and convince me of what I was missing. Not today though, shiiiiit. Today I am smelling my own drawls. When I was younger folks used to disparage me with remarks like “you think you cute!” and I’d plead and assure them that I didn’t. I really didn’t. Not today though, b*tches.  You're damn straight, I think I'm cute! lol, Happy Valentines Day :)

Monday, February 11, 2013

Don't try to buckle my stride...and other randomness

I've been writing in here a lot less frequently because I’ve been pretty busy, moving and shaking and increasing my happiness quotient. Life is pretty good these days, as I’ve posted a couple of times before :).

Last night, out of the blue I received a message from a guy I used to have a big crush on. This comes right on the heels of me mentally deciding to buckle down and focus strictly on myself. Naturally, right? But I couldn’t NOT respond. My curiosity would have done away with me! What does he want and why does he want it now? I aim to see, and hopefully it’s good. I could use some more good in my life. All last night and this morning I fantasized about him. Damn shame, aint it? Hey, I’m only human, but I’m striving to keep it cool. My thirst will be kept tightly under wraps, lol. This guy is considerably older than me, for a change. Haha. He’s 50! But he looks absolutely fantastic and has the brain to match. He’s not a young idiot, which is so very refreshing *knock on wood. What’s weird is I discovered by accident that he went to school with my ex’s older sister. Facebook is a funny thing. One day, while perusing my feed, Facebook suggested a mutual friend to me and it was him! Imagine my surprise. So down that rabbit hole I went and discovered that they’d attended elementary school together (random, right?) and that he’d posted their 4th grade class photo and tagged my ex’s sister in it. I don’t know where a soul from my 4th grade class is today but that’s not at all the case for this generation of folks, I’m realizing. It used to astound me how many people my ex’s sister knew and kept in touch with from her childhood. I don’t know if he knows that there is a personal connection between us, since he’s not my friend on Facebook, but I don’t plan to tell him. We’ll see where this goes, if anywhere.

I’m always looking for ways to improve my house and home but last week when I was running around picking up a kennel that was given to me for my dog, I saw for the first time in a long time that my house is really quite beautiful, especially at night. I pulled up to drop off the kennel before leaving to return my coworkers borrowed truck, and I caught a glimpse of the lights twinkling in my backyard on my pergola, the lights twinkling in the mason jars hanging from the tree in my front yard, my white picket fence, and the pillows I’d sewn for the bench on my front porch all took my breath away. I’ve done a good job of turning that house into a cozy little home. I think seeing my other coworker’s house (who is a doctor. the one who gave me the kennel) helped me put my own house into perspective. Naturally, his house is bigger but in no way is it all that much cozier. I love the Craftsman homes in Pasadena because they have so much character. They look like a home is supposed to look, in my opinion – thoughtful, and anything but boring. They are fully decorated and detailed inside and out, unlike most modern homes I’ve seen that are usually just boxes with flat, boring walls satisfying an end. But I’d rather have a place to rest that reflects my family, our history, my city, and a little whimsy. I think my house satisfies this.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Putting the brakes on the money train

UPDATE: I spoke to my mom this morning. Apparently, she's the one sitting on a hidden pile of money that she doesnt want my stepfather to know about. She apologized for last night and assured me that I'd not only get my money back with interest, but she's going to pay for my Beyonce tickets as a belated birthday gift because she wasnt satisfied with just buying me dinner this year. So all is well :) I'm still not the bank, though.

I'm up at 1:26 am on a Sunday watching Suzi Orman. She's a great reminder of what I'm doing and need to be doing with my money. Just 20 minutes ago, I came home from the ATM after loaning my parents $60, in addition to the $25 I'd given my mom this evening before they headed out to San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino. They wanted to borrow an additional $100, which would've brought their total loan to $125, but I declined. Then they regale me with the sob stories of them barely having gas and groceries, yet knowing this they decided to go gamble. I am not the bank. The fact that they expect me to be their bank pisses me the fuck off. I don't care that you're good for it, and it doesn't matter that you'll pay me with interest, like you would a bank. But unlike the bank, our relationship is much too close to do business with one another. But mainly, I cannot manage my finances while keeping your frivolous lifestyle in mind. I cannot support your whimsy! Of course, they don't understand this. They always thnk I'm sitting on a pile of hidden money, simply because I have managed to support myself and my son and stay above water better than most people they know. But if I'm not careful, they will surely help me to drown. Now I'm watching the segment of Suze's show called "Can I Afford It?" and it's pretty sobering. I feel like my finances have spiraled out of control and have been heading downhill for a good 7 to 8 months now. I'm not completely off track, thankfully. But I'm not in the shape I'd hoped to be in by now. Too many moments of weakness - for myself and my family. So I've raised my investing contributions a little bit, just as a saftey net and to give me some semblance of responsibility. But it cant make up for the mistakes already made - the splurges and cave in's for my family. But tonight I am vowing to work harder at getting it together and steering this ship steady. I'm about to set a budget and write a list of things that can be cut back on or cut out altogether. I need a will, need to fully fund my roth IRA, and add more money to my 401k, need 1M term life insruance, and to stop being unwise with the help that I'm giving to my son and my mom. Having said this, I still have a trip to New Orleans pending, and a Vegas trip to see Beyonce in concert in June. I dont intend to stop living :) but I do intend to slow this party bus waaaay down.