on occasion, i just want to throw him back. then i remember just how much i love him.

It’s a damned good thing this child is so cute!!!!!

Goddess

This one will bring tears to your eyes! i see music as the saving grace for our nations of the world.
just … imagine…music…teaching…cooperation

Bobby McFerrin walks into a UN meeting and leads them in this demonstration of togetherness and cooperation. no need for interpreters, armed guards, lobbyists, nuclear weapons…..

just hearts and sound. music from within.

why is this so hard to imagine?

now listen to it again from the beginning with your eyes closed and see this happen. if we all do this…

it will

Goddess

superhero or geek for love?

some days i just want to hide my geekiness. to just long enough to find a nice guy and not scare him off immediately. i appear to be a fairly neuro-typical chick until i open my damned mouth. there are days when i wish i could just run a mic and tape and have a translator put my speech into regulo-speak. hell yeah, i’ll wear a battery pack in my shoe…

how in the hell do people notice? i don’t but every one else does. i guess when my vocabulary shoots over their heads or when i start rambling on about what i am studying or hey how about when i start conversations about what i heard on “Science Fridays” on NPR.
damn damn damn!

some days i want so badly not to be geeky. then again why not?

it is like having to choose between super powers and obscurity.

on one hand, you get all the fame of being super and being able to do amazing things. people who want you for your specialness and not for who you are.it doesn’t matter what you look like because people are able to look the other way because you have something they want. people who want to just be seen with you to boost their own egos. but with fame comes a great deal more of the negative issues related to having it all. after a while i would suppose you would be wishing for obscurity again.
hmmmmm…

maybe i should wish for super powers so that i could at least enjoy what i know i wouldn’t want my life to be like so when i head back into geeky obscurity, it won’t seem as bad as it is now in terms of love.

goddess

Companionship? love? or a reason to commit murder?

Who the hell in sam fuck all decided that men were necessary for companionship?

i am willing to bet you that a man did.
I find myself lately on a daily basis trying to figure out why i continue to find difficult men in my quest for I-don’t-wanna-be-single-no-more-hood.
i fully recognize that i myself, am a difficult person.
i hide no shame in my ability to be a pain in the ass WHILE expressing my opinions.
i understand that i am not perfect and it is not plausible for me to expect perfection of others.

i know. i know. i know.

i wasn’t born yesterday.
so why do all the men i date act like i was?

i’m either finding someone who can’t stay away from me lest i crumble into a pillar of salt. or someone who turns out to be gay. better still, who treats me like dirt because they think i should pay for all the bitches who did them wrong. wait, don’t forget the dude from the bay with the crazy fetish.
i am not here for emotional target practice.
i’m holding the UZI. perhaps that’s why the pickings are so slim on my side of the LZ

What i don’t understand is why i like my DOG more than men most days. No matter how hard i try, i seem to find my equal in bullheadedness with the men i date. i want to know what the hell i did to cause the backlash that i experience every day that i am in a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. did i sacrifice my youngest on the alter in 75 B.C. with my wife wailing in the background? did i punish all girls in my village with blond hair by removing their ears? was i the dude lucky enough to be chosen to select the virgin for tossing into the volcano?

what in the hell did i do? i was looking at some books in my shed today and i found the book “loving a difficult man” and almost fell backwards and down the stairs. i obviously stayed in a relationship far too long if i had bought that book. good for me because of the title even better for the author. what if the author had been honest and published it with the right title “how to put up with a difficult man” or better yet, “how to bury a difficult man…and get away with it scott free to be able to live your life the way you want it with the perfect mate”. what would the author stand to lose?
riiiiiiiiiiiiight!
not much. “why” you ask?
because women are desperate and will buy anything that will tell them that a relationship will work out if they just put their nose to the grindstone. so what if she spends the rest of her life looking like “he who shall not be named” at least she stuck around long enough to prove all of the feminists, lesbians and bitter ex-wives wrong.

shame on me for thinking that i could find a good man.

i am surely coming to the conclusion that i may never find the right one.

as i type this, i have one in my bed right now snoozing away because he was more tired than he was willing to work on something that has been bothering me for the past week.
do i know what that is? no. I AM A WOMAN FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!

we are supposed to be so in love.
then i got to thinking about how it seems that he is the one in love with me more than i with him.
i expect to be able to be myself but the self that he is sometimes is more than i can stand. why? be cause i am the picky one? because i am the one who can’t seem to listen to the voice of reason… *ahem* manly *ahem* reason?

yeah.
probably.

women are not supposed to be the most rational beasts on the planet but sometimes men need to turn off their need to fix shit and just shove a sock in their mouths and LISTEN! i truly feel that if international conflicts can be solved this way, so can relationships (no really, i heard it did work once, but i think it was either Jimmy Carter talking or Bill Clinton).

this tends to not be the situation… not even close. someone always has to love one more than they other. there has to be imbalance. why have relationships if you can’t have conflict? why have relationships if you don’t have something to work on? why have relationships if you can’t have a reason to sit out in the living room and blog instead of heading to bed at 12:44am on a Sunday morning even though you were up at 6:30am being rushed out of bed to take the dogs to the dog park because you would be invited to a complaint-fest if you said you wanted to go at 8am because someone likes to over plan shit?

is that fair?
*stomps feet*
who the hell wrote the book on love?
*shakes fist at the sky*

oh yeah. see line 3…

to be continued…

goddess

If God made pie…

I am a foodie. If it smells good (and sometimes if it
doesn’t) I will give it a taste. I believe that all food deserves a
chance to be compared to dishes of excellence in the hopes that
their culinary creator can be hoisted above the shoulders of
foodies everywhere as the Sultan of Salami or the Matron of Maple
Pancakes. I believe that one such dish has been found!! *hoists
empty pie dish in the air* how was it made? Who made a deal with
the devil for the ability to create such a pie? A pie that causes
one’s mouth to water at the mere mention of it’s name? Not just any
old apple pie but a pie with the crust gathered from the soft
feathers of angels on high, a concoction of butter and flour with
time well spent making sure that the first bite tastes the same as
the last. Whose fingers took the time to create this magnanimous
feast of warm apples sliced so thin that they melt on your tongue
singing joyfully to reawaken your taste buds that have swooned into
a pile of spent casualties of the battle for all that is tasty.
“Mom’s Apple Pie”… TO BE CONTINUED…

haven’t written any prose in a while…

US

i miss you.
i got up and touched you this morning…
then you were gone.
i love you.
i closed my eyes and saw your face this morning…
then you were gone.
i want you.
i brushed my shoulder and felt your touch…
i need you.

haven’t written any prose in a while…

The phone rings while I am on the phone with a friend. I don’t answer it in time but I decide (against my better judgment, mind you ) to check the message…

It is a call from the substitute teacher telling me that she has been the sub for the week and that Milo has had a pretty “rough” week. I am almost laughing as I listen to the message. He has not had a rough week, his teacher who knows her class is not there. Who’s at fault? Milo? The rest of the kids in class? The rooster up the street? No. The substitute teacher and the administrators at the school. Maybe even the teacher herself.

Teachers, if you have a difficult class, please feel free to take the time to tell a substitute teacher about the class. Do not assume that the children will behave differently read: positively, when you are gone. Please expect the behavior to remain the same in your absence. Please let the parents know that you will be absent so that we can help our children prepare for the change, set boundaries and present them with consequences if things do not go as planned. Hell, ask for parent volunteers for that week. I know there are others who have signed the list to help and have not been called ( me included )THAT is how you set a child up for success.

The substitute wanted me to “have a little chat with” Milo so that he can have a better day tomorrow. Do you need me to beat his ass? Do you need me to ground him for a week from his video games? Do you want me to come get him for the rest of the day? Yes, let me have a little chat with my son about something that I have nothing but second hand information on.

Apparently, he splashed water on a kid in the lunch room and got a citation for that.
*screeching brakes*
Do you really write citations for water? Did you only write one for Milo because the other kid was wet? Do think maybe the other kid ( who Milo said did it first ) had bad aim? I get so tired of people expecting me to discipline him for behaviors unknown to me. I say if they want to teach him how to act at school, THEY handle it at the school. Don’t send him home to me so I can ask him how his day went, only to hear that he was on a green day and that everything had gone fine.
I would expect more from people trained exclusively to work with children. You change behavior when you correct it at the source. You don’t send it home to an overworked, stressed exhausted parent to handle because it is too much on your plate. Make the kids run laps. If there is no medical excuse on file, it is not cruelty. If they need to leave you class for a while, please make sure they are doing something active and helpful. Don’t just send them to be idle in another class because ( duh ) they will get in more trouble.

From now on school, you are going to get my opinion on the back of your useless ( and unsigned ) citation letting you know that I cannot punish my son based on hearsay.

Now if you want me to come sit in your class all day….

I didn’t think so.

Goddess

A new chapter in my life…

I am taking an adaptive Physical Education class and I am having a blast in it. The class is an introduction to the instruction of PE to children s with disabilities. As a part of the class, we are required to do service hours with a few projects around town. I chose project Play. We have many children who are brought together from the area with mild to moderate disabilities. Children in this program can be working with Autism, Down’s syndrome, Intellectual Disabilities and some physical disabilities.

Tonight was my first night and I was assigned Jacob*. He came with his grandmother Verne*. He is staying with Verne while his mom is on active duty in the military. Jacob has high functioning Autism. He is bright as everything and so willing to direct and make sure everything is done to his liking.

I filled out an info card with Verne and then went to play (he would not come to meet me so I had to go out and initiate contact). Jacob has some issues with socialization and behavior. He is an only child so it is complicated by the fact that he is not the most social child and already is the center of his universe by his circumstance.

We played. I mean we PLAYED. He wasn’t sure how to start so he ran from corner to corner trying to find things to do. We played with some bouncy balls and then I could see his mind switch on. He got a jump rope and proceeded to turn a basketball hoop into a trap for bouncy balls. It was interesting to see that many people around him seemed to think that he was having trouble doing what he liked. He would take a large ball and put it in a tube so that it would block the exit. He would then stuff as many balls as he wanted into it to make an avalanche. I watched and watched and watched him. I wanted to see how he was doing. He was having a ball until an adult came by to “help” him. She took the ball out and I could see his fists clench and his face turn down and his elbows go out. He was ready for a fight.

Let’s just say that distraction is a wonderful thing and works even better when you are in a gym filled with toys. We found something else to do and he ran me for the entire 90 minutes I was there. He wanted to collect balls and it took me a minute to recognize that he only wanted one kind of ball. BLUE! I could not figure out why he was ignoring so many other balls. THAT was exhausting and I had a fear that we were going to be going around all night looking for every blue ball so I helped him along by making it a hunt. We found all of the balls.

Jacob is working on sharing and his socialization skills. So I worked on him asking for things from some of the other kids. He would have me start then he would finish. It took a while to go to the other kid who loved to collect balls. He crept up to the side of the play structure the other child was in and tried to start the conversation, when up popped the other child offering him a ball. You should have seen his eyes light up!

At the same time, another group of kids had gotten a hold of the balls that he had so diligently collected and began to spread them through the gym. I hopped into distraction mode and let him know that we needed to go look for something else blue. That came in the form of the roller turtle. You know those little things we used to have races with at the roller rinks when we were kids? I chased and chased and chased and yeah. I’m still tired.

My ass was exhausted. I had to sit down so I asked him to count the balls with me. He was more than willing to watch me count but didn’t want to help. Oh well, this is called Project Play. So I counted (and RESTED) and he watched.

Jacob has high functioning Autism. Most people would look at him now and think he was a kid with only behavior problems if they did not know his history. His mother knew something was not going right with her son’s development and she took it upon herself to make sure that services were in place. She did a fabulous job because he is functioning at a level that will make things more manageable as time goes on. For him and for his teachers and peers.

I have to admit it, I am the kind of person who will fall in love with a child at first sight or make up my mind that I don’t want to work with them as well. He is a challenge, but I am enjoying my time. When it was time to go, he switched to “NO” mode. That was a little difficult to deal with but he recognized that I was not going to tolerate that for long. He was running and playing and scooting around on the turtle and was not ready to go. I reminded him of all the things I did for him and let him know that I have a little boy that I have to get home to and take care of.

We got him to put up the toys and headed out the door and we waked to the car. I chatted with Verne on the way out and started to walk to my car.

Jacob grabbed my arm and took me back to Verne’s car, opened the car door and motioned for me to come with them. I let him know that I was sorry I could not go but that I would see him next time and into the car he went.

I am going to love this physically exhausting opportunity. I was not sure if I could offer any more love to a child and there I was handing out more.

Speed Dating for Single Book Lovers Pt. Deux

The time has come to reveal how I feel about the actual night of speed dating.
I was more than surprised to see the turnout. I am glad most people were classy and did not dress like they were going to the gym or going to the swingers bar.

I was very very worried that I was going to encounter black men who thought that “Hop on Pop” was a choice item of literature to present with on their name tag for the dating games.

Mind you, this was a room filled with primarily black men from all walks of life but what I did not see was all the bling and the grillz. none none none

They loved all kinds of books from war manuals that have been adapted to workplace manuals, science fiction, poetry and history.
They knew their stuff and I was rightly impressed.

I got my email just the other day advising me of my choices.
Now see, you can’t get a match unless they put your number down on the card as well.
I put down about 7 matches and came back with a final tally of 4 guys.

I went to look at the names and believe it or not, a couple of them I figured out their names because I had my ears wide open the whole time I was threre.

No, I was not sitting there looking pretty. I was listening like a beagle for a gopher in a field of grass.

yaya for me.
I am proud of my self (as has been said by my Auntie Terrie) for getting off my duff and dragging myself out to the place. I was pleasantly surprised because I took a chance and was rewarded by meeting a group of interesting men who took the time to be knowledgeable of what they were being asked to discuss.

all but married man…

let me tell you about married man.
shame on his boogie man behind for bringing his separated behind up in the place. he even had the gall to wear his ring!!! I am almost sure no one picked him after he decided that he could grab some food. he was my last date and the whole time I sat and talked to him, he was sitting there EATING! Negro, put down your food, take a swig of water, pop a breath mint and talk to me.

I swear, i I had to hear any more of his grunting between mouthfuls of food and mayo running down his arm, I would have run from the building screaming like I was getting paid for it.

*note to self* be thankful that speeding dating is just that; SPEED DATING… 3 minutes was almost more than I can take.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Pay it forward

I have always believed strongly in the power of giving. i have always believed that if you give a little, that is all you have to do. don’t expect anything in return, but be grateful if it does come back to you.

today, Milo and i went to Denny’s after Mass and stopping by to say hi to Michelle’s momma. he was all decked out in one of the new shirt and tie sets he got for Christmas. we got to the building and you know how you stand at the counter waiting for someone to ask you “how many?” well we stood there for a minute when two men walked in. they looked like business men with their logos on shirts look and trench jackets. well the girl looked up and asked the men before me and milo “how many?” no question perhaps of who was here first, but she just took the two professional men over the mother and child. i won’t pull the race card, she was just not using her common sense. so i started to stew about it and was about to leave. the other lady at the counter sat us after a few minutes. she could see i was pissed. *sigh* what to do.
so i went as far as telling her what happened. nothing else happened. i am so not surprised.
i tried to let it go. i had lost my appetite but i ordered anyway (milo usually polishes off what i don’t eat anyway). i was thinking up ways to ask for a comp meal or something for the horrible hospitality, when a lady came up to my table and handed me a coupon for 20% off my entire tab. how very nice of her. she gave one to the table behind me as well. she said she would not be back by the time the rest of them expired so i thanked her and forgot all about the huff and puff i was about to raise.

so off to the counter Milo and I go to pay our tab. i was thinking that she deserved a surprise. so i paid her tab. that’s right. that lady was there with three kids. i paid her tab. my tab after the coupon wasn’t even 10 bucks so i paid it. me and Milo went back to thank her for the coupon and were on our way. Milo was trying to figure out what we had just done. i told him that we just shared a smile. if we could make her day by paying her tab, we were paying her back in kindness for the coupon she gave us while asking for nothing in return. i told him that if she is smiling and she passes that smile onto someone else, they would probably pass it on to someone else and milo chimed in with ” and people would be smiling all over California”. i added a bit more by telling him that hopefully it would be the cause of people smiling all over the world.

then we went home and i cleaned the kitchen while Milo played in his room.
there is so much that i cannot give my son materialistically, but i can give him so much more on the spiritual and emotional level. milo was dressed so smartly for church. he really has a way with people. when we get to the part where we show the sign of peace to one another, milo is the first with his hand out there saying Peace be with You. today he Hi Fived one of our Deacons. it was cute. i love my son. i love that he loves God. i love that he watches Father Joe in awe. i also love that he is not at all afraid to ask questions. even if it means that he might be setting an adult straight. like Jesus in the temple.
whatever my son becomes in life, i know that i started him off right. i am giving him what he needs to be a good Christian citizen. a child of God. a mother’s son.

this job i love.

i was touched in this same way. i don’t know when and i don’t know by whom, but i have always had this in my heart. i am glad to see that it was not a fluke with me and that i can pass this on to my son.
please, everyone, pay it forward if you can.

pay for someone mocha at starbucks or smile at a person who may or may not need it. give a person room to make a lane change or just wave someone across the intersection even if they stopped a split second after you.
i have been blessed and i am more than grateful. don’t get me wrong, i am still human, but i know things could be much worse. things could be better, but they could be worse. i know that i can give what i can and be content that i have done my part and will continue to do so.

somehow, this season has changed me. i can’t describe it.

g