The Immigrants

Do you guys support the immigrants currently in the country "illegally"? Or do you believe they have just as much a right to be here as you do? In all fairness, aren't we all "illegal", granted if you were born here, that's different. However most Americans today have ancestry in other countries, so who's right? who's wrong? What is your position on this issue?

Gary Dourdan...Yall, my baby is in trouble...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/04/30/people.garydourdan.ap/index.html

I'm easily irritated these days....by random stuff

This is a random post about things that are bugging me lately.....no reason...I'm just irritated...

1. Every evening when I return home I see this group of folks sitting outside at this one house off of Glade and Cocina....IN RESTON...this is a NICE NEIGHBORHOOD.....you know the kind where people don't sit outside in the FRONT yard, they sit on their decks...NOT AT THIS HOUSE. They sit in the front....this house is painted blue and trimmed in white. Most evenings they are just looking aimlessly at the road when I pass by....they have these tacky church hall chairs in their front yard and they are just sitting there.....doing nothing...this bugs me.....

2. I don't like the wires that are nestled behind my husband's computer desk....they are everywhere, I fell asleep fussing about it the other day, I actually went into his man cave and proceeded to bitch afterwards.....I hate those wires....

3. I want to slay my neighbor upstairs....she's loud as ..she wears these loud shoes, I always get loud upstairs neighbors....no matter how well insulated my place is....I can still HEAR her...

4. This Saturday, this nasty bastage left trash OUTSIDE the trash door, how freggin lazy and inconsiderate is that....I was so pissed...I dug through the trash to find any indication of who it may have belonged too...I found an old receipt....and I waited about 30 minutes....they never returned to properly dispose of the trash...so I walked upstairs and dumped the trash on their stoop.....:) yup I did it

....ok enough for now...I'm certain i'll be adding to this post....

Budda has arrived

Ok ladies you guys asked for it so ...here it is...welcome the BUDDA......embrace BUDDA, whatchu got to say now Des!!

Help me pick a dress!!!

We have a wedding to go to at the end of May; God only knows how big my "budda" will be by that time. So here are a few things I have chosen, just to give you guys a background, it's a night time wedding....what say you fashionistas?

My first baby pics...

Ok so mommy took two pics of me....the first one is me just starting out.....I was playing with the circle, the second is after I got a little bigger....

I'm still baking, that's why my head is so big.....can't wait to see you.

Smoking for dummies

Here's a reason to stop smoking :).

Memory Loss....already!!!

It's official, I am suffering from memory loss, my girlfriend and I went to eat at my FAVORITE mexican resturant, I'm sure i'll pay for this later, but anyway, I FORGOT where I parked.....WTF. I suppose what they say about the effects of pregnancy are true after all....I had a COMPLETE memory lapse. It was bad pre-pregancy but now...it's on another level. I hope your day is going well. I'm working my ARSE off today, reading PILES amongst PILES of documentation, I think that's where my brain power went......I'm almost out of red ink over here. Anyway have a great day, I'm sure I'll write later. Ooooohhhh on a political note, I'm going to be so happy when we pick our democratic candidate, I'm so ready for one of them to win, I would like it to be Obama, but I would be happy if it were Hillary too....anyone BUT a freggin RESTANKLAKIN....yeah i said it....RE-STANK-CLA-KIN.....we do not need another BUSH....ever...not in this life, my childs life, do you know this dufus was on the news this morning saying we were NOT in a recession, what kind of DOPE is he smoking.....hmmmphf! He's got the good SH#T. The nerve of this guy. GAS is like 10.00 a gallon, I'm seriously thinking about how I can pimp out my kid when it gets here...perhaps a "rent-a-baby service" or something LOL....joking joking, i'm sure I'll guard the baby like a prisoner guards their lunch....ta ta ladies...and gents....El Raymundo, ooohh before i forget, you guys better start leaving more comments you can comment you know....and if you don't have gmail, just enter in your information and use the anonymous tab, just make sure you sign a name....no posting of real names though, just post something I'd know you as...

Let's talk about RACE....

Are black folks too racially sensitive? On that same note, do white folks have a tendency to be racially insensitive? Please state your opinion on both and why you feel the way you do?

When you see a person do you "notice" that they are of a particular race? Like if you got a new job, would you "notice" that your boss was Japanese as opposed to the traditional "white man/woman" we are accustomed to seeing in a c-level posisition Do you yourself feel "uncomfortable" in a situation where you are the only race in the room? What goes through your mind?

I miss Nesta...

It's no secret that roots reggae music needs an awakening. When do you think we will have another "Bob Marley"? He spoke volumes, his lyrics were so comparable to everyday life, what a man. I don't know if any of you ever really just listened to his lyrics, but the man was truly deep, a lyrical genius.....

I can't stand moody folks......so

Are you an asshole? Are you grumpy? How would you handle a person that was always hot or cold?

What were you afraid of as a kid?

When I was a tike I was terrified of "Mr.Clean" and " The Jolly Green Giant", what say you?

Happiness

Are you happy? I am a true believer that happiness is the key to a good life and health. It's a true fact that happier folks live longer.....and I think that's because they are not constantly worrying about life, they are care free. So how does one do that, live care free? Relaxation and meditation, and most importantly surround yourself by positive people, good people.

If your life is stressful, change it....period. If you are constantly running around and always wondering and worrying you need to do something different.........that's my two cents for today.

Baby Nursery

Morning!

I'm apologizing in advance for all the "baby blogs". The thoughts of baby arriving takes up a lot of space in my brain these days thus the "baby blogs". So, we have decided on a crib, and set, this is soooo cute and the cool thing about it, it's unisex, it's good for a girl or a boy. I'm sure this will probably change a few times but for now this is my favorite look for the nursery...and yes I'm getting that giraffe.....I may actually do the the poke-a-dots pattern instead for the chair....

Pot luck my ass...

This is exactly why I do not do pot lucks if I have not been to your house....this is some nasty ish.....

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/04/11/zahn.living.with.rats.komo

What's wrong with black people?

This documentary airs tonight on MSNBC, I am so glued to the tele for a change......

Baby Names I love so far

Ok I love like all these names.....lord help me, my child is going to have 50 million names......

Lena
Sidney

Cole
Corrine

Naimah
Marley
Khali
Naphatali
Dylan
Luke
Christeansen
Isacc
Michael
Khalil
Lauren
Jasmine
Elaine
Brianna
Ryann
Synclair.....shut up
London
Camille
Sydney
Shane
Avery Noelle
Zoe
Samantha
Gisele
Kimmora
Naomi
sophia
Sascha Nicole
Sidney Nicole
Malia
Scotland
Anastasia
Kennedy
Gabriel
Halle
Corrine
Neema
Naimah
Nia
Lena
Maximus
Smith
Stokley
Isacc
Samantha
Marai
Mariah
Symone
Tory

Open Letter from Sister Walker :)

From another list serve:

LEST WE FORGET, An Open Letter To My Sisters Who Are Brave

From Alice Walker

I have come home from a long stay in Mexico to find – because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama/Clinton race for the Democratic nomination - a new country existing alongside the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the Goddess of the Three Directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is a space with which I am familiar. When I was born in 1944 my parents lived on a middle Georgia plantation that was owned by a white distant relative, Miss* May Montgomery. She would never admit to this relationship, of course, except to mock it. Told by my parents that several of their children would not eat chicken skin she responded that Of course they would not. No Montgomerys would. My parents and older siblings did everything imaginable for Miss May. They planted and raised her cotton and corn, fed and killed and processed her cattle and hogs, pai nted her house, patched her roof, ran her dairy, and, among countless other duties and responsibilities my father was her chauffeur, taking her anywhere she wanted to go at any hour of the day or night. She lived in a large white house with green shutters and a green, luxuriant lawn: not quite as large as Tara of Gone With the Wind fame, but in the same style. We lived in a shack without electricity or running water, under a rusty tin roof that let in wind and rain. Miss May went to school as a girl. The school my parents and their neighbors built for us was burned to the ground by local racists who wanted to keep ignorant their competitors in tenant farming. During the Depression, desperate to feed his hardworking family, my father asked for a raise from ten dollars a month to twelve. Miss May responded that she would not pay that amount to a white man and she certainly wouldn't pay it to a nigger. That before she'd pay a nigger that much money she'd milk the dairy cows herself./ FONT>

When I look back, this is part of what I see. I see the school bus carrying white children, boys and girls, right past me, and my brothers, as we trudge on foot five miles to school. Later, I see my parents struggling to build a school out of discarded army barracks while white students, girls and boys, enjoy a building made of brick. We had no books; we inherited the cast off books that "Jane" and "Dick" had previously used in the all-white school that we were not, as black children, permitted to enter. The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had had no idea – so kept from black people it had been – that such a place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their d oors.

*During my childhood it was necessary to address all white girls as "Miss" when they reached the age of twelve.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early twenties it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known, the plantations, because they attempted to exercise their "democratic" right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that white women have copied, all too often, the behavior of their fathers and their brothers, and in the South, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender free. I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. That, for instance, at Sarah Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into the Board of Truste es practically as soon as I graduated, I made my way to the campus for meetings by train, subway and foot, while the other trustees, women and men, all white, made their way by limo. Because, in our country, with its painful history of unspeakable inequality, this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my school for trying to make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my relative poverty I knew I could not.

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans –black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me. When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required. Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are glad to be of our s pecies. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our (white) selves. True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for. We differ on important points probably because I am older than he is, I am a woman and person of three colors, (African, Native American, European), I was born and raised in the American South, and when I look at the earth's people, after sixty-four years of life, there is not one person I wish to see suffer, no matter what they have done to me or to anyone else; though I understand quite well the place of suffering, often, in human growth. I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a people I love; I want an end to the embargo that has harmed my friends and their children, children who, when I visit Cuba, trusti ngly turn their faces up for me to kiss. I agree with a teacher of mine, Howard Zinn, that war is as objectionable as cannibalism and slavery; it is beyond obsolete as a means of improving life. I want an end to the on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of Iraq. I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior towards the Palestinians, and I want the people of the United States to cease acting like they don't understand what is going on. All colonization, all occupation, all repression basically looks the same, whoever is doing it. Here our heads cannot remain stuck in the sand; our future depends of our ability to study, to learn, to understand what is in the records and what is before our eyes. But most of all I want someone with the self-confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend," and this Obama has shown he can do. It is difficult to understand how one could vote for a p erson who is afraid to sit and talk to another human being. When you vote you are making someone a proxy for yourself; they are to speak when, and in places, you cannot. But if they find talking to someone else, who looks just like them, human, impossible, then what good is your vote?

It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton ( I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man." One would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance. I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who would drag into Twenty-First Century American leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others' lives that has so marred our country's contacts with the rest o f the world. And yes, I would adore having a woman president of the United States. My choice would be Representative Barbara Lee, who alone voted in Congress five years ago not to make war on Iraq. That to me is leadership, morality, and courage; if she had been white I would have cheered just as hard. But she is not running for the highest office in the land, Mrs. Clinton is. And because Mrs. Clinton is a woman and because she may be very good at what she does, many people, including some younger women in my own family, originally favored her over Obama. I understand this, almost. It is because, in my own nieces' case, there is little memory, apparently, of the foundational inequities that still plague people of color and poor whites in this country. Why, even though our family has been here longer than most North American families – and only partly due to the fact that we have Native American genes – we very recently, in my lifetime, secured the right to vote, and only after numbers of people suffered and died for it.

When I offered the word "Womanism" many years ago, it was to give us a tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our singular path as women of color in the United States. We are not white women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries, often in brutal ways. But neither are we inclined to follow a black person, man or woman, unless they demonstrate considerable courage, intelligence, compassion and substance. I am delighted that so many women of color support Barack Obama -and genuinely proud of the many young and old white women and men who do. Imagine, if he wins the presidency we will have not one but three black women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter; none of them carrying the washing in and out of the back door. The bottom line for most of us is: With whom do we have a better chance of surviving the madness and fear we are presently endurin g, and with whom do we wish to set off on a journey of new possibility? In other words, as the Hopi elders would say: Who do we want in the boat with us as we head for the rapids? Who is likely to know how best to share the meager garden produce and water? We are advised by the Hopi elders to celebrate this time, whatever its adversities. We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race, ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on Truth. Celebrate our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing. Do not stress over its outcome. Even if Obama becomes president, our country is in such ruin it may well be beyond his power to lead us toward rehabilitation. If he is elected however, we must, individually and collectively, as citizens of the planet, insist on helping him do the best job that can be done; more, we must insist that he demand this of us. It is a blessing that our mother s taught us not to fear hard work. Know, as the Hopi elders declare: The river has its destination. And remember, as poet June Jordan and Sweet Honey in the Rock never tired of telling us: We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Namaste;

And with all my love,

Alice Walker

Cazul

Northern California

First Day of Spring

March 21, 2008

How old is to old to wear..............

Cornrows?

For the love of money

Dear Drug Dealer,

Your are nothing more than a modern day slave in my eyes. A slave to the corporate/government tycoons who are flying drugs in from all corners of the earth. You're nothing more than a whore on the street getting pimped. Come closer so that I may whisper the following in your ear. May you reap what you sow. I know, you're just trying to get ahead right? Cause it's hard out there...go #$$#$ yourself. Grow up, get a job...a honest one. If you can count dope money you can bring your ass to school. But I know...you're thinking, if you don't someone else will......right?

Ok so now that I have said my peace to the dealers.....

All this stuff was drudged up....today I reflected on my struggles in life...pregnancy hormones perhaps. I ponder on things from time to time, every time I see a deal being done on the corner, every time I have memories of my mother's drug struggle I just wonder how kids in the same situation are making it these days.

I can't began to express my disgust for drug dealers, these people and their suppliers are the scum of the earth. I know my mother was responsible for her own actions, but the way people become addicted is an act in itself, the way dealers pull them in, pretend to be "friends". Drugs are powerful, drugs destroy families, they ruin lives, yet these idiots will destroy their own communities for a some rims and a Coogi sweater,sneaks, I just despise them.

Tonight I was watching this re-run of the special about Keisha Cole, she puts her life all out there, no sugar coating, she kept it real, she had a series of shows on BET where she reveals everything about her family and her mother and her issues with drugs. I couldn't help but reflect on my mother's issues with drugs, and watching her breakdown, we lost the house, cars, everything, everything....but there was light at the end of the tunnel....a glimmer, God's hand.

My mom has got to be one of he strongest women I know. I can remember nights that she had the look of a caged tiger when we begged her to stay in, and not to go out in the street, that look is the look of a person possessed.....and the only thing that can stop it is God. It took me a long time to realize that there was nothing I could do but pray for my mom, this became especially evident when we had a dealer show up on Christmas morning....with a gun, wanting to collect money mother owed, thank God I had it, I'm not sure what would have happen to us that day had I not. I just happened to have about 200 cash on me...I swear dealers just suck yall, they have no heart.

Anyway I just want you to know my mom won in the end, she has been sober for over a year.....and I can't began to express how proud I am of her. She has grown so much. I guess you just never know what life is going to bring you, all it's challenges, it's ups and it's downs, you just have to be prepared....you have to be a warrior....God's warrior.

Stay at home??

So I've been at home for quite some time because my new gig doesn't kick off until April 14th, with that said, I think I got a small...notice I said small taste of what it could possibly be like to be a stay at home mom....I hate it. This is why I am a career woman, this stay at home stuff is for the birds. I know that perhaps I might feel slightly different after the baby arrives, but I know me, and I highly doubt it. Being at home affords me the opportunity to be very productive, but after four or five hours of studying, reading, I'm bored. The only thing I really watch on the idiot box is cnn, discover, travel and hgtv.....and EVERY blue moon...BET..I know. Anyway, I dunno, how do women do it, stay at home? Oh...I also scoped out my kid's future daycare today, 1200 a month.....that's right folks...12..HUNERD....so that's two new car notes....yay....bah! I can't wait to see my angel....with his/her expensive self...

Define Bitch

What makes a woman a bitch?