Now I understand....

  When I was younger I told my mother that I never wanted to have kids or even get married.... EVER!  I stood by that thinking for quite awhile into my 20s... and then came along my beautiful baby boy and all of my feelings changed regarding having children.. (still had to get my mind wrapped around getting married).  Now, 2 kids, a fiancee, and many years later I am starting to think that maybe I had that outlook because somehow I knew how scary this world was going to be.....  The biggest concerns I used to have about my children were being bullied, being clumsy enough to hurt themselves seriously, eating the right things, possibly being kidnapped or getting molested... While those things are still incredibly scary and constantly on my mind, I now have "other" issues that I must add to that list.  I now live in fear that with each phone call I am getting and not getting could mean my children might be facing some crazy person with a gun or a bomb threat at their school.  Watching the news is horrifying and almost at this point it's sad that the headline "gunman... blah blah blah" is pretty much "the norm".  It's amazing that this world that can be such a beautiful and magnificent place can also be so terrifyingly scary to the point of thinking about it all brings one to tears.  I am scared of the world my children are growing up in.  My heart goes out to Baltimore this evening, such a tragedy that shouldn't have happened......

Parent Win.....then.....Parent Fail...

  Yesterday I had a couple different experiences with people.  The first experience was positive, made my heart smile.  While at the pizza shop, I walked up to the counter to place my order and when I was done, I turned to go sit down and wait.  There were 3 chairs that lined that wall in the tiny building and 2 of those were taken by a woman and her son.  I told my mini me to sit in the remaining chair and I stood by the wall.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the woman talking and motioning to her son and then he stood up.  The woman moved to the farthest seat away and told me to have a seat.  I was astonished, as you don't see that very often nowadays.  There have been many numerous times when I have had to stand while grown men would sit and not offer their seat.  I told the mother and son thank you and she told me she was trying to teach him young.  I happily exclaimed that I was doing the same with my son, making sure he holds the door for people and such as well.  We laughed a bit and I told him that it would pay off in the end!  When they were leaving I made sure to tell her that she was a good mother.  That encounter completely made my day and restored a bit of faith in humanity for me...... that is until I went to the movies later that night......


   My fiancee and I went to go see Evil Dead, I was very excited because I loved the first one so much, even though I had heard it wouldn't be campy at all, I had to see it, just to see it.  We got to the theater, bought our tickets and started to head in.  My fiancee had to use the bathroom, so I went into the theater, which was right next to the bathroom.  There was a man standing in front of the doors who asked to see my ticket..I thought that was odd, but showed him anyway and he said he'd remember my man for when he finished doing his business and I went in to get a seat.  We always sit in the very back at the top, because we don't like people behind us.  As I was approaching the top row, I noticed the first 2 people sitting at the very end of the row at the top of the stairs was an older woman and a little boy, probably around the age of 8, maybe 9.  I couldn't believe that this child was in here for this movie, let alone being brought by his mother!  Maybe it was his aunt, grandmother, whoever she was, she was old enough to know better.  I stepped past them with an "excuse me" and sat a few seats away.  When I looked to my right after sitting down, I noticed the 2 people sitting closest to me were 2 young little girls, I'm sorry, 2 young TALKATIVE little girls.  They couldn't have been more than 13, maybe 12.  I thought my mind was going to explode at the obvious disregard for these children.  I'm not the best parent in the world and I consider myself to be pretty lax about most things, but come on!  After sitting next to the 2 most annoying out of place children in the world, I decided I had had enough and instead of unleashing on them like I wanted to, I simply chose to move away to new seats. (Very proud of myself for that)  Not only were these little girls in a movie totally inappropriate for their age group, but they clearly had no respect for other people with all of the noise they were making.


   After the movie, a family of 3 passed by us going down the aisle, the mother, father, and their 6 year old son.  I don't understand this phenomenon.  Why is it ok to take young children to such graphic movies?  What are these parents achieving by allowing this?  Am I the one who is crazy to think that this is not ok?  Who knows, maybe it is just me.  Maybe it is just me who thinks that subjecting such young and impressionable minds to such gore is not the appropriate thing to do.  Maybe it's just me who thinks that we should be surrounding children with positive images and educational aspects of life and show them the benefits of being kind, gracious, and things alike.  While I'm all about giving kids the reality of life, I don't find anything from Evil Dead to be any kind of reality.

What do you think?

This is life. .. for some. ..

Everyday I wake up, I know who I am. .I am a black woman living in America.  This concept seems simple enough to me and not a big deal.  I go to work, deal with my issues, take care of my bills and my family. .. normal things?  I grew up extremely naive of the world as a military brat around white people most of my young life.  I was never truly privy to the hate that people had towards people like me, it was never an issue.  Anybody who did have an issue never made it known to me.

    As an adult I am seeing everyday just how naive I was.  With the election my eyes have been opened even more so and it sucks.  I'm never one to judge someone based on superficial reasons.  I judge you according to how you act, not your gender, race, age, or anything else that doesn't necessarily make a person be this way or that.  I also know that there are plenty people in the world who are also this way, but it's pretty annoying to see these blogs.. such as "stuff black people don't like" where hatred is the common denominator.  People that are commenting are teachers. .. and that's scary! Not only teachers are commenting, I'm just saying....  I've never considered myself a cynical person, but being slapped in the face with such a reality is definitely cause to see things with more of a fine tooth comb.  With every skipped over opportunities and attitude given,  I not only have to look at myself and ask what did I do wrong, I also have to ask if it's possible that I just wasn't the preferred race.  I not only have to reexamine these things in regards to me but my children as well. 

  It's a hard truth to swallow knowing that no matter how intelligent, qualified, or experienced that I am or my children are. ... the only qualifications that will matter are our beautiful skin tone and preconceived notions that go along with it. People ask me why do I look at things like that blog. ...I tell them that I have to be informed about things going on around me, not so much for me but for my children. .. it would be irresponsible for me not to be aware of these things.  I don't go searching for these hateful things, but with the increase of technology and social media. .. It gives everyone the opportunity to show their ass, figuratively and literally lol.  It's hard being the best person you can be but denied common decency because of ignorance.  There have been many occasions where I have dealt with people and it was obvious that they felt they were entitled to being treated better than I was when they didn't even know me.  I often wonder where does this feeling of entitlement come from? Why do people feel that they are the exception to the rules because they are them?  Why do they feel that I am not worthy because they are them? And why do they feel that they should not be called on it? How can you get mad at someone for calling you out on your actions? You mean you're mad because I'm mad that you're out of line. ..you're mad that I'm mad with you????

   Do I think racism will ever go away? Not likely, hate begets hate and very rarely does it beget courage to overcome it.  The best I can do is educate mine and try to spread that knowledge and be as aware as possible.  To the people on that blog and blogs and mindsets alike I say. .. God bless you all.

My fiancee says the craziest things...

    One day my fiancee and I were leaving a discount store and when we got to the corner, there was a homeless couple. The man was holding the sign and the woman was sitting down. My finance looked at me and said, look where we're at! We're not at some high end store,we're leaving the poor people store. Why do homeless people beg from poor people?  We're barely a step above them, that doesn't even make sense!

   Personally I thought this to be hilarious, true and hilarious.  Don't get me wrong, my fiancee, although brutally honest and sometimes extremely mean, he would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it.  It does make me wonder though, you never truly know the backstory of what people went through or are going through. It's hard out for everybody, living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to pay bills and still trying to come up in life.  So of course it's hard to see people who are worse off. I couldn't imagine not having anybody in this world to help me out when I need it.

   It's an annoying internal debate to want to help every lost soul in the world you encounter, but know that you can't because you have to provide for your own first. For me, I think the worst thing we can do as parents is not be the strength our children need so I absolutely hate to see people panhandling with their kids in tow. One time I was coming out of a store at like 11 pm on a Tuesday night and this woman approached me with her obviously embarrassed daughter pulling up the rear. The woman was telling me how they had no food to eat, no diapers for her baby, etc etc. I kept glancing at her daughter who was probably no more than 9 or 10 and you could tell she was mortified. I didn't get the impression that she was sad because of what her mother was saying, I got the feeling that she was desperately trying to telepathically teleport herself far, far away. The mother was acting in a manner such as that of an addict, grinding her teeth and not able to stand still, so I could only imagine the real reason for the begging.

  At the end of the day though I'll never know what was really going on or how that poor child was actually feeling. I didn't have any change so I couldn't help her, but I imagine that someone that hard up should be asking for food and not money. I couldn't imagine putting my children through that, being that type of influence for them. I understand that children loosen the heart strings, but come on now.....    But alas that is only my opinion looking in from the outside. But when I was down and out, which I have been a couple times, the thought of putting that burden on my children never entered my head....