The Sneak Attack

So middle child has had 2 loose teeth all summer. Oldest finds a slight wiggle in her mouth and within 24 hours has extracted tooth. We have been on the middle child to get that thing out of her head but she has just been so cautious.

Not sure why but last night we all worked on it and thought we would get it out before midnight. I thought it would have been special since yesterday was National Cheesecake Day. It did not happen but we all felt optomistic about it coming out in the very near future. We celebrated with cheesecake anyway and since the tooth was still not out I had a martini. I was not upset but just thought it a fine excuse for a White Chocolate Strawberry Martini.

We worked on it all day and every time she asked for something I would say, 'ok, after you get that tooth out'. I did not mean it but she worked hard on it. I tried yanking on it a few times but she whined and I did not want to make her cry because then the lost tooth gift may cost even more than it already will.

So I was getting ready to go to the post office and I hear the older 2 yelling. Oldest had done the sneak attack and snatched that thing right outta middle child's mouth! Thats what Im talkin bout cuz that is just how we roll around here! That's my girls!

July 30, 2008

So I am all emotional (on the inside but still) and a little anxious. Saturday is August 2. 10 years since my first daughter was born.

My weekend is slammed busy. In fact, starting this evening we have lots of stuff going on, over lapping activities and it kinda makes me mad. I want the 2nd to be more sacred. Not sandwiched between agabazillion other commitments.

Would we make a big deal out of Rya hitting double digits? Would her black hair be long like Adrian's or short like the other girls? Would her beauty bring tears to my eyes like her absent does?

Her life changed me. Her death changed me more. And I am greatful. I would never want to take paradise from her to satisfy my curiosity. I would not give up the life lessons I learned to have her back. Rya's death lead to my promise of eternal life. Our loss will be her gain as one day our entire family will join her to abide where Love reigns.

Rya gave me purpose. She gave me definition. She gave me dreams and smiles and hope. She taught me love that showed me a pain so deep and complete I began to need a Savior. She melted my frozen heart to the point it could finally be molded.

Jesus said in John 16:22 you have sorrow now but I will see you again; then you will rejoice and no one can rob you of that joy. I believe in the Word of God; help my unbelief.

School Year Goals

I love tourchuring myself with long to do lists and furthering the torment with a time frame. I find some sort of morbid thrill in boxing myself in and hope I burn off a few hundred calories from self inflicted panic attacks.

We have only 2 weeks of summer left and the only goal we have not crossed off the list is to go bowling as a family. Granted our summer fun list is easy (albeit expensive) to do. We get together as a family at the end of school and list all we want to do over the summer. We saw a movie and dressed like pandas. We ate at a restaurant AND developed an interest in archery on our Bass Pro Family Fun Day. We hit Sonic up for $1 shakes. We went to Lake Charles (not enough but CHECK!). We visited the library. This one was more educational than usual. I checked out a book on how babies were made. It even had pictures and diagrams. Yup. A moment of silence for my husband please.

Thank you. We had movie night where we made pallets in the living room, made popcorn with chocolate chips in it and threw bed time out the window for the night. We gave belly dancing a good go. We had friends over and had swim days and went on vacation. We even went to the New Orleans zoo. It was a great summer. My tan is BLAM! My boobs in a swim suit KABOOM! I am just saying. $5000 and yours can be too. Believe me, no one even noticed my fat ass. Thats what IM talkin bout baby. My pool boy/husband did a bang up job this year. I love my pool and I love my husband.

So now, I need to start compiling my school year plan. I need to revamp the girl's schedules and to do lists (of COURSE I make them do lists. It says to do this in the Old Testament, remember Hezikiah?). I need to factor in soccer and dance and pottery and worship practice and whatever else they can talk me into that my balancing husband does not talk me back out of. I also like to set some personal goals for me, the girls individually and the family as a whole. *squeel* I am giddy with panicy excitement!!

I have to have the list in black and white so I can cross through compleated tasks. This is very important. We have our daily lists in sheet protectors and cross through each item with a dry erase marker but the goals needs to actually be crossed through.

The only thing I know for sure that will make the list is going non profit. I have said I was doing that for years now. Time to walk the walk. I also really want my punching bag put back up. I want to put 'punch hard and daily' on my list. YEAH baby! I am not actually making the list yet but will be soon. For now I will just enjoy the nauseating feeling of butterflies while I contemplate just how many goals I will attempt this school year. Whoop!

Color and why I hate professional Photographers

This weekend was the big family reunion in NOLA. It was fun like listening to my mother-in-law rant about white people then reminding her in mid rant that I am white is fun. No one could figure out if it was me or my husband that was related by blood because I am almost as dark as him. We liked that.

My youngest refused to be in most of the pictures except one set with the professional and only then if we let her wear her daddy's coat. She is 4. He is a 3x. I think the photographer hated me as much as I hated him.

My oldest was 'hired' to make balloon animals for the children that attended and I told her to only give the kids 3-4 options to make it easier. One thing she made well was a sword, except it looked like a penis to my husband after a jack and coke. Most of the kids in the room were playing with them. *giggle*

I did love that all 135ish people who attended reconized we were all 'family' on some level and there was every color there. From blond to black, then back to shades and hair tectures from every where in between. It was nice to be defined more by family line than race because race was too muddled to consider. That is the kind of world I would like for my daughters. Not black pride or white power or having to choose a side.

Now getting 135 people into a single photograph the photographer was happy with made me want to break up with everyone there but I am not that fond of photographers to begin with. That experience was way too familiar and made me want to stab people with plastic cutlery.

So even though I do not try to act like having a black husband makes me personally black, I did see color from a different perspective this weekend. And really, the only thing white about me is my teeth. Thats what Im talkin bout.

Pardon me while I go non-PC

During the summer my family enjoys Wednesday night church services. We picnicked out at the lake before service, and then I checked the girls into their classes. I walked into the sanctuary just as the first song was starting. I went to the section we usually sit in and there was a row with only one guy so I asked if I could get past him. He moved over so I could come into the row.

The entire first song he stared at me. My McDonalds double cheeseburger slowly rose to my throat and my shoulders started inching up. It was obvious there was something not right about him. Not sure if it is PC to say he seemed retarded, but he did. His movements were spastic and sporadic and his hands were curled. Only a few notes into the second song he sticks his hand out to me and introduces himself as Brian. I gave my name and try to smile and act like a Christian since I am in church but he was really in my personal space. My skin was crawling and as cold as I know it was in church, I could not feel it.

I acted very into worship but I was actually inventorying the exit routs and how many people I had between me and each one. I am thinking, ‘Is this normal? He is just a harmless retarded dude! How do I process this and my reaction after Monday night?!?’. My plan became to respond to the first nursery number that went up. Not a single one did. Not one. The entire service.

I am trying to make myself calm down because I realize I am wound so tight, if he tries to touch me, I may over react. He is IN my space. Coming over onto my chair! My sense of smell goes into overdrive; someone near me smokes. I feel like I will choke on the air that has turned foul around me.

The break between worship and the message lasts an eternity as Brian makes small talk with me. I barely speak and plaster a smile on my face that may or may not reveal my underlying hysteria. Somewhere during the offering he hands me a slip of paper and says I can call him if I ever want to get together. I take the paper, stuff it into my purse and concentrate on the head in front of me. In hindsight I should have just politely said it would not be appropriate since I was married but I was beyond speech at this point. I remember thinking if he touches me, I will be justified in beating the shit out of him. Then I remembered Monday night at Suzanne’s and got a little confused.

He talked to me through service as I silently prayed for a nursery number to go up or another reason to leave. Several church members spoke to him so he was not a stranger and I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Completely unsure if what was happening to me was rational, sane or even real. He asked me several questions I did not respond to including what my phone number was.

At the end when married people were asked to stand I did and he did as well (he had told me earlier some stuff about his ex-wife) mumbling he was technically still married. By the time the prayer was over I could not sit in my chair again if I wanted to. He had moved so close that he was more in front of my chair than I was. Fortunately the couple on the end of the row next to me left so I moved into the space where they were sitting and as soon as Amen was said I grabbed my purse muttered nice to meet to ( how effing stupid was that?!?) and bolted.

It was just creepy. I flipped through a book I did called On the Threshold of Hope and there was a part on boundries and control and I think in my attempts to find balance in those areas through the grid of trauma, there are times when I teeter way to one extreem or the other. To a person not facing the issues I am, the logical thing would have been to move the moment they felt uncomfortable. I fell into a trap where I did not realize that was an option. But I see Truth today and I continue to work through lies when they surface. Next time a retarded dude freaks on me, I am outta there!

offence, not defence

It has been a while since I faced the victomization I experienced in my past. I pretend it does not define me but last night my friends gave me a wake up call that it does. I like control. I mean the responsibility and lack of freedom that binds me is not fun but I feel I need it. I like even numbers and multiples of 5 and revealed that even though the most comfortable temp for my house to be is 77 degrees, I can not keep it on 77. It has to be 76 (too cold) or 78 (too hot). An even number or a multiple of 5.

I also get angry at my husband for spending the majority of his time in 'his chair' in front of his computer in our bedroom and not interacting with me often. Often I want to discuss something that I feel will affect us and all he says is 'I dont care', and even gets mad. I thought because I was disturbing him and he did not want to be bothered with 'us' (me and the girls and our issues).

My friends pointed out that if he is nonconfrontational and avoids conflict then dealing with me on any level may be difficult. It reminded me of the question I so often got asked as a child, "why dont you ever come out of your room? Why do you isolate yourself in there so often?". To me it was a no brainer. Why would I come out when every time I did I got critized and put down and all my wrongs were pointed out? It was safer to stay in my room and get lost in a book or occassionally music. I realized last night in horror, it may be the same for my husband.

That hurt. I mean, he has issues. Big fat ones. But I was not seeing so many of mine and was totally falling for the lie that I was done with certain parts of my past. I do not want to be vulnerable to my husband or anyone, ever, including God. That can not be good or fun. And how can I grow as a person when I am in such a bondage.

I want another tattoo. On my foot I believe. I just need to figure out what I want to say. I do not know what I want to say! I say so much so often but last night's discussion showed me it is all defence. I do not even have an offence. I spend so much of my time fighting and ensuring I have some control that I stay in the defencive mode most of the time.

I want to learn how to be vulnerable. I think. Maybe.

One Drop

I have a family reunion in a couple weeks. A real reunion based on the origional family lines from the first settlers to Louisiana. This is the family I married into. My husbands family. I am reading a book on the geneology called One Drop by Bliss Broyard and I must say, I am quite fasinated at the story.

So this girl finds out when she was like 23 that her daddy was 'black' but had kept it a secret and lived as white until he was on his death bed. She then goes on a quest to discover who the black her really is. Which even she realizes is a little silly. I mean, not that I think she should not have done the research or hooked up with her black family members. Just that while she can have black in her history does not necessiarly mean she has to figure out how to 'be' black.

So one thing I read that really stuck out to me was it was not legal for different races to marry until 1972. That is 34 years ago. I admit, I have gotten annoyed with my husband at times for playing the 'black card'. I never tried to say he did not experience racism, but I just felt it, well, stupid for lack of a more suited word, to have a mentality of 'my people were slaves and held back by the white man for too long' drama. I am glad I started this book because I feel I am learning a thing or two.

Funny that at the same time I am reading, I watched a Chris Rock special and he talks about how black people were bred to be big, strong and dumb so they do have genetics to overcome. No one will admit they think slavery was ok, but what Bliss realized on her quest to discover her blackness as a white girl, was people will show their true colors when they think they are talking to white people. After Bliss discovered her daddy's secret, she began to notice little things that were actually racist, even in herself. She had friends tell black jokes in front of her and for a change, she no longer found them funny. Once someone made fun of her name and said it sounded like a 'black name'.

There used to be a law called the One Drop rule which said if you had one drop of black blood in you, you were considered black. I am reading about lots of mixed or even white family members (that were considered black by association, i.e. they had mixed siblings) that lived in a world that did not value them as human beings. I decided I wanted my girls to learn about what some of their family went through, if for no other reason, than to be considerate of how we treat others in this world.

We may have come far in society, but I am seeing that is not far enough. One thing that I know of is it is no longer required to list a race on birth certificuts. None of my girls have a race listed on their birth certificuts and neither does it list what Kenneth and I are. I hope I can learn from the history of my family and open my eyes to see what is going on around me. I want to be a part of the solution and never a part of the problem. And I will educate my girls about their 'blackness'. That's what Im talkin bout!

Know what you dealin wit before you run up on me

[Intro: Snoop Dogg]Snoop Dogg, Big Will

Ay lil' homey you need to {*"pump ya brakes"*}

Real talk, we came to have a good time

We ain't got time for all that

Man homey look {*"pump ya brakes"*}

Now slide right, and just {*"pump ya brakes"*}Wanna holla at you in a minute

F'real, ha ha {*"pump ya brakes"*}





[Verse One: Will Smith]All this excess, stress I can't take it

Slow that thing down, pump ya brakes kid

Why you gotta be all up in the face kid?

The AVS'll get you numbers and a name, kid

I mean really, houndin on girl

Was that really necessary, see your itinerary

Is all awe, you need to be hauled off

She start flippin, she ain't trippin, it's your loss

This a simple case of a anti-brake pumper

You don't have to talk to women bumper to bumper

That mighta got you a couple numbers when you were younger

But dude switch your whole approach, that ain't proper

Be a gentlemen and try to be gentle man

The essence of stimulation mental man

But if you actin like you just got out a kennel man

Put your foot on the pedal and, pump



[Chorus: Snoop Dogg]If your girl in your face and she out of place

What you need to tell her is {*"pump ya brakes"*}

Now if you out but your girls they pressin you hard

What you need to tell 'em is {*"pump ya brakes"*}

Now if you underage and you actin all grown

What you need to do is {*"pump ya brakes"*}

If you offended by this record and you know it's you

What you need to do is {*"pump ya brakes"*}



[Verse Two: Will Smith]Outside the restaurant, girl sees boy

Girl likes boy, girl meets boy (boy)Boy doesn't know that girl thinks he's fly (fly)

Boy's a nice guy so boy says hi (hi)Boy's girlfriend returns from goin to park

She sees them together this ignites a spark (what?)

Boy's girlfriend has a real loud bark

Now this is where the pumping of the brake should start

Girlfriend thinks that somethin's goin on

Girl tells girlfriend nuttin's goin on

Boy in the middle of the commotion beginnin

Girlfriend mad cause boy keeps grinnin

Now why is he grinnin? But that's beside the point

Girlfriend she chill 'fore they rolled up in the joint

Jumpin to conclusions get you nowhere honey

Pump ya brakes and be a crash test dummy



[Chorus][Verse Three: Snoop Dogg]Rule #1, is just like 2

The who-dos and what-nots and what you should dizzoo

No loud talkin, no back talkin

If you do either believe it you back walkin

I hate to sound rude but then again I have to

My rap bang and my mack game it'll smack you

Click-clack you, spit at you

I don't do it cause I want to, I do it cause I GAT to

I gotta question to ask you

Would you fall, stand tall, ball, or let him smash you?

If I was you, and you was I

Would you keep it G, or would you stay fly?

If you was rich, in a ditch, livin low, would you push the button

Keep it cuttin, or would you just let it go?

Calm down lil' homey

And know what you dealin wit before you run up on me



[Chorus]Pump ya brakes [to end]

Be Careful What you Wish for

I am not a fan of debt. My first 3 vehicles I paid cash for. So they were peices of junk but I was not in debt. Then the two became one!

My husband and I are different in many ways. He is black. I am white. He is into computers and electronice, they hate me and conspire against me. He hates heights and to fly. I love flying and heights. He is not a fan of water. I want to be a mermaid. Oh! And he is a credit card lover! Me, not so much.

I have always watched enviously the debt consolidation comercials on tv and wished to be the wife in them. My husband does not trust help and feels if he asks for it in any way, shape or form, The Man will get him!!

God told me years ago to hand over the finances to my husband and I balked at the idea. Basically God informed me Kenneth would never learn until he got behind the wheel. After years of him running us into trees, posts and concrete blocks, I was like, 'really God?' He was like, 'Yeah. Really. Trust Me. Trust him. Stop trying to control everything.'

So, I do not know what happened. I maybe do not want to know, but my husband asked if I was ok with not having any credit cards. I was like HELL YEAH. He did some kinda debt consolidation. Just like I wanted.

Uh. Shit. No back up? None? What about all the times I went to buy food and my check card was denied and I whipped out the credit card? What about emergancy car repairs, medical bills and what about vacations?!? All that stuff was on credit cards! What about dates and family fun days and shopping trips when Kenneth does something wrong and buys me something pretty?

This is just what I asked for. Hmm. Maybe me and Kenneth hame more in common than I thought. Maybe Trust is not either of our strong suits. Crap.

I got what I wished for. Thats what Im talkin bout baby. HA!

Silence Solitude & Sun

Wow. Wow. I had the most lucious day! Last night my husband took the girls to his parents in my van. They spent the night and all day away. If I had had my van, I would have felt compelled to go get the girls in the morning but since I did not, I had a day.

I watched a movie last night. I slept naked. I slept in. Once I woke up, I read in bed. I took a nice long shower and even shaved my legs without inturruption. I did a few things while I had some coffee then got a brunch together and headed out to the pool. Ahhh.

I love my pool. It was so still and refreshing. The weather was perfect. I read a book. I swam. I floated. I laid out. Topless.

I do not wish to be a nudiest or anything. I like to sleep naked. My sister likes to sleep in super soft things. I just like it. I dont often because the girls have a hard time comprehending modesty. Swimming and laying out topless has a little to do with tan lines and is just fun. I like that too. I have a privacy fence and no neighbors. It was clean fun.

The day was not long enough, yet too long. I needed it so bad but it showed me I would not want any other life. I kept thinking I would listen to music or watch tv but I never did. I just soaked in the silence, the solitude and the sun.

I missed my family, but I enjoyed myself without them.

As I was floating on a raft-without small people climbing on me-enjoying my surroundings, I had a thought. Last year I used weed killer and tried to kill everything along the outside of the fence because it comes in, but this year, I have not done that. I thought of the inside of my fence as man made and outside the fence as God made and realized there is no way to keep God out. God made is much more powerful than man made. The proof of that is clearly seen in the buckles and cracks in the concrete around the pool where little green weeds have pushed through. I like to think of the me made walls and fences I built being invaded by God.

His Work is so lovely too. Water being one of my all time favorites! I hope to be like a mermaid (or wormaid as my little girls say) when I get to heaven. I love how things look and sound under water. Slower and sensual. Flowy and graceful. Delicious and refreshing. I drank living water today. Thats what Im talkin bout baby!