Beware! Black men are on their periods this month.

So it is time for another internet hiatus. *chuckle*  Some ish has popped off online that all started on November 1.  I was over on OHN and some drama went down and now the owner is shutting down/selling his site.

*blink blink*

It all stemmed from a letter that was supposed to be from an anonymous reader to the Men’s Round Table.  Come to find out one of the men on the RT did it to put his girl on blast.  His girl is also part of the OHN community.  The RT dumped on her without knowing who they were dumping on.  Her friends came out to defend her.  Then she defended herself and then the bf outed himself and it all went downhill from there.

Then Beth took it upon herself to bring up our supposed to be secret ladies group and threw the bitches word out there.  A word I wear with pride when I need to but whatever.  Until I can ask for and receive what I ask for without being a bitch I don’t mind being called one. *shrug*  Fugs to give about that word equal zero.  However, the way she did it was uncalled for.  Then it came out that we STILL have a snitch among the women.  We think we've found her but we won’t know for sure unless more info of our goings on are leaked.  It has just been a mess for the past four days.  The snitch was feeding Beth word for word and Beth was calling Stan.  A BIG OLE MESS!

I posted in our supposed secret group that someone needs to let Stan know that he needs to check Beth if he is really trying to sell the site with its readership intact and then I dipped out.  Let the smoke clear and the dust settle.  Beth over on Twitter talking about she wants to punch someone. *smh*

I’m like wow!  And she keeps making references to our group as a cliche.  I’m like, yeah.  There are plenty of cliches on OHN.  You fall in with who you fit in with.  She wouldn't fit in with our group.  She use to be a nice person but I've noticed over the last year that she is turning mean and really bitter.  I’m attributing it to her son growing up and cutting those apron strings whether she wants them cut or not.

She’s in our cooking group and we were talking about what we were making for dinner one evening.  She made a comment that she hadn't been cooking much.  She said the last time she cooked her son didn't bother to come home.  I’m like, he’s 20 get use to that.  It maybe what is making her so mean this past year or it may be something totally unrelated that I know nothing about.  But truly it has been a mess.

I’m like, really people are this messed up because we got a secret group.  Everyone in the group ain’t even OHNawlers so again I didn’t see the big deal.  I’m part of two other secret groups and I don’t mention what goes on in those groups with the women and vice versa.

But now that I’m home with my feet up, I’ve had some time to put things into perspective.  Now I ain’t saying this is what is happening but it would make a lot more sense than what seems to be going on.  I was sitting here thinking what if the drama is being pumped up to up readership so that he can get a good price for his site?  If that is true, I ain’t even mad.  He has a young family and we are in a recession.  Black folks are always the hardest hit financially whenever the economy takes a downturn.  And we are the last to recover financially.  Though we spend more money. *smh*

So if that is what is up then my peacekeeping butt needs to have a seat.  If not then I need to lie down because this ish is completely uncalled for.  Because the drama over our little group has been ongoing for more than a minute.  This ain’t the first time Beth has said something about us.  Since she isn’t the topic most of the time her source(s) are lying azz lying to her. *smh*

It amazes me that adults can be so… petty about such a simple thing as a group of ladies who have things in common who have their own meeting place.  We ain’t the only OHNawlians with our own secret group.  Heck!  TDP got his own secret group.  He and I don’t get along so it phases me not that I am not invited to join.  That’s why I don’t understand why Beth has been so upset about the group.  When she talks about what happens between her and the OHNawlians she does get along with on gchat, text, etc nobody is mad.  That’s why I am so confused about this animosity toward our little group.

And I hope the chick(s) doing the flapping of the gums know what goes around truly does come back around.  We actually put our trust in each other to not spread around what goes on in there.  Not that we are doing anything that spectacular but we talk about personal stuff.  Fears, hopes, illnesses, family issues and the like.  We take turns buoying each other up.  And that is really awesome.  But the snitch(es) ought to be ashamed of themselves. 

Again, I’m a just chill and work on my book for NaNoWriMo.  I’m behind two days already.  I was just fine until Saturday and then I got lazy.  This is why I’m cutting this short so I can get back to work.

The drama don’t end there.  Me and TPL are on the outs but that is a post for another day.  Good thing I can play my zynga games on their website.

*tips water glass at monitor*

Maybe I'm too hard on my single mom friends.

After my post about MB3 I got to thinking about my friendships with the friends that have children. Maybe I am too hard on them.

Whenever my friends, family, and coworkers (only the black folk mind you) would ask me why I hadn’t had children yet (or now ever) my response is always that I never found the right husband for me. To which they always responded that you don’t need a husband to have children. To which I always responded, maybe you don’t but I do becuz I need help.

Then the question: What kind of help do you need?

My response: I need someone to take the kids off my hands when they start to get on my nerves. Then I’d laugh and they’d laugh and drop the subject for the moment. Now with all these celebrities having babies later and later people keep telling me that it isn’t too late. *eye roll* I’ve already blogged about that so back to subject.

I wouldn’t choose to be a single parent for anything in the world. It’s not easy being a single parent. Everything is put on you as the sole provider of love, comfort, education, discipline, nurturing, moral character building, food, shelter, support, clothing, etc. You need help whether you admit it or not. Then you have to work for a living and 9 times out of 10 jobs can be bastards when it comes to parents.

I know in my last position we had a single mother there who had 2 boys. She moved to a new neighborhood. Now she did all this on the weekend. She requested one week day morning off in order to register her kids for school. You know her supervisor told her no. That they couldn’t spare her cuz she was the early morning person. *confused shock* What the hell does that have to do with anything? She has to register her kids for school or be in violation of the LAW!

Yes, according to her she had plenty of sick and vacation time to use but her supervisor still told her no cuz it would inconvenience the office for a morning. *smh* But they have to give her vacation time off, what do they do when she’s gone a whole week? I never got the chance to find out becuz the woman ended up quitting. They did everything they could think of to get her to stay but I’m with her on that one. There are 4 other people in the office, one of them could have covered for her that morning or they could have just opened an hour late that morning. *smh* She ended up having to call in “sick” later that week so she could go get her children registered for school. *smh*

But if she had had a husband, then he could have gone and registered the kids for school. See what I mean? Help.

In that same office was a married woman with two small girls. Now for awhile there she was the one who went to pick up the kids whenever they got sick at school or the babysitter’s becuz she worked the closest. As soon as her husband got a job closer then they traded off. Sometimes he would go and sometimes she would go. It was a partnership. They were doing it together. They were help for each other. The wife could have easily said that since she had been doing it for the past 4 years her hubby could pick them up for the next 4 years but she didn’t. They agreed together to trade off.

It is what happens when you have kids. They leave home fine but 2 hours after they get to school or the sitter’s they are running a fever and need to come home. My single mom friends used up so much of their sick and vacation time that whenever they heard I was taking a stay-cation they would always guilt me into doing some things for them on my off days. It got so bad that I stopped telling my friends and family when I am taking a stay-cation until it is either over or just about over. *smh smiling*

I didn’t mind helping sometimes but sometimes I had personal things of my own to attend to. When I was driving, going to the MVA could be a two day odyssey. Once it was a 2 ½ day odyssey. All becuz nothing in the state of MD is linked. You get a ticket in Baltimore County they flag your license but you can’t pay at the MVA. Hell no! You got to go all the way out to Towson to pay the ticket and no they didn’t mail me shyt. Then once you pay in Baltimore County you have to come back to the MVA with your payment receipt to show that you have paid the damn ticket cuz even though you paid it there is no telling when that will update in their computer system. We pay both state income tax and 6% sales tax in Maryland for this piss poor computer system they have in place. *smh*

All that to say that sometimes I have things of my own to do and I don’t always either want to or have time to incorporate my single mom girlfriends’ errands into my life.

Still, I do feel sorry for them. It ain’t easy and I don’t believe that I would be a much better single mom.

I offer this as an example: When my niece and her husband were together I would watch their 4 kids when they took their couples’ weekend getaways. I would watch them at their house. Well, once my sisters asked could I bring the kids to church and they would take them to lunch. Well, I hadn’t brought any church clothes with me to my niece’s home so I got the kids dressed that morning and drove back to my place. I turned on the TV. Told the kids to watch TV and stay put until I showered and dressed. Took me less than 30 minutes. For real. I skipped the makeup and pulled my hair into a tidy little bun.

I left them watching Sesame Street. As soon as I got into the shower the younger girl, the nosey one, comes knocking on the bathroom door asking can she have some of my crangrape juice in the fridge. *mean eye* Ok…TV is in the living room. You gotta go through the dining room to get to the kitchen and then the heffa went into my fridge without asking. I caved immediately cuz I figured that would keep them busy until I got out of the shower. And it did.

But really thinking it over my answer should have been: NO! I told you to sit down in the living room and watch TV until I was dressed. I did not give you permission to a) get up b) go through MY HOUSE NOT YOURS BUT MINE and c) I definitely didn’t give you permission to go into my fridge. Becuz of all that sit your little tail down until I come out. At which time I am gonna wear your little tail out before church. But that would have delayed us further in getting to church. And had she been with my mother she definitely wouldn’t have gone out to lunch after church. Not her or anyone. Cuz she is the younger sister. Her older sister should have a) stopped her and/or b) snitched on her.

Sounds harsh don’t it? But that’s the way we were raised and we learned to respect other people’s property and to ask before using our parents’, nonfamily and non-immediate family members’ things. *chuckle* Now siblings’ belongings is a whole other post.

But I didn’t do that. I did what was easy. Why? Cuz I didn’t have any help. I didn’t have anyone to watch the kids while I got ready for church. That’s the problem with single parenting. There’s no one to trade off with.

I do sit back and judge my single mom friends rather harshly in their parenting skills and what they allow their kids to get away with. I guess I really shouldn’t cuz not a one of them has any help from their baby daddies.

It’s a lot easier to judge people sitting alone in my ivory tower. I’m a have to work on that.

Take MB3’s daughter Bonequisha. I believe that she had a baby so that she would have someone to love her. I know, doesn’t MB3 love her daughter? *head scratch* I don’t know. What I know is she has said the following to me more times than I can remember down through the years:

I love my daughter but if I had it to do over again I wouldn’t have had her.

You see Bonequisha’s father is a childish, selfish, egotistical, manipulative, philandering con artist. Nothing more. He’s in his 50s now and he has yet to evolve into more than what MB3 left behind over 20 odd years ago. I believe MB3 was on the verge of leaving him when she found out she was pregnant. It was her intention to abort but her mother talked her into having Bonequisha and thus bringing into being the instrument that MB3’s baby daddy would use to punish her for leaving him.

From the things he has done down through the years I believe that MB3 is probably the only woman to have ever left him. He has paid little to no child support, he barely saw his daughter no matter how much the child called and begged. If he by chance was staying with a woman who had kids then he would go get Bonequisha to babysit while he got some sleep when the mother went to work.

TRUE STORY: He was living with a woman who had a daughter. He pronounced this woman’s child to be Bonequisha’s sister since he was living with the woman. So he brought Bonequisha over to babysit her new little sister while he slept the Sunday away. When he woke up he and her little sister took Bonequisha home. As Bonequisha got out of the car and turned to say goodbye he told her he was taking her sister to dinner, a movie, and shopping. Bonequisha ran into the house crying her little eyes out.

That was not the last time he pulled that particular stunt either. There were other women down through the years with children. He always pronounced these children Bonequisha’s siblings and during the summer vacation months he would bring her to babysit while the women worked. *smh* I have no clue and pray I never get a clue what these women saw in him. He’s not aesthetically pleasing to my eye at all. I say that without prejudice cuz I’ve met pretty on the outside and ugly on the inside and can appreciate the outside in spite of who they are inside.

Anyway, I have too many stories of him doing that and other stuff like that to his own flesh and blood child. That child forgave him and adored him no matter what he did though. I know MB3 resented that. But MB3 refused to speak ill of him in front of her child. *chuckle* We barbequed him every chance we were able though. *smh* That’s ok, God does not like ugly. Bonequisha was barely 18 when he got lung cancer.

I believe he poured his resentment towards MB3 for leaving him into his treatment of Bonequisha. I believe MB3 poured her resentment at Bonequisha’s father onto Bonequisha.

MB3 gave Bonequisha every material thing she could…but I don’t remember her spending a lot of time with her daughter. I remember MB3 working, always working. If you got a chance to catch Disney’s The Princess and the Frog then I can tell you Tiana and MB3 are just alike in working themselves to death for what they want. But what they want isn’t necessarily what they need.

Then there were other things like MB3 never corrected her or her lying for her or never making her raise her own child. I would always ask MB3 would her parents tolerate such things to which she always replied no and continued to let her child go off completely on the wrong path.

*pause*

Almost like sabotage. Like she was trying to prove that no child sired by that man could turn out right.

*Epiphany moment*

Then when Bonequisha had a baby of her own she thought that she would have someone to really love her…but she never did the hard work. See, she played with her baby and of course changed diapers but that’s not the hard work that bond parent and child.

Shoot! Kids love me cuz I play with them all. Chase them round outside and push swings and play games and all the stuff that their parents are too tired/or distracted to do. Kids see me and think here comes their favorite person to play with. But that is not parenting.

A parent and child bond is formed over 2, 3, 4, and 6 am feedings. It is formed over ER visits, immunization shots, colic, potty training, first day at the sitter’s/school. MB3 did all that for her granddaughter. Her granddaughter differs to MB3 as her mother and Bonequisha as her big sister. For a while there MB3’s granddaughter was actually calling her mommy and Bonequisha by her name. Bonequisha never corrected her, MB3 did. It was then I started to see Bonequisha resenting her daughter.

MB3 thinks it’s cute that Bonequisha’s daughter doesn’t like living with her mother and wants to stay with her as much as possible.

Bonequisha now has a second child and the second one is taking to MB3 in the same way. *smh* This little one is a mean one though. See Bonequisha didn’t want this second one and even thought of giving it up for adoption but the father talked her out of it and…they live together now. WOW! Full circle.

MB3’s mother was talked into having Bonequisha and Bonequisha was talked into keeping her second child. *smh* There’s a lot of hell going on in those homes. This second one don’t smile for anyone but MB3 and she doesn’t mind anyone but MB3 either. MB3 loves that power.

WOW! *head clearing shake*

I’m starting to see MB3 in a completely different light. I always wondered why someone who seemed to be so nice didn’t progress…didn’t do better. Especially with how hard she worked/works. I thought it was only natural that she would have a little resentment toward Bonequisha for the way she treated her when she was bedridden after her accident but typing this now and really seeing the years I’ve know her clearly I see some things that I just never saw before.

I don’t even know what to say or think now…suddenly, I’m not mad at Bonequisha anymore. Suddenly, I feel sorry for her. It’s like she never really had a chance. She’s been stuck between these two resentful people her whole life and her extended family isn’t much better. Her cuzins are jealous of her material belongings. See her mother handed down all her old clothes and toys to them…there are just too many stories.

Too many!

And my head is reeling! I’ve always thought the victim in all this was MB3 but I am starting to feel like the victim in all this is really Bonequisha. And now she has children of her own to repeat the cycle of resentment. Cuz Bonequisha resents her mother AND her own children now.

WOW!

Gotta go! I got a lot to think about.

*smh at monitor*

Christmas 2009

Sooooooo, my GFN did it again. *chuckle*

Let me start by saying I do love my GFN.  She's funny and beautiful and she' wants very much to be ghetto-fabulous.  She does not succeed.  But she keeps trying. *chuckle*  If only we could redirect her energy somewhere positive and productive.

Anyhoodles, a little background:  She has shown up not once but twice *lol* with fake engagement rings trying to fool people.  They were such bad fakes they didn't fool the kids *lol*.  She married fake number two and he got a real diamond ring and band afterward.  It don't look nothing like the other one .

This Christmas she left her husband of 2 years and moved into an expensive azz townhouse in an exclusive area that I know she is working herself into the ground to afford.  Her mother moved into help her with the bills.  They are sleeping on air mattresses according to Sissy, her mother.

So it's Christmas Eve and her child is laying on the floor playing and kicking a purse.  There are plenty of people in the house.  I have no idea whose purse he is kicking and I could care less. It is just a purse.

She looks down and sees her son kicking her purse and snatches her purse.  "Give me my $800 purse."

I know the look I gave her was shock.  She must have mistook it for being impressed.  I looked over at my other sisters.  You sleeping on an air mattress but you just bought the newest Louis Vuitton?  GTFOH!!!!

*LOL*  It was serious on Christmas but I've dumped some negative energy and now its just sadly funny.

I hope she gets her life together before she ends up like her mother, Sissy, without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.

Bottomline, neither of their lives is my life.  I love 'em both but they gotta do them and I damn sure am gonna do me.  Cutting ties, people.  I am cutting ties.  Blood and others.  Anyone not contributing good energy gotta go.  I've met total strangers who are more supportive than some of my own kin and friends who have known me for years.

I am growing and changing in many new and positive ways.  I need people doing the same thing and I am going to go find them.

*smooches*