Random Words I Type

"I don't just want to have a boyfriend-I could have five boyfriends. I want someone who is part of my destiny." India.Arie -Essence, June 2002

I have an on the job friend who offers to take me to lunch, offers to pay my cell phone bill, and just last year offered take me to Paris. I'm sure he's a wonderful man and I could accept the material gifts he has to offer but right now that's not enough.

I ended my 4 year relationship last year and started up a new rendezvous that I believe has suffered its last fizzle just today. I'm okay with putting my past to bed and I'm moving forward to the better that life offers because I've learned to appreciate myself and damnit, I deserve it.

When I hung up with my friend who was making demands on me yet not carrying any weight or making his presence known in this relationship, that experience only reinforced how great and wonderful I truly am. I have no reason to settle.

I believe that compromises should be made in relationships. You have to carve out time that you would normally spend with your girls or time spent with your boys but one demand I will never adhere to... Quieting my voice.

For the next dude who comes my way... Please know that I love and appreciate chivalry but that's only the beginning. You have to be emotionally stable, financially responsible and doing a great job prioritizing your life, i.e. spending quality time with your child/children.

I have standards and for the first time in years I'm truly going to stick to them. I love The Happy Go Lucky Bachelor's Deal Breakers. Everyone should have and know what their deal breakers are. And keep to them. Why should anyone settle for less just to say that they have?

I am an established, stable woman. For me, it's only up from here. If you're still trying to find and redefine yourself and you're over 35 years of age, I am not your type of woman. That is not to say that there is no room for growth or to improve oneself. That should be done daily.

When I read India.Arie's article in Essence almost 7 years ago, that comment above has stuck with me since. I too want someone who is part of the intricacies of me, my growing, my aging, my creativity - finding joy in just getting to know and loving me.

But not right now...

I'm still bursting from the excitement that this new year has already brought in. Already this month, I'm doing new things and living purposefully. Plus I LOVE spending time alone. Sure it would be nice to have someone to go to events with or someone waiting at home for me to tell about my day. However, when the time is right, I know my destiny man will come along and I'll be ready for him when he arrives.

In Transition... 2008 concluding posts

I have been transitioning for a while, in a lot of areas of my life, but one particular area that is transitioning is my hair... I have stopped putting chemical relaxers in my hair and allowing my natural hair to grow in.

I'm learning that transitions are HARD!

First off, my natural hair is ummm.... let's just say that when my hair was long and straight people used to call me Pocahontas. Now they are definitely going to call me Kizzy. It's a shock now when I wash my hair and then can't comb it. I am stunned when I want to comb it one way and it's doing it's own thang. But it's my natural hair. It's thick, it's kinky, it's unruly and in every way it represents me. My hair is coarse. Always was, even with a relaxer in it. It just seems right to allow it to be unprocessed, raw. And my personality is a match for my hair. RAW. I have couth, I really do, but I don't have that mechanism that says, "K, sugar coat this". If you want the truth, just ask me.

I've learned some lessons about life recently while pondering what in the hell I'm going to do with my hair.

Transitions are sometimes ugly. When you want a desired effect, you have to brave the unpretty parts first. You're faced with decisions that you never had to make before. Do I choose the easy guilt laden road or do I tough it out and choose what's best, what's healthiest for me? I have 15 inches of hair and 12 and 1/2 inches of it is straight, thin and not so pretty 2 and 1/2 inches is crinkly, brazen and wild. Everyday won't bring sunshine. Every road won't be easy and sometimes it's going to be downright horrid. But you have to tough it out to see the beauty.

Transitions require patience. I'm a get up and go kinda woman. My morning routines are trouble-free (although I'm lazy and late to work). Now I have to take time with my hair where before I would comb out my doobie and step. The same goes for life. Routine is easy and can be done without thought or creativity but you can't have transition without tolerance.

Transitions can be uncontrollable. It's been 20 years since I've seen more than an inch or so of my natural hair but I never imagined throwing a hat over my head for days because I'm baffled about what to do with this. The thing with transitioning is that 2 things are going on at the same time. You're moving from one area to another and the end may not be visible. Everything seems to be awry but you have to allow the uncontrollable to be uncontrolled and know that eventually all will balance out.

With transitions, there are always options. I can do the big chop. I can put braids in. I can go through the daily battles or I can always relapse and go right back to my favorite Dominican salon and feel guilt as they apply the chemicals. I'm heavily treading on the daily battles road. And life transitions are the same way. You can quit your job and move to another city on faith. You can plan and map out the process and then leap. Or you can brave it daily, taking it one day at a time.

My 2009 is definitely going to be high and memorable, transitions and all. I cannot wait for the spring and summer months, the birthdays, holidays and celebrations to come around again. I can't wait to experience it all with a newness, slight innocence, with anticipation. I vow to take 2009, one day, one week, one month at a time, purposefully living each day to its fullest.

"Patience and Fortitude conquer all things." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

According to Middle Eastern Numerology 7 is a number of completion. I loved 2007. I took a few vacations from work, I played with the little girl in me and did some fun things like visited museums and going to movies and such. It was a good year, but oh did I go through some changes too. I experimented, cried, discovered, laughed, and fortunately I learned. I end all years with expectancy for the new, the beginning, the possible. Even though 2007 was good, I was readying myself to wave a hearty good-bye because I am looking forward with anticipation.

December 31st, Monday night and it's 10 minutes to the end of the year. I'm relaxing, sexified at my sweetheart's home. The child is in bed, the White Zinfandel is chillin' in the fridge waiting on me for 12:01 a.m., and lo and behold, an argument erupts.

Watch Night service has been a staple for me since I was about 9 years-old. I've gone almost every year since and I personally feel that it's a wonderful way to end the old year, in church, thanking God for the old, welcoming the new, etc. etc. New Year's day is my relationship anniversary and for our first anniversary, we celebrated in Aruba, which was absolutely beautiful. We didn't celebrate at all last year and I will just leave that alone because that was an issue for me and this year we were supposed to celebrate at church. I really wanted to be with my mate in my church but because of some circumstances we had a change of plans and we chose to celebrate at home.

The argument erupted when I grabbed my cell expecting a call from one of my friends who attended the church service and my mate turns to me and says, "if you don't want to be here, then you should have been at church". If he said it nicely, sweet-like, then that would have been cool but noooooo, it was nasty and filled with venom and while it didn't really erupt into an argument, there was just some unnecessary tension that was unwelcome before the emerging new year. I don't like to argue even though I'm really good at it. I play fair, I give the opportunity to speak, I listen very well, and most of all, I let the issue go when the argument is resolved. However my companion is horrible at arguing and I learned this very early on so while he's huffing and puffing, thumping and stumping, I pray my way out of 2007 and into 2008.

I could carry on with this story all day but I won't. I realized that the comment he made stemmed from the ups and downs and changes that have taken place between us. I'm far from being a relationship expert but I've had my share of relationships to know the stages. There's the 1st stage, Romance and more romance - that's the best part of the relationship!!!! The 2nd stage is the Reality Stage. This is the part of the relationship when you realize that your partner passes gas, chews with an open mouth and snores, among other annoying things. The 3rd stage is the Power Struggle Stage. This is the stage when arguments constantly pop off, mounting issues upon issues. It is in this stage that most couples decide whether they will stick it out or break up and this is the stage that my relationship is currently in.

I wish the drama ended at 12:01 a.m. Instead it was just brewing and I wondered if the relationship messes of 2007 would carry over into 2008 and right there I wanted to end things, pack up and head on back to my abode. It was then that I realized that relationship stages know no time constraints or emerging new years, especially when it comes to emotions. But if only for one night, if we could have reverted back to stage 1...
As the new year began, I grabbed my wine glass, the bottle of Gallo, relaxed on the couch and flipped to the Twilight Zone marathon, which I watched all New Year's day and well into the early morning of January 2nd.

According to Middle Eastern Numerology 8 is a number representing the end of a cycle and the beginning of a new one. I really hope for the sake of my relationship that the mess that took place the last 10 minutes of last year and traveled through January 1st was really the end of a cycle and we can expect all good things ahead. It unnerved me that we began the year with craziness and it was all unnecessary, however I feel that my partner resents me and thinks that I'm selfish and uncaring, which is completely untrue. It will be wonderful when we finally grow beyond this power struggle stage and move on to the Stability Stage... I wonder how many people actually reach this stage or even further to the Acceptance (Real Love) Stage.

A New Me

Aisha Elderwyn
"Every new year people make resolutions to change aspects of themselves they believe are negative. A majority of people revert back to how they were before and feel like failures. This year I challenge you to a new resolution. I challenge you to just be yourself."

I struggle with this last post of 2007 and I struggle with my New Year's resolution. I still make year end/year beginning resolutions even though I resolve to do things differently in my life almost everyday but it's something about the end of the year. I reflect upon the months that have passed and can only wish for better things ahead. For instance, by the time I remove my winter coats in the Spring of '08, it is my plan to have shed around 20 pounds, hopefully more than that. But just in case, I remove my coat and I put on lighter weight jackets and I haven't lost the poundage as I anticipated, I still want to be all right, feel fabulous and exude confidence.

The quote above appealed to me mostly because I've tried ridding myself of bad spending habits, negative people, unhealthy eating, clearing out my physical spaces and usually by March of the new year, everything I'd hoped to put into practice, is not. Some things have become part of my routine. But this year is different for me. I love me and I just want to be a better me.

By challenging myself to be myself, I want to:

Mean what I say and say what I mean
If I say I'm trying to save money so that I can move from the hood, then I can't do a whole lot of overspending and if I really mean to fit into that smaller size, then I have to dust off the stationary bike and ride.

Be assertive and speak up for myself
This is an issue for me because I'm the baby of my family and during my younger years I was taught to be seen but not heard from my older siblings. Now that I'm older, I still fall into my role as the youngest and fall silent when my older siblings are around. However this creates distress for me because I have so much to say and darn it I want to, strike that, I need to be heard!

Acting Out
Action is thinking and speaking in motion. This upcoming year I want to do things I have not done before. I want to take the vacation that I yearn for. And I want to set limits for other people in my life. I can run myself ragged doing everything for everyone else but I need to carve out some personal time just for me.

Clearing Out
I've yet to clear my closet of all of my cheap shoes that hurt my feet but I also want to clear out those areas of my life where I doubt myself, I self-criticize, and self-deprive. I deserve the best, the best shoes, the best foods and my own time and attention.

Fortunately I love all of the people in my life, or now would be the time that you'd be fired-lol. But really, I am surrounded by friends who give of themselves and I can only hope that I offer my best to each and every one of them. And by friends I mean the ones I see and my blogmates. A list wouldn't be a list if I didn't shout y'all out...

The Immediate Fam
Mommy - As I've grown, she has accepted and loved me and still mothers me. I appreciate everything about her.
MB (My Mate) - You made a promise to me in the beginning of our relationship and through years, the ups and the downs, you've kept your word. I love you, I am devoted to you and as we embark on our third year and approaching anniversary (January 1st), you still amaze me. May we continue to get betterer and betterer.
DC - We may not talk everyday but when we do it's always on time and I love ya!
Boom - You're my oldest friend. All we seem to do lately is email and text but that's okay because I so appreciate you.
CLily - My voice of reason and my constant email friend.
CeCe - You started as my cyber sis but since you like to travel from Cali to NY, we've become actual friends too.

The Co-Workers
Miss-Stress - If I didn't have you to be vulnerable around, I would probably sit at my desk and just cry and that would be stress because I can only tear from one eye-lol. You know me better than most because I can't seem to keep my mouth shut around you but you do and I love you for it because if you told my business, I'd beat you down.
JT - When you visit, you always bring compliments and jokes. You know I love to laugh and so do you. You're the best!
Ms. Liryc - "You're like a cool breeze, on a summer's day" - I know you know where those lyrics come from - lol. You're cool peoples and I luv ya!
FP - You're my friend, my coulda been husband if we met a lifetime ago, you insult me, harass me and just plain get on my nerves with your testosterone driven self!
Virgo - There are no words to describe you - oh wait! - you're complicated and simple at the same time, elusive and observant. Most of all, we are two people who truly sow the seeds of friendship.

The Bloggers
Don - Minus the Bars
Skinny Black Girl
DeepNThought
Honey Libra
Opinionated Diva
Queen of My Castle
Muze

Peace, blessings to each of you, be safe, enjoy the celebrations and may each of you "live each day with zest, daily grow and try to be your highest and your best". HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Whatever Feels Good For The Soul

It's nearing the end of the year. Christmas is 6 days away. I simply love this holiday time. I also love cleaning. Purging. Getting rid of the old and getting on with the new.
I usually cut people out of my life. I start with the cell phone and start deleting names. I travel to email and delete messages and people's email addresses. Then if they happen to call me or see me, I let them know that this year they haven't kept their end of the bargain and it's pink slip time. A friend or 3 of mine with perseverance for my immature tactics know how I roll.
But this year, I have not spent a lot of time thinking about my friends or my expectations of them. Instead I've been looking at me, my habits, my craziness and I've been sorting out and tossing out.

I've learned that:

I have no control over outside forces...

• The trains, the weather and especially people. I wouldn't even be comfortable with myself if I could control anything other than me. It takes the joy out of everything rather than feeling the jitters, the anxiety, the surprise.

To be honest with others, you must first be honest with yourself...

• The question that pops in my mind with this statement is "Who do I think I'm foolin'?" It's easy to blend it rather than be honest with yourself and stand alone but there comes a time when you have to be honest with yourself, confident in yourself and throwing out pessimism. When doing so, it becomes easier to relate and tell your own truth.

Buying quality trumps buying quantity

• In my case, I buy some cheap behind shoes. I cry for the days when Parade of Shoes was on each and every corner and when I found out that the parent company Payless was taking over, I knew then that I should not buy. But nooooooooo. So I've subjected my precious toes and emerging callouses to the cheap alternative. The simple and plain of it is, my dang feet hurt! So I'm expecting to have 3 garbage bags full of cheap shoes. The bags aren't all that big...

I have a resolution list emerging in my head and in my journal... But I think I want to focus more on Suze Orman's 8 Qualities of a Wealthy Woman...