Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary to my favorite Office characters

I think everyone hopes to be a Jim and a Pam...but let's be honest with ourselves...

we've all been there

Happy Anniversary guys

resigned to joy

wow i forgot you were here...move twice, forget an old email address and it's like we're strangers or something, but i'm going to work on that. Now that we're back. Now that we're friends again per se.

I’m going to start writing more. Because sometimes I feel like everything I say is negative – or at least my mother always says I’m negative. personally think I have a self deprecating sense of humor…but alas.

I want to focus more on the positive. I want ppl to think of me as fun, and funny, and honest and nice. Honest, but nice. Nice and honest. Rather than blunt…and kind of mean in my honesty. But honest –

I want honest to be remembered and rather appreciated.

Today has been interesting day. I woke up early. I’ve been doing that a lot recently. Waking up about an hour before my alarm is supposed to go off for no reason. Today it was around 2:55. My alarm was set for 4 because Sunny had ice skating. I halfheartedly tried to go back to sleep, but I knew it was too late. If I went back to sleep for an hour I would undoubtedly sleep thru all of my alarms.

So I resigned myself to wakefulness.

i.e. I surfed the web. 

I went onto youtube to watch interviews of ppl I find inspirational or funny. Actors in interviews laughing with friends. Finding funny answers to impossible questions. Those are my favorite. The guys in supernatural do that a lot.

Just have a great time together and the audience just seems to be invited to watch them have fun.

The marvel guys these days do as well.

 I guess the videos are old. I wasn’t really watching them before – I don’t know how I traveled down this wormhole to watching them this much. But watching someone who seems to be a watcher pulled into a friendship with a doer is hilarious. How he tries to stay remote and laughter just seems to burst out of him.

The surprised look on his face when he gets caught up in the hilarity. The moment when he realized that his friend is about to start a joke. As if he’s resigned to the joy. You could fall in love with that. I think I fall in love with that.

That’s my kind of guy. I like to find quiet guys on the edges – who watch and remark (probably judge if I were to examine it more)

and I like to pull them into the joke. I like to watch them fall apart in laughter – knowing that I was the cause of it. Finding what it was that tickles them and when they least expect it pull it out and watch them resign themselves to joy.

But maybe that gets old after a while…or they get tired of that joy. In the end we both end up resigned. The jokes stop being so funny. The effort for laughter less exciting. The humor fading in to the grey of watching. I don’t like the grey. I don’t like the watching….and then I resent it…and they resent it….and we part.

I don’t want to spend my life watching.

I like laughing and playing and kidding with friends. But I also don’t like searching ppl out for friendship. The effort of finding someone of playing the game of convincing them to pursue it…knowing that sometimes I won’t want to be the pursuer…that sometime I’d rather be pursued…and sometimes I don’t want to be caught.

But then I find myself awake at weird hours…watching videos of friends pulling each other into laughter and I smile remembering that feeling…finding joy in it…and I little sadness around the edges.

but that is my new policy. resigned joy. that will eventually become continual joy. see baby steps to positivity. But in the meantime i'll just write here...and maybe just writing all the silly, sad, aggravating, lovely things in every day life my humor will come across with joy. 

poly-not

it's been an interesting week at work....so i've spent a strange amount of the day taking buzzfeed quizzes. I somehow found my way to



because - i mean obviously i must know this information. Being single and all - it must be because i haven't found my most compatible star sign.

It was all going well enough. The usual questions. What would immediately make your life better?

1. a new job
2. moving to a new city 
3. massive wad of wash
4. a new relationship

cash....cash would help

What are you like in a crisis?

1. Cool, calm, and collected
2. Calm only on the outside
3. panicking, but prepared with a back up plan
4. Panicking and unable to do anything

2...with a touch of 3, but that's internal

What quality do you wish you had more of?

1. assertiveness
2. spontaneity
3. empathy
4. generosity

i have way too much 1

i'd say 2. i probably should say 3, but 2

Everything was going as expected - until this question:

those are all of the options?

this honestly is why i'm single. Why would these be the only options. 

1. I stay at home and your work. 
2. You stay at home and I work
3. we work, but we also have additional partners

I think i've only ever been approached by one poly guy. Someone i went to high school with who's married but dating...she's also married and dating. 

and i'm in no way interested in jumping into the web of confusion. 

Not that poly is confused...but i know him...and his part time job situation is not incentive enough for me to find my way around the traps and pitfalls of dating more than one person.

that makes me sound mercenary 

but lets me real, if Jeff Bezos was like "hey - you interested in jumping in a poly relationship with me...?"

but at some point i'm going to come back to these millennial problems in relationships. 

Wanting your cake and eating it to. 

I just don't think I could jump into someone else relationship...but i also know i'm not the type of person who could quit her job to focus entirely on my own either. 

unless it was with Jeff Bezos.

In case anyone was wondering:

Trust Issues

Today is Friday. TGIF.

I was off yesterday. Sunny woke up with a fever. Crying hysterically that her head hurt...and she was coughing...and she was thirsty. My first question was - why didn't you get water before you came to me...?

You know me - fix the problems you can...

So we got water, checked her temp and took the meds we had. I'm out of Tylenol - or was at the time. Our usual issues are allergy related - so we took something to stop the cough and rest first to see what we could do once the sun rose.

I felt horrible that she had to miss school. She was all out last week - for personal reasons (we'll have to come back to this at some point) and this week was her first week in a new class (related to the earlier story....we'll get there) - so it was pretty suspicious for her to be out for the rest of the week - but alas.

We ran up to the grocery store as soon as we (I) got up. Sunny was full on moaning in pain. I honestly can't tell the different between her drama and fact. She plays me though. I'm fully aware that she knows exactly how to freak me out. When she broke her ankle a few years ago - she cried for 30 seconds and then asked to go ice skating. The next morning she walked up and down three flights of stairs totally fine, and then cried to my mother about the pain later. When she's actually in pain she never cries to me. My mom was the one who ended up guilting me to the emergency room. She still hasn't let me live down the fact that her ankle was actually broken...(the doctor did say that it was a small break - and most ppl wouldn't notice...but i still feel bad about it).

When Sunny screams and cries she's usually faking.

She admitted it to me at least once. When she's actually hurting she stays silent - suffering in silence until she can be alone. When she wants attention she turns on the water works.

Cuz she's cute.

and little. 

and cries like Shirley Temple. 

I'm never going to put her in acting classes...

...she'd somehow use it to take over the world.

So anyway - back to the story -  she woke up screaming and crying about being thirsty - and her head hurting. We trekked up to the store and she moaned the whole drive. I ignored it...until i thought maybe i was being a sociopath...then asked directly -

"are you moaning because your head hurts that much - or do you just like the sound of it?"

She stopped...


and thought about it


and calmly responded

"my head does hurt...but i guess not really that bad"

We picked up meds, crackers, soup, and cookies and buckled down to spend the afternoon quarantined in the house. 

Until she started complaining that her back felt stiff. 

Which was random - and obscure - and scary enough to bring up fears of meningitis... and we rushed to the doctors office. 

I rushed. I sped. I called my mother and we freaked out worrying about what this could be. I sped her up the hospital stairs. I barked at the receptionist for time lines and expectations. 

Sunny huddled on the floor claiming the doctor's office chairs were too uncomfortable in her fragile state. 

we finally were called back and i was summarized all of her symptoms to the poor bedraggled nurse, Sunny decided that the sick patient act was getting old - and decided to switch roles. 

Fever suddenly gone. Energy levels high. As i explained that she woke up crying with a head ache she bounced up in down from examination table to the floor. As I explained how her fever kept jumping up and down she did sit up on the table. As i told them my concerns about back pain and headaches she practiced her bridge and cartwheels. 

The nurse eyed me judgingly- probably assuming that I was one of those helicopter parents rather than the Darwanistic-only-the-strong-survive type of mom I actually am...

The nurse leaves... and suddenly - boom - like the curtain closed and new show has begun

long story short - she has a virus. 

Tylenol and rest...

and a lifetime worth of trust issues for me.

...

Bully (noun) use superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone), typically to force him or her to do what one wants.

Racism (noun) the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

So at work today my coworker downplayed racism as bullying. She said 

"bullying happens to everyone. It's just not right."

It came up because i mentioned a story of a friend of mine. He went out to eat with his children and someone called him a "fucking ch*nk"

she said that was bullying.

hence the definitions above.



Now...i'm no expert...not even close. 

but something just doesn't quite fit.




Another guy came in complaining that he got pulled over on the way to work. He didn't have proof of insurance on him. so he got away with a warning 

his complaint.

corworker "dammit...today had to be the day i wore my bob marley shirt." 

coworker 2 "yeah you should have worn a collar...you could have gotten off"




must be nice to live in a bubble

because black lives matter too....

Dear Sunny,

I remember the day I found out I was pregnant. I was terrified. I remember sitting in the bathroom just staring at that little stick, that pink line that literally changed everything that I thought life meant. I remember the first time i heard your heartbeat. The first time you kicked me in the ribs. That moment i realized that my body was sheltering something amazing.

protecting you.

i remember when you were born. the look on your face when the doctor lifted you up to the world. your first smile, your first laugh. your first steps

the first time i realized how little power i had to protect you

i remember the news of the little black boy shot in the street. the video black girl tackled to the ground after a pool party. the non guilty verdict of the police officer who shot a girl sleeping on the couch at your grandmother's house..

and every story i hear i remember that moment...when the doctor lifted you out of me and i realized that i no longer have the ability to protect you...

that in this world. in this country...where you and i live and breathe...i have so little power in saving you from anything.

i remember the first time you scraped your knee. the first time you bit your tongue, the first time you came home asking me why your hear wasn't straight like your friends.

i remember the first time you realized that stranger were staring at you in the street. that women were only petting your hair. that while blonde girls were told how delicate they were you were told how strong you look.

i remember the first time i had to tell you that you were black...and so things were different. you would always be treated different. and that black was beautiful. the curls in your hair were magical. the strength in your bones was majestic. that you were smart and you had to show people how smart you were.

and i remember that first time - when you looked at me with tears in your eyes and asked me

"but, mommy. if i'm a better listener...if i show them i'm smart...can i not be black anymore"

i cried myself to sleep that night...

and the night you begged for straight hair

and when you pushed that girl away for touching your hair

and bit your tongue when someone told you you were chocolate and not vanilla


and the first time i told you that you had to shake it off...and stand up straight and know that you were magic and strong and life wasn't fair...

and held back more tears about how unfair it was...


that my sweet baby...was realizing that i wasn't strong...and i couldn't protect her...



and i'm sorry for that.

for the unfairness. and the fear in the eyes. and the rigidity of my spine. and the different expectations placed on you than everyone else...


all i'm ever trying to do is protect you.

because while other women worry about what college their children will get into. what home they'll eventually buy...

mine if just that you are one of the few that make it that far


success for me...in parenting...in life..


is you

just living it

and i'm sorry that it can't be more....

Just because we're magic doesn't mean we're not real

Now, this award - this is not for me. This is for the real organizers all over the country, the activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do.

It's kind of basic mathematics - the more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize.

Now, this is also in particular for the black women in particular who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you.

Now, what we've been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to deescalate, disarm and not kill white people everyday. So what's going to happen is we are going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours.

Now... I got more y'all - yesterday would have been young Tamir Rice's 14th birthday so I don't want to hear anymore about how far we've come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on 12 year old playing alone in the park in broad daylight, killing him on television and then going home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it's so much better to live in 2012 than it is to live in 1612, or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner. Tell that to Sandra Bland. Tell that to Darrien Hunt.

Now the thing is, though, all of us in here getting money - that alone isn't gonna stop this. Alright, now dedicating our lives, dedicating our lives to getting money just to give it right back for someone's brand on our body when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies, and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies.

There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of. There has been no job we haven't done. There is no tax they haven't levied against us - and we've paid all of them. But freedom is somehow always conditional here. "You're free," they keep telling us. But she would have been alive if she hadn't acted so... free.

Now, freedom is always coming in the hereafter, but you know what, though, the hereafter is a hustle. We want it now.

And let's get a couple things straight, just a little sidenote: the burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. That's not our job, alright; stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression. If you have no interest—if you have no interest in equal rights for black people, then do not make suggestions to those who do. Sit down.

We've been floating this country on credit for centuries, yo, and we're done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil - black gold, ghettoizing and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit. The thing is though... the thing is that just because we're magic doesn't mean we're not real.

Thank you.