The Kindest Eyes

I've been thinking about my nephew lately. He lives in California. I keep seeing his face.  About a year ago, he was here for a visit and during an anniversary party we had an opportunity to sit down and talk with him.  We miss him very much.  

QueenMaker said, “Will has the most kindest eyes I have ever seen.  Did you notice when he’s speaking to people, his eyes are always gentle and full of kindness.  What a great young man.”

To my nephew:

When a good soul comes along

It makes the world brighter

He’s good nature, helpful, and full of love

The glass is always full, his smile always shining

When he talks, he talks about family

The bonds of joy, the ties between us

He gathers us to him, his eyes singing his love

He wants and needs to know what we know

We watch him, his manner infectious

We smile because he smiles

We laugh because he laughs

We love because he loves so much

And when he listens, he listens with his whole being

With the most gentle eyes ever expressed

With the fullest of kindness that reaches deep

And when you speak and look into his eyes, 

your beings meet, talking soul to soul. 

Come visit us soon.  

RTT: Something's Got To Go

It's Random Tuesday Thoughts once again.   So in the spirit of randomness, I've written down the first things that popped into my head.

Question and Answer Period:

I’ve always wanted to hear a president say FU.  I believe I’m finally hearing it said, but in the nicest way possible.  The recent Q & A session between the President and the Re-pube-licks was a beautiful thing to hear.  I enjoyed it immensely.

There’s a metronome ticking in my head.  I think it’s the march of time.

Under-wire bras suck. I keep thinking I’m having a heart attack.

Biting my nails big time again.  That is not a good sign.

Bought a swifter kit.  Used it once.  Dust taking over.  Cough. Cough.

Of all my K2 sized flaws, my minimal housekeeping is the last guilt I must conquer.  I must figure out how not to feel so guilty about it.  Cough, hack, hack.

Thinking about my life roles a lot lately. Daughter, daughter in law, sister, aunt, teacher, role model, mother, wife, companion, lover, friend, queen, business owner, instructor, marketer, financier, manager, char woman, confidant, therapist, researcher, individual, and creator.  How do I satisfy so many facets of myself?  How do I satisfy the responsibility of each of those roles that I feel must be met?  

I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. So that is when distracting minutia takes place to help quell the guilty feelings, to keep me looking industrious and busy, and thus temper the demand of those roles. The benefactors will learn to say, “Well, she is so busy. Poor thing. How does she manage to do it all?”

That’s right. I can’t do everything. 

Housekeeping?  Sorry, you’ve been dropped off the list of top priorities again.  Hang in there kid.  You will always be on my mind, so don’t you worry.  We’ll pick things up again real soon. 

You may want to continue picking things up. I suggest you visit Keely at UnMom and pick through other Random Tuesday Thoughts.

Pet Peeves - Not My Cup of Tea

Pet Peeves – A new Spin Cycle.  Okay mine might be a little preachy.  But isn't that what pet peeves are all about.  

One of my pet peeves is people with pet peeves.  They make life so negative some times. They start by saying things like, 

“I hate it when…”  or  “It drives me crazy when…”   or   “I can’t stand it when…”

When I hear these words I feel like I’m being drawn into their minor hate, or craziness, or intolerance.  I can feel a migraine coming on right now just writing those words.

Pet peeve is defined as a source of annoyance or irritation. Ouch, your negative aura just increased by 2 degrees. I’ll stand over here.

Their psyche apparently snaps to attention when they meet their pet peeve, or let’s admit, any peeve at all.  A pet peeve is a drama in the miniature, one that resides in a room of a beautifully furnished peeve dollhouse in one’s head.

They correct you constantly whenever possible.  Seemingly normal people transform, morphing into your parents, your teachers, your bitchy girlfriends, your blaming boyfriend, or your nosy neighbors.  Some stay silent but make a small judgment call on your character, intelligence, or obvious inferiority.

Even if they understand exactly what you are trying to say, they will stop you in mid-sentence to correct your grammar, your metaphor, even your thought process.  And you know how much I love that.  My husband belongs to the Grammar Police Association (GPA). I think he’s a General now within this esteemed organization. 

I don’t mind that people have pet peeves as long as they're, there, their tirades are not directed at me.   If something really bugs them that much, I guess they are entitled to voice their extreme displeasure.  I have relatives that are light years ahead of the rest of us in the scope of pet peeve annoyances and irritations. I barely can be around them. I can only soothe them, bring some perspective, and offer alternatives views to their complaining, whining, and eternal accounts of despair and irritation. 

My happy brain cells are finite and must be retained at all costs.  I need to worry about peeves that are worthy of my time and effort. I’ve dropped the peeves at the low end of the scale. I can’t afford to let my head think in terms of what drives it crazy. I need to think of things that give me solace. 

But a pet peeve is nothing, nothing compared to what should really be bothering them. 


Maybe that’s it!  A pet peeve may be part of the every day distracting minutia that they can focus on, to avoid the things that go deeper beyond mere irritation or annoyance, a safety valve if you will.  Gee, I'm all for that.  

I guess we need pet peeves. I've changed my position. Carry on. 

So carry on to Sprite's Keeper to read more about some really great pet peeves.

My Opinions - Worthy or Worthless

Well the assignment this week on the Spin Cycle is opinions.  Whoa!  I am very opinionated, but usually I keep my opinions within these four walls.  But if you get me going, I will give my uninformed, less than stellar and sometimes incoherent opinions to whomever wants to hear.   I in return will courteously listen to others offering an opinion all the while thinking, "But you didn't acknowledge my point."

Any-who, here goes.

When did it happen?  It used to be that saving money was suppose to be a good thing.  They were chastising us for not saving enough less than a decade ago. Or was that just a quaint 20^th century notion?  We weren’t saving for our kids’ college funds, or for a rainy day and definitely not enough for our retirement. 

When did it happen? It used to be that we knew how much house we could afford?  We knew that a car should not cost as much as a house, or half as much as a house, or a third as much as a house.

When did it happen?  We used to have patience, saving for the new couch, pinching pennies to buy the new dress. We were willing to wait making our purchases special occasions.

When did it happen, that credit became our lifeline? We used to know that credit should not cost as much as a house, or half as much, or even a fifth of a house, or even a ... 

When did it happen? It used to be that we knew not to use our house as a commodity.  We turned our dream of owning a home into a scheme for making quick money. We used to protect our homestead instead of draining it. When you turn life’s necessities into commodities, you’re asking for trouble.

My credit card company just sent me a letter telling me that they were lowering my credit line.  At first I was angry.  Because the way credit is working these days, I know that their action would lower my credit score. Imagine, a non-entity affecting your worth.  Bastards!

The letter said, since I use so little of the credit available to me, that obviously I didn’t really need that high of a limit.  I realized that they were correct.  It meant that they were either punishing me for not getting myself into trouble, or that they were actually pulling it back to where it should have been all along.  All I could think was screw them. 

Slowly throughout the years, the worth of brick and mortar industries have been reduced and transformed to judging their worth based on paper only and the betting and odds given on the worth or health of that paper.  Since we are running out of these types of commodities, there is a need to seek other avenues of profit and worth.

Real estate, at first an unlikely area for speculation, has now been ravished and decimated much like locust descending upon the plain. My sister lost her home and my niece is about to walk away from hers. She can’t get the bank to work with them.  I can see why people abandon their loans, because the industry abandoned their customers long ago.

Really people, bundling mortgages or portion of mortgages and selling them as paper and speculating on them was irresponsible, open to all kinds of illicit activities and stupid, on any plane of existence.

The only other big industry left for speculation, that I can see, is health care. Insurance companies already do this when they try to predict, speculate and lay odds on how long we will live or whether there will ever be a need for a payout.  What we do next regarding health care can be a big step forward for society or end up like real estate, laying in waste, boarded up, and people experiencing the same and very real abandonment issues.

What’s next?   Us.  We are turning into the commodity that everyone wants to bundle.  Our habits are studied extensively. The technology is here to help.  Advertisers, politicians, industries hire ethicists, psychologists, behaviorists to figure out what people will do next, to help predict and then to speculate and bet on the odds. I hope that they will always underestimate us.

I feel like I’m turning into paper.  I’m not kidding myself that it hasn’t been happening for a long time. I won’t need to ask, “When did it happen?”  I know.   I hope that when that time comes I can just say, “Screw them!” and walk away.

Now onto Sprite's Keeper to get more opinions that you can sink your teeth into. Yes they are that meaty.

Papi and Boyfriends - The Early Years

I was chatting with my sister on the phone and she reminded me about the time Papi went after a boy that was bothering her.  It makes a young girl feel safe when her daddy is willing to be her knight in shining armor and save her from the advances of some unseemly suitor.  Then again...

Here is a short history of my dad’s interaction with his four teenaged daughters’ boyfriends, the early years.

Chased boy with a crowbar, a guy bothering Youngest Sister.

Chased boyfriend P with butcher knife, boyfriend arguing vehemently with Sister After Me.

Chased rival boyfriends P and W, fighting over Sister After Me.  Stupid guy, W pulls small knife, Papi pulls much bigger butcher knife, chases both guys away.

Frightens future suitor of Middle Sister while wielding a baseball bat in the air.

Finds oldest daughter making out with boyfriend on couch.  Boyfriend suddenly disappears, flying through the air, landing on butt about fifteen feet away.  Daughter looks up to see very angry father, very frightened boyfriend, and Youngest Sister (could have warned me that Papi was home from work, but chose not to, Punk!) and friend coming in to watch the fun, laughing their arses off.  Boy ordered from house. Boy running as fast as possible.

My dad, the Dark Knight, fiery eyes, with his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth, wielding tools of mass destruction – priceless.

Coloring Hair May Cause Childhood Injuries

Memories of Childhood, always good blog fodder.

Principal Lord, what a man.  He was great guy and a gorgeous one at that.  He had presence and charisma that even the youngest children at our school would take notice of it.  And his name, can you believe it?  Just saying it makes me think of him with a dreamy smile and real affection. Principal Lord.

The parking blocks in the teacher’s lot lined up nicely and the kids would walk and hop on them on our way into the building.  I was doing just that when I slipped on a wet block and put a gash in my knee that would not stop bleeding.  Being the wimp that I was, I cried uncontrollably.

Principal Lord drove me home. How cool! We found Sister After Me and soon we were in front of our house.  He carried me to the door (Sweet!) and when the door opened, I think we both gasped.  Mami was wearing a tattered housecoat, had plastic gloves on and her hair was covered with goop.  What was that stuff!

She grabbed her head in horror when she saw Principal Lord and frantically looked around desperate for something to cover up. Her expression quickly changed from extreme embarrassment to concern and she forgot her head.  Soon the red dye was running down her face and dripping on the floor.  Who knows what Principal Lord was thinking?

The following year someone pushed me down.  My face hit the gravel and a gash opened up over my eye that later required nine stitches.  Blood poured down my face getting into my eyes and although I was the biggest wuss ever, I felt perfectly justified in screaming my head off.  Again the gallant Principal Lord came to my rescue and drove me home.  With blood dripping down my face, he swooped me up and carried me to the door. My mother seeing a man carrying one of her children swung open the door wearing once again, big plastic gloves and black goop in her hair.  What are the odds!

A year later, Sister After Me broke her ankle and you guessed it, Principal Lord took her home and carried her to the door. Yes you can guess the rest. Mami opens the door with plastic gloves and was coloring her hair. My poor embarrassed mother. Everyone said she was a beautiful woman, looking a bit like Elizabeth Taylor, but Mr. Lord would never know it.

The three times Principal Lord came to our home. Three times he comes carrying injured children. Three times he finds a woman that is apparently obsessed with her hair color. Did we have radar and know just when and how to embarrass our mother in front of the most gorgeous man on the planet?

Is there a cosmic connection that whenever Mami colors her hair, one of her children incurs an injury? A twist on the old chant that children sing when walking along, “Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back.”

“Color your hair red and a child will break his head.” Really what are the odds?

RTT: Challenge, Life's Motivator

I am so excited.  Project Runway starts on Thursday.  This is the only "reality" program I will watch.  Why?  Because I get to watch super talented people, displaying their versions of art in clothing form down a runway.  I am not a fashionista, but I do love sewing.  I love construction.  I love tailoring.  I love the drape.   I love artisans.  I love to watch the talented express themselves. They are challenged and they always step up to produce some great pieces.

I wish I could challenge Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  to research my family tree.  In an upcoming episode on PBS, he is tracking down the ancestry of an interesting group of people, Meryl Streep, Stephen Colbert, Yo Yo Ma, Queen Noor, among others.

Remember Gates? He's the guy that President Obama invited to the White House to have a conciliatory beer with the police officer that offended him.

I've tried to trace our family tree, but I found it to be a monumental task.  My major problem stems from the way names are recorded with both mother and father's name as part of the last name.  In some cases, it was normal practice to have the lineage be carried by the mother, which adds to the confusion.  I would have to travel to the island to find birth records in churches, or family bibles.  Then to trace roots beyond the island would mean to travel to Spain.  From what I understand they kept excellent records when they conquered the Caribbean, but the records are in Spain.  I know some of my descendants are Taino indians that were enslaved by the Spanish.  My last name means Bethlehem in Spanish, which means we took the last name of the slave owner.  My mother's ancestry comes directly from Spain.  How about it Mr. Gates? Care to take up the challenge?  Call me.

Speaking of challenge, I have been challenging myself to get stronger and healthier, or at least, not to punish my body.  I took a survey on a women's health website about my habits. It tallied my answers and then gave me the results. It basically said, "You are very hard on your body."  I sort of knew that in the back of my mind, but now it was there spelled out, something I had to confront. Why was I punishing my body by depriving it of what it needed most?

My challenge is to be good to my body. It's not about weight loss, though I suspect that kindness to my body will help in that endeavor.

• Hydrate it. 
• Feed it on regular intervals stretching it out to four or five small meals a day. 
• Allow it to sleep. 
• Find time to go to the bathroom because apparently you are training your body not to expel and it will forget how to do it.  Really?   Use or lose it people.  
• Breathe deeply twice a day. 
• Put my feet up. 
• And think positively.  Because like Stuart Smiley on Saturday Night Live, "I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me." 

No go over to Keely, because there are a lot of doggone, good and smart people over there.