...and the winner is...

*end drum roll now*

ME!

i return to the land of the day-walkers (aka... the gainfully employed) on Monday, October 4th! WOO!

Today...

*cue the Ice Cube track*

...is a good day. Methinks my days of leisure are over...

*begin drum roll*

Now hitting hour #delirium...

This evening I wrote the draft of a letter my husband & I are composing to send to the Chancellor of NYC's DOE. While the letter reared up all of the ugly feelings I (still) have about my kid's 5th grade teacher & his principal, it also reminded me how much I (still) love writing.

I miss you words... I think you miss me too. I promise we'll spend more time together.

Soon.  soon.

Buy these books too!!!

This author is phenomenal in his Nuyorican / Lower East Side literary escapades.

The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow Into The Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle

 

No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again; A Symphonic Novel

Buy This Book!!!

Daughters of the Stone: A Novel

Please buy this book... It's AMAZING!!!

I can not recommend it strongly enough

Have you ever...

...FELT a long-term foul mood coming on. Woo... it's coming & I don't want to stop it.
It's gonna be a doozy!

=(

Oh Bubbie...

Touch me... Touch me...

Thursday, April 29, 2010 is NYC's Annual Poem In Your Pocket Day.

The poem I will be carrying is the last in the 33 Collection in Julia Alvarez's book Homecoming.

Sometimes the words are so close I am
more who I am when I'm down on paper
than anywhere else as if my life were
practising for the real me I become
unbuttoned from the anecdotal and
unnecessary and undressed down
to the figure of the poem, line by line,
the real text a child could understand.
Why do I get confused living it through?
Those of you lost and yearning to be free,
who hear these words, take heart from me.
I once was in as many drafts as you.
But briefly, essentially, here I am.
Who touches this poem touches a woman.

You get what you pay for.

My neighbor & his girlfriend are fighting in the hallway again.
Well, she's screaming & he's calmly insulting her with gems like this:

"You're just a whore with pretty shoes."

Hey... as my dear friend Angela said, "At least she got a compliment out of it."

The thing is...

There is a story getting a lot of attention this rainy Monday, about a homeless man who was left to bleed to death on the street after assisting a woman being attacked. In the media, the focus has been on the passers-by (as shown on video-tape) who seem to occasionally gawk, but continue on their ways. Everyone is hollering about the lack of humanity. I agree, there is definitely a lack of humanity in someone being allowed to die in such a manner.
BUT... Why didn't the woman being attacked call the police after reaching safety? Her life was saved; she could have repaid the favor. The guy who shook and shifted the homeless man to what was wrong ABSOLUTELY should have called the police...

Living in NYC, I have come across homeless people lying in the street all of my life. Seeing one sprawled across a sidewalk is not always call for alarm. The majority of the time, I also look & continue on my way. Unless I saw a homeless person bleeding, or in obvious distress, I wouldn't think twice about anything being wrong. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

With that said, I would like to tell some of my fellow NYers to get off of their hypocritical, sanctimonious high horses. While there were some individuals in the immediate situation who knew better & should have done something... most of the rest of us would not have even known something was wrong.

I'm ashamed...

...to say that I was not familiar with Dr. Dorothy Height's activism efforts before her death today. The struggle for civil rights has lost a great voice. RIP Dr. Height

What happened to mellow & munchies?

My neighbor smokes a TREMENDOUS amount of weed a day. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I mean this guy has admitted to spending about $500 a week… A WEEK… on weed. He spends more money on marijuana in one month than what I pay for all of my bills + maintenance fee combined!

Let’s not get into the fact that my son & I are allergic to something in marijuana. We both get itchy, scratchy throats & excruciating headaches… I don’t know what or why that is, but it is.

But anyway - back to the point of the story… my understanding is that smoking weed is supposed to mellow you out. My neighbor has the absolute opposite reaction.

Case in point: tonight the wrath was unleashed upon a ladyfriend. At least I hope it was a ladyfriend & not his daughter. If it was indeed his daughter then Alec Baldwin is officially off the hook for calling his daughter a pig. But I digress…

Apparently Neighbor paid for said ladyfriend’s vacation. Neighbor thought she was going with friends… but she went with one friend. One male friend. One male friend she claims is gay & Neighbor vehemently & loudly expressed his disbelief of (about?).

He also (vehemently & louder still) expressed how he was going to find out if that one male friend was gay or not. He told her that the next time he saw that dude, he was going to grab him by the hair & fuck him in the ass. Oh! If the guy liked it, then Neighbor would know he was gay. But if NOT... then Neighbor would know that ladyfriend was a liar.

I'm thinking... there has GOT TO BE a better way to find out than the way he was yelling about. There must be. But I'm also thinking... if he smokes so much weed, shouldn't he be more worried about getting his hands on some mallomars & doritos?

My yarn game is serious...

This is not my yarn...
But this is pretty much what my yarn looked like this evening when it was spilled all over the floor... except it was not as beautifully color-coordinated and/or arranged.

I love yarn. Alas... husband is coming home in a few days & I had to put the yarn away in order to pretend that there is some semblance of housekeeping going on while he's away basking on a beach working and I'm stuck at home.

next up... dishes. although to be fair, there aren't really any dishes because i never cook. ha.

All I know is...

Today is tax day & I got a juicy refund. You’re welcome government, for the interest-free loan I gave you. I’d like to give you a bigger loan this year, but that would require me to have a ready, steady job paycheck. Mm-kay? A husband with a steady paycheck would be nice too. I have already worked out the husband part, so let’s get cracking on his paycheck, shall we? Well, really… can he?

I also know that 24 hours ago I discovered my 10 year old son had a secret email address with which he used to open a secret twitter account. That he is still alive & not walking around with my foot hanging out of his ass is a miracle I attribute to Papa Dios. One of his followers was a dude from Leidersbach whose bio reads: “faithfully, honestly, realistically, ambitiously, quietly, tolerant, carefully, at home, friendly, fond of children, romantically” Ummmmm… the fact that I’d seen the Law & Order: SVU episode of Rosie Perez vs. Pedophiles-R-Us earlier that evening was not helpful in containing my fury last night.

Tonight I'm gonna need a double dose of ambien.

...I never knew love like this before....

From the archive of my super-private journal that exists elsewhere in the webiverse:

the secret: Apr. 14th, 2005 at 12:16 PM

last night E asked me to marry him. holy shit. HAAAAAAHAHAHAAAHAHAAHAAAAAHAHA!

*deep breath*

and i said Yes. oh yes indeedy i did! holy shit!

um, so yeah - we're going to get married this summer. seriously low key, so low there's no key. LMAO. no rings yet either. no date set, no huge plans. maybe vegas, maybe brooklyn bridge, maybe elope... i dunno.

summer. that gives me time to get another job & get rid of this roommate & get the boy back home before i tell him "oh by the way - i'm married" (no - not going to do it that way... I'm going to talk to him tonite & E wants to take us out on a date this weekend, but i may push that to next weekend in order to let the boy's shock kinda smooth over).

okay what am i doing? did i agree to get married based purely on love & nothing else? holy shit.

anyway it's a secret because i think we both kinda want to hold onto this for a lil while before sharing this w/ our circles of friends & because neither one of us want a whole hullabaloo & because we're both devious deviants about things like this. LoL... HAHAHAHAAHAAAAA

oh my God. I'm going to be E's wife. holy shit.

i would still do it all again tomorrow. i volunteer.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Beautiful day in NYC today...

my good mood surprised even me when i was surprised by a stranger who approached me to compliment me on my singing. He said I sounded like a young celia cruz. i'll take it... much better than telling me i looked like a young celia cruz. *eyebrow raised*

nice to know my years of smoking haven't completely obliterated my vocal skills. i miss singing... SANGIN. part of my muchiness lost.

back @ the playground. letting the boy be a boy w/ his playmates. getting that playground stress relief. i'm just glad to see him play w/ other kids .

ugh... but its getting cold. & i'm having deja vu.

Go Ask Alice...

Leave it to Johnny Depp, Tim Burton & Lewis Carroll to remind me...

"You've lost your much-ness... You used to be much-ier."

Over the past 3 months or so, I've been rediscovering my much-ness. I've missed it. Without it, I'm a lesser person.. .someone I can't bear to be around... someone who shares space with company I consider abominable. But as of late, that layer of skin has finally become unbearably uncomfortable. So, I've started to shed... and I'm excitedly looking forward to reclaiming more of my much-iness.

Feelings will get hurt...

Jill Scott Is The Truth

Nobody Cares After You Have The Baby

Having been a single mom for the first 5 years, I don't think there is anything crazy, stupid or selfish about what Jill Scott is saying.

A LOT of mothers feel that way sometimes... it is ridiculously hard to lose the self-identity you have spent years & tears developing just to become "somebody's mother" overnight.

Being a mother is just ONE aspect of a person... it doesn't have to be the whole kit & kaboodle... however society would have us believe that everything about a woman (her identity, her interests, her personality, etc.) completely disappear the minute a child drops out of her bloody cooter.

*squee*

i've gotten a brand new follower on twitter & it's making me positively giddy!

Dance Until The Morning Light...

I just want to release & be released.

Tonight, Tonight

I wanted to paint... or crochet.

I separated laundry instead.

Yarn Wonderful Yarn

I'll be updating my yarn stash this week & weekend, which means I'll be working on some new projects soon. Some necklaces... a special order lapghan... cookies & cupcakes... can't wait!

Happy New Year!