Childless and Loving It

While I'm not childless, I do support those who choose to be. Why? Better question, why not? For those who have made a conscious decision not to bring children into the world is not only their right, but shows they have nothing to prove to others by conforming to the standards and opinions of others.

In a recent Newsweek article I read in detail about childless couples and adults. I applauded their decisions for being mature enough to know what is acceptable for them and thier lives. As I said, I'm not childless, but had I not chosen to become a parent, I don't think I would have had anything to prove by becoming one. If someone knows they're not financially, emotionally, socially, or otherwise able to raise and be responsible for a child, why have one? The religious sector would obviously disagree with this kind of thinking because it's contrary to Biblical (or other religious manifests) teachings. Yes, the world must go on and races of people preserved, but at what expense? Why sit in judgement of the childless and not judge those who have multiple children; some of which they can not take care of, locate the father, or any number of other absurdities.

With the alarming rate of inflation, economic cutbacks, poor healthcare, (the list is long), why not reduce the birthrate? I know a guy who has known since his mid 20s that he didn't want children and said that he would have a vasectomy to ensure he didn't "accidentally" get a woman pregnant. Is he selfish or sensible? Rhetorical really seeing as there will be so many that argue his stand. The same question can be applied to women and yeild the same outlook. Personally, I think neither has a thing to prove. Having a child doesn't define you as a man or woman. Having a child doesn't give you a one up on someone else, nor does it make or break you. It's a personal choice that shouldn't have to be explained.

Having an only child resorts said parent to unlimited barrages into his/her reasoning, which too is equally insulting and offensive. Why does that person even have to justify that? They don't! There is no rule that says one has to become a parent, but there should be a rule that says, if you do, you better know how to take care of it.

I spoken my peace!

Why Wednesday?

The following is a list of things that have me asking why today? Feel free to add your own in your comments:

Why do people buy ice cream when there is a threat of a power outage? (saw that as a result of people preparing for the hurricane)

Why do people not return a smile or greeting when one is extended to them?

Why is it so easy to say something negative than to give a compliment?

Why does bad songs get so much air play? (London Bridge by Fergie comes to mind)

Why does Whoopie Goldberg have a morning radio show and she doesn't have the voice for it?

Why do people who aren't reciprocal in maintaining contact call and say, "What's up stranger?"

Why do people spend so much money on comestic surgery to look worse than they did before the surgery? (Joan Rivers, Kenny Rogers, & Mickey Rouke come to mind)

Why is Reggie Bush so damn fine? (I know shit about football, but he might change my mind)

Why is so much money spent on zoos and so little is spent making affordable housing for humans?

Why do people insist on building homes on beachfronts and other waters ways knowing it will get ruined in a bad storm or hurricane?

Why is Love treated like a four letter word?

And they should live why?

I've already posted my views on abortion and why some women are skeptical about giving their babies up for adoptio, so there's no need to rehash. However, this morning, I read about a couple; a FOSTER (people who ELECT to parent while someone else can't) couple who were recently charged in the murder of a toddler. Foster Parents Charged in Toddler Death. And that further promotes some of my personal reasons of why I couldn't place a child for adoption; well, unless it was within my own family.

Can someone please explain to me why these people should not be put to death? I'm sorry there is no, and I repeat no infinitum, excuse for what they did. To add insult to injury, the mentally challenged boy's life was spared by him being put into the child care system only to have it taken by some heinous, ill-willed, and sadistic bastards to be killed. They not only left him locked in a closet for two days while they went to, get this; a FAMILY reunion. These )#%*#%* morons know jack shit about family.

Upon their return to find the boy dead, the father (used EXTREMELY loosely) burned the body to cover the death. That is beyond comprehension to me and what they did warrants the immediate issuance of their own death certificates. Man, I'm so glad that I declared that if asked to perform jury duty, cases on violence toward children and sexual assault on women were cases I couldn't remain unbiased on. I'll tell you what, let me be on that jury panel and I'm voting to kill the mutha effas. Forget being given life of being put on death row where countless tax payers dollars are being used to prolong their miserable existences. Let's just rid ourselves of being reminded of them and just kill them. It's not like their lives have any great importance for what they did.

My blood boils to volcanic temperatures when I hear about cases like this especially when there are so many people who want children or would be willing to help children by fostering them and someone takes a child in and then kills him. AARRGGHH! I can't take this shit. I'm so furious right now that it makes me want to go out and visit children in group homes and let them know that while I can't personally take care of them, I'll pray for their safe growth and for a loving person to take them in.

To calm myself down, I'll think of a woman I've worked with who has taken in 15+ foster children into her home and loved them like her own regardless of race or gender. She and her husband have even adopted some of them. And the kindness didn't stop there. Two of the children she fostered and later adopted returned the favor by becoming adoptive and foster parents too.

I had to end on a positive note or I'd be in tears.

Monday madness!!

After a rather relaxing and low key weekend, I figured I'd ride into Monday morning without incident and feel strained to find something to talk about. Well, lo and behold, someone managed to perform a skit from the Dumb Ass Duck Shit Chronicles and send me into a tail spin. Story goes as follows...

I stopped at the local WaWa to grab a cup of coffee (they have great coffee) before I got to work. I'm standing at the coffee bar creating an exotic mix of various coffees, when two apparently acquainted men strike up a conversation.

Man 1: Hey dude! How was your weekend?

Man 2: It was great. A little risky, but man was it great. (He gave a cryptic laugh and grinned like the proverbial Cheshire cat) I fucked my girlfriends mom.

Man 1: Dude? For real dude?! You fucked Karen's mom? How the hell did that happen?

Man 2: I went to get Karen and she wasn't home. Her mom was in her robe when she answered the door. She said she thought I was her boyfriend. She told me to wait in the living room and that Karen had called to say she had to work a couple extra hours and couldn't call me as well as her mom cause they were really busy.

I looked at Man 1 with a thoroughly contemptuous look and walked away get a bottle of water and Man 1 and Man 2 started talking again. One would think they'd be a little quieter, but instead they became loud again. I guess they thought I couldn't hear them anymore. This is what I heard next...

Man 2: Karen's mom is fucking hot dude. I thinks she's always wanted me. (It was obvious Man 2 was really feeling his testosterone)

Man 1: How'd you know man? Talk quick cause I gotta run and don't wanna be late.

They get into a two man huddle I swear no more than two feet behind me as they look for thier respective energy drinks. I guess Man 2 was still feeling himself and Man 1 wanted in on the deal (lol). Anyhoo,

Man 2: So Sheryl, (Karen's mom) comes back down, still in her robe, but now it's kinda open. She's got long legs and nice tits. Not bad for a 45 year old man. (Man 1 chuckles) She starts talking all this shit about not feeling sexy and wanting to do something to make her feel young again.

Man 1: A real MILF huh? (he laughs)

Man 2: Yeah, she's even hotter than Stifler's mom dude. Her tits were juicy. I never thought I'd like 'em a big saggy, but dude they were yummy.

(I laugh at his juvenile description.)

Man 1: Then what?

Man 2: So, she keeps going on and on and then she sits next to me and starts asking me if I think she's attractive and sexy and shit like that. Of course I say yeah, cause she is and she's got her legs dangling outta her robe. I started to get this killer hard on.

Man 1: Dude spill it, I'm gonna be late.

(we're all now heading toward the door)

Man 2: Well, she keeps going on and on, then starts in on her boyrfriend being selfish in bed, then outta nowhere she starts kissing me.

(Man 1's eyes widened and I'm sitting in my SUV faking like I'm on the phone; windows down just so I can keep listening.)

Man 2: So, I start kissing her again and kept telling her how hot and sexy she is. Then she stops me and says we can't. Dude! I've got this killer hard on and she wants to stop. Says it's wrong and she can't do that to her daughter.

Man 1: Then what? You said you fucked her, so I guess she changed her mind?

Man 2: Yeah, I told her that I'd never tell Karen and that it was our little secret. Then she gave me a blow job that almost made me nut in her mouth. Then we fucked right there on the couch. I swear, older women are hot man. Kutcher knew what he was doing when he got with Demi Moore.

At that point, I had to leave. I was completely and utterly flabbergasted and distugested that this woman seduced her daughter's boyfriend. What kind of mother does that? The kid couldn't have been more than 20, but he was old enough to know better and she was certainly old enough to know you don't screw your daughter's man. I wouldn't even date someone a friend dated much less wanna screw my daughter's boyfriend. EWW!

We live in a strange and depraved world people. Are women that hard up for attention that they'd screw their daughter's boyfriend? It's pretty sad that her self-esteem was apparently that low to even want to do something like that. I'm still stuck on the fact that she screwed her daugher's bf! That's just nasty any which way you slice it. There are plenty of men in her age bracket and higher that she could have screwed. This is a shameless and morally corrupt woman and her behavior is dispicable.

Is it just me or was this woman wrong in any number of ways?

Stop the presses...Really!

It's with much skepticism that I listen to or watch the news and/or read newspapers. It's funny how freedom of speech is allowed for the press (though usually embellished), but not for your everyday Joe/Jane. We know that models, most actors/actresses; hell many people in photos don't really look that good, so how do we know that what we see in photos presented by the press is really true? How many of us even pay enough attention to what we see because we believe so much of what is spoon fed to us? I'm not typically one for political debates because it causes more harm than good; just as I'm not one to believe a lot of what I see because I know how easy it is to manipulate things.

Well, a friend sent me a link yesterday regarding the press and some pictures they published. On sight some of the pix are hard to discern to find the embellishment, but there are some that are easy to question. Here's the link and take a look for yourself. PhotoFraud. Once you've seen and heard the commentary, maybe then many of us will take things a little more seriously, question more, and stop allowing ourselves to be spoon fed by the mass media and the government as to who's doing what to whom.

Who's body anyway?

I read another blog of a young woman who is in favor of a woman's right to chose and it inspired this blog.

Between the legislative government, some doctors, some pharmacists, and the countless people who think they have the right to make dictations on other peoples rights, abortion is arguably one of the most sensitive topics regarding women's rights. I'm not going to say that some women haven't used abortion as a means for birth control, but I will go as far as to say that the majority do not. Terminating a pregnancy can not possibly be the easiest thing for a woman to do. I doubt she says (after confirming her pregnancy), "oh it's no biggie, I'll just round up $300+ and go get an abortion." Let's be for real here.

The average woman caught in this situation will have to do a lot of soul searching and make on hell of a decision as to what she should do. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, should force a woman to keep a pregnancy that she doesn't want; especially rape victims. It's bad enough someone violated her body and then she would be further violated and persecuted by having the baby and putting it up for adoption or keep it. That child too will suffer immeasurably. Those who blow up clinics and such to protect the unborn are all hypocrites. In the process of trying to preserve a life, they're killing innocent people. How does that even make sense?! If they stop playing the semantics game, murder is murder. Justify that. Naturally, I'm just one woman with an opinion, but I AM A WOMAN, and that gives me grounds enough to be more than angry with those who try to deny me or any other woman whatever reproductive or non-reproductive rights that we choose. Poll your average woman who'd submit to a blind study that has terminated a pregnancy and I'll bet she'll tell you that it wasn't an easy decsion to make. She'll probably tell you that it wasn't something she decided to up and do without consideration. Yes, there's adoption, but that in itself can create another set of problems, hurt, and regret.

It's a woman's body and her choice to decide what to do with it. Again, I'm not condoning abortion as a means of birth control, but I support any womans decision to have one. I, like many other women I've spoken with, are sick and tired of being told what we can/can't do or should/shouldn't do with our bodies. Especially when a man can go out and get an Rx for his penile dysfunction and/or sexual maladies, but a woman can't get an Rx for birth control. Hell, in some states a woman (or man) needs spousal content to have a tubal ligation or vasectomy. What kind of BS is that? So, a man or woman can go around pro-creating without regard for the other person or the child involved, but they need consent to prevent it? That's some ass backwards thinking if you ask me. I think any man or woman who has never had a child; even ones who have, and choose to no longer have that option, should be commended for that. Why bring a child into the world that is unplanned, unwanted, and could not be properly taken care of emotionally or financially.

As you can tell, this is a debate that irks me to no end. There are a lot of women (and some men) who fought and died for a woman to have reproductive rights and I think their memory and hard work has been ignored because some politician; some overzealous religious fundamentalist; or some over opinionated gloat; thinks that a woman can't or shouldn't be able to control her body and/or her choices. Agreed, there are instances where parental notification should be maintained, but for the most part, I maintain my stand that it's a woman's body and it's her place to chose what she wants to do with it.

I end my tirade now before I spend the rest of the day ranting on this topic.

23 Days

For those who read my post Horoscopes, you'll be familiar with what I'm talking about. For those who haven't, you should go back and read it. Nuff said; moving on.

So, in 23 days I'll embark on my new year. I won't disclose exactly how old I'll be, but I'm tipping the high end of my 30's. No, I'm certainly not ashamed of how old I am; in fact, I'm rather pleased and more so pleased that I don't look it. (bows and claps to my family for passing on such good DNA). Okay, enough accolades!

Since my post (20 days ago), I've done a lot of housekeeping and it looks like I'm going to have a lot of space in my life come September 13th. The literal closets are already a lot cleaner and clearer than before and the metaphoric ones are becoming more roomy too. People are (in neon lights) showing their true colors and showing me what I've allowed myself to be blinded by. The excuses I've made will be silenced and unfortunately some friendships, relationships, and people will no longer be held in the same regard as they once were. While I'm not ready or trying to embark on making any new friends, I won't rule it out though. Things and people are as seasonal as Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter; hot, cold, etc., you get where I'm going with this. It hurts that some of the changes will have to be so dramatic, but it is what it is. I've tried and I'm getting tied of it all.

With that said, I will acknowlege some positive changes that have occured and I'm more than pleased with them. My Phantom Pain is no longer phantom and I know (finally) what is going on in my body. The weight I thought I gained was minimal and I'm holding down the weight I was almost 20 years ago. How cool is that!? I'm less reluctant as I once was about my teenage daughter growing up (refer to Growing Pains) and we're embracing the changes together; and quite well I might add. My ambivalent feelings toward my job are more focused now and I feel motivated again. One of my fave improvements is that I can code so much better than I ever thought I could. (The lil lady will be impressed though she might not admit it...lol)

I told you I'd keep you posted as the time marches on and I have. I'm sure there'll be more to add later and I will tell you about it then.

'Preciate all the love, support, and interest. (muah!)

Playing Catchup!!!

In adddition to my full time job, I have a part time job. I only have to be there one weekend a month, but trust me when I tell you it might as well be a full time job. Due to medical reasons, I missed the past two months and had to make the time up. When I went in last month for a day and a half, I almost lost it when I saw a replication of Mount Everest sitting on my desk. I immediately formed the words, "what the fuck?" as I tried to make sense of the madness. There was no making sense of it. The bottom line is that folk had gotten lazy, exercised little or no good time management skills, and exercised no skills in taking on additional tasks. Long story short I had my work cut out for me.

For that day and a half I worked myself to the point of almost forgetting to piss cause I wanted to get as much of the shit done as I could. Bottom line, there wasn't enough time to get it completed. Worst yet, by the time I would go back to the PT jay-o, there'd be even more for me to do. Ding, ding, ding! Survey says, "you're right"! Yesterday and today, I worked my way through the piles of paperwork and can now actually see my desk. My inbox has some level of organization and I have weeded out what my coworkers thought they couldn't do, which was a lot. Plain laziness! To add insult to injury, I had to come to my FT jay-o in order to make up time there because I didn't want to miss hours and have to use my hard earned leave on dumb shit.

So, here I am tired, borderline hungry, and quite perturbed that I have to go back to the PT jay-o tomorrow to finish what I didn't today and still make room to get some training done. And you wanna know what else? (I see y'all nodding) I have to work my PT joy-o this weekend too and then go back to work next week til Thursday. Can a sista come close to catching a break? Apparently not.

In closing, this is how I feel about my coworkers at the PT jay-o and what I'd like to do to them.

Couldn't Help It!!!!!!!!!

Tickled Pink!!

Being new to certain things technical, I tend to approach them cautiously in order to screw anything up and then wind up looking like a ditz when I seek help to fix it. Anyhoo, I decided to test my creativity by playing with my cell phone. I have a Treo and although I was apprehensive about it at first, I've since become quite attached to it and all the things it can do. On Saturday I took a photo of the Union Jack (British flag for those who aren't familiar) to have it as my wallpaper. (Yes, I'm English!) Thinking it rather cool, I decided to draw on it. Yes, I can draw on pix that I store in my phone. How cool is that?! I managed to write Blu Jewel and center it almost perfectly on the main red horizontal block of the flag. I felt like a kid with a new toy! I couldn't wait to show my new creative prowess off to my friends. They too laughed and thought it "cute" that I was so tickled at being able to do it myself.

Onto even more ticklings...So, this morning, I decided my page needed a little sprucing, so I tried my hand at playing with the code. Lo and behold, I was able to successfully make some changes without the help of anyone!!! I felt all the hues of pink wash over me again. So, here I am in my tickled pink bliss sharing my technical creativeness with you. Ha! Even better yet, I can show off my skills to the Lil Lady and The Manager and make them "ohh and aah". Well, I doubt that they'll really do that, but I do think they;ll be pretty impressed that I can code! Hell, I'm impressed that I can code.

Now, please don't start emailing me to pimp your blog pages cause Lord knows I'm not that good, but feel good enough to know that I can do mine. Ah, the simple pleasures in life :-)

Do ya hafta?

I don't usually work on Fridays, but I am today. I'm in an erratic, though a not bad mood, but I have some things that get on my nerves which cause me to ask the title question. I'll share them with you and if you'd like, comment on them accordingly. The list is as follows:

1. Do ya hafta say hi EVERY time you see me? In this case, it's every time the unnamed perp passes my cube. It's to the point that I refuse to even look up. UGH!

2. Do ya hafta talk so effin loud or on speaker phone for no good damn reason knowing you sit in a gosh-dang cubicle? I mean come the freak on already. I really don't give a shit if little Johnny scraped his knee or if your wife forgot to pack your lunch; making it your f*cking self and you wouldn't forget it. Let's practice noise reduction. UGH!

3. Do ya hafta cough and hack like you've got a perpetual hairball and never seems to care that you're scaring me or other people around her that you might fall out or die? UGH!

4. Do ya hafta ask why I'm on working a Friday and it NOT be a huge production? Does my presence really mean that much to the asking person? UGH!

5. Do ya hafta insist on having a conversation with me while you clearly see me sitting down to my lunch? A hot one to boot! UGH!

6. Do ya hafta send the same damn email that you clearly saw my name in the list of recipients to me again when it says to forward to at least four people? I got it the first damn time alright! UGH!

I'm going to quit at six cause if I chose to actually use my mind past the 75% capacity it is right now, I'll be typing a novel. I'm off to find someone to annoy because I'm here on a Friday when I'd rather home or anywhere else that doesn't include the company of my coworkers; save for the few I really do like.

Slides away from the pc to saunter down the hallway for a victim...snicker!

PISSED AND DISGUSTED

It's 3:00 pm EST and I dash off to the ladies room in haste to relieve my rather stressed bladder and then grab a cup of coffee. I go into the ladies room and enter the stall only to be greeted with the bowl full of paper towels. I shake my head cause we all know you're not supposed to put paper towels in the bowl. I move on to the next stall, this too is full of paper; only this time it's toilet paper. Again, I move on. Keep in mind I really hafta pee and am bordering on the pee-pee dance. I open the next stall and get greeted by the brown shark. EUGH! I say loudly, proceed to say a few choice cuss words, before entering the next stall. Fortunately for me, stall number four of six is actually usuable and has nothing to cause me to piss myself. As I anxiously relieve myself, I'm cursing wildly at how disgusting women are. Professional women to boot! I guess I shouldn't expect that just because we all make more than minimum wage that we're all properly potty trained and know public etiquette, but come on let's be for freaking real here.

As I'm exiting my stall, another woman walks in and I watch her as I wash my hands go through the same changes I did. The only difference, she didn't curse loudly. Then I wondered what she really thought about what she saw. Was she too embarassed and annoyed or did she not give a shit? But how can you not be? I mean, let's be for real here...who the hell leaves wads of paper towels or toilet paper in their bathrooms at home? Who leaves shit in the bowl and walks away? That's just nasty! Refering back to the latter, weren't we all taught to check to make sure the shark drowns? I know I sure as hell was and more importantly, why would I want someone to come in and see that shit...literally!

I swear people never cease to amaze me and they sure as hell never cease to make me a proud card carrying member of the "I'm an equal opportunity discriminator: I hate people" club.

I'm sure this is not something you really wanted to read, but I had to get it off my chest.

Childs Play

I decided to set up a myspace page. Actually, I already had an account, but I'd done nothing with it though I've had it since like February or something. I gave the thing no additional thought until my manager said it would be good networking tool. I figured what the hell seeing as I am trying to market my work. Now comes the fun part...I hadn't a freaking clue of how to set the damn thing up, but did enough to get it started thinking I'd really done something. I then consulted an 'expert'...my daughter! I did what I thought was cool only to find out that my page was corny and needed to be pimped! "Pimped?" I ask. "Yeah," she replied. "You gotta pimp it and make it look good." I look at the child completely dumbfounded and say, "how the heck do you know all this stuff?" She shrugged her shoulders, smiled, and went about pimping my page. There were many trial and error views of what the page could look like until I finally settled on the one I liked the best.

Now what I want to know is, how the hell do these kids know how to do all that shit? I mean, I'm on the upscale of my 30s, am computer literate, set this dang blog up, and I can't set up a myspace page? Makes no good sense right? Right!

So, I gave lil lady full reign and told her to make it look good. She did! I sat there baffled as she instructed me on how to have my page pimped. The manager put her two cents in too, Lord knows what the page would have looked like without them. Kudos to you both! No, you can't have a raise!!!

Now, I revert back to my thoughts on how things that are pretty intense (to me at least) and techinical is like childs play to these kids. I watch them set up webpages, play complex video games, and make things look like spreading soft butter on bread. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there like a dumbass sucking my thumb like, "doh!" Feeling very Homer Simpson, I concede that these are kids born and raised in a technical based society. They know nothing about cassettes, life without an iPod, cell phones, email, faxes, and all the other technical gadgetries we have now.

Hell, half of them can't even spell correctly because they write in IM speak. I guess that's where I have the one up on them...(snickering wildly). I refused to get punked by a kid, so while they can pimp out myspace pages, I have a talent that they don't...I CAN SPELL!!!!!!!!! LMAO.

Road Trip

Miss me? Well, I've just returned from a road trip to Florida, which was startlingly amusing. Being one who'll drive just about anywhere, I was more than prepared for the drive. Big Buddy (my SUV) had never been on such a long excursion faired rather well, though he's a little stinky and very dirty right now. Gas prices were a mutha from time to time, but it still beat flying and gave me the convenience of driving a vehicle I'm completely familiar with.

My daughter was surprisingly tolerant throughout the entire ride and not once hit me with the infamous "are we there yet?" In fact, she slept a good portion of the ride to and from Florida. She successfully finished reading a book and was so proud of herself that she bought another one and is almost finished that too. She did make me laugh a time or too with her comments when she woke up and wondered which state (geographically...lol) she was in. On the ride down, when we stopped for gas in N.C, she asked where we were and then asked where's the beach. She looked and sounded so cute as she woke from her slumber. On the way back, she ironically woke up in N.C as we reached South of the Border and she asked if we were in Vegas. I LMAO on that one. She added additional humor by saying, "we should go there!" Imagine that. As much as mama loves to drive, I doubt that I'd be driving clear across the country to Vegas.

The overnight pit stop in Atlanta was fun too as it gave me an opportunity to spend some time with my college buddy and his dog Reno, a Rhodesian Ridgeback. He's a huge, loving, and playful dog, the kind you'd gladly housesit. Eating at Gladys & Ron's Chicken and Waffles was a treat too, though I had no idea there was one in MD very close to my friend Linda's house of which I've been too several times in the past year. Bummer!

There was a free day, save for the cost of gas, to Busch Gardens, Tampa compliments of Operation Hero Salute, which gives free access to military families to any Anheuser Busch park. In addition, I joked about getting a reduced parking rate due to my having a Temporary Disabled Placard and in fact it did save the cost of parking. How cool is that?

Getting confused and then lost on I-4 was both frustrating and hilarious; however, it did help me learn the highways in Orlando better. Refer back to previous blog Sense of Direction, and you'll understand how getting lost can be good.

Checking out housing developments was fun too, including getting locked out of Willows on the Lake because you need a code to get into the gated community. Meanwhile I could have gotten in had I called my cousin the Real Estate Broker. DOH!

Spending time with my family was great. I don't get to see them as often as I'd like, but we're always able to pick up where we left off the last time. We're a close knit bunch of a huge creation where everyone pretty much gets along. Yes, I realize that's a surprising concept, but it's true. The annual cookout was a smorgasborg of mostly Jamaican food, which is to die for; correction, get fat for. I'm sure I packed on a couple pounds, but trust me, it was worth what it'll cost me to take it back off.

There was a downer to the week, but since the situation has now been resolved, I won't detail it. I'll just say that it really doesn't pay to take things that don't belong to you and then turn around and show it off as if it's your own. The perp will be dealt with accordingly and will make his appearance in the Hall of Shame for quite some time.

That aside, I had a blast and look forward to the next event.

Horoscopes

I'm not sure how much stock I put into horoscopes partly because it's contrary to Biblical teachings and partly because I wonder who comes up with the stuff anyway. If you compare the various predictions in newspapers and magazines, you'll see that each one says something different; so how do you know which one to go by?

Right now, I'm going through my annual "clean out my closet" fest. What's that? It's not as literal as it sounds per se, though I do clean out my closet in process. It's actually the time of year where I evaluate the ending of another year and view my approach for the new year...my birthday. For the next 43 days, I'll work toward the completion of goals set for this year, who and what stays in my life, what my goals are for my next year, reflect on any issues to see if they've gone resolved or not; so on and so forth. Then by the 44th day (my bday), I should have a plan in place.

While being on my personalize Google page, I read my horoscope and it said the following:

"You must say what you feel and detached analysis just won't be enough. You need to experience the uncertainty that goes with expressing the raw emotions that evade logic and rational thought. Your mind is active, but you must avoid the temptation of reducing complex emotional networks into overly simplistic statements of fact. Feel your way instead."

What alarmed me about this is that I have been wrestling with whether or not I should express some concerns I have with a few people in my life (I'll leave nameless). I'm not one for confrontation and I particularly hate screaming matches; though I shamefully admit I have partook. I am human regardless of my likes/dislikes. That aside, I resume my initial statement already in progress...So, I read this horoscope over and over and the more I read it, the more it disturbs me. I ponder is this really a sign that I need to addres the unamed people? I then ponder whether I have the strength to address the unnamed. It's not that I'm an emotional coward, it's that I'm simply tired of going around the proverbial mulberry bush. Why do I need to even address these things? Are people essentially that lame that they can't see what they're going or how contrary they're acting? Whatever the reason, I'm now left wrestling not only whether to address the issues or not, but now is the horoscope really true.

Honestly, I don't know what to think, but I do know I have 43 days to clean out my closets. It's going to be a very interesting 6 weeks...I'll keep ya posted if anything really interesting happens.