Fed Up, But Not Full

        Life is like your own personal restaurant; you have your waiters, your menus, the decor, your specialties, your maître d’ , reservations, and your policy to refuse service to anyone, at any time.  I know this may be a stretch, but please entertain my inner fat girl for a moment, will ya. When you walk into a restaurant you have chosen that place based on your own appetite, and people who enter your restaurant will have chosen it (you) because of their appetite…basically, what they had a taste for. So stop and ask yourself what is your appetite and what type of people are you attracting based on what they assume your flavor to be. What are you offering? What does your menu say about you? If your menu claims that you are not a jump off , do not allow a customer to come into your space and request jump off tendencies and you comply with their request. That’s like you walking into a Muslim establishment and requesting pork or an Indian ( non-American) establishment and requesting beef…..it just wont happen! This is your restaurant… YOU MAKE THE MENU….either they like it or they can hit the road and go to McDonalds with the other 1 billion served. You can’t expect Burger King to make filet mignon properly, so don’t go misrepresenting yourself in someone else’s restaurant and expect to get something different from what they are offering either…..wait around a while and seek out all of your menu options until you settle on what you want to have for dinner. The best restaurants in the world have a waiting list, people sometimes wait for months to dine for a few hours…..so if they are willing to do this for literal food, why does it seem impossible to make someone wait for your metaphorical food? Real food will eventually spoil and yet we put more value on it than ourselves. Sounds bizarre once you put it that way, right? Suppose someone comes into a restaurant and starts misbehaving and causing a ruckus, you better believe that they will be asked to leave as not to disturb the other customers. When people come into your personal restaurant and start misbehaving, you must immediately ask them to leave as not to disturb the rest of your being…..it is all the same principle. And the basis of a restaurant is to eat, break bread, socialize, and have a good time. If the service is poor, you dont tip. If the dishes are dirty, you ask for new ones, if the food is horrible you leave, but most importantly…..when you are full……you leave. But do the rules still apply with every other aspect of life?

        For instance, if you read my “Advice from the Other Woman” blog entry you would know that I have some weird situations in my life that I couldn’t make up if I tried. The wife in that episode would sometimes ask me how I handled her husband, my then ex-boyfriend, when it came to some of his ways. The question would pop up of “what should I do” and I would immediately retreat. First off…. as mentioned in the aforementioned blog entry…..you dont ask any other woman, ESPECIALLY his ex, what you should do when dealing with your man. I would tell her that it was not my place to answer, because if I knew what to do with him then I would still be with him, so my advice is now void. She would then follow-up with “I’m so tired of this” or “I’ve had it up to here, I’m fed up”, to which I would reply “But you’re not full”.  A simple statement that meant sooooooooo much more than most people could ever imagine.

        If she were indeed fed up, she would be telling me this from her new apartment, from the divorce court while filing her papers to the tune of Usher on repeat through Bose headphones, or while tapping into her inner Angela Bassett as she lit a cigarette and threw the match into the passenger seat of his Denali, but instead she was sitting there asking me for advice.  I say this because he was doing all of his dirt for years!!!!! She knew how he was BEFORE they got married, she knew of me BEFORE she got married, and some how, something convinced her to say ” I do”. Now I am not in their marriage like that any more, have no clue what the hell is going on now, so I send great prayers to their marriage as it now is and pray that it is the beautiful union that God intended.  But one has to wonder…..wouldn’t all of this have been enough? Him getting a woman pregnant before you got married but were still together wasnt enough? I say, no.  As a woman, in general, and having been his woman… I understood what she was going through but her path was intended to go further than mine, I just knew for a FACT that I was full. She was still eating and complaining about the flavor of her current meal. She would send it back to the chef & tell him to fix it and then bring it back to her table the way she liked, but she wouldn’t leave the restaurant. She was still willing to eat. This was the restaurant that she had chosen, and then decided that she would rather complain than choose a different spot.

        It doesn’t just apply to relationships with a lover. This applies to the person who keeps loaning money to people and then getting upset when they don’t get the money back. Or the girl who pays for her older siblings’ rent just so her parents wont have to pay because she feels obligated…even though it is NOT her battle. Or the girl who keeps getting her ass whooped on a daily basis but wont leave the man who beats her but refuses to leave. Or the guy who doesn’t want to pay child support but wont wear a condom. It is a cycle of responsibility that each scenario holds that each party must accept before they can get out of it. Stop eating at a restaurant that does not match your palette and then proceed to complain about it. JUST DONT GO!!!

        You can’t expect the food that you allow to be served to your table to taste differently just because you keep sending it back to the kitchen. If the chef is digging in his ass without gloves and then proceeds to create your meal, no matter how many times you send it back….until he washes he hands or the kitchen gets a new cook…..it will always put a bad taste in your mouth. All of the examples that I gave were the equivalent of a person eating an appetizer and then claiming to be full. They eat their delicious calamari and drink glasses upon glasses of their beverage of choice just to exclaim, “I’m stuffed”, before the entre has even hit the oven in the kitchen. Yet, and still, they sit back rubbing their bellies discussing the meal they just had (whether good or bad) and then become distracted by other conversations as they wait for what is next to come. And true to “your eyes are bigger than your stomach” form, upon the main course hitting the table….they dig in, as if it is expected, despite what their stomach is telling them. But I thought you were stuffed. Maybe my definition of stuffed is rather different. When I am stuffed I immediately ask for my doggy bag (suitcase) pack everything up nice and neat, pay my final obligation, leave a tip based on my judgement of service, and I LEAVE. A simple principle.

        This principle has become one of my personal and favorite protective mechanisms. Once I have had enough….I’ve had enough! And sitting there, allowing more time to pass for the previous bullshit to digest so that you may stuff more bullshit in its place is one of the dumbest things that I have ever heard. So I employ you to search your present plate and ask questions. What is on your plate today that doesn’t leave a good taste in your mouth? What are you running out of space for? Are you just fed up or are you truly full? Is full your final answer? If so, back away from the table and politely excuse yourself. Your mental waistline will thank you later.  Dessert will be served in the form of contentment and emotional stability and peace. I promise. Bon appetit!

Sincerely,

~*My Mother’s Daughter*~

The Art of Vulnerability

 

Have you ever told yourself that you would never like another person? You’ve loved for the very last time, and every time you make that vow you swear to stick to it. Well, I am sitting here on my couch rather confused by a vow that I made to myself years ago. This vow of guarding my heart because “no one else will” seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, and sometimes in moments of pain I choose to revert back to it. But how healthy can this be for me?

Let’s see, there’s an Art of War, an Art of Seduction, and but why is there not an Art of Vulnerability. Vulnerability, once seen as a weakness, the scariest places for billions of people around the world, and yet the very gateway to get to what it is that we need. I recently told myself that I would open myself up to love, to be vulnerable. Even my horoscope agrees. It said to me, a Sagittarius, that I would need to talk to a stranger because it could very well lead to something and to have fun. Sounded like good advice, at the time. But today, as mentioned before, here I sit on my couch confused. The cause of this confusion….a guy.  And I could conquer this confusion if I had the tools. I know that there is an art to Vulnerability that I have yet to master because these bitches wont write a self-help book to show me how.

I dont know what it feels like to be on this side of vulnerability. I know what it feels like to block advances, to tell a guy where to shove it because I dont hear the game that he is trying to spit in my ear, or wanting to hear from a person who has now made it on to your emotional radar. Especially the person that “appears” to want you on their radar too. I’ve read the books, and his signs are telling me that he IS just that into me. But my fears are telling me that he JUST may be playing me. But how is that being vulnerable? How is listening to my fears, borderline intuition, not a smart thing to do when exploring something new? I dont even think I am making sense as I write this…again, I’m confused.

I’m confused because a change in his pattern occurred, and for 24 hours not a word!!!!! Usually, I could care less, but he was supposed to meet me yesterday. And unless there was a murder, an arrest or a death, I have not received a text or a smoke signal to tell me to be calm and to not fly off the deep end with my imagination. THIS is where you go…girl, he’s no longer THAT in to you, right? Because if he wanted to talk with you… he would call. My original thought was to not call or text. Then my friend told me just to call one last time to make sure an accident didnt occur. So I did. Reluctant to do so because I am ALWAYS the one to figure out where people are. WHy me?

I could go on….but I am just going to sit here on the couch and continue thinking. What have I learned about being vulnerable? I have learned that even though the premise may have been a lie, I enjoyed what it felt like to be in the moment. AGain, I could be over acting and he could be dangling from the edge of a cliff in a car on fire…..I dont know. But I also know that I finally told people about a guy that I liked and I may have to take it back. I may have to take back all of the good things I’ve said and I dont like being embarrassed and open to people judging me. (Then why the hell am I writing this blog?) But I had to share this moment, in the thick of it. I wanted people to know that I was capable of being loved and here I am sitting not knowing where the other half of this equation is and I feel rather foolish. But…it is what it is. THIS is why I keep things to myself, I like suffering in solitude. *SCREAMS!* Okay… let me workout and use this energy differently. Thanks for reading, and NOT writing a comment below…. that ALWAYS makes me feel better about myself too.

Sincerely,

~*My Mother’s Daughter*~

Lyrically Speaking: Erykah Badu – Tyrone

First Edition

I think every woman over the age of 25 remembers where they were the moment that they first heard this song. It was probably with a group of your closest girlfriends, in your house hugging a tub of Ben & Jerry’s bawling over his dumbass, kneeling down in a parking lot slicing tires, or face to face with the ‘ova bitch! Either way….everyone can relate to this song; Erykah Badu’s Tyrone.

I must admit that as an impressionable 17 year-old when it was first released, this song is the sole reason why I have never, and will never, be in  a cohabitation situation with my significant other before marriage. I mean, what if my man turns out to be Tyrone’s homeboy and his name is on the lease? Too much drama for a teen to comprehend, right? I mean, Erykah has this way of telling a story that makes you visualize the story, so I visualized every verse and made up in my mind, in advance, how the hell I would ever handle a situation should I ever have to.

SO, listening to the live version, she calmly asks the sisters if they are alright, followed by the brothers….without any warning of the first verse. The women IMMEDIATELY begin to cheer, but there was not a brotherly tone in the mix agreeing to shit. I think they took it personally. lol

First verse:

Alright

I’m gettin tired of your shit
You don’t never buy me nothin’
See every time you come around
You got to bring Jim, James, Paul and Tyrone

See why can’t we be by ourselves sometimes
See I’ve been having this on my mind for a long time
I just want it to be you and me like it used to be, baby
But you don’t know how to act, so matter fact

 

WOW! Bold, right off the front, “I’m getting tired of your shit”. Cant you just picture her sitting on the edge of her couch in the dark, Angela Basset after torching all his shit, Waiting to Exhale Style,and just blurting that out as soon as he walks into the front door? lol. How empowering! I mean, when I broke-up with my high school sweetheart 3 years later….that’s EXACTLY how it went down. He walked past me a few times and I just blurted it out. I wish I had used “I’m Getting tired of your shit” , it sounds more direct and poignant…lol.

And what was up with his friends’ names? Was he a rejected, ghetto disciple?  Missing member of the Black Beatles cover band? And here she was just wanting to spend time with her man, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO it was all about his boys. I say, if you like your boys so much…have sex with them and leave me alone. lol.

Chorus

I think you better call Tyrone
(Call him)
And tell him come on, help you get your shit
(Come on, come on, come on)
You need to call Tyrone
(Call him)
And tell him I said come on

 

Now the chorus comes in right as she flicks on the corner light switch that casts a shadow on her profile. And in chimes her bitter ass friends that you didn’t even see sitting at the kitchen table to the left, high-fiving & playing Pinochle, “Call Him!” .  Just in case you didn’t hear what she meant she articulates the “T” perfectly clear on the end of shit. I think this is the most clarified execution of the English language in an urban song in the years prior to Cee-lo Green’s Fuck You. It is a mantra that is tugging at the strings of every man’s pride, and the back-up singers are like kryptonite. Almost like a fly that keeps buzzing in your ear, and you didn’t even request their input…but here they go, “Come on, Come on, Come on!” Almost like a ” Nigga, I wish you would” threat from the days of old when Big Mama heard you whisper under your breath.

 

Second Verse:

Now every time I ask you for a little cash
You say nawl but turn right around and ask me for some ass
Oh well hold up listen partna I ain’t no cheap thrill
‘Cuz Miss Badu’s always comin for real, you know the deal nigga

Every time we go somewhere
I gotta reach down in my purse
To pay your way and your homeboy’s way
And sometimes your cousin’s way

They don’t never have to pay
Don’t have no cars, hang around in bars
Try to hang around with stars
Like Badu I’m gonna tell you the truth
Show improve or get the boot

 

This verse was the one that made me NEVER ask any of my dudes for cash. I doubt I will ever ask my husband for money. I come with my own. I’ll never have to place my needs in a battle over a booty bargaining chip. Not gonna happen here! And even though the first and second stanza clashes with who really brings in the finances of the house, I WISH A NEGRO WOULD make me pay for his way and that of his boys. That would be the deal breaker right there. I’m not saying that I will never pay for my man…occasionally ( unless the circumstances are out of the ordinary) but I’ll never pay for his boys and my MAN wouldn’t let me. Just saying.  I will also turn my other cheek to the double negative in the  “I aint no”, “Dont have no cars”  & “They don’t never” lines. The  line, “”You dont never buy me nothing” was a triple negative and I am unable to comprehend that. This song is too amazing for me to attack her grammatical structure, too hard. But it will have to be a -6 points against R&B.

And after another round of the chorus, the crowd ( women only) are chanting the lyrics and loving every moment of it. And then she hits the end of the song with the BEST ending to a song that has yet to be outdone. As her friends get up from the table to block the dude from stepping further into the house, Erykah leans back calmly on the couch and clicks off the lamp and pimpously says

But you can’t use my phone

HOW PIMP IS THAT!!!!! A Pimp Named Slickback & Powder need to learn a thing or two from Pimp Bad-du….cause that was vicious! I give this a stamp of approval for having constant play in my MP3 & CD player!

Grammatical Error Count (Specifically Double Negatives)

R&B: -6     Rap:0

 

Sincerely,

~*My Mother’s Daughter*~

Adam’s Cracked Rib

So, yesterday I went to church. I was a good little Christian sitting in the balcony at 8am service waiting to hear a wonderful word. I received many, but one train of thought from the visiting Pastor rubbed me the wrong way. And I wasn’t alone.

After service a friend and I went to Busboys and Poets for brunch when we both spoke on our mixed feelings about the comment. The Pastor said, “If a woman can guard her man’s heart then no other woman can have him.” He also went on to discuss how many religions think that the rib from which woman was made is the very rib that once covered Adam’s heart. That sounds all well and good BUT…you mean to tell me that if I do everything that is required of me to guard and protect my man’s heart then he will stand beside me through thick and thin? Really?

With me having just broken off a situation…let me analyze this. You mean to tell me that my continuously supporting this dude through thick and thin, sitting in the cold for 3 hours while he played basketball because he wanted me to watch him play… hell I paid for the basketball they were playing with, checked on him from time to time, spent time with him when I could, complimented him, and encouraging him to continue his studies so he could graduate in December should have been almost, if not enough, what he should need in order to feel as if his heart was protected? Or what about me curbing my appetite to become the stereotypical angry black woman when he started bugging out and by staying calm and respectively telling him that I was upset, directly stating what I needed, offering him numerous times to correct the mistake just to have him screw me over again, was the proper way to “guard his heart”? If so, then why are we no longer together?

Much like my friend, I had several gripes with this pastor’s way of thinking. For starters, he was making a generalized statement. All males are not mature enough to know when they have a good woman before them who is willing to help and support them through thick and thin. They tend to take those kinds of women for granted, and manage to fall in love with the badly bruised and damaged woman who treats them like shit and manages to quite those actions as the type of women they hate while claiming that there are no good women left. I suggest they lift up there feet and check the soles for the string of good women who he managed to step on through his immature phase. Also, he didn’t flip the story and tell women what they will get out of the process. You mean to tell me that I have to do all of this for my man and he wont go anywhere….but what will he do while he is there to keep me. Isn’t a man supposed to protect? Why was this left out of the message? Women are always taught how to be there for their men but seldom do I ever here a good message about how a man needs to be there for his woman. Quiet as it was kept, Mary was almost a single mother because David didn’t want to be a fool…but that is another story.

In short, each man is different, and every man will respond to a good woman in completely different ways. No matter how hard a woman will guard her man’s heart it is up to him whether or not he is ready for such attention, whether he deserves that kind of attention, and if this is the kind/type/size of woman he wants that kind of attention from. In most cases, not all, dudes receive that kind of dedication and love from his woman and he thinks that she is trying to tie him down and he runs. What is a girl to do?

Well, since I am a descendent of Adam’s cracked rib, I have to tell you that we received something broken and we keep getting the message that we need to fix it, guard it, protect it , love it and support it, but when we do the males often times tell us that we are too independent and that they don’t need us to do anything for them. So, do I go by the Bible or do I go by these misled males out here who I really don’t think that they know what they want themselves? This could go for women as well…. But you all didn’t receive one of our ovaries…so you can’t talk about us in the same manner. With us Biblically having a piece of man in us, shouldn’t we inherit some of his qualities? Shouldn’t I be able to be bold and independent? Shouldn’t I be able to guard his heart in the same fashion that he is meant to guard mine?

If I could write a letter to Adam, I would tell him that it is okay to have a woman support you. With Eve being such a picky specimen in the first place….for her to have chosen you should be considered an honor. We don’t like everyone, we don’t offer our hearts to just anyone, never have and never will….and if you want to stop seeing bitter and damaged women….stop extending us just your cracked rib.

I don’t know if any of this made sense…. But I just had to get it off my chest while I was thinking of it.

 

Sincerely,

*~My Mother’s Daughter*~

If He Likes It, WHICH Ring Should He Put On It?

 

        For an entire YEAR, Beyoncé had the world over, women, kids, gays, lesbians, little people, tall people, ugly people, and I think a chimpanzee in Milan screaming from the mountain tops that “If he likes it then he needs to put a ring on it.” Needless to say, even SHE wasnt screaming that nonsense until AFTER Jay put a ring on it. Before that it was Independent Woman this & Let Me Cater to You that. It’s a set up ladies. lol The premise behind him wanting to put a ring on it and what you must do to get there are two totally different things.  I know that for a fact. Just like I know for a FACT that this blog entry is going to stir up a ton of backlash from my female readers….but so what. Maybe then you will see things from your man’s side and may actually be grateful for the stress and strain…and balls to the wall courage it took for him to finally propose.

        My philosophy on the engagement ring is sooooooooo far different from any female that you will ever hear in your life. It is my personal belief that when a man proposes he should propose with the simple band (no jewels) as a promise and symbol of a pending marriage. Upon completion of their vows, then and only then, should they exchange the heavily awaited diamond encrusted jewel piece. Why do I think this way, you ask? Simple:

1. I’m a logical human being, and in being so I think that even the song is stupid. You mean to tell me that if   he LIKES it he will put a diamond ring on it, but if he LOVES it all I get is a simple band? Stupid, right? It’s as if you put more em-PHA-sis on the engagement than you did on the marriage ceremony with the current set-up of the rings. No wonder why marriages are jacked up.

2. Since guys don’t know what they really want and/or need out of a woman that he may one day marry….there is a chance that he will buy a minimum of two (2) engagement rings between the ages of 19 and 35. This also creates drama on whether or not a man should get the ring back should the relationship not work out. But if it was a simple band we wouldn’t have this problem.

3. I am rather a narcissist, and it is my belief that I would be okay with him giving away 5 simple bands to women before me who he thought were the one, but then I would be the only one who made it to the altar to receive the ultimate prize of the diamond ring. As his new bride, I would love him for not wasting money on 5 different women purchasing 5 different diamonds ( BECAUSE YOU DONT RECYCLE A FAILED ENGAGEMENT RING)!

4. This will cut down on the woman working just for the ring and then changing once she has it. I am a strong believer that you should only buy gifts over $1 Thousand for a fiancée and over $2 Thousand for your spouse….everyone else has yet to earn that kind of spending. That is why these gold diggers want the rings to be so huge and then find out you don’t actually live like that.

 

        All of my reasons are rather selfish, really. I guess that I am not the type of girl who wears a lot of jewelry to begin with, so WHICH ring he proposes with wouldn’t really bother me, because it is more so (at least to me) about the fact that he had enough love for me to be courageous enough to ask me to spend the rest of my life with him. I know that scares the daylights out of a guy….so why add the stress of the engagement ring? Shouldnt the diamond be a surprise at the altar of what he thought to get for his new wife? Shouldnt the most expensive jewel only be given to the wife? Because if you put things into perspective….you will always be the other woman, an informal side piece, in comparison to his future wife. You do not deserve the jewel unless you both have said “I DO”.

        Trust me, I know I am causing a frenzy at Tiffany’s, Jared’s & Kay’s right now. And yes, I’ve heard it all. While at a gathering yesterday one of my guy friends called his mother while the entire table of women and men ( about 12 of us) were in the midst of this conversation. I think his mother replied with how “she would’ve already had her engagement ring chosen”. lol. Another friend at the table said that there “use to be a time when you could walk into a particular jewelry store, tell her name, and they could point out which ring she had wanted for herself.” So as not to be outdone, I called my mother all the way in Minnesota and put her on the phone. And true to form….she said that I was correct! lol.  I mentioned to my mother how at another gathering of the same caliber a female friend told me that she disagreed because “the diamond engagement ring was her dowry”.  My mother commented and said, “No, a dowry is traditionally given at the marriage ceremony to seal the contract of marriage.” Side bar: I love My Mom!!! So, I went to research.

        Dictionary.com says that a dowry is “a noun, also, dower, the money, goods, or estate that a wife brings to her husband at marriage.” Key word ladies… a WOMAN brings the dowry to the man, not a man to a woman. (Two for me, none for the others.) The initial purpose of the dowry was to help set up the bride in her new marriage so that she would not be a burden to her new husband, as well as compensate the husband for going out of his way to marry. It was more of a business deal than a love match. So, would you really want to still carry on the traditions of a business deal, or would you like to set a tradition that is met on love where when you get a diamond ring, or IF you even get a diamond ring shouldnt really matter? Because if I were a dude, I would be pretty skeptical of a woman who wouldn’t marry me because I gave her a band instead of a diamond. That would flag what kind of woman you are right then and there.

        Now, I am not judging anyone, but the actions that women extend and the pressures that they put on a man are ridiculous! I think that the victory is won at the finish line and not mid race. So I am quite okay with waiting until we get to the altar to say I Do before God to receive my ring. But again….this is just my opinion. ANd even though all of the guys that I say this to agree, even the security guards in my office building, I doubt that many women other than my mother will agree with me on this. But it is another way of looking at it. DO you want to be just another female who he gives a diamond ring to, or do you want to be the ONLY woman that he gives a diamond ring to? I choose to be the only one. But again, I did preface this entry by saying that I am far different from others. Yet, when the time comes for him to propose, I would honestly like to forgo the diamond ring for a band and his promise to one day be my husband, just to get to the altar on my wedding day and have him surprise me with a diamond wedding ring. Now THAT is a fairy tale to me.

(Click “If He Likes It, WHICH Ring Should He Put On It? to view comments)

Sincerely,

~*My Mother’s Daughter*~