Christmas Cards and Beatdowns.

I decided this year that I'm going to send Christmas cards and OMG! I didn't realize how many friends I have!  I mean I really honestly didn't realize how many people I have.  I bought 48 cards and I think I'm going to need more.  When I was online on Facebook, I never realized how many people I hold close to me.  When in a social setting like that, the numbers don't add up

But when you are handwriting these sumbishes, the numbers really freaking add up.  The last two days, however, I've figured out how to get the envelopes to print in my printer.  They look really cute now.

Still no enlightenment on the stomach issue.  After the coffee and the two sausages I managed to keep down this morning, I felt pretty okay.  We were going to go to the Popeye's on Wilkinson Blvd., but the line was around the parking lot and out into the street.  We drove the 20 miles to Concord Mills.  Just for some chicken.  Yeah, we do that.  Don't judge us.  I felt okay after eating a breast and part of a thigh.  I haven't eaten anything else but then I'm not hungry.  I never really hungry anymore.  Dinner is fun. Did you feel the the exorcist head twist?

I'm having problems on the Ex front.  NOT with the Ex.  It's the girlfriend.  Back in July, I posted on Facebook because I was upset that when my girls were over their father's house, she didn't care one whit for their appearance.  Twice I asked her to help them with their hair and she refused.  She left the house looking runway fly but my girls looked like didn't nobody love them.  And yes I know that the grammar in that last sentence was all off but I don't care.  If you are with a man and he has girl children, as the woman in the house, it makes sense to make sure that when they are leaving with you, and people will look you as a group, that they look at least decent.  But she didn't and I resented that someone who was trying to be a self claimed role model was acting like that.  His godmother came on my Facebook and tried to reprimand me.  I let it go but I'm sure by the tone of the comment I left and the fact that I very soon after deleted her entire family from both of my daughter's Facebooks as well as my own may have clued her into the fact that it kinda pissed me off.  Whatever...  The girlfriend took the post sixteen ways from wrong which is you know whatever I didn't really care, but here's the thing, it's been six months and she's still holding onto it.  She actually snubbed me in front of my children.  I was a good girl though, I only called her a bitch and not even loud enough for her to hear it.

But here's the thing.  My mother called the ex the other day because she baked him a pie he asked for.  She called a cousin in Texas to get this recipe for him and she baked it just for him.  But when she called him, he was in the car with her and it took my mom a minute to realize he wasn't blowing her off, he was trying to get her off the phone because the little bitch in the passengers seat was probably making that weird pouty face that looks extra ugly because she is not a pretty woman.  Apparently, she bitched at him all freaking day about why he had to go to my mothers house and you know what?  He did end up blowing her off that night because he couldn't get away long enough to call her and explain and my mother felt bad.  She felt worse when she found out what her simple phone call had cost him.

You don't hurt my mother.  You can snub me.  You can talk about me.  You can call across the country and tell your friends about me, but You. Don't. Hurt. My. Mother. EVER.  You don't mess with my kids and you don't mess with my mother.

X always says he doesn't want drama.  And I have been moderately good about not causing drama.  I have caused my share, I own up to that but I'm not the one causing this drama.  It's been six months.  Let it go.  No one cares and if she cares so much, she needs to pull up her big girl grandma undies and come talk to me about it.  If she ever had any plans on marrying into X's family, she needs to learn to speak up for herself or she will be run over like fresh track under an Amtrak Turbo train.

Funny story... now... the night that X and I got to consummate our marriage, he paused above me... in me and apologized to me.  I asked him why and he told me that he was going to cheat on me when they went to port (he was in the navy) because he had always wanted a white girl.  To my knowledge, he never managed to get an Anglo Saxon white girl, he got another black woman and a Mexican; the other white meat.

And I realize that someone out there reading this may be mexican, let me be clear I am not slamming you or your race.  Honestly all the slurs are directed at her and her only.  This blog is my way or venting my frustrations on her.  If I don't vent then somehow, I may end up venting them literally on her.  And I'm not a nice person when I am venting.  I usually fight with my words, but I have been known to stop talking and start swinging.  I have also been known to carry my knife to a fight.  I'm not saying I would ever use it, but there comes a point in every cat fight where the brain reaches it's shut off point and anything can happen.

Okay, I'm already yawning and ready for bed.  I have to make the sugar cookie dough for cookies tomorrow and if I make it in the morning, I may can make a batch or two for personal taste testing tomorrow. Heh.

Goodnight, Bloggers.

I'm not mad.... I'm not mad... I'm not mad...

Maybe if I say that over and over... and over and over, it will reach my brain.

I highly doubt that and not just because my brain is swimming in the great caffeine sea right now.  Once again, one of my daughters has been crushed on the X-IL's "My way is the right way" highway.

I can't sit here and tell you horror story after horror story about my marriage... Well I can, but it wouldn't be fair because somewhere in there, I was kinda a bitch and played the eye for an eye, salmon swimming against the tide, I will survive game for a little bit longer than was decently possible.  I did my dirt too.  When my X-IL's talk about bad seeds, they do have a few stories that feature me as the wicked bitch of the North. I know they do and like I said, I deserve them.

But here's the thing, I have this thing inside of me that does't allow me to kowtow to people trying to dominate over me.  If we can work together and come to a reasonable conclusion I can do that.  If you walk in, tell me "This is how it's going to be.  It's my way or the highway" and you aren't my actual or adopted mother, my teacher or principal in school, or the government, you don't need to be dominating over me.

(I could never be Anna Steele.  Never.)

The night of our wedding, with family gathered around, my X-MIL gave her toast and she looked me in the eye and said, "I didn't want you but I guess I have to keep you now."  Needless to say their entire family laughed and found it funny while my mother and I recognized it for the punch in the face it really was.  That one sentence set the tone of the relationship I would have with my MIL to this day.  If I had known that this was how she was on a regular basis, I would have pulled up stakes before the ink dried on the marriage certificate and run.

We've always been rams locking horns.  I think that was our fate.  She never accepted me as good enough for her son.  I never kowtowed.  She never accepted my daughters, I resented that she showed favoritism to my son only.  She hated that I tried to make my marriage about my husband and I, I hated the fact that she had just enough control over him that just when things were going good she was able to convince him that I was the tramp that got pregnant on purpose.  Not once, not twice, but three times.  She hated that I insisted on running my household my way, and I resented that she kept making it so she got her way in my house from three hundred miles away.  I was an age old story of MIL in Hell and the details may vary but you know the story, I don't need to tell it.

As with any MIL she always gave unsolicited advice.  If the subject was as mundane as how to kill a cockroach and my solution was to crush that bad boy with whatever heavy I could find, her advice is to crush it with the north side of your left shoe in a rotating pattern.  No not that way, this way. And in my x's eyes, mom is always right.

We had it out a couple of times.  More than a couple and for awhile she backed down.  Okay so she was really regrouping but I took my victories where I could and I didn't gloat, I wasn't a bad winner. (Maybe once...)

But then J and K started to gain weight.  They take after my side of the family and we aren't exactly rail thin.  On J, it was considered "more to Sugah to love" and he'd tone it one day when it came to sports.  On K she was just fat.  And what was worse, she said this K, repeatedly.  And if you know K, you know that in terms of her self esteem it's not always up to par and kid gloves are needed. (insert story about the kid that took her parent's divorce very badly here)  K didn't get any more graceful as she grew but that's okay becasue she is her own person and she will get it when she gets it.  But that wasn't okay to my X-MIL.  It was a parenting faux pas on my part that I am allowing her to find herself in her own time.

So recently, I decided that as K will be 13 this year and she's in middle school, it was time she got a grown up hair cut and stopped wearing the stinky cornrows I can do.  So my mom paid for the style cut and tracks that our family stylist (That sounds so awesome to say) to give to K.  She looked awesome.  No, she looked AWESOME.  For the first time in a LONG time, my baby walked around looking ahead of herself and not at the floor.  She was happy and her self confidence was right up there where it should be or damn near close.  My baby was happy.

And one overnight trip to Daddy's almost ruined it all.

X-MIL has moved to down Charlotte to be close to her kids since X-SIL has moved down here.  Personally I think X-MIL has moved here specifically to torment and annoy me but I'm kinda biased on this subject.  On Labor day, X had to work so X-MIL and X-SIL, who both grew up in NYC, one of the weave capitols of the world, took the girls to the pool in X's neighborhood.  Seeing K's hair, knowing that it had glue in tracks and that she had just recently gotten a perm (Relaxer), she gave K a Shower cap to wear in the pool.  Labor day, community pool, splashing.

In the end, my child looked like Erykah Badu when she took off her wrap in The Other Side of the Game video.  I couldn't believe it!  Who does that?!?  And then to send back the advice not to put tracks in my daughter's hair anymore?!?!  My daughter walked in here looking at the floor because she KNEW her hair looked jacked up.  She didn't think there was any way I could fix it so that she didn't get laughed at at school.

I have to say here that I think sheer anger at my X-MIL and X-SIL fueled me to work that deep down magic that all black women are apparently born with but don't always tap into cause dammit, my baby looked like a rock star this morning and she walked out of here with her head held high.

And my mom, my blessed mother walked me down from my water tower yesterday because all I wanted to do was march over there and tell that woman exactly what she could do with her advice and herself last night.  She reminded me that they've always been this way and her jacking up my daughters hair with sheer negligence wasn't a personal attack, it was just her being an asshole.  It was nothing new.  I was over reacting.  I just need to regroup and change my tactics.

So, I'm not mad.  I just need to work on my battle strategy.  It's gonna be okay.

We cool.

We cool...

Shit list...

So everyone has a shit list.  You know the list of people who have done you so wrong that they end up on a list of people and places that you never want to associate with again.  Ya that list.  Everyone has one they may not call of shit list but everyone has one.

My sons music teacher is officially on said list now.

A couple of months back he sent home a form asking parents what they wanted their child to play in band.  I checked flute and piccolo.  I also checked saxophone because Randy said he would get the boy a sax if he wanted to play it.  I scratched out trumpet, trombone, and whatever else was there for two reasons.  One, I can't stand the sound of them on their own and two I know that parents have to pay for them and I own on a very fixed income and couldn't afford it.

Well imagine my sunrise when the boy comes home and announces that he now plays the trumpet in the school band.  I immediately wrote to the band director asking him what was the point of asking patents what they wanted their kids to play if is was going to ignore them and do what he wanted.  Is did not respond.  So them Jovaughn came home and said that I needed to buy him a mouth piece for the trumpet.  I politely wrote the band director another note telling him that since he had ignored my wishes, I was not going to acquiesce and buy the mouth piece.  He chose to ignore me and so of was all on him.  No response.

About a week ago the boy comes home and says that the band director has now told him that if he doesn't get the mouthpiece soon, he will fail.  Now I'm mad.

So the boy gets on the phone and calls his father and randy does the good thing and sends forty dollars so that I can buy the mouthpiece. I figured that if he could give me the money for the mouthpiece, I could atleast go and get the mouthpiece. Imagine my surprise when I got there and found out that the mouthpiece cost 50 dollars.  Yes! Fifty damn dollars.

Fortunately my mom had it on her. I now owe her twenty as she requested I put the other twenty in the tank.  But I'm still floored over how much a rigging mouthpiece costs.

Then they guy behind the counter dropped a little knowledge in me.  If the school provides the instrument they should also supply the mouthpiece.  He said that if multiple students use the mouthpiece, then they should sterilize them between uses.

I called the school and requested he call me back today.  I also let them know that if he doesn't call me back, I will be sitting there in the office until I see him.  If they try to have me escorted off the property then I will go to the board of education.

This has gone too far and I'm pretty sure that its going to go to levels that I've never had to go to with a teacher before.

BTW this also the same teacher that has now gone on three weeks to fill out a recommendation for for the boy to get into Northwest.  He'll be giving that back blank or filled out when I see him.  Enough is enough and I'm done with this.

People if you move to Charlotte, don't ever let your kids go to Ranson Middle school.. they suck ass and I am dining myself busting balls to keep my kids out of there next year....

Oi!!