I will be phasing out this blog December 31, 2008. Let's just say that when I first started blogging, I had no idea what I was doing! I forgot that I had already used "thecreativelady" way back when so I created this one. Big mistake. I finally figured out how to use my original name, "thecreativelady" and it's too much work to maintain them both so please join me at my main blog:
O O & Thanksgiving
Obama & Oprah! What a winning combination. I'm going to change my name to Olanda!
Now that the election is over and won, I hope that I can drag myself into my creative space to get busy creating. I have turned into a lethargic crafter. I'm going to take the rest of the week off from even attempting to create just to clear my mind. Work is kicking my tail to the highest and I need a vacation! Thanksgiving cannot come soon enough.
I may not even go "home" for the holiday. I want to stay put and relax. Watch football in the comfort of my own space without interruption.
One year, my husband and I skipped tradition all together and went to Las Vegas! Thanksgiving dinner was eaten at the Luxor. It was to be desired! But it was still Vegas baby! It was surprisingly not crowded and easy to get around. Would I skip tradition again: yes!
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Friday, November 7, 2008
Pedicures and Metros
Aside from the excitement of this week's presidential election, I saw something very funny. A co-worker was hobbling down the hall, walking as if each step was painful. I could not resist asking what was wrong. He said that he had gotten a pedicure and then went to play basketball later that night. When he woke up, his feet were extremely sore! Those darn metrosexuals!
Reflections
A student asked me if I voted for Barack Obama just because of the color of his skin. Hmmm. . .I had to choose my words carefully. I told her that based upon the 2 choices, Barack Obama's platform on the issues impressed me and promoted what I needed: change. In the past elections, race was never an issue in the race. We just chose a president based on the issues. But because of race, it was an issue. Regardless, the American public spoke and elected a historic choice, Barack Obama!
Obama Wins! I am a tough cookie but when Barack Obama was announced the winner of the 2008 Presidential Election: I cried! I called my 89 year old Grandmother and we talked about Obama's win. She had been on pins and needles all day. I am so happy that she lived to see the day to vote for and elect the 44th President of the United States of America, an African American named Barack Obama.
John McCain offered a well-rehearsed but good concession speech.
Earlier in the day, I sent postcards to my family and thank you cards to my 11th and 12th grade history teachers! I thought it was most appropriate and timely. My 11th grade teacher always told me that when I graduated, she wanted a dishwasher! Ok, I'll put that on my list. Maybe we can go see Oprah!
Election Eve Politics and Religion. I learned early to avoid discussions about these two. But trust me, I have my views about both. But on this election eve, I had to go on record to express my thoughts. There is a buzz in the air. No matter which party wins, history will be made. Either the first African American Head of State or the first female VP. It is an exciting time to be alive.
I have been amazed at the number of people that I have known who died this year before they could vote. But on Tuesday's Oprah, there will be a segment about a fellow Mississippian who turned 109 and had the chance to vote in this historic election. (Though I live in Tennesse, I still consider myself a Mississippian.) The Oprah guest, affectionately called, "Aunt Nettie" is the mother my high school American Government teacher! How cool is that?! Now, the show has not aired yet but I work with Aunt Nettie's great niece and she reports that she proudly stated that she already voted early, for Barack Obama.
There is such pride in my community among older folks I know who have lived long enough to cast a vote for Barack Obama. My 89 year old grandmother is another Obama supporter. I've bought her t-shirts that I promise she is going to wear the silk screen off until it no longer reads "Obama" but "O"! Then she'll be able to represent both Obama and Oprah! What a team! My friend Liz has sent her 2 buttons all the way from Washington, D.C. and you'd think she had hit the lottery! She even went so far as to ask if I thought that Obama himself had sent her the buttons! I had to give her the truth, and tell her no. My grandmother is hilarious.
My husband and I voted early on October 20 and I was in line for 45 minutes. I did not mind the wait. Struggles ensued so that I may have the right to vote. Surely, if my ancestors could march and face unspeakable oppositions, surely I could stand peacefully in line to cast my ballot for Barack Obama.
S and OToday "S" and "O" together stands for significant other. But yesterday, the alphas took on a different meaning.
As the weather is changing to fall, I had to get my sweaters out. I wore a new sweater and some khakis. The sweater was long and covered by butt. Working in a middle school, I know not to dress revealingly because I work with perverted teenage boys and men.
Case in point, around midday, a male teacher mentioned that my waist was very tiny. I asked him why was he looking. At the end of the day, he told me that I should not wear that sweater again because it was too revealing. I was totally covered up, no boobies hanging out or skin showing. I told him that I was a grown a$$ woman and I could wear what I wanted and that he should keep his eyes and comments to himself. He said that to be so small and petite, I was shapely ! I asked him since I am shapely, like an "S", if I were an "O" would he have felt compelled to say anything to me about my sweater at all?! I doubt it. Why do some people not know when to shut the *bleep* up?!
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Service pleaseI don't want to always seem like I'm complaining but I have to vent. I did not take my lunch to work today so lunch became a bag of Doritos, a honey bun and a Coca-Cola. "Well why didn't you just run out and get lunch?" you may ask. I work in a school and we are not supposed to leave the building without permission. However, I see people leaving all day, without asking and without signing out. I am not one to ask for favors because granted favors come back to bite you in the ass. So most days I take my lunch or order from a deli that delivers. With today being Halloween, I just toughed it out.
On my way home, I stopped at my favorite burger place and paid $6.22 for a Grilled Chicken Salad that I could have prepared for much less but I was starving and I know that I cannot not go in the grocery store hungry.
Gone are the days when I could just pay, grab the bag and pull off. Drive-thru service has gone to the dogs. Too often when I have just taken the bag, do I find that my burger has mayonnaise on it when I explicitly told them NO MAYO! How about paying top dollar for an up sized burger with pepper jack cheese, only to find that I was given a dried up Jr. burger and there was no sign of any kind of cheese. It wasn't worth the gas to drive back. How often have I gotten an order and the food was so sloppy that it looked like it had been on a roller coaster before making it to the bag? Nowadays, when I splurge and get the expensive combo (sandwich, fries and drink) why do I always have to ask for ketchup? And then they give me a damn handful. What the hell am I going to put that much ketchup on? I refuse to mention the wood chips fast food places try to pass off as fries. I try to be green when I can but damn.
Salads are perhaps the worst food to order in the drive-thru. Too much room for error. I often order taco salads and regularly missing are either the tortilla chips or the sour cream. I have started holding up the line to perform my own quality assurance. I check my order. I am not even intimidated by the impatient SUV-driving-soccer mom behind me. And I don't think she wants a black eye from the feisty-Dodge Charger-driving-pissed-off school librarian!
Well today, I checked the bag and noticed that the blue cheese dressing that I ordered was not inside. I waited until the worker came back to the window and she handed me the 2 packs of dressing. I felt vindicated. But the damn joke was on me because when I got home: the chick had given me a blue cheese and a thousand island! I don't eat no damn thousand island!
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Natural Hair
I started wearing my hair's natural texture in July 2007. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a youtube video documentation of my journey is priceless! Enjoy!
My Confessions: 1. I cuss more than I thought. 2. I am a Product Junkie and I like it! 3. I cannot figure out how to activate the "Add Comments" feature to my blog and I am the Technology Coordinator at work! Yikes! Somebody help me! 4. I love shopping online because it saves gas. 5. I eat like a pregnant pig. 6. I watch Good Times, Sanford & Son and The Golden Girls everyday even though I own the Complete Boxed Sets of each of them. (Why do I still have cable?)
A friend and personal stylista recently told me that I am a caged bird in the workplace. She's right. I almost quit my job today. It started with my being late for work due to an accident on the 2 lane road that I take to work. Normally, it is the best way to get there because I avoid a lot of traffic. But now there is road construction going on to widen to the road and the accident was smack dab in the middle of the work zone. The accident was not in my southbound lane but the traffic jammed there anyway because the cops had to systematically let the cars in the accident lane get by. Fortunately, my lane was never stopped, just crawled. I called the office to let them know that I was going to be late. I only ended up being 15 minutes but still late. I hate being late. Lately, I've been late or just skipping work all together. Is that a sure sign that it's time to go?
Being the librarian should be a fun and relaxed job but it's not. I don't know whose bright idea it was to give the whole school a hands-on project but it sucks! The projects have to be done at school. What the hell are the parents supposed to do? The burden of education is already heavily on the teacher and now, projects!
No matter how many times I've tried to teach the students to "copy and paste" in order to print only the content they need but they always manage to just click file and print and waste a ton of paper and toner. I get so pissed and tired of repeating the same shit. They herd the students in the library like cattle and that's how they act. There is not enough time in the day to hustle 6 classes through a library on daily basis. How do 30 kids use 10 computers for research in 45 minutes? I am not the math teacher but it ain't gonna work! I have tried to inform the powers that be that the library should be used for small groups. It would be a more meaningful learning experience than the roundup that occurs. But I no longer make suggestions. I don't know how they expect me shelve all the fucking books they want circulated and juggle the other jobs. Don't even mention the constant flow of interruptions of technical questions that I get. I give up. Oh, I do my job but I don't let them stress me out.
As my no-good-terrible-bad day continued, I learned of my BFF's father's death. He'd been ill but you can never prepare for the actual occurrence. The funeral will probably be Saturday. I'll be able to get home and attend with him. Oh, my BFF is a man.
I had a strong vibe that something would happen. I am not completely superstitious but . . Whenever I see an owl, somebody close to me dies. It does not even have to be a live one. Being a librarian, I come in contact with plenty of book covers. Last week when I encountered one with an owl on it, I shivered. My family knows all about this premonition with owls and they believe me - now. I try to tell them about this so that perhaps nothing will happen. But most of the time, a death occurs.
I've mentioned in my All About Me blog that I wear my hair natural. The afro puff is my style of choice because it is super easy. Can you believe a woman thought that I was wearing a weave afro puff?! Good grief woman! I wanted to take it down and show her but I moved on.
The best thing about today is that I found my spare set of car keys that have been missing for a long time and apparently since April! I have torn my house apart looking for those keys. I have searched every coat pocket, pocket book, lunch bag and box that I could find. Nothing. I knew that they were somewhere truly lost and in a place I would not be looking. In the midst of my preparing for my exodus, I found them: in the school-issued laptop bag that I NEVER carry. I have brushed up against this bag for the last 6 months without knowing that my keys were in there. Hmmm. . . my keys were lost for my entire summer vacation!
I could pin point the loss back to April because when I opened the bag, the first thing I saw was the 40th Anniversary DVD on the Death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I picked the DVD out the bag and then my eyes landed on some keys. For a moment, I paused and knew that surely these were not going to be my keys. But they were! As I thought back, I remember rushing one morning to get the DVD to play in the video feed at work and ran into all kinds of problems. I was probably running late and just threw my keys in the bag. I am happy that I have found them because I've been paranoid about getting locked out the car or losing my primary set. You don't want to know how much Dodge would charge to get a key made.These days if you have a key with a transponder in it, it's expensive! You can't just take new keys to Walmart and have one cut. It will turn but not crank the car.
I got out of that building today as soon as I could. Not knowing whether I would go back tomorrow. I wonder if Oprah needs a new BFF?
I guess the first thing I should do is introduce myself. Yeah, that would be the proper thing. As my name indicates, I LOVE to create. I am trying to find a way to create 24/7 and sustain a comfortable lifestyle. I have grown quite accustomed to wearing clothes and eating at least once per day. I do not want to be the true starving artist. I did that for the first 18 years of my life and I think I have served my time.
I have been married for the last 4.5 years to Michael. We had a whirlwind romance and marriage. We don't have children and at this point, they are not in the plan. In 4.5 years, we have never had an argument.
My day job is in education. I am experiencing total burnout. It happens. Though I am not in the classroom and people think that I have one of the best jobs in the building, every job has it’s own quirks. Because I don’t have a class, I end up getting the catch all tasks like keeping up with the school’s fixed assets, making sure that computers are operational, and because I am thecreativelady, come up with catchy bulletin boards, scrapbooks and whatever other last minute shit they can come up with, all while trying to be the librarian. I know what you’re thinking: that I must be an old fart, who wears a sweater and glasses and her hair up in a bun telling kids to “shhhh”. Only one of those things is true: I do wear a sweater or jacket all the time because it’s so fucking cold in the building even in the winter when the heat is supposed to be on. But consider myself a New Age librarian. I am in my 30s and often get mistaken for a middle school student (no, no please) and my vision is 20/20. I wear my hair natural and would love to be able to wear it in a bun but it hasn’t grown that long yet! My hair will be a whole other separate entry one day. But I chopped all of the permed hair off in 2007 and started wearing it au naturale. I shocked some people and took some criticism but it is my life and hair and will do what I want.
So what do I create? kickass professional slideshows for weddings, reunions, graduations, etc., jewelry and fabric art. That is just a fancy way of saying “quilts”. But I don’t create your typical grandmother’s quilt. I will use a variety fabrics and techniques that differ from the traditional 9 patch or flying geese pattern. I have studied my craft and know my history. My 89 year old grandmother makes the traditional quilts. I like the funkier, edgey designs. One day, I will create a traditional one but not now. I also took home economics 20 years ago and have spent lots of time and money in Hancock Fabrics buying fabric and patterns with the notion of actually sewing a garment but it has not happened! Watching Project Runway really had me thinking that I was gonna create some clothes. It has not happened yet. I need time. I know that we all have the same 24 hours a day but . . .I'm special. I also enjoy cooking and baking cakes. Cookies, well, I leave that to my friend, Liz. My cookies always come out like cupcakes. I have bought all kinds of cookie presses from HSN and QVC and every non-stick cookie sheet to be found. No deal! Oh well, you can't excel in everything.