Hurricane Maria victims NEED OUR HELP!

I've been reading to see how we can help and this article has a lot of really great suggestions:   How You Can Help Hurricane Victims in Puerto Rico 

I mean...it's a shame how this has happened.  They really missed the boat on this one and the more you read, the angrier you get.  

Hurricane Maria pushes Puerto Rico's struggling hospitals to crisis point

By the numbers: More than half of Puerto Rico still without drinking water

One Day in the Life of Battered Puerto Rico

And the latest...

President Trump dedicates golf trophy to hurricane victims, Puerto Rico

I mean...there are seriously just NO.WORDS for this level of incompetence that is currently our government.  They aren't by the people nor for the people.  Just...no.

Oh well, share that link.  I pretty much have nothing to say nice.

Going, Going, Gone...Gray

I have been going gray for a minute now and I stomped all up and down declaring that I was just going to let it go until it is all the way gray and be a gray head rockstar looking all super sleek and whatnot.

I saw myself looking like this:

Just all one-dimensional amazing with some banging natural silvery highlights.

All regal and what not ya know?  QUEENLY!  I planned on wearing a lot of purple. Rich silks with like...some braiding on it or something.  I'm talking straight up Egyptian royalty in the house!  (Great...now I can't get "Egyptian Lover out my head...UGH!"

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Yall...I was ready to wake up already LIT!  

The reality of it, however?  It's gon' take a minute and I am struggling so much so that I think I'm going to have to do some temporary stuff in the middle of it all so I don't walk around here looking like someone without mirrors in her home.

This is my hair air dried and without heat or moisturizer on it to give it some semblance of a cohesive color and tame it.  This is my natural hair color and I am convinced God doesn't want me to live like this anymore.  Whenever He looks my way He probably shakes his head and says..."Oh no, baby...what is you doing?  I have given chemists the ability to create hair color so that you can handle that situation!  WHY DON'T YOU WANT TO BE HAPPY???????"

I've tried everything to keep it contained.  I even had box braids for three weeks (I couldn't get used to all that hair and I promise my neck was tired holding up that hair.) and after seeing my little cousin with Dutch Goddess braids, I even did a version of it on my own using braid hair and French braids (cuz I can't do them dang opposite braids to save my life) and they were okay but only last a good week for me because my exposed hair starts looking too fuzzy.  

And it totally doesn't help that this guy I'm married to looks all distinguished gentleman and whatnot rocking his gray.  (So unfair and honestly...just rude...)

I'd like to find something between the two different braid styles using braid hair to keep it under wraps until more of the gray transition has happened.  Something that covers more of my hair but doesn't have to use so much braid hair.  I'm serious...I had for real, serious neck pain with all that hair and I got sick of wiping oatmeal off strands every.single.morning.  That's just gross.  I wish I could have kept them in longer though.

So I'm back to considering color but don't know where to start.  My funky red/brown/gray color is just odd as heck to me.  My hair is low-porosity so by the very definition it's more difficult to color and it's as healthy as relaxed hair can be and I don't want to sustain any damage with keeping color on longer during the coloring process.  Oh...and those temporary colors just slide off onto my pillowcase anyway so...

*sigh*

If anyone has any tips...holla atcha girl.  I'm desperate.  

Mommy Wars - The Ultimate Better Thans

“She woke up at 5am and made enough coffee for two cups.  She removed the breakfast dishes from the table that she hadn’t had an opportunity to remove the day before.  The instant grits dried almost as hard as concrete on the plastic bowl.  She picked up her 6 year old son’s toys scattered around the room and put them in the basket she kept by the sofa. Next she folded the sofa blanket and straightened up as much as possible.

When her coffee was ready, she made a cup and took that first grateful sip, walking into the bathroom to start a bath for herself as quietly as possible so as to not wake her son.

Twenty minutes later, she woke her son, got him dressed for school, fed him breakfast and rushed out the door to drop him off to school and then go to her first job.

From 8 - 5, she worked for the state filing papers all day for petty lawsuits.  Her son catches the bus to her parent’s house.  His math tutor shows up and works with him for an hour a day on Monday and Wednesday and his reading tutor on Tuesday and Thursday.  Her parents are on a fixed income so she makes sure there is enough food in the house for all of them to eat during the week.  To afford all of this, she has a second job at the dollar store from 6pm to midnight.

At midnight, exhausted, she drives to her parent’s to pick up her son and she carries him to her car kissing his little neck and cheek softly so as not to wake him.  She puts a sweater over him in the cool night air and drives home.  At the last minute, right before her turn to go home, she remembers they are out of milk and decides to run in and pick up a gallon and a couple of apples.  She briefly debates removing her son from the car and considers letting him sleep with the doors locked, but she didn’t want him to get overheated since she’d recently watched a show about how quickly it gets hot in a car even during mild temperatures.

She only needed milk and eggs so she wouldn’t be in there longer than 10 minutes and she could see the car from inside the store so she left the car running with the air on and rushed in to get the milk and apples because her day started over again at 5am after having only 3 hours of sleep.”

That was fiction.  

The real story is one where a single mother left her child in a running car at 1:15am to run into the grocery store and she returned to find her car, and her child, missing.  The car was found 15 miles away from the store with her son inside dead.  A bullet through the brain.

In the hours which followed her finding her car and child missing, back-to-back Amber alerts went out far and wide.  These Amber alerts woke us up in the middle of the night.  We read them, put our phones back on our nightstands and went back to sleep.

The mother did not go to sleep.  She waited for news of her child, terrified.  Hoping for the best but terrified of the worst.  A parent's worst nightmare playing out.  Not knowing where her child was, who had him, was he safe, what were they doing to him.

By the time we were eating breakfast, the news of his murder broke and all our collective hearts broke for that baby and his lost life.

By the time we were all reading the news reports online, the undercurrent of hateful rumors had started.  Speculation about why the mother was out that late started.  Stories of how the mother was in the club partying while the child was in the car.  Theories of how the child found a gun in the car while outside of the  club and accidentally killed himself.  Rumors that the mother was inside the store for over an hour waiting for the car to be fake stolen.  Adamant statements of the mother contacting the murderers and setting up a fake kidnapping so she wouldn't be charged with her child's murder.  And...the most startling of all...DEMANDS, IMMEDIATELY, FOR THE ARREST OF THE MOTHER FOR CHILD NEGLECT FOR LEAVING THE CHILD IN THE CAR.

Whenever I saw one of these statements and comments online I noted that the most vocal of them all were single mothers and, quite frankly, it came across with such an air of the "better-thans" that it was sickening.  "Look at me!  I'm better than her!  My child is still alive!"

Smug, nauseatingly so.  

"I'd never..."

"What kind of mother..."

After a mother lost her child in the blink of an eye.  Her baby in that car terrified, or maybe the baby didn't even wake up.  Just sleep and then dead.  A bullet to his lil developing brain.  Dead.

Why was it so quick that the potential story surrounding the child being in the car at that time of night be so ugly instead of the fictional story above?  Why was it so easy for so many people to jump on the bandwagon of straight damning this poor mother immediately after her child had been murdered?  Sure...she made a life altering decision to leave him in the car...but that woman didn't want her child to die.  SHE LOST HER CHILD!  

I saw pictures of this mother being carried by family members after she collapsed upon hearing the news of her child's murder.  

I saw pictures of her grief-stricken family, horrified. I read the story in the Clarion-Ledger and got so upset I had to walk away from the computer.  I had to walk away from all the perfect mothers who "would never..."

Turns out Ms. Archie, Kingston's mother, was in the store for 10 - 15 minutes buying medicine.  

Turns out the child was murdered after the car was stolen by, in another tragic twist to this horrible crime, 17 and 18-year-olds.

Turns out Kingston was murdered by at least one of the children who stole the car at 1:15am.

Turns out all those rumors were mean-spirited and evil.  Judge and jury in the midst of a mother's grief.  

Turns out...people will do the most to be "better-than" someone...even during the most heinous of times.

As you can tell...this shit has sat on me hard.  *sigh*

I know enough single mothers to know the shit is hard as fug.  I listen to how exhausted they are getting it all done.  I sit back and watch them do every single thing they can do to make sure their child/children have the best life possible.  Because I actually KNOW and interact with single mothers...I can empathize with this poor mother even though I'm not a mother myself.

You'd think that other single mothers would have been able to empathize with her even easier than I did.

But the ones spreading the rumors and calling for her to be charged chose the low road.

How dare you add to this woman's grief in such an ugly, ugly way.  How dare your narrative be so without compassion for another mother.  How dare you.

People Need to Quit

My week started out with back-to-back weird interactions with people.  

On Sunday, I had to go to Walmart.  Yeah...I know...already crazy.  Walmart.  And on a Sunday.  Crazy talk.

The homeless guy who is always by the car wash in front of the Walmart was standing there with his sign.  I rolled my window down and asked him did he need anything out of Walmart.  He said some food would be nice.  

Cool.

I got him some food from the deli and a couple of pre-made salads because everything in the deli was fried and I'm old school and believe meals should come with veggies of some sort which are NOT fried.

When I walked out of Walmart, he was standing across the row from my truck and told me that the police had made him move.  

Cool.

I handed him the bag with his food and told him that I'd thrown in some salads too.  He thanked me and said something about not having veggies in a while.  Then?

He hopped in the truck he had been standing next to and drove off while I stood there and watched him drive off.

Now, I know homeless people and people with immediate needs sometimes have vehicles but I was just so startled because I have honestly never seen someone who'd been standing on the road with a sign asking for help, drive off into the sunset after someone had given them something.

It was odd.

On Monday, I had to have a plumber come out to do some work.  The gentleman was extremely nice.  Good people.  He invited us to his church and kept trying to get me to change my mind about coming.  We kept talking and got on politics.  He mentioned the new laws in South Carolina and Mississippi about "religious freedom" and transgender bathroom use.  He shared that there was a gay couple in his church that everyone loved who were just great people and he hoped they didn't feel some kinda way thinking that everyone in their church supported the law.  Then he said the law in SC was something he supported, however, because...

Him:  I don't want some grown man in the bathroom with my 9-year-old daughter.

Me:  How would she know?  Is she looking under the stall divider?  Remember, women don't use urinals, we have doors that we can lock.  Also, the woman is NOT a man, she has been reassigned as a woman and, if your daughter HAD looked up under her skirt under the stall she would see the same software.  

Him:  I just don't want it to happen.  I mean,  they could do something to girls in the bathroom.

Me:  Or they could be so terrified that they are going to have to deal with some crazy mess just because they were in public and had to use the bathroom that they used the bathroom so fast you didn't even notice them.  Did you ever read the book "Middlesex?"  What about the people who were born with a little bit of this and a little bit of that and their parents, with guidance from their doctor, took action to assign a gender and, unbeknownst to them, assigned the wrong gender just trying to make their baby "normal?"  Do you think that poor child deserves to be persecuted for the rest of their life?  I mean...ya think that's how God wants you to handle it?

Him:  Well, I don't know about all that.  I just know how I feel.

SIP:  *sigh*

Such a simplistic view of a very real problem in the lives of some is cringe worthy.  To me.  As many defects as people end up having...yeah...okay.

Dude left so fast he forgot his utility knife.  I put it under the sink in the bathroom because I'm not in the mood to see him again.  

I’m a Transgender Man in North Carolina. Here’s What the Bathroom Law Means For Me.

I'm actually still feeling some kinda way.  I never remember anything about using the bathroom in public because my focus is on getting in and out of there with minimal time with major hand washing. Do people hang out in public bathrooms and that's how it comes to be that this is such a major issue?  Are transgender people in South Carolina holding sit-ins in the bathrooms naked from waist down?  

I should have asked him could I still come to his church if I was transgender huh?

The MIGHT.BE homeless guy did end up making me laugh cuz really...had you seen me in the parking lot watching him drive off...it was Seth MacFarland movie funny.  I was just standing there like, *BLINK,BLINK,BLINK*

Eh...I guess.

Have you had any interesting run-ins with strangers recently?  

Pause...Why didn't YOU tell me?

At peace buying plants!

There are lots of things I've missed out on not having my mother in my life during my adult years that I could have really, REALLY used.  I've learned how to manoeuvre through life without her knowledge, however, and I continue to keep it moving.  This new thing however??????????    

I don't know how I'm going to get past it.

Men...check out now.  This ain'tcha genre.  You've been warned.

I've always had pretty basic Midol Weeks except for in the past when I've had a ruptured fibroid going on.  I used to be able to basically set them by clockwork.  They came ever 31 days and two days before I'd get PMS.  Cranky boots.  Tender boobs.  Water retention.  Backache.  Salt cravings (Lays Plain potato chips), etc.  I go about my business like all other women and make it do what it do.  I used a period tracker when I was trying to get pregnant so I knew when I was ovulating even as I had very painful ovulations and knew exactly what was going on when it happened.  After I wasn't trying anymore, I kinda let that go.  

A few months ago I was feeling really, really weird and messed around and asked Mr. Google one too many questions and determined that I might have Lupus.  It was two weeks after my regular Midol Week so it never occurred to me that it could be another Midol Week.  So yeah...Lupus.  I was seriously about to make a doctor's appointment when I had visual evidence that yeah...prolly not Lupus.  But I was way confused because I thought I'd just had a cycle.  I didn't know for sure since I wasn't tracking it but I thought so and I remembered other things like packing for a trip two weeks prior and having to take supplies so yeah...two weeks.  I told a friend who laughed and laughed and laughed at my "lil 'bout of Lupus" turning out to be Midol Week.

Again.

Thirty-one days later...Midol Week started up and, TWO WEEKS AFTER THAT...another one.  Now, at this point I'm thinking I must be crazy so I started using a new tracker:  Clue  

I like Clue.  It's easy to deal with and figure out.  BUT...Clue clearly thinks all this is crazy.  Like...Clue is so confused.  Clue is not here for this.  Clue thinks I'm inputting incorrect information.  LOL!  Clue is about to delete itself from my phone for making a mockery out of the awesomeness it has been accustomed to being.

My doctor says there is nothing wrong and that this is all normal for a woman my age.  Even when I shared with him that I get night sweats two nights before Midol Week no matter the length of that particular cycle so I know it's coming.  He just stared at me blankly like..."Yeah...and?  What do you want me to tell you?"

With these crazy cycles I'm a full, solid two pounds heavier than ever and, no matter what I do, I can't drop it until AFTER Midol Week is over completely.  Because of this, I'm my normal size for basically three weeks every two months.  LOL!  On my frame...that's a lot.  It definitely shows in my jeans and yoga pants.  I get crazy migraines before and after and well, twice a month for a year was bearable but now it's like six ever two months and well...those extra migraines are a hot, fonky fried mess.  I'm currently sitting here in shorts, a sports bra and a fleece jacket that I have zipped up.  I had it open an hour ago and before that...I had it completely OFF.  I used to only have to buy light and regular supplies.  Now?  Hand me them super doopers playa.  My already tiny bladder has clearly shrunk by about 50% of volume.  I can't drive from the house to Target without REALLY NEEDING TO GO TO THE BATHROOM WHEN I HIT TARGET!!!!!

Crazy talk.

I hadn't had any wine during Lent and had some this past weekend.  The wine made me too hot.  THE WINE MADE ME TOO HOT.  That might end up being the death of me.  

Oh...and during Midol Week, my ankles swell.  Had me on a plane once thinking I was going to need compression socks.

And again...my doctor says it's all normal for a 46-year-old woman.  He says some women go into perimenopause and stay there for a long time before it sorts itself out.  He says that if it's unbearable he can give me some drugs that might help but I'm of the mind that I put enough drugs in my body when we were trying to have a baby so yeah...I'm good with sitting around with a fonky azz look on my face as long as I can sit alone, in the cold, without a lot of talking going on.

Things that used to not annoy me now VERY MUCH ANNOY ME.  My people-ing skills now take significant prep time to be put on deck.  And, more than ever, I truly only want to do what I want to do.  I'm totally growing into one of those people who have a Zen garden with one of those rakes to make designs as meditation.  The only time I'm at complete peace is when I'm playing with flowers or digging in the dirt or on the sofa with The Robinator and the doggies (but only if they are NOT on top of me if I'm hot).

I said all that to say...these are things you don't really talk about out loud with folks until it is something you're dealing with and then...with only a few folks mainly your mom.  If she's not there...you gotta use another trusted source even as you know that everybody is different and will react to something this major...differently.

I'm totally going to do this without drugs because the side effects of the drugs used to treat these symptoms scare the plum piss outta me.  One Elder scared me so bad...she got me planning to start running as she says that it's the only way to keep the weight around the middle off by sweating A LOT via exercise.

I hate sweating but hell...I sweat sometimes just sitting.  LOL!

Now I understand the pink talcum powder puffs my mother and all her girlfriends had back in the day.  Hell...I'm looking at Shaq in the Gold Bond powder commercials with a steely glint in my eye.  I might need to incorporate some of that soon.

And I thought getting used to my gray hair was going to be the problem.  UGH!

Yup...it's like that.  These are the worst of times.  Getting used to this new normal is going to take some doing.  LOL!  Yet another reason to keep my baby wipe hand strong.