Adventures in Emmieland

It’s finally over. The search for a housemate that is. We decided on a guy, Das would have preferred a girl but we had mostly guy candidates so. One positive that came out of the roommate situation is I can use the dining table for din8ng again and the downstairs is tidier 5hhan it ever was. Although we could rent out the other downstairs bedroom too we decided that a sitting room/game room would serve to give everyone a bit more privacy. I’m making headway with my story, over two thousands words which I’m not sure is a good thing or not. Trying to not over stress about life but sometimes it’s a take a clown and go to bed early kinda day. Funny thing here, the most I see police is at the library. Are libraries really hotbeds of crime? I see plenty of unruly and loud kids but so far they have all responded well to a shushing by the librarians. Maybe they are here to walk people to their cars, which is nice seeing as how sundown is before five. I’ve been sleeping like mad in part...

So far finding the perfect roommate is proving to be a myth. In fact finding a roommate at all has been pretty dicey.  So far one person has actually showed up. I’m learning that my method of looking for housing where I actually cancel appts and let people know if I decided on someplace else is not the norm. Who knew common courtesy isn’t all that common. I’m writing a story in order to just chill out. Of course I get all excited about my characters but if they aggravate me I just kill them off, sadly not a real world option. Well I guess technically it is but since I’m not looking to go to prison I’ll strike it from my feasible responses.

So we are advertising for a roommate. My idea is we will find someone for say six months to see if we like having one. Friends advised us to rent out both spare rooms but this place only has one bathroom.  It’s not yet six am so by rights I should be asleep but I keep drifting off only to have the beginnings of a nightmare so at this point I’m just gonna stay awake a minute. A girl can only take so many alien abductions and werewolves a night.  I’ve been thinking about how often bipolar people are not encouraged to have romantic relationships with other bipolar people. Given that both Das and I are bipolar it’s a topic of interest. Sometimes I think they may be on to something. When we are both in danger of going off the deep end, when neither of us can quite settle down and get shut done. On the other hand I have found it invaluable having someone by my side who gets it. He’s not baffled by my on a dime mood swings or my being overwhelmed by life and just need to tak...

I had a dream a couple nights ago where I was getting my ears repierced using lasers. It felt so real so imagine my dismay when one I woke up and two I googled and discovered this was actually not a thing. Oh well I may have to do them the old fashioned way, see a guy with a needle and enjoyment of my pain. It’s been a rough day, week, month, six months.... every time we thing we have a lock on something it becomes clear in the most distressing of ways that we don’t. I figure up should be coming around soon since we have been dancing with down long enough to shut down the club. On a happy note I’ve been taking pictures. Some nudes because I don’t love my weird body well itlll make me unhappy for no damn good reason. Early this morning the fog was just right so I ran out severely underdressed to try and capture it. Think I did ok. Adding pics to this blog has become a huge pain in the butt so if I can figure it out I’ll post a couple if not you’ll just have to take my word for it th...

I’m often left baffled by this obsession with demonizing little girls who don’t have a hundred hair bobs and braids. Is this a western thing, an American thing, a black thing? Today’s wtf moment was brought on looking at FB (always good to get your blood pressure up)  I’m in a group ostensibly about vintage black American pictures but there seems to be plenty of contemporary photos posted. Someone posted a pit picture of two elementary school aged black girls with the girl on the left wearing a ruffled dress with hair in multiple pigtails and adorned ponytail holders, the girl on the right was wearing jeans and at shirt with her waist length hair falling straight down her back. The y posted the pic with the comment little girls back in my day vs little girls now. Everyone knows the secret to enjoying anything on the web is to not read the comments, advice I all too often don’t take. There were over a hundred comments and while I didn’t read them all the overwhelming trend was to ...

I’m not sure why but tonight a few incidences I had in my teens/early twenties came to mind. Now people will tell you 5hat North Carolina is the south south like say Georgia or Alabama which I suppose is true but it’s certainly not a multicultural haven either. I grew up on and around a military base which means I was exposed to people of different ethnicities and cultures regularly. You might think this hodgepodge of folks would be a buffer against racism but nope. My best friend had parents who were immigrants, one from Poland and one from Japan. They were always sweet and welcoming to me and I never head them say anything nasty about any person or group. But when the Polish relatives were visiting I was forbidden to come over due to their racism. Another incident comes to mind my first year of college. My second roommate was a sweet girl from a small town. She needed to make a quick trip home and asked me to ride with her, I love riding so of course I went. When we got there her p...

Facebook strikes again, I was minding my own business lazily scanning my feed when I came across an anti bullying video. There was a demonstration of bullying with the bullied person reacting then there was a demonstration with the bullied person replying to insults with either agreement or a compliment to the bully. The idea being that such reactions take the steam out of the wood be bully and the bullied person has all the confidence in the world. My first thought when it finished was well that’s all well and good so when do we get to the part about accountability for the bully? Of course telling kids to have confidence to love themselves to not let their people get to them is nice. In a perfect world or scripted stage it works too but the reality is that while that approach may well deter some of the not dedicated to making your life miserable the serious bullies won’t bat an eye. And once again the onus is on the receptor to extinguish behaviours they are not exhibiting we seem t...

Sometimes it feels like life in general is it to get me. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, I beg to differ. What hasn’t killed me has made me crazy tired. Last night I was so exhausted I was about to cry, bodies weren’t meant to be that stressed. Here’s hoping things get a lot better sooner rather than later.

I was laying here today incapacitated by a rebelling body when I decided, now is a great time to write a poem, go figure.  I originally was going to post it on my poetry blog but seeing as how I’m locked out of it, again, I’m just going to put it here in all it’s long assed glory. I think about pain a lot, I’m in pain more often than not but I only ever hear it discussed clinically unless it’s a throwaway judgey as hell comment about everyone becoming addicts if so much as an Advil passes their lips or how everyone is over dramatic and they need to suck it up and tough it out. My thoughts tend to run more to the personal highs and lows of dealing with daily pain.                                    Pain Work through it Surrender to it Learn from it Turn your back on it We deal with pain Each on our own Although we should know We’re never truly alone It shouldn’t defin...

I was looking at a pic of my younger brother and his lady friend on fb and noticed there was one comment. It said “bishop” Now for all I know this is an inside joke between my brother and his friend but it made me think about how often I’ve seen/heard remarks telling someone a calling that they haven’t themselves claimed. What seems super odd to me is not just the audacity of it all but it mostly happens when someone is dressed up. Are we really so shallow that a nice suit equals pastoral potential? I’ve yet to encounter these prophecy comments based on pics of someone doing something  aside from singing in church or delivery a testimony. Where are the shout outs to people captured on camera behaving like Christians? Maybe I’m overthinking it but it certainly feels like there is something significant to ponder.

The ability, nay the insistence folks have on throwing shade befuddles me. Now I’m not going to lie I have been a bit shady myself but I do try to keep it out of public if I have to go there at all. FYI I find going to confession a good tool for self improvement. My priest knows my voice and seriously don’t want to be all “I’m being an intolerant jerk, again” every time I go. A lady posted a great pic of herself with her hair announcing itself with an unstructured Afro. I shouldn’t read the comments I’ve been internetting enough to know that but I did. A pleasant sunrise was how the vast majority of comments were compliments but there’s always that one. Someone comment that the poster’s skin was glowing which was immediately followed by someone else saying it was makeup and declaring her high confidence which negates her needing to hide behind a mask. Exactly why does one so confident feel the need to diss another woman for her beauty practices? The next moment of shadyness (probab...

You know the best thing about fiction, it's so often non fictional. I was reading a dark mafia romance, one of my favorite kinds, and came across a character I both rooted for and wanted to slap due to her cluelessness. It took reading through three books before I realized why she worked my nerves so badly, she was me. I clued in when I found myself agreeing that keeping her indoors/constantly attended in order to keep her out of trouble since she was hopeless at doing it herself, it gave me pause. Hmm wait a minute that sounds rather familiar, oh right that would be my life sans the billionaire mafioso. Nothing like a reality check brought on by a fictional character. I loved that she was soft and vulnerable and pliant but not weak although nearly everyone thought she was because her responses we not the norm. One thing I don't think people get is how you need to be strong to go through the world vulnerable. Softness is not for wimps, lol. In fact this girl was exactly the...

I've been reading an autobiographical novel, it's actually a 7 book series about a woman's childhood and adulthood. One thing that has me intrigued is how despite her being practically continually abused by her parents no one believes her. Her mother is such a successful liar and has gone out of her way to paint her as a liar and violent so that multiple teachers, social workers, doctors, and a child pdoc refuse to give any credence to her allegations. It's one of those situations that you have to believe because fiction wouldn't be so outrageous. One thing that makes my brain hurt is how easy it is for supposedly informed professionals to be manipulated. It makes one wonder just how often children's pleas for help go not only unanswered by fault of ignorance but willfully ignored because it doesn't fit the image or idealistic view of either the family situation or specific people. From what I've seen although people by and large are quick to condem ch...

Not sure why I woke up thinking about a fancy-ish restaurant back in J-ville but I did. I loved it when we went there for brunch on the weekends, a rare treat for a family of six on one modest income. They had food I'd never heard of  and sadly the names evade me. Maybe one day it will come back so that I can find them in the real world. That place holds a special memory for me too, I had my first date there. When I was 18 the man (he was 30 so fully qualified as a man) I was engaged to took me out on our first date. He had officially asked my parents if he could marry me when I was sixteen but he'd been telling me I was his God sent mate since I was twelve. A story for another day. Anyway it trips me out now that my first date was at eighteen after graduating high school. Nothing like making it to young adulthood completely clueless about social interactions in the world of romance. Funnily enough I don't remember much of the date besides me being giddy and worried tha...

Pain management or mismanagement as the case may be seems to be an often overlooked influence on the opioid crisis happening in the state currently. People in pain want to feel better but due to pharmaceutical company pressures combined with worries of dependency/addiction a bunch of drs will prescribe stuff that is not effective. There is also a social component, in the states wanting pain relief is somehow looked upon is immoral and/wimpish. Even when given proper medications to alleviate pain people take them joy when they are in unbearable pain instead of maintains a steady level through the day so that their pain never gets that bad. While met (I hope) drs do tell their patients to take whatever pain relief is prescribed at regular intervals it's not unreasonable to see why patients aren't compliant when the dr also is telling you that the drugs they are giving you have high rates of addiction. Nobody wants to chance becoming an addict and more importantly nobody wants oth...

On FB someone posted the question of when women first start having men notice them sexually. I was curious so I read through around sixty comments, by the time I was finished something struck me. A large number of the women who responded also added in that they had bold, were tall for their age, went through early puberty in and of itself that info wasn't interesting to me, however what did catch my attention was that even though the question only asked for an age, so many people gave the age along with a provision. I doubt anyone was doing it intentionally but it felt like they were giving the men an excuse. While it's hard to fathom a pre pubescent kid envoking an erotic reaction from an adult the fact that the child had some attributes of an adult, even a young one made it if not ok then at least understandable. It occurs to me that while we spend a lot of time both critiqueing and criticing our society we aren't always aware of we ourself acting in accordance with the...

I was thinking today about some of the more conservative/religious people I've known. They never saw the irony in taking a firm stance against children being exposed to violence in games or movies and yet they also are loud advocates of spank. So kids shouldn't see violence but it's ok for them to experience it. Makes perfect sense, right?

I was letting my mind wander and started thinking about the bruhaha about the "Yiu don't know you're beautiful and that's what makes you beautiful" trope brought to the forefront by a song by some boy band a couple years ago. It strikes me as kinda funny that the only interpretation of that statement was negative. We are led to believe that they are advocating low self esteem in girls but what it's more subtle than that. Since it's a bunch of teenage boys singing I'm not going to assume well thought out ideas of feminism or anti feminism. Knowing boys I'd venture to say that what is being put across is less of a desire for girls to think they are homely until a guy comes sweeping in to bestow the label of beauty but instead a way of expressing appreciation of finding a girl who doesn't think her prettiness puts her above mere mortals. The kind of girls who would publicly snub, in the most embarrassing ways possible, an average guy. A better p...

Sometimes it seem to me that in the efforts to achieve an equilibrium in wealth distribution between the races in the states we as black people are losing sight of traditional values that mean more than money. I'm not saying we shouldn't work to have the same opportunities, learn money management, investment, and business management I just think that they shouldn't be placed above love of family, extended support systems within our communities and an understanding of what it means to be truly successful. In times past often due to necessity we as a community knew the value of communal living, of spreading our work and our riches among our loved ones related or not. We did not embrace the rhetoric of individualism. We had a better grasp on the fact that knowing a trade was laudable, not something to be disdained. We understood how important people at all stages of life were to the entire community. Having cousins and grandparents living with you and close to you meant youn...

I recall growing up hearing from various sources that relationships between white men and black women couldn't work. There were accusations of ill intent on his side and even when conceding no ill intent the idea was that push comes to shove he will put being a white man above being your significant other. I didn't buy then or now that those are predestined events. I am now coming to understand more of where those attitudes come from. I know a guy, white with a pretty unapologetically bigoted family who married a woman of color. While they were together he was the outspoken champion against racism even going as far as cutting ties with some family members over their inability to change their ways. It should be noted that before becoming involved with her he'd no ever taken a stance on the issue against his family but when it became personal he stepped up with all the vigor of one discovering the worlds unfairness and zealously sought to eradicate it. Well time passed th...

Thinking about what it means to belong to someone and it occurred to me that you can't really belong to someone unless they also belong to you. I've heard multiple dominant partners say that they are the owners and it's not appropriate for the owned to feel possessive of them. For a time I tried to wrap my head around that and despaired the fact that I never could reach that point. It's something I've come to time and again, feeling guilty for having a strong sense of him being "mine" since I'm his. Now I don't think they have it right. It's not that he shouldn't be mine or that I should not feel possessive of him, the surrender comes into play with the acknowledgement that even though he's mine I can't control him. Trying to exert control over him is the inappropriate thing and I think it's much harder to have a strong sense of owning someone as much as they own you but not only commit to them exerting not only influence but ov...

Sometimes I seriously don't understand people. I get that we all make choices and they aren't all great. Everyone makes mistakes after all but when I see someone making the exact same mistakes repeatedly and sabotaging themselves it both baffles and frustrates me. We know someone who I've been ready to wash my hands of multiple times because I so often feel that we are way more invested in their betterment than they are. At one point to you just step back and let people do what hey gonna do without getting all het up? Does love mean always being there to help them clean up self made messes or is love of yourself and your sanity more important? I'm thinking there is no one answer that fits everyone but man sometimes I wish life came with an instruction manual.

I was reading a novel yesterday, the man character was a woman who went to great lengths to not believe people about the criminal activities she's told about. This made my mind jump to how common it is for people to accept without question negative stories about those they have a relationship with as opposed to seemingly blind belief. I know I've witnessed parents and spouses having both responses, sometimes see both in the same person. It's always odd to witness even in myself.  Last night an idea  came to me. When someone tells you something unflattering about your person they are inadvertently calling your judgment into question. We don't like that so shutting the info out seems like a reasonable knee jerk reaction. We all have our insecurities.  After all we've had someone outside reinforce our fears and in a roundabout way, our judgement. Now when something negative doesn't reinforce some kind of preexisting negative belief then the more likely to fall ...

Once again something I saw on FB has me thinking about something. The question was should parents charge adult children rent. There were a whole lot of yes and a whole lot of no but I don't think a blanket yes or no works. I give my "it depends" vote with no shame. I was charged rent as a young adult and I was at the same time under a curfew and had to follow various and sundry rules put forth by my parents in order to continue a level of control over me that made them but not me, happy. There was always the "if you don't like it there's the door" attitude which definitely contributed to my leaving home for good as soon as I possibly could and swearing to myself that no matter how difficult my life became I would never live under my parents roof again. What I learned from this was how it feels to be expected to take on adult responsibilities while being treated like a child. It wasn't a good feeling and it did nothing to strengthen my relationship ...

Yesterday I found myself reading a first hand account of slavery in an interview of two sisters who had been 12 and 6 when emancipated. It intrigued me because there really are not many first hand accounts by slaves of their experience. What both interested me and annoyed me though, were the comments. Person after person expressed regret that the sisters, in their eyes, seemed unaware of the horror of slavery since the ladies both agreed that their former master was a good man who treated them well. They even said that growing up in the main house they were spoiled and didn't want to leave when word of emancipation came through. I found it annoying that someone who has never come close to their experience felt that they were better equipped to classify and describe it than the women who actually lived it. So many of the comments were patronizing. People said things like "poor things they didn't know any better" I don't like the idea of slavery any more than th...

Sitting here catching up on post about hair had me think about an incident when I was around 10. My parents decided to have a cookout with members of our church on a Saturday afternoon, my usual "hair done" day. My mom washed and conditioned my hair but then got busy and left it to dry without braiding it. Now I have mad shrinkage, my shoulder length hair looks like a two inch Afro when not stretched,  and let me tell you having to get my hair braided after it dries is a high level form of torture. So the day goes on and I'm enjoying myself paying my hair no attention until guest start arriving, then suddenly I become hyper aware of my uncombed hair. To my recollection no one made any comments about it but I remember with the clarity reserved for mortifying events the deep embarrassment I felt about my hair being undone. I was near tears just because my hair wasn't braided or straightened. Looking back it seems nuts that as an elementary school student my hatred of ...

I imagine that it is difficult to say the least, to explore relationships between masters and slaves or even free black folk and white folks. The idea that white men with black women was always only rape seems off to me. Not out of any desire to downplay the reality but just in thinking about how complex people are now and have always been. It's doubtful that most or even many of these arrangements were entered into due to mutual affection but I can't say it's an impossibility. Of course in the case of owners with the owned that adds an element of coercion simply due to the power differential. I wonder if in fact those with true affection on both sides had more difficulty because they were stepping outside of accepted roles on both sides. To not hate the slaver and to not disdain the slave would have put them in unenviable positions within their communities. I'm not looking for great romances that reframe the reality of that period but I am curious about the actuali...

Das and I were talking the other day about how relationships change which flowed into a discussion on the state of ours. While we never had an extremely obvious (to others) M/s dynamic we've moved into that chill space where to us, it looks like we aren't really doing much. Well it looks that way until we note other people's reactions to us. What we take for granted and has just become how we do, is still noticeably different from the norm. These days we chill a lot. I wonder if for folks who had more obviously intense dynamics the easing off looks more like losing your way than finding it. Sometimes intentionality is important if just to make sure that complacency hasn't set in. I haven't seen it talked about much, the growth that goes on and from the outside looks like a pulling away from M/s when in reality its a testament to how much our roles have been internalized that he doesn't need to flex and I don't need to be placed. Now of course there are peo...

While enjoying a contemporary romance novel this evening I read something that jarred me. The female main character pondered the prevalence of dominating alpha male in romances. She then ponders that her love interest while being great in bed and rather direct doesn't boss her around because he respects her. I've repeatedly come across this type of thinking and can't wrap my head around why it is so difficult to grasp the idea of a male led relation that includes respect for the female partner. I've wondered if in our attempt to equalize the sexes we have prioritized what is "proper" over what actually works. I've never seen a well functioning enterprise that had no leader. Everything simply cannot be completely equal all the time. Now I don't think this means that anyone should be disrespected but I don't equate leadership with disrespect. Maybe that is the issue, in western society people who label as leaders often show blatant disregard for th...

There is something extra disheartening about a black person denying racism and appointing all responsibility for black folk being treated with respect. This morning while catching up the random that is FB I came across something a screenshot of a tweet thread about the use of the way black people speak. After clicking to get the full post I quickly becam annoyed with one guy who proclaimed himself an intelligent black guy who knows how to speak proper English and dismissed the ascertain someone else had made about the inherent racism of the attracts on non standard speech particularly when speaking of black vernacular. The point was made, rightly I agree, that the speech patterns being held up for ridicule were in fact fairly common adaptations across several groups from multiple countries. The standard English speaking black guy "sesbg" kept trying to change the conversation from one where people were discussing the intricacies of speech to belittling anyone who spoke that...

Debates from anti abortionist and  pro choice factions seem to mostly stem from deciding when a person is a person. Yesterday I saw an article/video about a couple who "adopted" left over embryos from IVF. By adopted I mean they were given permission to implant these embryos and deliver a baby. The embryos had been frozen for 15 years prior. I saw that they took the fact that they gave birth to live babies as confirmation that life and peopleness began at conception. I didn't take it that way because well how many post birth people have we ever heard of who have been successfully frozen and reanimated after 15 years? The fact that it can be done with embryos and not anyone outside the womb indicates to me that embryos are something but not what I would call people. I tend to think of them as potential people. Of course this story had other elements that made me question the motives of the folks involved but that's another post for another day.

I know a fair amount of clever people who have the gift of  witty turns of phrase. I also scroll through FB looking at this weeks offerings from the sum it up committee. Sometimes, often in fact, I find interesting sayings and ideas, interesting to me mostly due to their sparking extensive thoughts on some subject or other. People intrigue me so much of what I look at has to do with people. Today I read a post that was redirecting the meme of " no one can make you feel bad without your permission"  pretty well. I've known people who espouse this idea who mean well and I've known people who use it to cover their own cuplibility in being an ass to someone. What irks me is not that idea per say but the attempts to summarize things that truly cannot be said in two lines. Some ideas are simply not tweet sized and the push to summerize is not the way to go. Of course most reasonably intelligent people take the time to delve more into these ideas, not taking the surface ...

We were talking about God and stuff this afternoon while I was outside storing up on vitamins D and drying my freshly dyed/washed hair. For some reason the thought came to me that the whole communion of saints can be understood by thinking of God as a manager who delegates. While I wasn't being flippant  it was kinda funny.? I've got a backlog of lost items people are praying about, would you get on that Anthony... It makes me laugh when I think of the ways we as folks find ways to conceptualize things that by their nature are inconceptualizable, not sure that's a word but whatever, it is now. We went to the Saturday evening mass and jackpot, very few children. They don't get to me the way they do Das but if he's aggravated he can't enjoy the service so we've been searching for a workaround. It was a nice service. The person who spoke the homily has a very thick west indies accent so I'm really not sure about all he said but that's what I like ab...

I've been playing with essential oils. Today I made up spritzes of lemongrass, orange, peppermint and eucalyptus. While I like the fresh smell of the peppermint Das doesn't so that won't be a big bottle buy anytime soon. However the orange and lemongrass are good and of course lavender is my favorite. Still trying to find the best water, salt, oil blend to get the most lasting and strongest smell. I swear if i'd had this stuff as a kid I would have either smelled great or possibly had the whole house smelling crazy. Funny how much more creative in a crafty way I've become as I've gotten older. I think having options outside of knitting/sewing and cooking helps a lot. Not to mention being able to do things on my own schedule without anyone looking over my shoulder. I've also been taking loads of pictures. I love the overgrown look of my back yard right now, well I love it when i'm not actually walking through it and being accosted by spiders and other...