rainbow brite

imgp2949
Originally uploaded by raquita.

The irony of this beautiful picture is that I didn't take it - her father did. I always say that you can tell how a person sees you by the pictures they take of you - I believe Cam will certianly konw her daddy loves her by this one

Saddness..Untill I hold her...

Twenty three and a half hours.

23.5

23 ½

20 + 3 + .5 =1410 minutes

1410 minutes

84,600 seconds.

That’s how long I was in labor. And I remember most of it. And looking back it doesn’t seem as bad as it felt at the time, but I’m sure it was just as painful as my mind would like me to believe. After she came I remember thinking – wow that didn’t take so long, then I looked at the clock and came back to reality.
Looking back on the ten months of pregnancy (yes men folk, 40 weeks is ten months – drop the nine month crap – it pisses pregnant women off.) I remember think how easily I would die for this little girl. How I would move minds, and mountains, and anything necessary to make her world easier, brighter, clearer, give her anything.
I am remembering this because I read a blog of a fellow mom group, and they were all over the place – talking about Disney movies and how the mom always gets killed –that’s another post, and picking Christmas gifts and making kids appreciate thanksgiving and amidst all of these posts there was one that stopped my mouse, and made my heart stop. Kelly – See DotMom link to the right – was recounting how recently her son’s life was threatened at school, and the nonchalant was the school reacted to it. A young boy in front of teacher and a principle calmly stated how he hated her son and was going to kill him. Now in today’s age of Columbine, 9/11 and the moment London becomes New York, or San Francisco becomes an embassy and the color coded warnings don’t work, they want her to just brush it off with no assurance of what they are doing to make sure her son is safe?

‘Cuse?

These are the exact reasons why home schooling doesn’t seem so bad, I mean I’m not the smartest cookie in the bag but I only gotta be smarter than the stuff I’m teaching my kid right? So I think it’d be a safe bet that I could handle it, at least until ninth grade algebra. I could swing geometry but not calculus. But really I don’t want to send my daughter in to social oblivion, I don’t want to keep her beauty and radiance from the rest of the world. (yeah – that’s the ticket) I don’t want to screw it up and not have the school system, that we will choose to blame, not really… sorta, but no matter what I chose I am so afraid for my child. And I don’t know what to choose. School system will protect the kid threatening Kellys son but can’t make any guarantees to Kelly about her son’s safety – and what would I do? Pull Cammy from the school. Hire a body guard to hang low key around the school. Get a restraining order and make the school figure out how to teach the bad kid. What do you choose, and will it ever be my choice?

I pray daily that my child stay as happy as she was the last time I laid eyes on her, that her laugh stays easy and warm . That I can protect her from the bad things, the really bad things, and those that I can’t God handles for me. I pray that for all kids really, I wish it were different. Wish it were the dream we all dream of for our kids.

I don’t know what else I can say here and that makes me so sorry.

Kelly I am praying for your son and your family.

Poem;
Swords clash
Vibrate violently
in mommys hands
She was never a swordsmen
but she learned quickly
quick strokes
block and attack
push them away
and protect the dreams of her innocent
Steel never too heavy
not when I hold her
not when I hold her

All kinds of stuff, I'm just catching up...

The Holiday the Cook and the Spatula

Thanksgiving was a good day – Although I poured so much into it I am still drained. I cooked for two days straight – I helped my sister prepare her thanksgiving and then I prepared my own for my husband and his father. I feel like I served my soul up in Turkey dressing, macaroni and cheese and homemade cranberry sauce and gravy and garlic mashed new and baby red potatoes, and candies yams, roasted asparagus, and green bean casserole, a German chocolate cake and sweet potato pies and apple cobbler.

Did I ever mention I love to cook?

Love. Love. Love it.

Like I love my family, I love to create with food, and share and give of myself, and pour my heart and everything into what I am preparing. Thanksgiving is the ultimate attempt of people all over the country to express how they feel about their families and friends. However I approach cooking like I do everything in life. So I got to use the best to offer my best. So I spent WAY too much on the right veggies and ingredients and the right gadget to get the consistency just right, get my browning just right, make my sauce just right.

After the holiday people asked me on several different occasions when was I gonna open my restaurant. Well, as soon as I find $500,000 attached to a investor willing to believe in my vision. Cause I got one. Cooking for a living was one of my dreams, just like being a full time photographer, painting, writing, teaching for a living. They all hold special, special places in my heart. They live stored in the film around my heart holding it together but none rushes my blood like cooking.  
Spoken says it will not work and we’ll stop being friends. I’m saying she’s too pessimistic. Shes’s saying … “all I’m saying is you need a business plan, and a floor plan that not only Feng Shui and bring in good energy and is located in a cool area,  and a menu, and taxes, and …..blah blah blah”
I said but we can do it!!! Anyway back to my rant.

I honestly believe you can talk and communicate with the energy you put into an activity. As A woman I believe I have made men stay with me when they would have left by simply making something for them. I know at least one man came to me after tasting from my kitchen, and I knew it was time to leave another when nothing I cooked for him came out right.

But in that I believe food is powerful, its not as empowering for me as it is draining. I felt like I poured my whole life into thanksgiving and it took me DAYS to be able to say I had gotten most of my energy back. If I open a restaurant I wonder if it will kill me?

Reading Writing and other fundamentals

I have started reading a lot lately, I wan to write but I don’t have the strength to lift a pen if feels like lately, so I am hoping I’ll read something that will make me want to write. 13 – her blog has made me look for a pen only to lose the moment when I could not find what I needed. I need to get organized. I need to get it together. I will. After I take a nap.

Moving, Dogs and other madness

If you have read J’s blog you know we are in the market for a new dog, we are also moving this month (December) and looking for a renter. A big part of me wants to stay in our current home and renovate it into ‘Our Home’. J thinks we should move and keep the renters income coming in. We can go back and forth about it all the time. But we have decided to go ahead and move it benefits us as well as my granny, and gives us some yard, and gives my cousin, I hope, the chance to live and come into his manhood. (I’m breaking my own cardinal rule about renting to relatives)
New dog- I want a Cane Corso. Apparently I can’t have one cause they cost like an arm and a leg. Got a spare Cane Corso laying around and wanna share? I’ll gladly take him.

Now I just told Spoken I was blogging this conversation she would like to note the views expressed in this blog make her not my friend anymore. Then she calls me a whore and she keeps going on about how she can’t believe I blogged the conversation. Yeah Dog!

Love ya spoken!!!

Revelation via Bank Statements and Blogs

Truth of the matter is I get a lot of my blogging ideas from reading other blogs and having more to say about it than the comment section will allow. Today I was reading about a fellow bloggers money issues. She was left with a choice to have some cash or go see an opera and she chose the opera (she lives in New York) and roughly four or five days later at $7.32 in her checking account, she was feeling the pinch and took a change jar to a Coinstar to rummage up some grocery money. $32.31 later she was shopping like a college student – who like veggies.
I was struck by –first the ability to budget to $7.32 and not end up with over draft charges WAY up the wazoo, and two to get to 7.32 and be like - cool – let me grab my change jar and get my grocery on. Maybe it’s the single no kids aspect that makes that possible.
I remember my happiest single time. I was 22, I was dating, almost serial dating, and was fairly serious about this lawyer/councilor I was seeing. He helped me find a apartment in my current dwelling area of South City, I was working at the job I hate but I was using my check to perform poetry all over the country. I was traveling, a lot. I was fit, going to the gym four days a week, eating giant bowls of fruit for dinner. I’d eat a whole watermelon for dinner once a week a least all summer. Pasta three four days a week, a little pesto sauce some clams and a quarter pound of shrimp and I was happy. Hot wings and a small Imo’s pizza. Hamburger helper made with ground turkey and a can of peas. Two sushi rolls and a Fanta orange soda. I IBC and A kick ass turkey burger and sweet potato fries. It was easier to clean up after my self, I never miss placed things. Everything was simpler. I never budgeted beyond my monthly bills, and I was too happy with my life. Not happy-full like I am now, but happy-free. Does that make sense?
Now I am learning to merge two lives, two thought processes, two everything –except furniture thankfully – and it is times like this that I have to remember I am still a newlywed. I am quickly starting to see what changes when you get married. Because no matter what anybody says living together is different than being married.
Point in case.. Finances. J and I have big GIANT hiccups when it comes to finances. Most of them are things that happen beyond our control – but they tend to happen over and over again. So something in our control has to be able to change- right? But when you are married you gotta find those things together. Have to agree or be willing to let the other person take control or be willing to take the lead.

We don’t do that very well it seems.
So maybe I need to take control.

I don't want to over do it, and anybody who knows me will tell you - when I take control, watch out. But neither of us is wanting to force the other into our world. But here we are married and in each others world, so for real. I find that I have been way more old fashioned than I expected from myself. I am not the future forward woman I thought I was. At least in marriage. Might as well find myself a ankle long skirt and avert my eyes when spoken to. I think I expected J to take a more forward approach to our life. Why? I DON’T KNOW! (read all kinds of sarcasm into that) That surely wasn’t the example I took for Cliff and Claire Huxtable let alone from my parents marriage. If I knew why I thought that maybe we could work on all kinds of racism and sexisms and any other ism you can think of.
But I think I have decided that What I have to do to improve our situation is regress a lil bit back to free-happy Raquita. When I’m happy everybody in my house does better and I do better. Full-happy is so necessary on a soul level but I think free-happy is part of the equation too. I don’t think, anymore, that it has to be an either/or situation. I was so active before in the things that made me happy, and now I think I’ve tried to hard to be so inclusive that I’ve lost too much. He was happy with me then- probably more so – since I was so much more alive. So this is my decree. I need to find a more well rounded happy than I have settled into. Now once I figure out how – I’ll let you know – but I think I’ll start with some well earned shoe shopping. And a fun time with my family. And I think we’ll have fruit for dinner.

P.s The blog is gonna undergo some new changes in the near future... be on the look out.

Maturity

maturity:
To be able to stick with a job until it's finished;
to do one's duty without being supervised;
to be able to carry money without spending it;
and to be able to bear an injustice without wanting to get even.

Well - are you mature?

He went to get a MuthaFukkin raincoat?!?!!

"You can't tame the white supremacist power structure with cheese" –Huey Freeman
“Don’t trust them new niggas over there... ” –Uncle Ruckas

Okay – the boondocks was off the Motoflippin chain dawg! I loved it, I thought the voices were pretty good, and will develop into more individual voices as the series progresses. But, ironically, how good the show is has begun to take a back seat to all the uproar the shows existence has started.

And that is the number one reason why I love it.

It is a show for black people, and for white people. For young people and old, rich and poor. It’s a show that is designed to make people talk. That’s the whole point, and all the people up in arms about it are as ironically as the characters on the show, missing the point and proving the point all at the same time.

For instance there is a guy in LA who is trying to boycott the show with his group Project Islamic H.O.P.E. and other groups along with fellow protesters The National Action Network, The Malcolm X Movement and the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, headed by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, they are barking up the wrong tree if you ask me. …http://www.eurweb.com/story.cfm?id=23284 Don’t you have some Music video directors or rappers and record labels who use nigga in a manor that is way more detrimental to our society since kids can listen at all hours of the day rather than after 10 p.m? Or how about politicians or anybody more important to focus that energy on than a Cartoon designed to make people talk. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT! Can we talk about the lack of decent grocers and produce in black neighborhoods and inner cities? How about the still Segregated schools inner city kids still attend? Disenfranchisement, High gas prices, our president, lack of black owned renovation in neighborhoods? Can’t we find somebody who is not on the same side as us? There are quite a lot of right wing, anti everything, pro just what they think people running the world that you really shouldn’t have to look to far to find one.

Aaron McGruder is not the revolution – he’s the conversation about the revolution. The Boondocks isn’t supposed to change the way you do anything, its supposed to make you think about it though. Truth of it for me is- removing derogatory terms won’t do any good, we’ll just make up new ones. We need to remove the core that causes people to need and want to used those terms in a derogatory manor.

Like it or not, The Boondocks is a part of a geodesic sphere called Truth. There are countless sides to the truth and one doesn’t negate the other in anyway. Black folks need to see what the picture looks like from different views. White folks need to see what the picture looks like from different views. And not being able to stomach it is exactly what the doctor ordered.
People are going off saying that the only people who will like and watch this show are weed smoking frat boys, I hate to point out that I am neither and no one who watched the show with us fell into that category. I can’t wait for additional discussion about this to pop off.. feel free to start it here – cause I’m ready to respond.

p.s
I find it funny so many people are saying that Huey and Riley don’t sound right. Ummm.. pardon but if Aaron McGruder says they sound like Regina King channeling a ten year old boy - then guess who they sound like?

If you missed it watch it here
http://www.3030media.net/nov05/11062005-boondocks_1of2.wmv
http://www.3030media.net/nov05/11062005-boondocks_2of2.wmv

“Bet You wish you had your rain coat right now.”-Grandpa Freeman

Love your body

-Be bold and LOVE YOUR BODY. STOP FIXING IT. It was never broken. - Eve Ensler

 

That quote just made me feel good, so I thought I'd share...

Rockin out!!! To Grover!?!?!

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Originally uploaded by kate.foreman.

Well, its official I’ve got a concert to go to and I’m excited. I got up early as a MUG this morning and place my ticket order and bought tickets to take Cammy to her first show. Her dad is going with us, we are very excited, it’s a classic, they tour every year.Go ahead and guess who we are going to see…

Go ahead…
No.. Not Black Star
No, we saw Mos Def by him self a few weeks ago,
No, I missed the Common show
No I’m not paying to see Air Supply- but I’d go if it were free…

Give up? Sesame Street Live "Super Grover! Ready for Action" That’s right I am so in grossed in this parenthood thing I am going to watch Muppets live. Now if they did a classic Muppet Show, you all would be jealous. Swedish Chef and the two old guys on the balcony have always been my favorites. But alas I have decided that a very large building full of 2-7 year olds is exactly where I want to be…

Funny how life changes..

when your mom blogs

Loving your mother

My mother and I are quite a quandary. She had me when she was young, a freshly 17- I was a week late birthday present. She was my best friend for a long time then Puberty hit and hormones (I’m blaming the hormones – don’t push it) made me a psycho teen - those hormones didn’t settle until I was twenty-ish, but had done the expected damage. She says left I said right, Her up, my down. Never see eye to eye anymore, even now it doesn’t happen often, although not a violently ying and yang as we used to be.  I always thought my sister was her favorite. They like to do all the girly things together – I wanted to do the girly thing – I was just never comfortable. Still have never learned how to do my own hair.  Anyway when my parents separated, I expected my mom to.. well I don’t know what I expected. But in giving birth and raising my own daughter it often makes me look at my mother in a new mom light.
I understand a lot more why she is who she is, and I am learning more and more about her as a person. At 28, my age mind you,  our relationship dips into the friendship mode and that’s a sticky place at best when you get along with your mom. When your relationship teeters like a see saw between pretty good, alright and I’m gonna leave now, friendship can be… difficult.  Besides in being friends with the women you grew up to hold and admire in such selective reverence, you tend to learn things about them you really would have never guessed. You know when your mom/auntie/grandma/godma/inset authority figure here gives TMI and you are like ‘Whoa – I don’t want to, well - not respond cause I want us to be able to talk on this level but – pray tell what do I say to that?’ You know you been there. I know I still have so much growing to do, which she likes to point out every now and again. I speak about my mom because she has told me she has started to blog, which is kinda cool, she also stated that she reads mine, and I wonder how much of it has she read… she never comments – she’s working on being technically advanced and sometimes it’s the simple things that will get her – when you put your thoughts out there – you certainly run the risk of actual real people you know in your real life reading it and figuring out which fake name is theirs and causing some hurt feelings, I’ve yet to use my mom in blog history so – I’m pretty safe so far. As soon as I figure out what her blog address is I’ll let you guys know. It should be interesting to say the very least.


Things that I love that I shouldn’t admit lest you think I’m a dork:

ChocoCat – Hello Kittys dark alter ego – seriously
Lip Gloss and makeup – really
CD’s I use to be a junkie – but in trying to be responsible I only drool and don’t buy
Scrapbooking – It is my most Caucasian hobby but I really enjoy it.
I like kissing my kids stinky feet cause it makes her laugh
Dressing Cammy up
I love when Jerry talks to me in his sleep as says silly stuff like “The dolphin just tackled me!” He really said that
Mall walking
Elton John’s song Benny and the Jetts
Pink – the color not the singer
Playing Basketball
I love when Jerry sings
When I come home and Cammy breaks into grins

Somebodys been sleeping in my bed...

I found this a few weeks ago I wrote it in like 2000 – and thought – wow – it still rings true- SO I am going to edit it to fit my new life and post for you….

Voila!

My Bed

Of all the spaces I call my own, all the material objects I have attempted to and successfully acquired, non hold the same special place in my heart that my bed does. I have a very, very special relationship with my bed. Granted I love my kitchen and all its little gadgets – for they help me create such magic. There is the chase in my living room with I adore, it holds me quietly – I liked to sit there and nurse Cammy.  Our bedroom could be cozy but my bed is sacred.
It is my separate universe, my own private earth. The only place where I can just be, a woman – made from man, nothing more, nothing less and now that I am a piece of a couple it is the space where he is just a man. Made in the image of God, and I can worship God in loving him and nothing else exists beyond the boundaries made by our sheets. Sorry got a little side tracked – I was talking about my bed.
To the average person it doesn’t look any different than your average ordinary bed. Standard Queen size set up – basic mattress and box spring – that needs to be replaced. I used to dress it in a mink bedspread, and caramel colored satin sheets, standard ghetto baby powder dusted everywhere and jasmine oil layered between the sheets, but that couple thing I mentioned never understood my bedding needs and wants, so now it is simply high count solid color cotton sheets, and a purple comforter.  
And I miss that, I miss dressing my bed – the way most women dress them selves.  My bed was to me like dressing my self, I always feel my most beautiful in bed, my most comfortable. I could sleep naked because my dressing was wrapped around me. It is the place where I can be completely honest, if I am tired, then I am tired. If I snore then my bed knows it and cradles me anyway. In my bed I never have to be the strong one, honestly it is where I run to when I need to hide for a minute, and where my tears are welcome. The time I spend in bed is the most vulnerable time of my day. I go there defenseless, my mind is not on guard, I’m not thinking or planning, or scheduling. When  raise that sheet and slide in I leave everything else outside, and find my peace, and my dreams used to come from that place. Now I don’t dream nearly as often, or I don’t remember them the way I used to.
Now my bed wasn’t always so special to me. In my early youth my bed was a cage, a prison I was banished to when bed time arrived or adults tired of my cuteness. I can recall my bed magically becoming a plaything until parenthood deemed game over and it was back to Strawberry Shortcake covered prison bars. It wasn’t until my teen years, when I was given choices where my room and bed were concerned that I began to covet that time. It doesn’t help that I am a night owl, and SO not a morning person.
But in marriage I find that my husband doesn’t have the same affinity for our bed that I do. I am dying to chuck the queen and switch up to this pillow top King size wonder that will fit when we switch to our new home. Its killing me not to paint our marriage bed in beautiful colors and fabrics and textures, but there is always something more important, more pressing so it ahs been sacrificed repeatedly and my heart hurts for it.
But eventually I will find my way back to keeping our bed exactly the way I need to. Eventually.