The Big Chop!

Before the Big Chop, I got my hair professionally done weekly and now all I do is spray some moisturizer in it and go. it’s a little off putting for me to be walking around with an unkept afro. It just looks like a frizzy fro with some TIGHT curls in the back. Some days I’m happy to be nappy and I REALLY don’t care and others days, I’m super self-conscience and I feel like my ‘look’ has drastically changed. I wont be turning in my stilettos for Birkenstocks anytime soon, but there’s definitely a shift in my aura with a natural. That’s the part about this process I embrace. I love that it’s my hair in it’s most natural state. Now I just need to find a style that I’m comfortable with. I’m over the ‘Teeny Weeny Afro’ and I’m about to throw some Senegalese twists up in here until it grows a bit longer for my liking.

Something that surprised me is the amount of money that I spent on products. I spent hundreds of dollars monthly on my relaxed hair style and I assumed that with a baby fro, I’d be a rich woman because I was going to save SO much money… not so much… The day I Big Chopped, I spent over $200 on shampoos, conditioners, deep conditioners, pre-poos, post-poos, castor oil, coconut oil, jojoba oil, virgin olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, leave–ins, wash-outs, gels, curl creams, curl custards, curl butters, etc… after 3 days, I was over the curl thing and now I just used shea butter oil and bounce. It’s a process and I’m learning, I’m sure there’s more that I could be doing, but it’s not in me to spend that much time playing in my hair. I’m going to let it grow and hope for the best. The way I look at it, my people were slaves and they didn’t have any curl cream and I’m sure their hair grew just fine! We’ll see how it goes… If I hate it, trust and believe I will throw that creamy crack right back on my scalp!

I don’t know what it is, but I’m fascinated with fascinators. I mean, I do know what it is… I’ve recently gotten into horseracing and the whole culture of going to the track is something new and somewhat exciting for a novice like myself. Not only does it give me an excuse to go shopping for appropriate attire, now I have to find a show stopping headpiece! Ok, maybe not show stopping, but I’ve got to put SOMETHING on my head… If I’m going to do it, it needs to make a statement, like POW! Anyway, here are two of my fascinator looks for this season… I need to get into wearing hats because I plan on hitting up the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and Belmont Stakes next year and I need to look fabulous.

So… the next day, I go to the DMV (again) and now that I’m a pro, I go get the correct form, fill it out (again) with my super fly pen and then a guy to my right asks, “Hey, can I use your pen?” I didn’t even look up… I thought about it for a millisecond more than I did yesterday, and said, “No” (again). Then I got on line, got my number, plopped down on a bench, shrugged and said to myself that this was just an ass woopin’ I was just gonna have to take…

If you look at the picture on my license, I’m cheesing SO hard because I made it out of the DMV unscathed and wasn’t chased up outta there by the thought of getting beat up over a pen.

Cheesin’!!!!!

I promise you I can’t make this shit up… I’m at work, sitting at my desk, minding my business when this older Black gentleman walks in. I’ve seen him before and he comes in from time to time to hang out and chat with the office secretary. Most days he ignores me as he makes his rounds and I just assume it’s because I’m new and nobody seems to like new around here, but today I keep catching him staring at me out of the corner of my eye. This surprises me because like I’ve previously mentioned, he goes through great lengths to ignore me whenever he walks in. So when I catch him looking at me for the third time, I say, ‘How’s it going?’ and he replies, ‘Good… Pigs Feet and Chitterlins…’ I kid you not, he looked me straight in my face and said, Pigs Feet and Chitterlins.” And that’s it. I paused for a second and let the silence seep in, but as someone who can’t let shit go, I ask, ‘What ABOUT Pigs Feet and Chitterlins?’ and he replies, ‘That’s what I’m having to eat next week.’ Another awkward pause follows and I say, ‘Oh ok,’ and went back to working at my computer. My coworkers are politely ignoring the exchange, but I have no doubt that they caught the entire exchange and at this point I’m kicking myself under the desk for even speaking to this old guy. I’m a sucker for the elderly – I love old people, BUT THIS GUY RIGHT HERE? Not so much… Out of EVERYONE in my office, why does he have to tell the Black girl about his plans for Pigs Feet and Chitterlins?!?!?! Why me!??! I hate to say it’s because I’m Black, but dang! What else could it be? He spoke to everyone else in the office about random things, but with ME he wants to talk PIG PARTS?!? I mean, how does one respond to such an inane comment? How about, “Oh ok, can I come over and sample?” or how about, “For real?! Let me tell you about my secret pig-parts-recipe!” I mean what the hell?!? I personally have never had Pigs Feet OR Chitterlins so I don’t know if there was a proper culinary response that I should have come after his outburst, but I know that before you start sharing your personal eating preferences, you should learn my damn name! I should roll up to his office and yell, “DASHIKIS AND KOFIS!” right in his face and see how he likes that BS… Honestly, I don’t think that Pigs Feet and Chitterlins are a ‘Black’ thing, but I definitely think that when the only two people of color are discussing pig parts at work it’s somewhat inappropriate… maybe it’s just me…

Just finished running 13.1 miles!

Hands raised singing "Men Anpil Chay Pa Lou" which is a Hatian proverb that means, 'With many hands, the burden is light'

As many of you know, I went to Haiti for two weeks with Habitat for Humanity. The goal of the organization is to make sure that everyone across the globe has safe, affordable housing and over the summer, Habitat began forming the first team of volunteers to head back into Haiti since the earthquake that ravaged the country on January 12th, 2010. The epicenter of the 7.0 earthquake was near the town of Léogâne, which is 16 miles west of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. In order to get to Léogâne, we first had to fly into Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and then drive by bus across the border into Haiti. As the first team, we didn’t know what to expect but we were all prepared to be flexible and to take the experience in stride. It took over an hour to cross the border and in total about 8 hours to get to Port-au-Prince where a demonstration was taking place and hindered us from being able to visit the Presidential Palace which, visually, for many represented the level of destruction that was caused by this natural disaster. We stayed at a Christian Mission that was close to the build site and made it convenient to go back and forth on a daily basis. The goal for our team was to see how quickly a team could construct two houses. Later this year, there will be a Jimmy Cater build with 400 volunteers and Habitat wanted to ensure that the construction could be completed with a certain number of volunteers and within the time frame of their visit. The land that we were constructing on had been where many displaced families had set up their tents after the earthquake. The community members told us stories about how they lost everything when the earthquake hit and how they couldn’t stay where they were and picked up what was left of their belonging and started walking until they found some land to set up their tents on. Once the plan for the neighborhood had been established, they were moved to the other side of the road so that Habitat could clear the land and start constructing. This is my 6th Habitat build and I’m never prepared for the things I see. Everyday we drove through their neighborhood and all you could see were rows and rows of tattered tents. As someone who works in the news business and followed the story closely for over a year, I was still unprepared for what I saw. All of the ‘aid’ that we sent hadn’t done much to help the people who survived the storm. A year a half later, families were still in tents, still had no clean, running water and there were large amounts of debris that still had yet to be cleared. It reminded me of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit. On one of my trips down there, we were gutting houses and piles of debris remained on the streets for months. I also had the impression that the tents that were sent to the Haitian people after the earthquake were providing a livable, safe shelter for those who were displaced, but one look at the ‘tent cities’ made it obvious that this was not the case. One of the community members explained that the tents don’t keep out the rain when there’s a storm. It rains quite often in Haiti and the tents would flood and be unsafe for people to stay in. Then there’s the unbearable heat; the tents get so hot that it’s impossible to stay inside of them on most days so they didn’t provide much shelter to anyone. These tents that were supposed to provide relief are actually unlivable for the people that they’re supposed to help. During a town hall style meeting that we had with the community, I got very emotional hearing their stories and seeing how they’ve perservered through it all. One of the woman used a translator to tell me that, “Mwen renmen-li anpil..Mwen sent-li andan po mwen” which translated to “I like her a lot. I feel her in my skin.” This bond we created grew over the week that I was there. She showed me her home (tent) and introduced me to her son. We chatted everyday on the work site and she brought me a watermelon to show me that she appreciated me being there. Interacting with the community and working alongside future homeowners renewed my team’s commitment to get the two houses completely built as quickly as possible. We were successful in our goal to have 2 houses constructed before we left and after we finished building on the last day, the community members came over to the finished houses to surprise us with a going away party and to thank us for the work that we doing. We all prayed together, sang together and blessed their new homes. They brought us gifts and baskets of fruit and it meant so much to me because these people had lost everything… everything! And they still found a way to express their thanks to us and bring us tokens of appreciation. This trip was a life changing experience. It’s always a blessing to be able to see how other people live in other parts of the world so that I always keep what’s important in perspective. The Haitian people may have lost physical possessions, but it didn’t change who they were, their love for one another and their love for their country. Haiti will forever be in me and I pray for those that I met while I was there. With the houses that I built side by side, hand in hand, I hope that I’ve left a positive mark in their hearts and as they’ve left in mine.

Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill

Mom already said that she didn’t want to go out for dinner so I went downtown and got her favorite meal from her favorite gourmet Chinese restaurant, then I went to the liquor store – and people, this is where I went wrong – My mom is somewhat of a wine connoisseur and I figured I would impress her and show her how GROWN I was by having some wine for us to drink with dinner… *pause* … yeah… *pause* … So I go around the corner to the liquor store and I ask the guy where the wine is and if there’s a good one he could suggest (visualize me asking this of a guy who works behind plexiglass – naïve, I know). So he points me towards a fridge and says, “Our strawberry wine is really popular.” This is where I should have turned around and went home, but instead, I go check it out because I’ve never heard of strawberry wine and since I wasn’t much of a drinker back then (we know that’s not the case now!) I assumed that this strawberry wine was something exotic that I hadn’t been exposed to in my short 21 years of life. So I check out the bottle and there’s a big orange sticker that reads, “2 for $5.” This was another point in which I should have given up my plan to impress, but I was a shiny faced, recent college grad with very little money who needed to impress my mother with my maturity and my deep knowledge of grapes so all I could think was, “Wow! I can get TWO bottles for only $5! That’s better than the Arbor Mist we used to drink in college.” So I bought my wine and went home to wait for my Mom to get there.

So my Mom arrives – she loved my cute little apartment and loved how I decorated it (win!). As I prepared our plates, I’m in the kitchen telling her I also picked up a bottle of wine (it sounded so cool to say at the time) and I poured her a BIG glass and brought it to her. She looked at it a little funny, (and this is where I should have aborted the mission) but probably just assumed my pink wine was some form of “blush” (yeah, not so much). She didn’t really sip it and it wasn’t quite a mouthful, but she drank enough to spit it back out and looked at me incredulously and said, “What the hell is THIS!?” (note: My Mom doesn’t curse) I said, “It’s strawberry wine!” and then she said, “What the hell is strawberry wine?” I was so flustered by her cursing and confused about what was wrong with the wine that I said, “I don’t know! I got it from the liquor store around the corner.” (should have kept that part to myself) She then gave me the tiiight sideeye and told me to bring her the bottle. I wasn’t smart enough to remove the big orange sticker that read, “2 for $5” before I handed it to her, but that didn’t matter because she was really just concerned with the label because she damn near yells, “BOONE’S FARM?!? You gave me BOONE’S FARM!?!” I’m scared at this point and I said, “What’s Boone’s Farm?” and she’s like, “It’s what the winos used to drink when I was a kid – see, 2 for $5? Straight wino.” As she went to the kitchen and poured both bottles down the sink, she began to laugh uncontrollably-to the point of bringing herself to tears. Needless to say, I was embarrassed and quickly poured her a replacement glass of water – no lie, she barely made it through our meal because she was laughing so hard. It’s been a couple of years since then and every once in awhile when I break out some wine, she says, “It’s not Boone’s Farm, is it?” and then starts to chuckle to herself.

Our First Cocktail: not sure what it was supposed to be, but it came with a spoon and a straw

Happy Mother's Day: It was fitting to have sorbet

Events Wall: I thought it was pretty eclectic

Random Gas: It was just in the middle of the block, you pull up, pump and go

Even the French Know What's Up (peep the top story abt DSK a week b4 his scandal broke in the US)

Trying to Master the Metro

On the Flight from Paris to London: Mom got me tipsy on wine and thought it was funny enough to take a picture of... I was sick all the next day