Thursday, December 22, 2005

Out to the ATL !!!

Hey everybody!!

I want to wish everyone a very merry Christmas as I am on my way this morning to Atlanta to visit the in-laws :-) with the fam!

I will try to post during the next week, but it might be chancy! LOL

Holla at'chall when I return!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Monday, December 19, 2005

Cookie Monster

For an update on Your Grandmama Ain’t like Mine click here

On to today’s post…….

You know….stupid assed people are EVERYWHERE. My proof of this? Well, today I was walking around my office and saw this HUGE basket of cookies. People typically bring in stuff for the WHOLE office to eat and sit it up front near the receptionists desk---especially this time of the year. And everyonei s welcome to the goodies. People bring in cookies, fudge, cold cuts & cheese, bagels, doughnuts, and other assorted food products of the like.

Well,in our office there are divisions. For example, I work in HR, there’s also finance, investigations, tech support etc. Well, this flighty woman who is 5”0 and petite is the admin. asst. for that group. We’ll call her Molly Doogood. Her daughter used to work up here in our office, but now she has transferred downstairs to a related, but separate entity within our company. Her daughter routinely takes her for granted and though she is nice, she is a dingbat, we-must-follow-evveeeeeeeeeeeeeery-rule-to-the-tee kinda person. For example, one day I asked her to scan a photo that I needed to have placed on disk. She tells me “Umm…… I’m not sure that I will be able to do that…… this printer/scanner isn’t TECHNICALLY supposed to be used to scan anything other than “company” stuff”


**crickets**

DON”T YA’LL KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW that I wanted to slap the holy horseshit outta this bitch and tell her to get a life and that I was going to slap her ass if she didn’t scan this fucking picture?????? There was NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO reason why she couldn’t have done it. Also, and let me say this, I know some of ya’ll are thinking ‘well, Robyn maybe she just doesn’t LIKE you’……. Uh….. no. That bitch is just dingy as fuck that way! I HATE people like her that you have to cajole and convince to do some inane ass bullshit like scan a fucking picture and put it on disk because they operate under some “boyscout honor” type bull!! Oooooh that burns my ass cheeks!!! That’s where whites and black are totally different I believe. A black person TYPICALLY win’t care as long as they #1. ain’t getting in trouble for it or #2. if someone does find out that it can’t be traced back to them. As you might have guessed she’s the white one and I’m the black one! HA HA!!! I mean, was it REALLY necessary to even think TWICE about doing something so small and stupid???? I didn’t think so.

So, this same bitch made some cookies and brought them in. BUT. She placed them in the ‘investigations’ area on top of the cabinet over there. My area is RIGHT next to the investigations area by the way. Now, I guess the cookies were supposed to be for the ‘investigations group’, but being the bitch that I am I saw them and went over there and was like “ OOH cookies!” and went to grab one. One of the investigators that I have a good repore with said “Ay…… you’re not an investigator”. I said “Well, I am today!” as I proceed with my grabbage ( I know….that ain’t a word) of the cookie (singular). I then read the sign (which I hadn’t done previously) and it said something like “For the Investigations Team, Thanks for all your hard work!”. And just so you can have perspective here, there were like 50-60 cookies in this BIG-ASS Tupperware thing and there are like 9 investigators. So I said, “Oh…..is this JUST for the investigators, meaning, can no one else have any”. The guy that I have the good repoire with says “I dunno” with a raised tone at the end of it which sounded ½ joking, ½ not. So, I start thinking to myself “Oh bitches PLEASE…… ya’ll are selfish as hell for just having this big-ass tub o’ cookies over here in the 5th place!”

So, he says , ½ jokingly mind you “ Well, you better ask Molly Doogood if you can” .

**Crickets**

OOOOOOOOOOO. K. you have GOT to be joking right? It was ONNNNNNEfreakin cookie for God’s sake! So, I roll my eyes so hard I'm surprised they didn't pop the hell OUT and ½ jokingly say to Molly Doogood Molly, can I have a cookie that’s for the investigators?” (Now, I hope ya'll know I ALREADY had a second one in my hand AS I WAS ASKING because from where she sits she can't even see the area where the cookies are). She looks and says “”I guess so….. these are for the investigators though so you might wanna ask them…..” (more eye rollage on my part). Ya’ll don’t know how baaaad I wanted to say “I’m Rick James BITCH” and slap that hoe and walk away.

So I fake-ass laughed and said ‘whatever’ under my breath and walked away mad at MYSELF that I didn’t recall the memory of how STUPID her ass can act about everyday dumb ass shit. But I got another cookie anyway! (WOOO-HOO !!!!!)

Stupid people….let’s shoot them to the center of the sun and be done with it!

Signing off,
Cookie Monster out…..

Thursday, December 15, 2005

My Grandmama ain't like yours Pt. Deux/College Finale/My Dad's Death

Expose of the janklies Pt. Deux…..

If you missed the first installment, read this first

Well, boys and girls where did I leave off when last we parted? Oh I was telling you about my Grandmother and her retarded exploits. Well….here we are…2 weeks after her death and on the brink of the “BIG CLEAN UP”. Me, my brother and my sister have to go to my grandmother’s house this Sunday to "clean up" her apt. but wait……. I’m getting ahead of myself….let me backtrack….*insert wavy memory lines here*

Now, when my father was dying, I was in my LAST semester at Michigan State University , which was the last of my 5+ year “bachelor’s program”. Little bit of explanation on that one. When I went to college, I had big ole dreams of being a doctor. So, I enrolled in the residential college( a separate college within the university) along with my roomie Traci and set out taking chemistry, calculus, physics, biology , some other “ology’s” and all that jazz. Well…. I’d say about 2 goooooooooood years into it, I decided that the doctor thing just flat-out WUDN’T gon happen. So, I was left with a bunch of classes that did not apply to ANY OTHER major that I wanted (really) and I had to “find” something to major in. This is why once I picked another major, I had to take MORE classes and honestly, I had to repeat a FEW that I got a straight up 0.0 in. *hanging head in shame*

Anywho…..I had JUST started my LAST semester when my father was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He was scheduled for surgery and had the surgery as my semester progressed. Though me & my father had a kinda tenuous relationship (see this post if you’d like the story behind the blog on this …….) I felt bad because I was NOT going to “postpone” my graduation, as it was I was going to graduate at fuckin grand total of 5 ½ years. I was NOT going to make it another semester and go for an even 6. Hell-ous no-us ! I even took 5 classes (alot for me because at this point there was nothing I wanted to see LESS than MORE work, but I wanted to graduate, so there ya have it). My father’s surgery to remove his stomach, his and part of his small intestines (and rebuild him a stomach) was successful. He was at home recuping and my brother and my sister checked on him daily. So….. I was in school working towards graduation and my then boyfriend Dave (who was at Howard Univ. working on his MS degree) called me. He was like “how’s your Dad?” I said “I think he’s on the mend, the doctors need him to heal some more before they start chemo.” He asked me “So why don’t you think about moving here and going to Grad School?” I was like “really?” He was like “yeah, I’d love to have you with me.” Maaan, my heart was doing the biggest flip-flops in the world. I think that if I’da jumped out that window at that very moment, I WOULD have flown! LOL

Anyway, I made plans to go to D.C. in January, in silence. After all, I had originally wanted to go to Howard straight outta high school, but my mother made it VERY clear that at MOST, she could pay for ONE year, if I didn’t get financial aid. And as ya'll thst went to an HBCU know, it COULD be a crap-shoot if you get fin. aid or not if your parents make over 5 cents an hour. I then decided to go to MSU because I could get in school tuition and I liked (at the time) the program I thought I wanted to be in.

Now, whenever I came home to visit my Dad, my grandmother was always cussing and fussing about my father’s ex-(so we thought at the time)wife. It turns out that he and the woman, Viola, whom I always thought he was married to, was only a fake-wife. They never married because seeing as though she AND my father were a couple of greedy asses, her sizeable pention from her dead husband would have ceased if she had remarried, soooo….they never tied the knot, so as to keep the cash flow...flowin. She regularly visited my father and sometimes spent the night to keep him company and to keep his spirits up through his arduous and painful recovery. My grandmother HATED her and I believe it was because of the fact that she “took her baby’s attention” away from her selfish ass. So, EEEEVEN though Vi was there for my FATHER’S COMFORT, my grandmother ROUTINELY called her everything BUT a child of God when she happened to come up to the hospital and Vi was there.

My father eventually went home and though he could not eat orally (because his ‘new stomach’ was still healing) he had a tube that went directly into his stomach. Well, waaaay before I had come to live with him, my Dad, had taken in a roommate, Johnny. He & Johnny were old friends and Johny had actually lived with him for a bried stint after he & my Mom divorced in the early 70’s too. So, when he went home, Johnny was there and helped take care of him, though my Dad could get up, go to the bathroom,etc by himself, Johnny still helped him bathe and delicate things of that nature.

Graduation was fast approaching, but I then got word that my father wasn’t doing well……he wasn’t gaining weight and he was just very tired all the time. He went for a dr’s appt. against his will. He didn’t want to go because he was trying to hold out and attend my graduation. His symptoms became too much for him….the day before my graduation. He was indeed put back in the hospital. They operated on him again and discovered that the cancer had spread waaaaay too extensively and had metastasized to his pancreas, spleen, gallbladder and more of his intestines. It was too severe. He was given a few months to live. It was December 10, 1993. I felt sooo very bad because I know that though my Dad and I weren’t ace-boons, he was proud of me and he was my Dad. He fussed at me in private, but according to all, he praised me in public. I could never figure him out that way……. But I knew he was proudest of all because I was the first on his side of the family to graduate from college. So, I know it hurt him to NOT be able to be there. And that hurt me too.

When I returned from school, moved all my stuff home and everything, it was right before x-mas and it was solemn. No ornamental tree, no wreaths, just cigarette smoke and a dusty, lonely house. I was happy that my boyfriend was home, because I needed the support. Going to see my father, who was now a hospice patient, was never easy. He was evil and scowling most of the time (which I can't blame him) and other times he was just plain mad at the entire world, loking like he could slap the horse shit outta ANYONE at any given time. He was far from pleasant to be around. Viola eventually “moved in” to the room my father had, so to speak. The hospital placed a cot in his room and there she slept. Every. Night. She also spent every day there. Though they had been broken up for at LEAST 7-8 years, she still loved him and I have always said this and I will say it again, Viola will surely be blessed for the kindness and love she showed my Dad. It was the end of December. I was planning to move to D.C. shortly and I hadn’t told anyone.

I think that in retrospect, my wanting to move was my way of dealing-by-not-dealing with the fact that my father was dying.


To be continued………

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

I tolerate things.......

O.K., since I was tagged by Zed, I figure, I will go on & do this dang thang So here goes:

Things I have not changed because I have tolerated

*I like porn….it’s not very ladylike, but it is what it is….. I used to hide it, but, eh…FUCK IT (hee hee, no pun intended)

*I like to shop…..for something…..every.weekend. It's part of what me & my husband fight about most. But it’s my release. It is what it is.

*The fact that I don’t like to listen to my disco with “non-appreciators” of the genre and it’s versatility.

*My severe hatred for cleaning the bathroom

*The fact that I can often be lazy if left to my own devices
*That I am a horrrrrible procrastinator. I like this quote:

TOP TEN REASONS I PROCRASTINATE:
1.


*That I don’t like authority….and probably never will

*That I have horrrrrible road-rage. No, I mean, like if there is a person who hesitates for 2-3 seconds at a light, I am in my car calling them all kinds of “dumb-asses” and “slow mu-fucka’s”. I think I MUST believe that I own the road or sumthin’

*My increased %age of body fat ** grrrrr**. I need to work out.

Sooooo..... since I've been tagged, I shant do the same to other folks. Oh wait....unless you're the first THREE to comment. If that's you, consider yourself tagged!!!

Be e-z,
r.

Monday, December 05, 2005

My Grand-mama ain't like yours......pt.1

My grand-ma-ma.

She passed the day after Thanksgiving. This was my father’s mother. Thank you, thank you, thank you (being said in response to the “awwwww….I’m so sorry to hear that” ‘s, but I wasn’t close with her. I wasn’t even remotely fond of her.) It’s a shame really. So, sit back and listen as I unravel my tale. As Zed told me, this needs to be a 3 –4 part series, so henceforth this shall be called:

“My Grandmama ain’t like yours”

I have been off since last Tuesday, the Tuesday after she died to be exact. I got a call from my niece Cher (my older, ½ brother’s daughter, with whom I share paternal bloodlines) on Saturday morning telling me that she had passed the night before). “how?” , “when?”, “what did she die of?” were amongst the first questions to part from my lips. I had many feelings, but the greatest of them was a great bit of nothingness. I had not seen or talked to my grandmother about 10 years.

My niece went on to tell me that the guy that has lived in the 4-family flat (he’s around 45 years old now) and who she had practically looked after so to speak for, forever, had been with her when she died. Come to find out later, she died of a massive heart attack in his girlfriend’s arms. I didn’t feel sad. I felt sorry. Sorry for all the years that could’ve been spent together, rather than apart. But that was the past now. I didn’t cry and have yet to shed a tear, because it’s hard to cry for someone who acted like you didn’t matter for years and who didn’t ever have anything good to say to you.

You see my grandmother and I have never been close. I have always had a difficult and terse relationship with her. I have never felt, nor has she ever been like a “grandmother” to me or my siblings. Her motto: “Don’t come over to my house until you can got to the store and buy me some licka (liquor)”. She was the type of person to dog you, talk about you being too black, (yes, she had a color-complex), too fat, too whatever. If she sees a flaw, she’ll pick it out and dissect it…..right. in. front. of. you. Hmmmmmmm……..sounds like the perfect grandmother to me!

This distance between us was heightened when my father died in 1994. My grandmother was (per my father, brother and sister) NEVER a mother to my father. She had him when she was 16 you see. She was too busy trying to be cute and not have the responsibility of taking care of a child. She ended up having another child after my father. It too was another boy who ended up dying at the age of 7 from stepping on something sharp and rusty and contracting lockjaw. No one knew until it was too late and since we’re talking about the mid-late 30’s, medical help was not what it is now. Though my father always dealt with his mother with a hint of irritation (mainly because at least when I was living there she would call at LEAST 5-7 times a day for N.O.T.H.I.N.G), nevertheless, he did things for her, checked up on her, paid bills for her, ran errands for her and owned the 4-family flat that she lived in which she never had to pay to live in. My father was very good with his hands so whenever things would break or painting needed to be done or a water heater needed to be installed, he always did it. So, the money she earned as a sales person at B.Siegel department store was hers scott-free to run her numbers with.

When I lived with my father for my senior year in high school, because my mom moved to Florida that September, she would call connnnnnstantly and I would talk to her, though I felt NO closeness whatsoever. Prior to moving with my Dad, I had only seen her on holidays or on occasions when my Dad had a cookout and my Mom would bring me over so that I could be around the “other side” of my family. So, here I was a 17 year old and I LITERALLY had never spent a night or even a day with her because “she didn’t do kids”…..HELL, she didn’t raise her own! And she let people know in NO uncertain terms! So, I always felt “weird” and awkward around her. Add to this, she didn’t have a “friendly” or “welcoming” disposition. She was a surly, cursing, fussing about EV-ERY-THANG type of woman. And that was daily. That was just her disposition. But because I was a shy girl (when I was younger that is), all the loud talking and cursing made me uneasy because for as long as I can remember, when I was at home with Mommy, it was just she and I and it was peaceful and quiet. My mother was and is very calm, fairly quiet and slightly reserved. My mother never cursed at me and BARELY cursed around me. If my mother said the word “SHIT”, I would get scared cause I knew it was just that…some “SHIT” for her to utter those words. My mother is a nurturer and a healer by nature and profession (she’s a nurse), and she never stopped me from being around my “Dad’s side” but she never over-encouraged it either. You see, I don’t think that she wanted any of their “loud, obnoxious, trifling, hard-life-living” ways to rub off on me. She was set on protecting me and making sure that I respected my elders, knew right from wrong and grew up to be a lady in every sense of the word and since she was pretty much raising me by herself (cause my father was an alcoholic and SCARCELY could be counted on) she was gong to make DAMN –SURE I was given as much protection as she could provide.

She always made sure I went to see my grandmother and provided gifts and such for she and my father on the appropriate days. My grandmother just never seemed to take a “real interest” in being a “grandmother”. And as I know now, there are just those kinda people who are like that and that’s just the way the cookie crumbles(pun intended…..my grandmother’s nickname was “Cookie”, and everyone called her “Cookie”. Even to me she was known as “Grandma Cookie”).

So, when I received the call, I started to have a regretful feeling that I had not “seen her” since forever and that it was a shame that she had died without her family around her……then I remembered how she acted when my father was dying…….

….to be continued