Celebrating Life - Road Trip!

Hello World....

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Life is what you make you it!!! you should be rocking and smiling right now as you read these words..So this year will be "41" for me.  March 21st is my actual birthdate but starting a few years back i started celebrating from March 1st with my Pisces birthday month folks mainly because my day is the first day of Aries meaning i'm a cusp baby and plus i just like birthdays..mine and everybody elses! LOL!  But as I get older, I start thinking about other significances of celebrating things.  And I started thinking about how a young college student would feel when she's about to give birth in about 3 weeks and on top of that was hoping that she'd be getting her degree not getting a daughter.  So there's a LOT of emotion going on in her life, in her head.  So as my life outlook changes so do my celebration reasons!

This weekend began this year's life celebration and it includes attending a wedding of one of my girlfriends that i met in Atlanta.  We have 2 AWESOME things in common: We are both from Texas and we are both Dallas Cowboys fans!! *CB4L*  She has found her prince charming and I get the privilege of witnessing it.  I met her through a group of friends and i like for ALL of my friends to know each other so i ended up road tripping with another friend....welp! I'll have to pick up these thoughts later......

Ok i'm baaaack!!!!  I tell you what, when you are single and pretty much do everything alone, specifically road trips, you never know what habits that you have that could be bothersome until you travel with someone else.  One thing I notice is I tend to (for whatever reason) allow myself to be corrected about something I do/am doing and i'll apologize for it but when someone does something I just ignore it/adjust to the new environment and keep it moving.  I don't know if that makes me a push over or what...but I have to believe that if someone has proven to be a friend, truly stepping in to assist me during a time of need,  that the personality difference is just that.  A personality difference.  I experienced some stuff during this road trip that could have genuinely hurt my feelings back in the day but I had to keep the fact that this was a part of my life celebration going in my head.  I did find myself shutting down emotionally because I was literally told in stereo that I talk too much.  So I shut it down and allowed a reunion to happen, funny enough when i shut it down i was then told that it made the scene awkward.  i laughed it off but i'm thinking "you want me to stop talking, right? So i did...i'm over it.".  No hard feelings I just now know new information....AND I see/know some habits that I have that I have to modify when i'm not rolling solo....enough said.

NOW, to describe the wedding weekend!!!  It was MARVE-lous!!!  I got a chance to see some of my family, me and my ATL homegirl/road trip partner stayed with my cousin and his family one night (Friday) and checked into the hotel where the wedding party was for Saturday.  The wedding was at 4pm, we stepped up in there at about 4:30...LOL...luckily my girl (the bride) had a delay and we got there on time! LOL!! Thank you Kalilah!!   The ceremony was BEAU-TI-FUL, all weekend me and my homegirl had an impromptu photoshoot...I have to say that gal was on it with her fashion!  We had fun!!!  Then on to the reception at Sneaky Pete's!  OMG! I still see that name and giggle. We had a blast! The reception was soooo much fun!  Family/friends were positive and then at the end...the DJ overloaded us on line dances! I did some I knew and learned a few too! LOVE IT!!!!!  So on the way back we took some pics as we crossed state lines which put a tad bit of a delay in our return to the ATL but it was worth it.  Although i did learn a new travel law...that you can split up a hotel bill and pay via two different credit cards but can't do the same thing for a rental car. *interesting*

Overall...All in all I had a blast and was happy that I made my way to Texas to witness my girl get hitched!  Great road trip!!

I will continue to blog about my birthday/life celebration as the days go by...... March 1st to April 19th

Never Settle For...

Hello World...

I hope your day went well and that your night is going even better.  :-)  So I'd actually thought about this blog a few days ago but life happened and I forgot about it until my blog where I ended up stressing to my bretheren and sisters to never settle.  So that's the title of this blog. 

*The context of this blog is in referencing to settling for less.  Dictionary.com states: settle for, to be satisfied with: to settle for less.*
I thought about it because of an AM radio station/talk show I listen to online out of Houston daily from 10 to about 4pm KCOH 1430am and one show that airs from 11 to 3p is hosted by Wash Allen, who has been on the airwaves for years and years AND who has managed musical artists like Bobby Womack and the O'Jays in their early years.  I found that out yesterday! How cool is that??  Ok so he has this segment called "Confessions" where people can either call in or write in about a certain life situation and they want advice.  So then he has a following (and now i'm one of them) called "the soothsayers" that call in and give advice and some of them throw in a few jabs from time to time but mostly give advice.  So one day this guy wrote in and said he'd been married for 5 years and had fallen out of love with his wife, that he was no longer "in love" with her.  He said she was a good person but he wasn't into her anymore.  And immediately I thought about some of the young married (and i mean like my age young) that I see out and about and the husband is having a ball and enjoying himself and the wife is sitting there like a bump on the wall OR the marriages where the wife is a social butterfly and the husband is the wet rag on every occasion.  I thought about the friends that I know that got married due to pregnancy and are now either divorced or heading in that direction.  I thought about me and my early age marriage and how I thought that I needed to get married at a certain age and just marry whomever I was dating and when we finally did the do, we didn't need to because our relationship was really shitty and I still married him , I settled and i was miserable!

So when the soothsayers started calling in, a lot of them were advising him to stay with her because she loved him and if he loved her once, he'd fall in love again and, to add cayenne to your eye, he'd need somebody to take care of him when he got old.  I heard this one dude compare the situation to his own parents saying how they had their problems, his dad cheated, had outside kids but his mom stayed there like a trooper and he needed her to take care of him.  I'm sitting there with my mouth open thinking "what type of damn example is that to set for your kids? my mom and dad didn't have a faithful relationship but hey mom stuck around and that's the kind of relationship to have." Are you shitting me????  Listen to me and listen well...NEVER SETTLE!  Don't get with somebody because they fit a checklist you have if you don't have that connection, the emotions, if they don't put a smile on your face when you think of them or when they enter the room...stop and do both of you a favor and move on.  I had a friend of mine to suggest that I go out with a "great guy" she knows...right..so she then tells me he is not african american and that I should broaden my horizons and I should basically force myself to be attracted to someone that I'm not.  And I was like, hey i salute love to ALL that find love with whomever they find it with but I know what i like and then she says "he has money"...are you shitting me? You actually think that a man's money will make me jump in a relationship and I'm not attracted to them? Wow!  So we laughed it off but that really got under my skin, i shrugged it off to the fact that she didn't really really know me in that area.  So it made me flashback to a relationship I had with this guy i met in school in Houston. He was an engineer major and he was working for a company in his field, nice looking (to me) but I chose to look over some other stuff that I knew I didn't really like.  I LOVE a good smelling man..cologne is an aphrodisiac...he didn't wear cologne. (strike one)  For the most part, I like to keep a neat home but I most definitely keep my dirty clothes in the hamper and wash once a week..this dude used to throw his dirty socks on the side of my bed.  I figured that out when all of a sudden my room started smelling like a locker room.  I told him about it and he thought it was funny. (strike 2) So then a birthday came (and this was pre-throwing my own parties) and I had to tell him/remind him to take me to dinner. (strike 3)  You see I once again settled...this relationship was AFTER my shitty marriage and you'd think I learned my lesson. Nope.  Now, the "settlers" would say, he's going to make a lot of money, who cares if he doesn't wear cologne, who cares if he doesn't think to put his dirty socks in the hamper, who cares if he doesn't remember your birthday..just remind him of all of that and be happy with the money.  One concept that I have about marriage is to be attracted to my husband and want to be around him. *hey i'm just saying*  You do you, I'll do me.

So to ALL of the settlers...enjoy your mediocre existence..shopping sprees and all..it's a shame you have that emptiness that you use money to fill instead of the emotional connection you long from a mate.  To my single friends, don't settle.  If it ain't what you want, if your skin crawls instead of tingles that's a sign.

If you haven't gotten the message yet...NEVER SETTLE!!!!!