On my mind...

A not so subliminal message...

Episode 35- To Every Asshole I've Ever Loved...

...leave me the hell alone.

You're my ex for a reason.

First...S emails me...I chose not to respond. Then calls me. I didn't mean to respond. See my previous post in Episode 31. Why can't we just leave it right there?

But wait, that's not even the funny part of the story. Last Friday my other ex...the one from Episode 34, contacted me. Ok, short story we were together for 4 years. He cheated on me at the tail end of our relationship (but this isn't why we broke up) and MARRIED the girl he cheated on me with. They moved to Texas and they have 2 kids together (plus 1 each from other relationships).

The weird thing is, I was cool with him and wifey (because at that point I just didn't care) for a minute until I was told by him, out of the clear blue that she didn't want us to be friends and didn't want him calling me anymore--mind you, this was like a year or two into their relationship, so this wasn't anything new. I was like whatever, I thought we were better than that, but I respect your realtionship.

Since that happened, my ex maybe calls me at most every 6 months or so just to check up on me because he was really tight with my family. I've never called him. But when we do speak, the conversation is usually along the lines of how you doin, how're the kids, casual chit chat whatever aight holla...I've never stepped outta place, I don't want him back. I'm so past that.

Last night I was up late watching a movie and he IMs me...I didn't think anything of it since we just spoke on Friday. We go back and forth for about a half hour...he tells me he still hasn't told wifey that we've spoke and asks if he should...methinks something is up. I say (with all sincerity) I don't care. Tell her, don't tell her, that's between y'all--I don't have to hide who I speak to.

Anyway, I find out during the course of the convo that he cheated on his wife.

Can't say this surprises me. So we keep talking and toward the back end I get a message that says "I justed wanted to thank you."

??? For what ???

For letting me know that my husband is a liar and I'm ready to leave his ass and take the kids and nail him to the wall for child support... come to find out I was talking to his WIFE!

I busted out laughing. I was like what was all the duplicity for? Anything you wanted to know I could've just TOLD you. LMAO.

We keep chatting...

I tell her that whatever is going on is between them. Again...keep in mind I speak to him casually twice a year at most. She tells me--well it just that he lies about so much and about the dumbest stuff. He even lied to me about his porn collection...lmao...I could've told her about that for the asking since I gave him some of the movies. Big deal. Then she gets to telling me how she found a hotel receipt that proves he cheated on her but he still lies about it.

The kicker was when she said... I wish I had known before we got married and had kids.

Seriously?

Lemme understand this... he cheated on me with YOU,and you somehow thought your pussy was so magically delicious he wasn't going to do that shit to you?

Bwahahahahahahaha!!! Now that's some funny shit right there!!!

I feel kinda bad for her, but then again I don't. Because karma is a bitch and anyone who says differently is a worse liar than my ex.

Episode 34- The Definition of Irony

Post of a conversation I had with an ex who cheated on me and then married the girl he cheated on me with, re: some mutual friends of ours...

Me: you still working at the same place?

LS: well i still work for the same company doing tthe same thing

Me: oh cool. btw I talked to D**** recently

LS: how is she doing

Me: fine. you know J got married and had a baby

LS: congrats

Me: um...he married the girl he cheatd on D**** with (thinking to myself does this sound vaguely familiar)

LS: u could have given us an invite

Me: I wasn't invited

Me: she told me about it after the fact.

Me: when J***** sent her a picture of the baby

LS: what u lost me who is j***

Me: lol...you were confuzzled there for a sec huh?

Me: J****

Me: you're getting old and senile. j**** as in d***** and j*****------j*****


Mind you, these were our closest friends when my ex and I lived together. Birds of a feather flock together I suppose. LMAO

Episode 34- Easter with my family

I'm going to take a momentary break from my usual semi-snarky, semi-witty, observational commentary...but just for a moment, to reveal the soft side that not too many people seem to think I have.

Today is Easter Sunday. Instead of being with my family, I'm home alone blogging. My parents and daughter are on the west coast, the rest of my family is in Ohio. I couldn't make either trip this time around. I miss them. Even if I don't tell them enough.

Easter is the one holiday in my family that usually gets us all together. In my youth, these family gatherings would be split between my grandmother's and her sister's--my great aunt's-- house. At my grandmother's we would do Easter breakfast. I would get to drink coffee--even at age 7. I would wake up early looking for my basket from "the Easter Bunny." I knew even then, that my basket came from the hands of my mom and grandmother. After breakfast I would don my Easter dress either for church or for the trip over to my great-aunt's. We would dye eggs, hunt for them in my grandmother's back yard. Eat cake that my mother and I or my aunt would bring. One year we made finger toffee. My older cousins/uncles who thought they knew everything, got their hands stuck together in molasses.

My grandmother died of cancer just after Easter 1984.

Every Easter after that one became significant. My family moved around some and eventually fractured over the next couple of years with the back to back deaths of my grandfather and step-grandfather. We spend most subsequent Easter Sundays at the home of my great aunt. It usually goes something like this...a crowd of family and friends in the neighborhood of 25-50 people, church, a huge dinner, an Easter egg hunt for the kids, a liquor bottle hunt for the adults (using miniature bottles) and hours spent jumping on the moon bounce (my family owns one) in the front yard or playing video games or bean bag toss in the garage.

My cousins and I got older and it became our kids on Easter Sunday hunting for eggs, jumping on the moon bounce. I bounce with them. I play Easter bunny, fixing baskets for the kids. I watch them play in their Easter Sunday clothes as we, now parents, urge them not to mess them up. My mom, now mamaw and my great aunt and the older adults talk in the living room or smoke in the second kitchen at the back of the house. My family, for better or worse, seems like a family.

Today is Easter Sunday. And instead of being with my family, I'm home alone blogging. And I miss them. Even if I don't tell them enough.

Episode 33- The Good, The Bad and Philly

I have a rather odd relationship with the city of Philadelphia.

Every time I've ever been, there's always something...drama, something...

This time...surprisingly enough aside from a parking ticket (ugh!) and a slight detour into New Jersey, I actually enjoyed myself.

If you know my history with Philly, you know why this shocks me. I'll have to cliff note those stories (plural) in another episode.

In any case, the show went ridiculously well. And that's despite starting on serious CPT
The crowd was great. The other artists were really really good. We acted like straight fools. I was head nodding with the DJ so hard my neck and shoulders actually hurt.

And I pulled off probably the greatest stunt in the history of poetry... I exaggerate but it was still pretty awesome. How 'bout we did a sound check right and everything was good. Later I get on stage and I'm starting my first (and hardest) piece with music no less, (so I'm trying to time it in my head) and the mic starts acting a mess, so mid poem, without stopping I pulled off a mic switch...not once, not twice, but 4 times!! not to mention during the hand offs the DJ was adjusting the sound and music so I'm keeping up during all of this and still killed it.

Then I messed around and did a hip hop song in front of a crowd of MCs from Philly/NJ and NY. Lemme find out I was really feeling myself huh? lol.

Again surprisingly enough it came of really well.

So after last night despite some minor stuff, I may have to rethink my relationship with Philly...maybe instead of hate, I'll amend it to love/hate, because right now I have nothing to hate about the city of brotherly love.

Episode 32- Adentures in Dating (Retroactive)- Bad Dog! Or Why I Never Let Friends Set Me Up on A Blind Date

Thank you to C. Alexis at Coherence Is Bliss for this. CA just posted a story about why she does not date, which caused me to subsequently remember a really bad incident from a few years ago.

Let me start out by saying, by happenstance and a series of most unfortunate events the whole day started out bad before the actual date. If I remember correctly the day started with, among other things--a rained out outdoor Nas concert, a ruined outfit and hairstyle, a broken shoe, a minor foot injury and a pizza guy who tried to rip me off causing said broken shoe and minor foot injury.

This is when my friend Liz decided it would be a good idea to further torture me by setting me up on a blind date. It was one of those--she was going out with a guy and he wanted to bring his friend along kinda thing. Now, I knew her date...I'd actually known him since elementary school. He wasn't a bad looking dude and typically you know those type run in packs. However given my salty disposition I really was not in the mood to entertain anyone, much less a complete stranger or anyone else for that matter. So, I made my position very clear...if he's ugly, I will turn around and go straight home. If I'm gonna subject myself here after the day i had it better at LEAST be worth it.

After some assurances from her man that his boy was ok I reluctantly agreed to go, still clinging to the hope that I could perhaps salvage the remainder of my day...HA! No such luck.

I see the car pull up and I catch a glimpse of the troll in the passenger seat and I go as my friend MJ calls it...nuclear. I literally screamed out loud "oh HELL NAW. Fuck YOU. I'm going HOME!" Screw tact at that point. I knew the guys had heard me...ask me if I cared. On the ugly scale this dude was probably neck and neck with Shabba Ranks.



I spent the better part of 10 minutes on a profanity laden rant. Cool points be damned. Liz and her date managed to calm me down enough to go and my date knew at this point to just sit back and STFU.

We went bowling. The whole time Mr Ugly was suspiciously quiet. Which was great because then I didn't have to worry about kirking out again. He just sat back drinking beer and said a word every now and then which did nothing to improve his looks. But by now, I'm beginning to feel a little bad...damn my conscious. lol. I'm thinking I've been an asshole all night, he hasn't said two words. I probably made him feel like how'd I get stuck with this BITCH. Ok, let me at least make an effort to be nice. We decided to hang out (or rather they decided let me say-- I did not drive we were all in one car for the moment so I had NO choice in the matter), we go to pay for bowling and come to find out they messed up our bill. How 'bout they walked out without paying??? OK. This keeps getting better and better.

I'm trying to hold it together by a sliver at this point as we get to Mr Ugly's crib. We ended up playing spades I think. And Mr Ugly handed me a beer, which I promptly babysat. No way I'm drinking in this situation---not enough beer goggles in the universe to make him attractive.

Now here is where it goes completely over the TOP. We're playing cards at a glass kitchen table. Turns out Mr. Ugly had a rat chihuahua. At some point during the cards I picked up the rat and sat it in my lap...more as a distraction so I could avoid conversation, but this caused Mr Ugly to lean in and while he was pretending to pet the dog this mofo is trying to sneak a feel. At the risk of knocking him out, I remove the dog from my lap slyly...thinking he's been quiet all night perhaps I'm just over reacting---but when he did it again, I jumped up and the next words out of my mouth were "your dog just bit me!"

Don't ask me where that came from, I think maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I figured I'd spare him the agony of my fist across his jaw, but what I didn't take into account was under that glass table, the dog was sitting quietly at the feet of my friend Liz.

By now she and her guy had pretty much figured out what happened. And while they laughed at me decided it was time to go. Mr Ugly however wasn't about to let me walk out without one last try. He proceeded to tell me I was "too drunk" to drive home and I should stay for awhile. Now remember that beer I babysat...well I was completely SOBER. Then when he realized that wouldn't work, as I turned to leave, before I could even distance myself, this dude decides to attempt to kiss me...BIG MISTAKE. As a parting gift he received teeth impressions from where I bit him in the face, followed by an extra coat of blackness from the back of my hand.

Needless to say, that was the end of that date.

Episode 31- This is NOT up for discussion

The (truncated version) of the conversation I just had...

Me: Hello.

S: I'm unhappy without you.

Me: Thought we agreed not to talk.

S: I'm unhappy without you. I really want to work it out

Me: Ok, well this is not up for discussion

S: I want you back

Me: this is not up for discussion

S: can't we talk about it

Me: this is not up for discussion

S: How're you just so cold like that. You just want to give up?

Me: (feeling confuzzled since we broke up like more than 2 months ago and I KNOW I said I was FINISHED and put it in WRITING no less). Um, yeah.

S: So what should I do, I don't want to be with anyone else except you.

Me: I don't know how to advise you on that, because as I said, this is no longer up for discussion. Let it go.

S: C'mon man.

Me: this is not up for discussion

S: You know I will show up at your house.

Me: I don't think you have it in you, but I wouldn't be surprised if you did. Doesn't matter though, cause I don't want to talk about this.

S: You don't think I have it in me?

Me: Nope. But again, nothing would surprise me.

S: I just want to talk to you.

Me: at the risk of repeating myself...this topic is not up for discussion. Not now, not later.

S: We can't talk about this at all?

Me: What exactly is there to talk about? I said what I had to say last time and I told you I am tired of you fence straddling. You do NOT know what it is you want. One minute you want to be with me next minute you don't, then you want to be my friend, next minute you can't...I'm done! End of discussion.

S: I know what I want. I want you. You know this hurts me and you're not thinking about anyone except yourself.

Me: Actually, YOU are not thinking of anyone except YOURself. I made myself VERY clear. Repeatedly. I know what I said 'cause I was THERE when I said it. Period. This topic is NO LONGER up for DISCUSSION.

---call ends. Ten mins later...

Me: (exasperated.) Hel-lo.

S: (sounding tearful) So do you want me to leave you alone?

Me: (for the love of Jesus, Allah, Buddah, Mary, Joseph, Confucious and Captain Crunch) YES!

----
Did anything I said seem unclear there? I didn't think so. **Sigh!**