What Goes Up, Mus come down

So this is my new place in Royal Oak. Its a nice place that I share with my roommate, Val. I tried to get a photo of her but she insisted that I take one after she takes a shower and then of course I forgot later on. This is my room with my bed I bought used from Craigslist.com. You should check it out.



This is my living room, which I am free to decorate any way that I like. The only problem is is that I do not have any furniture or any money to buy any furniture. :0) I don't really see it as a problem. More like reality and thats just the way it is.



This is the fabulous kitchen that I love to cook in, but I guess do not clean up so well, sometimes. The granite countertops is what sold me about the house. I remember how when my parents were trying to sell their's granite countertops were a big thing :0)



I Like the open concept of this house. The living room leads into the dining room, which then leads into the kitchen. Fabulous



Last but maybe least, the bathroom. Its a little small and I have to share but its really not that bad. As long as I do not have to share with a boy who can't pee straight I am cool.



This is my other roommate, Cosmo. He is a beagle that can sniff out the brownie lint in your pocket. This dog is definitely part blood hound. It kind of gets on my nerves. He just seems like he is always hunting for something and he used to watch me when I ate, but now he knows that he ain't getting nothing. I mean not a crumb. Well maybe a crumb from the floor. I know now that I do not perfer Beagles. although he is really cute, but not all the time. If you know what I mean.

Hopewell Christmas Dinner

Here are a few photos from the christmas dinner with my cousins from my Dad's side of the family. They are hella cool and laid back. I think I'll keep them :0)



Lamar on the right, is my cousin Jeanette's son and these are his two sons, Tre and Lance.



This is a family portrait of lamar and his family. Lamar is very funny and is always the center of attention. basically all night we just set around and listened to him crack jokes and he was very funny.



This cutie pie Lance. At first he was trying to act shy, but like most kids the longer I hung around they harder it was for them to resist me. :0)

Ignoring Christmas

So I am Ignoring Christmas or I am trying to, but its more difficult than I anticipated. I told no one to send me anything, but they do anyways. I don't get to see my family and I have to work. It sucks. No one cares cause they don't have to do it or they already did and they feel someone else has to pay their dues. Whatever.



I am trying to keep this blog a secret, but it has almost been discovered twice. If I could do my postings from home than this would make this a lot easier. But I don't have it set up at home, yet. I need to get on that. I had to get a new banking account cause the one I have here locally sucks and the one that I am changing to I found out sucks as well. Bank of America was the best. User-friendly completely. Other banks could really take a lesson from them.



I am so through being the low man on the totem pole. I know that I am suppossed to be happy about it or something but I don't see how. I get treated worse than the intern. I mean really. Oh well such is life. I have been getting to know another photographer here and he seems alright. I didn't trust him at first to be honest, but he seems to be opening up to me about his personal life and he wouldn't tell me that stuff if he wasn't geniune, I think. Time will tell. I have not found out if he has betrayed my trust. If he did, It would be hard to swallow, considering that I have no one to really confide in. I am not the best at making friends even though normally I have friends. I think its harder as I get older. I don't try as hard and I don't think other people don't try hard either as they get older.



I have been having this conversation with a lot of people, mostly males, but we all agree that once you get older Christmas is not the same anymore. When you are a kid there is a feeling to Christmas, Like almost magic and when you reach a certain age it just dissipates in the air like fairy dust. You are stuck in reality and you can't fly away to NeverNever Land. It basically sucks. I hate this whole growing up thing and being an adult. I like the freedom, sometimes, but I do not like the junk that comes along with that freedom, Like bills, work, responsibilty, no room for error (EVER). I mean really the only way to descirbe it is IT SUCKS. I remember being a kid and being excited about christmas. When I was a kid it was the promise of something new to come. There were new toys, but it felt like a new day. A new life. It was more sentimental and symbolic back then. I met a lot of christmas nuts while doing an essay on Holiday lights, which you can check out at : http://www.freep.com/assets/slideshows/lights1223/index.html And they keep the spirit alive through their kids and really participating in it. This morning when my brother called me from my aunt's house I could hear everyone getting excited about Adora, who is 2, opening up her presents for Christmas. There were all these ewwww's and ahhhh's. It sounded like fun. I really can't wait to have my own kids. This guy at work was saying really 35 is too late to have kids, because by the time they are 18 you are 53. Too old. I never really thought about it that way. I only thought about it from my point of view. Like I don't think I will be ready until 25. But my MOM had my brother when she was 36 and she doesn't seem to old. But she is less involved in raising him. So maybe there is a difference. She had me when she was 29. So thats my goal. At least 29. If I wait till after then, I know she will give me hell. But really I am not waiting. I am ready. i am not married. I don't have a boyfriend. All I have right now is a career. So really there is nothing I can do but wait.



I am definitely in the hum bug mood. I hate being stuck at work. I could go out and try to find an on location, but for some reason I am bitter and I don't want to. I love this job, but I feel weird today. I have New Year's off but I don't know what I am going to do. I was thinking of calling Reggie and seeing what he is doing, going to VA, or going to Pittsburgh to hang out at Nancy's. The VA cost $350 so thats out. Should I tell my parents that I have News Years off and try to go home? I feel like thats a no. Because its only for three days. Its not long enough.



My Dad got a dog, an airedale terrier. Wanita said it cried the whole first night it was away from its ma and pa. It basically does not like to be left alone. I don't blame it. I was thinking if I got a dog, I would get two so it would never be lonely. But then I heard when one dies, the other dies right away. What if one gets hit by a truck and just leaves the other to die of loneliness? That would be too hard. It's six o'clock. I still have two hours left. I am hungry and I want to go to my cousin's house to eat Christmas dinner. I am never able to come to anything and it makes me feel bad. I want to say something but I am not because it would not be nice and I was raised if you have nothing nice to say and it hurts you more than helps you then don't say. Just think it. THose of you who know me know what I am thinking. Christmas Sucks. If I was home the gifts would suck, but at least I would get to see my family.



If I wasn't here I would be in Virginia, probably, and I don't know if I could take the family for both holidays. I love them but they are a heart full. I can't take it sometimes. Like I heard that Uncle Mike and Dietral missed their flight to VA and Dietral was mad cause she says Uncle Mike showed up at her house at 7 pm when there flight left at 7:30 pm. I tell you that is one of the slowest men I have ever met. It is beyond ridiculous. He's worse than a girl. I don't know if he was always like this or its a way he acquired through the years. I know I am not the timeliness person, but I ain't that bad. So those are my holiday thoughts. I was going to say lame holiday thoughts, but I realized I am always getting down on myself. I put myself donw so much that I think I deserve to be alone, cause really who would want to be with me. Sometimes I think I see my lonliness as my strength. That I don't need other people to fulfil my life, because I am different, special, above others. I stand alone, like a mountain or something. But I know even though i tell myself I want it that way. I don't know if its true. Or is it that I really do like being alone, but its society that tells me that something is wrong with me for wanting to be alone, therefore I search out companions to make myself feel normal. But then I never do because I am not following my heart. I think there is a good reason why I want to be alone at times and I should respect my reasons whether I understand them or not.

Friends, How many of us have them?

Do you remember that song from the 80's? Friends, how many of us have them? Let's be friends...So this past week, my best friend from High school came to visit her ex-boyfriend, Reggie, in Detroit. And while she was here she called me up to hang out for two days. She is the same introspective person. She went afro. I am telling you its a pandemic. Its nice to know that I was one of the first to go afro, before it became trendy. I am such a rebel. :0) Really just an individual even if it kills me. :0)



Her and Reggie are really funny and they spontaneously just started to break it down in the kitchen cause we are all dance junkies. No seriously we were apart of a dance crew called dance junkies.



It was nice to have someone from home to see in Detroit. But realistically she did not come to see me and that became brutually apparent when she did not call for the rest of the week after haning out on Sat and Mon. I was disappointed cause I was really excited that she was coming. I don't have anyone to do fun things with here in Detroit. And maybe thats because I chose for it to be like that. but whatever the reason things were not like i thought they would be when she called me up last week to tell me she is coming. Oh well. Life goes on.



Reggie is really funny and I hope we hang out some here in Detroit. We don't have to be best friends, but I just need some to chill with and dance with. I think I am going to call him and invite him to lunch next week. Isn't this photo hilarious. It was totally spontaneous and I don't know why he made that face. Funny :0)



They are always off and on again for the past 5 years. There status now is not together and I think that is because it would be a long distance relationship and they didn't want that. They kind of drove each other crazy, but they both still talk about marriage. I can't see them with anyone else, but then I don't see them married. I don't see Sandra married. I don't see myself married, but I want to.




I don't know. I can't explain it. A lesbian picture between friends. :0) We had fun while hanging out. She said I am back to the old Kim. The Kim she remembers from our youth. The Kim I guess that was confident and sexy. Whatever. I don't know if that Kim ever existed. It was probably just hormones. :0) She asked what did Missouri do to me. I think that its just another layer of who I am. Really I think its the hair if you want to know the truth...

Stuffed

There she is ladies and gentlemen, the constant driving force behind our family getting together. The one, the only, the proud, the trophy-beauty contest winning, Adora. Yes she is in her terrible twos so when she gets mad there is nothing that can appease her and all she yells between her muffled cries is Mama, but she doesn't want her mama. Very complicated.



So for Thanksgiving I went to Virginia to be with my mother's side of the family. My mother, although, did not grace us with her presence. She called me surprising enough, while I was there but did not want to talk to anyone from her family. I am at a coffee shop and there is this white girl with the typical valley girl accent, but I remind you, we are no where near the valley, keeps talking and she is annoying. I don't want to hear her nasily voice. But I am sure if I was here with my friends, talking loud, she would be annoyed. So really what it comes down to is prejudice. She is obviously different from me, which i recognize not by the color of her skin but by her vernacular. So it's cultural prejudices. I have moved past color prejudice. At its basic level though it is still the differences between us that divide us. There has to be young educated black women like me in this city. I just need to find my peers.



So my family is fun, but they are also high drama and sometimes they get on my nerves. I guess to have a good thing there has to be some bad to balance it out. Everyone has such attitudes and everyone is spoiled and used to getting their own way. Of course when I say everyone, I mean myself as well. But I am the most agreeable and willing to compromise person in the group, but I think as I get older I have become less agreeable, because I noticed when things happened that I would normally accept and just do whatever was told of me, I questioned, sometimes verbally. To be truthful I hate being with my family sometimes because they take their baggage out on me. My aunt orders me around with a nasty attitude all the time because she is still angry at my mother for not taking her anywhere when they were kids. So she takes it out on me. I just want to say no sometimes, unless you ask nicely. It really makes me not want to be around them, because it brings up my childhood stuff of how she was to me my whole life actually. I hate it. Its not fair, I have never done anything to her. I have always obeyed her and surprisingly enough I have never talked back to her. Never! and that is surprising for me.



This is my unlce and that is all I have to say about that. He is who he is. He is very comlplicated and the only boy in his family so he does whatever he feels like doing, besides doing what men are suppossed to do. My problem is that I compare him to my father. My father is no where near perfect, but I appreciate what he does as a man a lot. With not questions asked, he packs the trunk of cars, he gets the family together to do things. My father has never put his feelings before the group as a whole. If he is having issues he swallows it. Maybe thats because he had to deal with the death of both his parents at the age of 19 and still try to graduate from college. I really respect who he is. He is a great man. He may have some issues with appropriately expressing his feelings, but when it comes down to the bottom line I know that I can depend on him. If I find a guy half the man that my father is, I would be so lucky. And this is a new revelation for me. I think when I was younger I did not understand him. I did not grow up in his household. I moved in with him my second year in high school and it took for me to grow up, for us to have a real relationship and now my relationship with my mother is faltering. Such is life. You go up the hill and then you have to go down the hill to get to the other hill.



So since I went to Virginia, my cousin and I have been talking on the phone alot. We had a run in in Virginia, but it was different this time from when we were kids and it would usually end in blows to the head. She started yelling at me cause she could not find Adora's movie and I was the last one using the DVD player. So I was the culprit. I told her that she could not just yell at me and acuse me of something that I am not responsible for. So after ignoring me, yelling at me three different times, and telling her mom that she was not going to talk to me the rest of the time I was there, she comes back upstairs and apoligizes to me for accusing me of losing or taking Adora's DVD. I was very surprised and it humbled my sprirt alot. She has definitely changed. I was surprised. So I looked for the DVD and then I found it in Adora's room in a corner. It looked suspicious like I had it the whole time and just appeared with it. But I really just found it sitting in a corner. So then she helped me look for my hat that I could not find and I was frantic about because I had spent $30 from Urban Outfitters.



There she is again. She really is a beautiful baby, but really I am not surprised and she has a cool personality. I think I like her. :0)



See my crazy family and as Chris Rock would say, you always have that Alcoholic Uncle, Lazy Uncle, and Molestor Uncle. Can you guess which uncle I have? :0) Just a joke. But hella funny. Comment if you can guess what kind of Uncle I have. :0)



This is my Uncle's girlfriend. She is really cool and really giving, but she can get sassy. I have a funny story about how we went shopping the day after Thanksgiving when she almost got into a fight in the dressing room of the Limited because the fitting room clerk told her she could leave her purse in a room and then another clerk let a woman into the fiitting room with her purse in there. She asked the lady to open the door so she could get her purse and I guess the lady said no. All I heard was her yelling and I thought to myself, that can't be Deitral. Well it was and the lady ended up slamming the door in Deitral's face after she got her purse out. So before that spectacle, Adora went into a fit and Mary had to take her out of the store and give her a spanking in the bathroom. When I went to go find her, I found them in the corner of the mall and her earring was half way across the floor. I guess her and Adora had a tussle. I told Adora I would buy her a juice, if she promised to act right the rest of the time. I told you my family is high drama. Its just tiring writing about it.



A mother and daugher relationship, undefinable. When they start out, you can do no wrong as a mother in their eyes. Then as they grow up they begin to notice your insecurities because they begin to affect who you are as a person in a negative way and you don't like it. But in all that there is always love.