I always wait until it’s an emergency and that’s a bad thing.
Today and yesterday were rough ones. I’m not going to pretend that things are always sunshine and roses in our household. The minis were up before 6am for no logical reason. All 3 minis just up and moving around in the dark talking and asking if they can play toys. There is nothing about them that says “I’ll just lay here until I hear someone moving around.” If Mini-Sir wakes up and nobody else is up, he is waking ALL of us up. That is horrible because I’m a sleeper. But parenting has changed all that. Anyway, we digress. They all had random attitudes—crying about foolishness, picking at each other and just being overly sensitive. Then we ate breakfast. Someone cried because they had too much waffle, Mister-mini cried because he ate his waffle and wanted mine. I shared, and he pushed it away and it landed on the floor. Mini-Sir cried because he wanted orange juice not grape. Me-mini ate so slowly she couldn’t finish and whined because she didn’t have time to finish. The timer on the house alarm went off, because she had molasses in her feet, she wouldn’t leave the house. Mini-Sir wouldn’t put on his seat belt and didn’t want anyone to help. He cried because he was helped anyway. Mister-mini was fussy because he couldn’t have his sit and scoot train in the car with him. It wasn’t even 8am yet. I needed coffee and prayer. I was kicking myself for asking God to help me with patience because he whammied me this morning and I’m going to need days to recover. Fast forward to the end of the day when the minis were supposed to be getting ready for bed… Me-mini was refusing to sit in the bathtub. How you’ll take a bath without submerging is a mystery to me. And let’s just say by the end of the night I had to Clorox the bathroom and wash all the rugs…… They all get in bed but no one stays. Mister-mini ended up stark naked and had to be re-dressed several times before the night was done. Bedtime started at 6:15pm. All minis were not asleep until after 10pm. Same game today except we had more stuff on the agenda. Today the mommy-lady was done at about 5pm. After dinner at our favorite BBQ restaurant, I stayed in the car and let the family come in the house without me. Mini-Sir thought it was curious that I didn’t come in. They’ll be asking what happened to me when they wake me up before daybreak tomorrow. They won’t wait for an answer before telling me that they are ready for toys and breakfast. Some days I go eat lunch or dinner by myself. Other days, I window shop at Target. Most days I just go do the regular things I need to do but without kids. I went to Old Navy and Walmart. Then I came home. They were still awake so I went back to the car and listened to a podcast. I came back in the house, wrapped Mini-Sir’s birthday presents, put on pajamas and got in bed. The End.
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Why I won’t teach in public school again
Before I was a mom it would’ve sounded weird. Now I’m a mom and this is normal
life.
I met my wife in the fall of 2002. I had just graduated number 10 in the class from George Washington Carver Magnet High School. I sold, and smoked, weed most of the summer. Had never done either before then by I always knew it was there if need be. Although I had a full scholarship to Texas Southern University, I had no idea what I was going to do before the semester started. Nobody in my family had ever been to college. Shit I had only been on campus one time. So I looked around and saw all of my friends had started smoking weed. I was good at math and always had a business acumen, so it made sense for me to be the new supplier. Along with that lifestyle, comes with a lot of other randomness that happen that summer too. Dumb shit.......but entertaining. Maybe I'll share some of that at another time. My friends, this is a love story.
Right before the college semester started, I got a job working at Convergys. It's a call center company. We took Yahoo based calls for personal ads. At this time, Yahoo ran everything. I wanted to be a systems administrator at the time, so I was also starting my career as an IT professional. That's what took me out the weed game which I had never planned on staying in. On the music side I was still battling on my downtime but didn't really see money in it so I didn't take it seriously. My hood ass girlfriend at the time got herself another street nigga when I left the streets. Fucked around and visited her on a lunch break and found him at the house. The square shit wasn't as entertaining as the stories I had slanging 3 for 10's all over the northside. So I'm not really chasing women at the time. I'm focused on being the man. Overall though, life was headed in the right direction. I have a job in my field, the first in my family to go to college, no kids, and I was gonna be a professional and make paper. When I get to college, I meet black people that were nothing like me. They came from all over the world. And I was pretty much the most hood cat up there. I was new to all this college shit but I had the brains to rock wit the best of them so I immediately became an asset for tutoring. I met this really super smiley chick from Madison, Wisconsin. I was captivated by her. I wasn't in love with her but I needed to be around her all the time because she seemed content. I was NOT content. I was on a mission to change the world and I needed something stable to have my back. She was fearless and was able to teach me a lot about all kinda shit. Like snow. I still was getting over my breakup so I came to college to handle biz. I wasn't worrying about women because this was my only shot. She knew how to cook and I had some money from the job so we made a deal. I buy the food if she cooks it. She also had cable, so I sat at her house all day and listened to the R&B music channel. I didn't grow up with cable. So life was perfect. Go to school, go to work, get some grub, jame some music, go to the hood, repeat. This went on for about 2 or 3 months. Completely platonic domestic relationship. One day, I invite Tristan Jones, a friend of mine from high school who I didn't know went to the same college, over to her house for food and kool-aid. This was pretty much my hangout spot every day when I had time. Either that, or I was back in Acres Home mingling wit the natives. When we finished jamming music and grubbing, we got up to leave. Right after we got outside, he says, "She kinda cute". I leaned back in the doorway, looked at her, and said "She is huh?" I had never thought about her like that. The next day I came back to her on some "We're either going to be something, or nothing. I'll give you some time to think about it and get rid of whoever you entertaining. But we can't only be friends no more. I'm not going to be sitting over here liking you without you liking me. I'll find something else to do. Do you wanna be my girlfriend?" type shit. She wasn't sure at first. But she came around. That conversation lead to a 10 year marriage. We broke up plenty of times for various reasons. We survived all kinds of craziness that I might go into one of these days. But HERE WE ARE!! A dynamic 10 year marriage that is full of God, love, trust, collaboration, and a mutual support system from both sides of the family. 3 children later. Only by learning what The Bible says about marriage gave me the courage to marry her. We celebrated this 10 year wedding anniversary during December of 2017. We rented a hall and grabbed our closest friends and family to celebrate. We wanted to show our families that marriage is great when it's done intentionally. Her father was able to walk her down the aisle and "give her away". That was nice. Our friends gave us toasts. The music was awesome and things are great. I hope you believe in marriage the way that I do. I know you may not be used to this much transparency from a rapper but......welcome to my thoughts. You might be doing the math on this relationship. We had 5 years of not being married before we got married. That's when all the crazy shit happened. Gap filled. I look forward to many more years with my wonderful wife. I would love to hear some love stories from my readers. You can either leave them in the comments or email them at [email protected] under the subject "Marriage Thuggin". I'll post interesting ones on the blog. Happy Valentines week!!!! Stay tuned for new developments about music and merchandise becoming available. Facebook should have an eye roll emoji button. I’d use that joker all the time!
Seriously just a few things that I’d use the eyeroll emoji for: Anything that starts off talking about what the current president did or said. If anything this man does or says shocks you then you haven’t been paying attention. I have a few opinions and theories about the 45th administration but I’ll sound like a conspiracy nut. So not sharing those. At least not right now. When people post pictures of food. I’m not judgy about what you think a delicious meal looks like.... but sometimes the stuff people post isn’t it for me. Everything on the plate shouldn’t be yellow. Diversify. I’m a particular eater. My food should look good or I am going to struggle with eating. Yeah, they say it all goes down the same way but if it looks like a pile of wet cornmeal I’m gonna have a hard time. That’s partly why I don’t share as many homemade meal pics on my page as I used to. I add that stuff to pinterest. I appreciate those people that use instagram for those food pics. What I think looks good might not be it for the next person. Those few people who log in to social media just to tell all their business. Some things should stay private. If you need serious help then maybe a group message or a post that asks for suggestions, recommendations, or flat out help. But I don’t think the whole world needs to know all the secret stuff you should tell your bestie. Or the stuff you’d say to a priest during confession. Maybe keep those things off your main wall. Requests for games or any other app. And chain messages/posts. There are some posts that have been floating around since Facebook went public. You see this face? I've seen this face on people all around the world. All ages. All races. I've even worn this face for years and years. I'm not sure what it means on this man, but I know what it meant for me. Right now I feel like there are a lot of people with this face. People are tired of life. People are tired of other people's shit. People are tired of liars and thieves. People are tired of fake ass phony people. People are even tired of happy people. People are tired of people.
When I used to have this face, I was tired of being boxed in. I knew it was a bigger world out there and I felt like I couldn't get to it. I didn't really know what was out there but I knew it was something more than what I interacted with at the time. Shit there were even some things that were right in front of me that I missed out on. I didn't know exactly what it was but I knew it was something. There's no way I would be a corporate thug if I had ever been exposed to a studio as a teenager. So instead of getting to that studio, I made this face. There were studios all around me that I didn't access for whatever reason. I did the best I could with what I thought I had at the time. I was boxed in. Momma didn't box me in. Momma said I could do anything except be a lawyer. Only because lawyers lied and I didn't do that well. Now that I have better communication skills, I probably could have been an honest lawyer. I've studied how people deflect instead of lying and I coulda did that all day long. So who boxed me in? I really think I did. The box was built for me by somebody else but I didn't have to stay in the bitch. When my wife moved here, she took a bus all around the city and found out more about it than I even knew. She told me "Did you know that there's a skating rink at the mall?" Hell naw I didn't. I had never been to the Galleria. Boxed in. I had a lot of people pull me out of that box and now I'm stone cold crazy. I can go anywhere and do anything. It's all because of the things that learned from other people. And that's why I LOVE people. People can do some fucked up shit but people are also capable of bringing the best out each other. So I don't make this face as much no more. Well......I wouldn't recommend making this face for the same reason that I made this face. This dude may just be in between smiles. I was fucked up. Get out the box. Don't let this world box you in at all. Hopefully you can find somebody that believes in you the way people believe in me. But, if you don't have that person, leave a comment and maybe you can find one. Dueces. Mom
I am the mom to 3 minis, ages 5 and under. Yup. Wow. I feel like I spent 3 years straight being pregnant. People used to joke that I was Bonnie from Family Guy. Always pregnant. The great part about it is that they are some pretty decent kids when they aren’t driving me bananas with all the screaming and crying. They are all super smart and ridiculously adorable. Being a mom has taught me all kinds of stuff that I didn’t know I didn’t know until it became a necessity for me to figure it out. The stuff you learn while wearing the mom hat changes you for life. That quote from Eleanor Roosevelt is so true: "A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water." Being a mom showed me how much pain I can tolerate, mentally and physically; how well I can function on 3 hours of sleep, how many days I can go without showering, and most importantly: how to stand up for myself so that I can stand up for my minis. I’m outwardly tough now. I was always strong but now I can be hard and calculating without an ounce of regret. I also will do it with a smile. Wife At the end of 2017, the hubby and I reached the 10 year milestone in our marriage. 15 years as a couple and 10 years married is a big accomplishment. So much so that he wanted to have a big celebration. (The process of organizing an event like that requires its own detailed reaction. If I keep blogging that will come up really soon.) I’ve been married only once, to the same man for the last 10 years. There are lots of things that people don’t tell you about marriage but it basically boils down to this: You have to work to make it work. Nothing about being married has been easy. But a great deal of it is extremely rewarding. We work well together and we do so because we put effort into each other. We put effort into each other because we love each other. We learned how to love each other from the Bible. The people we are now did not exist 10 years ago. They were developed and that development took work. We had to have people mediate. We had to trim the fat around our relationship, meaning we had to let go of some toxic people. We had to and still do go to counseling. Not necessarily because something is wrong, but as a way to prevent crazy stuff from turning into marital cancer. We also are constantly adapting. Turning into new and better versions of ourselves each day. The great thing about that is that we can keep growing and evolving this way for many more decades, as long as we keep putting in the work. Former Teacher I was a school teacher for 8 years. Oh the stories I could tell! I will sum up by saying just a few things: There is no amount of convincing anyone could do to get me back in a classroom. There are lots of people who parent well and there are lots of other people who don’t. Just because you have the credentials to be in charge of stuff doesn’t mean that you should be in charge. Bad bosses will ruin their employees just like a rotten apple spoils the bunch. Also underpaying people, stifling creativity, and discouraging feedback are not conducive to healthy work environments. That’s all I have to say about that right now. Friend Many people have friends that they’ve know for a really long time, possibly people that they grew up with. Yeah, I don’t. I had one friend that made it to adulthood and then she stopped being what I would consider a true friend and that relationship ended. I made some friends during middle school that I still keep in touch with. I have some friends that I made in my adult life that I keep in touch with. I do not have any friends that I need to talk to everyday. I consider people friends that check on me. They don’t have to do it everyday… but they check on me. Not my kids, not my husband, not the house, not anything else…ME. They care about other stuff but they definitely ask how I’m doing and check on me before digging into the day to day dramas. People who are my friends say prayers for me and they let me know if I’m not doing a good job taking care of me. I spend lots of time taking care of and checking on other people, it provides balance when I have people who check on me. My Grannie says all the time that your circle of friends changes as your life changes. That has definitely been true for me. American Citizen/Closet Activist In the next few years I am more than likely going to become more active in my community as a way to safe guard my family from things that I see as issues. There are so many… Primarily, I plan to focus on education, nutrition, fine arts and racial equality. I have some very strong views on all of that stuff. What I will say right now is that those views are MY views. As with lots of things that have happened since marriage, people tend to think that because my husband is more vocal and articulate about his views, that he has “made me” believe or act in a certain way. So not true. I think and act in ways that I deem appropriate. He has influence over ideas that I have, just as I have influence over ideas that he may have. Things like that tend to happen when you share a life together. That being said, I can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do just like he can’t make me do anything that I don’t want to do. The issues I am focusing on are going to make us look pretty weird as a family but I have learned that there is very little about “normal” that appeals to me. Why does it matter? It doesn’t. If what I thought mattered, people would ask my opinion. People rarely ask my opinion. I used to offer it unsolicited but that didn’t go over well. It also opens you up to hearing other people’s opinions. Kinda can’t say no when you just forced your thoughts on them. I’m not sharing my thoughts because I want people to say something back. I’m not sharing because I think I’m always right or interesting or whatever else. I’m sharing because I realized there is a story behind every picture. Many times people will look at a picture and think, “Awe they have such a nice life.” The picture captures that one moment, one millisecond. It doesn’t tell how those people got to that point or what happened to them afterwards. So this whole thing is my way of sharing one perspective to give some type of depth to the photo. So just like any other day I'm alive, I'm learning something. This particular lesson really stood out to me. We are fuckin our kids up from making good decisions in the future. Let me break this down for you.
I'm currently researching the science of decision making. Risk verses reward. Explore verses exploit. Some cool shit a mentor gave me to sharpen the saw with. Book is called "Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions" by Brian Christian. It's my first audio book too. Interesting stuff. Here's something that stood out to me. It discussed an experiment they did with kids. They took a room full of kids and offered them the option of having 1 piece of candy right now, or 2 pieces of candy when the teacher left and came back. Some kids chose 1 piece of candy right now, others chose to have 2 pieces of candy later. That's not the part that's interesting. 2 big things came out of this experiment. They followed the kids who made either decision up until adulthood. The Result. The kids who waited to have the 2 pieces of candy later had an overall "better" life by any scale of "better" that one could measure with. Emotionally, financially, socially, etc. Very interesting correlation. It proved that they had more self control and were willing to invest in things of value. It followed them into adulthood. Very interesting stuff. But not the biggest lesson I pulled from it. Here's the more valuable lesson I pulled from it. There are a lot of things that are taken into consideration when deciding to delay gratification while putting hope in someone else. How long will the teacher be gone? How sure are you that the teacher will come back? When they come back, will the deal still be valid? Do I even want the candy that's being offered? Here's the fun part. There's a great deal of trust that goes into this decision. And ruining that trust is very easy to do at such an early age. For instance, if your uncle told you he didn't smoke weed and you found his weed(Like I did), it would ruin your trust with him.(Like it did for me). If this continues to happen with other people, your ability to trust any person, especially adults, will go down. So if you show up to school during this experiment, and the adults around you don't live up to your expectations all the time, you are most likely going to take the 1 piece of candy. Why would you chance that? Is that the kid's fault? No. It's the fault of the adults around them. And with the correlation of being more successful supposedly linked self-control, adults are ruining a child's ability to invest in themselves properly on a regular basis. What's being perceived as self-control is actually the ability to be optimistic. We fail children as soon as we get a chance. We are ruining them. I know what you're thinking, "Well your life didn't turn out so bad so what the fuck you talkin about Ren?" I'll tell you what the fuck I'm talking about reader. In my case, my momma NEVER lied to me about something that she was going to do or try to do. My Great Grandma also NEVER lied to me about something she was going to do. Or at least I've never caught them. They also didn't promise me the world. They told me that I could be anything, not that they would go get it for me. With that said, I had at least one person I could always invest in. They would always come back. They would always give me the 2 pieces of candy if I did what they said. But my question is, what about the people that didn't have that? They fucked up in the game. What am I saying? Be that for all of the kids around you. You may be the only one that gives them the courage to invest in themselves and have self control. They need to be able to delay gratification in order to manipulate this world to become successful. Having a scarcity mentally doesn't produce wild fruits and vegetables. It produces vegetables in a box. That's my suggestion. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Please comment here. Welcome to the Intelligence Corner. It's difficult for me to see which way the sun is going when I look at a picture. I can't tell if picture like this means the sun is rising or if it's setting. I would need a lot more context to understanding something like that. I would need to know which direction we are facing. What time is it? What country is this in? Is this new day starting or is an old day setting? Who knows?
Here's the thing about every picture you'll ever see of the sun. It's moving. Whenever it's moving to will get light and wherever it's moving from will get darkness. I want you to look at 2018 as the sun. Take a snapshot of your current position and see where your light is going towards and where it's leaving. Ask yourself, "Should I be headed in this direction?". What are some goals in 2017 that you are glad you hit? What are some goals you had that weren't able to be accomplished? Why not? Did you even have goals for 2017? Do you have goals for 2018? The answers to these questions may unlock a better future for you and your loved ones. Or maybe it might piss you off and bore you to death. Those are my suggestions as we move into a year of new music and new music videos. New advice. New Successes and new failures. New learning opportunities and new blogs. New shows and new merchandise. As this year closes, spend some time with yourself to find the new place you should be shining on. Dueces. I thank God for wisdom. It has been one of the worst things I've ever asked for. I've been through some very interesting circumstances to get it. I continue to go through these circumstances to keep it and get more. Being smart is one thing. Being wise is actually applying the smarts to something and solving a problem. I run across a lot of "smart" people. I immediately intimidate them just by working with them. It's not that I'm smarter than everyone. It's that I always look to apply the information I give. Most smart people just say smart things and other people around them call them smart and that's it. I don't care if you're smart. I'm smart. But what can we do with the information? So I start asking them questions so I can see how I could use the information they have to solve a problem and they start fumbling. They get mad like I'm questioning their manhood or womanhood.
But to be honest, it's definitely a male driven thing. Women don't mind when you try to get details because they aren't intimidated as quickly by men. But men who aren't confident in themselves tend to swell up and throw temper tantrums when another man is trying to work with them. They don't want to lose the top spot. Truth is. Their is no top spot. The world is too fucked up for us to have a top spot. So we gotta crawl up there together. But men would rather fight at the bottom. A women with children ain't got time for that. She KNOWS she gotta make this world a better place for those kids. She needs wisdom. Fuck being smart. Men wanna argue about the Earth being flat and black people being the real Israelites while their family get let down every month. I notice the same thing with females when interacting with other females as well. They fight over who will be Beyonce instead of dealing with the task at hand. Maybe only the opposite sex try to solve problems together??? I might be drifting a little bit but it's still relevant. Stick with me. There are plenty of problems to solve. These problems are solved by wisdom. Not by being smart. Nobody is as smart, or as wise, as they need to be because if they were then we wouldn't have any more problems. Until that time, we have much work to do. We all need to stop squabbling over nonapplyable(Not a word) bullshit and work towards wisdom. Solve some shit, then we can circle back around and discuss the latest Lebron vs Jordan stats. Become a man/woman of intelligence. Talk back to me on your thoughts. |
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