"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy" ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

No matter how sour things have ever gotten with me & the opposite sex, I have tried very hard not to become a jaded "man-hater" kind of woman. That shit is just not sexy. So it has been with extreme caution that I've referenced things that have bothered me about the opposite sex & I've chosen to be very specific in the He(s) that I've referred to and tried hard not to generalize.

This post won't be like that.

Today was the Fourth of July Block Party on my street. Some of the neighbors paid to be able to close off the street, they put out a flyer to the residents and asked everyone to contribute a little something. There was music and a couple of kegs of beer. A good time was to be had by all. And to be fair, it really was a successful gathering.

However, in the span of 3 or 4 hours I had two different men tell me and my mother separately that I was too strong or tough to talk to and that I "intimidated" them. One actually told me that I scared him a little. (insert crickets chirping here.)  The dude who said what he did to my mother told her that I was so "hard" that I "came off as mean" & that he wasn't "even sure how to act" around me. This is a person I've exchanged perhaps FIVE sentences with. How in the hell did he come to that conclusion??!   ....THE HELL!?!?!

Now even though this last guy is clearly an idiot, this isn't the first time that I've heard something like it. You know that saying that a man wants "a lady in public and a whore in the bedroom"? Well, a lot of us women have a few things that WE want from you men.

Pay attention now:  If being smart, assertive, strong & confident makes us too "intimidating" for you, then that makes you an unacceptable candidate for the task. And  here is my response to it:

Pussies need not apply. Do not pass go. Keep it movin' Son.

 I'm DONE with this whole idea that the only way I'll ever be considered approachable is if I buy into this meek, subservient bullshit. I'm not doing any song & dance routine to get a man's attention. I have a brain and opinions & I won't bow down or slouch my shoulders or walk around looking at the ground  to bag ANY man EVER. If your ass is too scared to climb the mountain, then stand down. You'll be saving us both a lot of time.

And since this seems to be such an issue I'll spell it out for ya. I want a man who is strong and loving and masculine and sensitive all at the same time. A man who is not afraid to let me see him be weak but will knock a person out who tries to harm his or mine. Someone who knows that while I AM strong enough to take care of myself and all that may get thrown my way, that there are times that I need him to step in and take over. I want a partner. Not a son. I want a MAN not a wimp. A man who can say "I love you" just as easily as he can say, "You are acting a damn fool & when you cool off, we'll resolve this." Someone who knows that while individually we are amazing, that together we are a force. One who values my opinion & seeks out my thoughts on things because he knows that I contribute something positively. Someone who knows that while I am just fine on my own, that with him I can be better.

What I'm not having any more is some dude who is so tore up & twisted about how great I am but "it just isn't the right time" or I'm "so great, but I'm not sure how to make this work." Or even someone on some super macho bullshit either. I'll not have someone tell me when or where I need to be or how to spend MY money or time. Get your mind right. Get yourself a set and then come holler at me. Think I'm too strong now? Psh. You ain't seen nothing yet. Think you're not sure if you can? You're probably right. I will not change to subscribe to any bullshit mentality. I'll die alone before I do. Do not think for one second that I'll drop my standards to make anyone else's shit feel better. There are plenty of women out there who are just fine stepping into those shoes. I am not one of them. 

*Steps off soapbox*

"The good news is you haven't found it yet. The bad news is you haven't found it yet." -Anonymous

See the thing is; I moved 2,291 miles. I am certainly not standing still waiting for anything. I've been out on my little date thing. I'm obviously moving on. I've biked, run & walked hundreds of miles across this city. I'm definitely keeping busy. I've had hundreds of long conversations. I've cleared out my iPod from anything that could force my thoughts to places it shouldn't be. I've thrown away the letters. I've burned the pictures. I gave away the gifts. I have done everything that everyone has told me. I've listened to all the advice in all it's shapes and forms. Clearly I'm not sitting around waiting for something that is not ever going to come back.

One little wrench in the plan though. I may have fooled my brain. But not my heart. Never my heart. My heart can not be tricked. It knows that I gave it away long ago. There was no return address on that package. You may sit here reading and think me a fool. Judge my naivete. My foolishness. Hell, I've done that twice as many times as you have. But my heart is the most stubborn part of all of me. And it will simply give when it is ready to do so and not moment before.

I don't get into a pool toe first. I jump right in. I don't laugh with a hand over my mouth. I'll cackle and snort if the joke is that funny. I don't eat fat free food and I don't drink Diet Coke. So it shouldn't surprise any of you that I don't love half-assed either. There isn't one ounce of me that isn't all in.  And when it ends, I don't just go looking to hook up with the next guy to replace the last one. Maybe the statute of limitations for others is 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years. I don't know what mine is. I just know that I shouldn't feel bad about not just "letting it go." In fact, I am proud of the way that I love.

Just because a relationship is over doesn't mean that love stops.  Love isn't a switch that you turn off. It doesn't just leave when you demand it to. And just because I know that a relationship IS in fact over, doesn't mean that it's no longer how I feel. I'm always so curious about people who just flit form one person to the next telling each one along the way that they "love" them. How is that possible? Is there some endless well that I've not been made aware of? Because I give mine away sparingly. I recognize is as the gift that I think it should be. You don't go giving away the good stuff to just anyone do you? So why then would you with your heart? My love may not be the smartest thing, but it is the thing that makes me stronger...isn't that funny? The very thing I fear may break me is the thing that in the end, always makes me stand tall.

So maybe it takes me longer than everyone else to get over. That's OK with me. I know that what I have to offer & have shared is the stuff people write songs about. (If that sentence just made you laugh/cry/snort, that was meant for you. Thanks to you I know that I'm not alone out there in my position.) The thing that epic love stories get written from. That thing that  shapes sonnets and soliloquies. The thing that once you have felt it, leaves you forever a changed person. I'll get it right.

Who would have thought that a Puerto Rican from Brooklyn could be so idealistic, huh?

God will have me at the exact place & time that it's all meant to happen. In the meantime, I'll thank you in advance for your advice and attempts to get me to have a little fun. I'm good. I promise. I'm having a great time even if my insides haven't healed 100%. Every day I smile a little more, laugh a little harder, remember a little bit less & forget a little more.

"Our children are our only hope for the future, but we are their only hope for their present and their future."--Zig Ziglar

Those of you who know me in real life know that I am a fairly strict parent. And those of you who know my mother know why... I don't have cable TV. My children do not have cell phones. They do not have access to the internet without supervision. Even my child who has an iPod Touch has very limited access on that. I don't do this because this is a household where we use words like "H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks" in the presence of the little ones. I like to say fuck and do so without much censoring. Those of you who do not know me, may have started using your judgment about how I raise my children starting in the last 45 seconds.

Let me be clear. I want my kids to be kids. As innocent as they can be for as long as possible. That's why I control what they watch and listen to. My twins are 14 and my baby girl is 12. I've managed to raise well-balanced, well-adjusted girls on my own, and not because of any real secret well of knowledge. I'm just honest with them. REAL honest. I don't baby them or sugarcoat things for them. They know that the time will come for them to see those things and say those words and it's up to them to do so responsibly when the time and maturity calls for it. Just like sex. Which I know they're going to have and I talk to them about that as well...and contraception and disease and abstinence and abortion.

Now, onto the point of this post. I try not to judge the way other people raise their kids because I don't like it done to me. But I have to get this one off of my chest. Last week I went to watch Sex & The City 2 as so many of you surely have. I did not get to enjoy the movie as much as I'd liked to have due to the woman with her three very young kids sitting on front of me also watching Samantha get fucked on the hood of a car.  These kids ranged in the ages of say 6 through maybe 11.I was appalled and disgusted. Said mother made ONE attempt to shield ONE child's eyes for ONE of the sex scenes. By the time the rest rolled around, she was too engrossed in the movie to be bothered.

Fast forward to today when I see a YouTube video making it's round of a sweet little girl who has been made up to do a cover of Lady Gaga's 'Telephone' video. Look, I'm just going to say this bluntly. I'm sick of people prostituting their kids for money & their own 15 minutes of fame. That child looked just as confused as I felt watching the minute I was able to sit through. Enough is enough already! And before you go getting all defensive, you tell me...? Do you think a kid that young has the capacity to ask to do something like that? I can assure you she does not.

We live in a world of instant information & so-called reality TV and this shit is killing the age of innocence. The window for kids staying kids is practically non-existent and it is NOT the media's fault. The media would not stand as it is if people weren't eating this shit up with double fists. WHY would you allow your babies to watch this stuff?? This is NOT a call for censorship for artists either. I personally, LOVE the Gaga video. My children, however, DO NOT get to see it  until they are older. And if they came across it from one of their little dipshit friends bringing their own phones/iPods or whatever to school, we then discuss what they saw and why it is inappropriate imagery for kids.  Lady Gaga has every right to make whatever kind of videos she wants. She is a GROWN UP. That being the key word here to those of you still not catching my drift.

If you think for one second that the group of little girls gyrating to 'Single Ladies' at that dance competition (you all saw that video, I'm sure) didn't have an adult lead the way to that mess, you're delusional. Now we've got untalented adults choreographing their babies to do this stuff because they missed their own chances at the brass ring that is Fame. What is this sick obsession with fame anyway? Don't you see how this plays out when a child is forced to find acceptance and approval from the people sitting on the other side of the screen??? These kids end up filling our magazines and talk shows with all of their desperate cries for attention when the star fades. Tally it up. Old and young. Britney. Lindsay. The entire cast of Diff'rent Strokes. That Frankenstein of a human once known as Heidi Montag. Corey Haim. Brittany Murphy.That is but a mere few. A drop in the bucket of the victims of this insanity.

The worse part is that I'm not even sure it'll get worse before it gets better. I think we're in a permanent down slide folks. I can't tell you how many little girls I've spoken to whose loftiest goal is to become the next Miley. What the hell happened to little girls wanting to be the next President or doctors or surgeons? I think girls are at the worse risk too. When you get your self esteem from showing your ass, we have a serious problem. Young women today have become so detached that oral sex isn't even considered sex anymore! It's in the same family as kissing. Seriously.  This whole thing has me fired up.

I've gotten into countless battles with my own reality-TV-obsessed mother about not letting my twins model. I'm sorry but they need to develop self-love and respect FIRST so that IF and when THEY decide that is something they ever want to do, they'll understand the difference between love and the "adoration of fans." I want my daughters to understand that their heart and their soul is what makes them beautiful, not how skinny, popular or rich they are. And should they decide to pursue acting or modeling, I will gladly support that decision. AFTER they've had the chance to be little girls. Why is this such a hard thing for so many people to understand anymore?? And what is it going to take to make people realize that if we don't change the way things are going, the future of the young women in this country is dismal.

We have got to do a better job at protecting our children from this stuff and stop pimping them to fulfill some unrealized dreams of our own. Start teaching our kids that fame isn't some magical solution to having a perfect life. It doesn't answer ALL the questions. Who the hell wants to have all of their mistakes documented and judged and ridiculed anyway? Because that is what ultimately happens.

Maybe the process of this whole thing isn't so black and white but those are my kids. I'm doing whatever it takes to take care of THEM. It'd be nice to see more parents doing the same. It's that simple. Rant over.

"The book of love is long and boring. No one can lift the damn thing. It's full of charts and facts and figures and instructions for dancing. But I I love it when you read to me. And you You can read me anything." -Peter Gabriel

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have noticed a tweet today where I said that I don't want to be one of those people who wishes their life away. I wrote that just today. Well it occurred to me later that I've been doing exactly that for at least the last three years of my life and I realized what a waste that is. I'm certainly not getting any younger, now am I? Who really has time to waste anyway?

I started obsessively thinking about that statement while I was sitting trying to read a book and it completely distracted me from the story. That is something that even my three children, my crazy mother, two dogs and a cat have been unable to do to me while I am engrossed in a novel. But so deeply did I ponder this, that I started comparing my own life to a book. A story unfolding so to speak. I mean, that's what life ultimately is, is it not? 

So, I wondered. Where am I at in my own story? What chapter? What page? What sort of story am I living in? Am I a comedy? Am I a romance? (Sadly, if you've read this little blog before, you already have the answer to that one. pshhh...) Am I in the middle? Closer to the ending? Is my story a cautionary tale? Am I a tragedy? What sort of story am I? And as my amazing songwriter friend asks in one of my favorite songs of his: If I could, would I peek ahead to finish? See how my story will end?

And the answer is this. No. No I wouldn't. I would not read ahead...because it is the journey that determines if our ending is important. If our lives were lived richly and to the fullest potential, with little regret and lots of love. Not time that was squandered or lives that were not shared. It is appreciating every present moment for what it is. Special. Irreplaceable. One grain of sand in the hourglass taken from our side of the reserve.

Why then, I ask myself, am I just sitting here wishing the pages would turn more quickly??  This part may not be great but it is the place I am meant to be so that the rest can happen the way it is going to happen. If my life is like all stories, then I have a limited number of pages until the end and sitting here dreaming about the next chapter isn't going to get me to it any faster. I may not be the main author, but I am certainly a co-writer in this book!

Well, I decided that an outline is in order. An idea of how I'd like to see it unfold. Because, we all have a say in  how it goes down, don't we?

In the next few chapters there will be a lot of time spent researching a way to get the means that I need to start my own business. It may take some time and there may be days when I feel like the chapter will never end or that I may never get to the next one...but I will. That will lead to me working for myself, where every drop of blood, every ounce of sweat and every single tear put into it will be for the better of me and mine. So every one of them will be worth it. And I will appreciate every second of it.

When that is in order, there will be the part where I put philanthropy at the very top of my priorities list. Where doing for others will satisfy my life more richly than money or success ever will. My daughters will not only bear witness to that but they will be a part of it and use that example in their own lives and will give of their time in similar fashion. They will go on to be the beautiful, loving, kind, loyal women I know they are meant to be. The kind of women I hope to help shape them into. As their proud mama, I will remember to tell them I love them, even when they makes the many mistakes that their stories are sure to have.

Mostly though, in this story there will be love. Lots and lots of bountiful love. Endless love for my wonderful daughters. The love of my amazing circle of friends that I know will continue to grow into an even bigger ring. The love of my family, for even as they are capable of driving me to maddening tears, they are mine. They are my biggest fans and my loudest cheerleaders and they will continue to play leading roles in the story of my life. Lastly, there will be personal love. The love of a man that I know is out there. Who sees me. The real me. Not just a single mother. Not just girl with a scar on her face with a less than pristine past who has a potty mouth and may have lost her way for a few chapters. But as the woman I always knew I was capable of being, even if I'm not quite there when we do meet. He will be loyal and honest and strong and beautiful and true and he will man the ship when I am too tired to do it, all the while knowing that I am just as capable. My partner.

So is my story a mystery? Is it an epic romance? A light beach read? Ultimately, I'd like to think it's a mix of them all. Not one that any author worth their salt would ever conjure up out of their imagination. Not one that would be in any top 10 list. But my story none-the-less. One that is a work in progress, where there are still blanks to be filled and characters I have yet to meet, and many, many chapters left to go through.

And there will probably be a surprising twist...or ten. There will likely be more tragedy and plenty more tears. There may even be more loves lost and bad jobs to be fired from. (o_O)  I don't know yet...the rest of my book is still being written. What I know for sure though, is that I have the pen. I didn't get to choose the beginning & I may not get to choose how it all ends. But I DO get to decide how the pages get filled and with whom...and suddenly, that is the most exciting thing I've thought about in a long time.

I probably won't get a fairytale ending. But I plan on getting MY version of  happily-ever-after. That's just some of my story. I won't give too much away. You all will just have to keep reading to see....

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking. ~Buddhist Saying

I'm going to go ahead and cop to the fact that I'm not having a great day before I even get started. So if the tone of this post isn't sunshine & rainbows... wait...when has my blog EVER been that??
I guess I just figured that I'd forewarn you that me blogging while in this headspace is the writing equivalent of drinking & texting. Ya know it's probably not a good idea...buuuut you're going to do it anyway!

Last night I had a pretty nasty argument with my mother which she started in.front.my.children.  (For those of you who don't know, she moved out here with me & is living with me for a bit. I know, begin prayers NOW.) Trying to reason with her has the same outcome as trying to reason with a petulant two-year-old who is stomping her foot in the middle of a grocery store. Your best bet is to placate her & then smack her upside the head in the privacy of your own home. I kid, I kid... I don't condone beating children...unless I birthed them...and they deserve it...  ; )  Anyway, she yelled, I attempted to speak calmly, yet firmly...yeah. Didn't play out the way I'd had it worked out in my head. So, I didn't sleep at all last night. 

Well today was supposed to be the day I got my official starting date from the job I had landed. So I was going to keep my chin up! Right? WRONG. I got an email this afternoon telling me that although they want me to work for them & that a position WILL be there for me at some point in the future, I am on hold for now. Which.Really.Sucks. Sorry if I'm lacking in the eloquence department here folks, but I really wanted this job. A place where the people seemed to love what they do, and really like & respect their boss? And do a professional job and dress casually?! And I don't have to perform a song and dance for my pay?! (I worked for tips up until recently...) Damn. Damn.... DAYUM!!!!

My most recent job hunting experience (besides the aforementioned) has consisted going to a bunch of cattle calls for sales gigs. Look, I know already. Sales is for the strong. Blah,blah, blah. I can't in good conscience try to get folks to pony up money for something, when the truth is that I have been in their shoes (still am!!) and just plain can't afford something. No means NO  dammit! I get that. So no matter how you tap dance around it, there is certain element of force that goes on in sales that I just don't believe in & it is not in my nature to browbeat. (Shocking, I know.)

Oh, and lets not forget the humiliation that was "saving the sea turtles" gig which consisted of being dropped off on a street corner in a city I'd never been in before without my wallet or cell phone, in the pouring rain, begging people to sign a monthly credit card agreement to donate money for saving endangered sea life.  I mean, it was a gig I believe in but lemme tell ya something... when it's Tsunami type weather conditions outside, even the most bleeding heart animal lover will tell you to go fuck yourself if you try to stop them for ANYthing. They just want to get to their destination as dry as possible. I know this, because it actually happened just that way... Verbatim. Repeatedly. I don't believe myself too good for ANY job, but the eight bucks an hour being "earned" there was simply not enough to keep me engaged. Plus, I got a wicked cold & ear infection from that day. My $54 paycheck went to a minute clinic. Good times kids. GOOD times....

So now here I am again.  Job hunting. Some more. Worrying about how the hell I'm going to pay my now passed due rent, all the bills about to come in, and the next months rent that is rapidly approaching. No pressure or anything...

The LAST  thing I want to do is start questioning whether or not I've made the right move coming clear across the country for a new beginning. I feel in bones that I've done the right thing.  But right now, at this moment, all I can think about is WHEN am I going to catch a break?!! Jeez!!! I got the mother unit in the room pouting, I've been locked in this house for six weeks, I'm going out of my mind with boredom, I'm broke, I'm terrified, I'm unemployable (or at least it feels that way) and all the while I have three sets of little eyes watching my every move. I can't break in front of them. I won't break in front of them. I WON'T break. I refuse.

Dear God, don't let me break....