(Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, taken with my iPhone with the Hipstamatic app.)
Monthly Archives: September 2011
Season One, Episode Six: Through The Looking Glass
I was on the site 20 Something Bloggers earlier, and one blogger, Andrea Regueria, posted in one forum a great topic to blog about–writing your teenage self a letter. I did a lot of stupid stuff towards the end of my teen years–goofing off my junior and senior years, failing a few classes that I had no business failing, not walking with my class, getting pregnant at 18 and becoming a mom at 19, getting dumped by Nicky’s idiot father at 20, failing horribly at two (count them, two!) universities and ultimately losing financial aid at both schools–some of which made me into the person that I am today, the rest just stuff that I wish I could go back in time and kick my teenage ass over. Instead of writing a letter, which would be too time consuming, and let’s face it, Teenage Me wouldn’t have bothered to read it because I thought I knew every damn thing back then, I am going to give Teenage Me just a little advice and a heads up on the consequences that lurk ahead in the years to come.
Christ...This is probably from between 2002 and 2004, making me anywhere from 16 to 18. I'm leaning more towards 16, but anyway, I'm the girl in the middle. I look pretty much exactly the same.
*You won’t believe me now, you won’t see it until you’re about 25, but you are absolutely beautiful. I know you think you are ugly and you want plastic surgery on the nose you think is too big and you hate your high forehead and all your curves and features that don’t exactly blend in with all your friends, but you are so, so beautiful. I wish you would see it for yourself at 16 because that would stem the tide of bad decisions that you make in the next few years.
*Don’t worry so much about having a boyfriend. You’ll learn that you’re completely fine without one. I know you think you are a loser because you haven’t been kissed yet, but you aren’t a loser. You aren’t ugly or hideous or gross. You just go to an all girls’ school and you are insanely sheltered. In a year’s time, you will kiss a stupid boy at Burger King who just wants to get in your pants and since you won’t give it up, pretty much ignores you forever. You won’t even like him. You will feel like an idiot, and I wish that you would listen to Jari, but I know you think that there is something wrong with you if you don’t kiss him. Please don’t kiss him. Save that kiss for someone who deserves it. That kiss leads to a long line of stupid mistakes with guys that you still will have a hard time with when you are nearly 26.
*School is so important. So much more important that the kids you are going to meet at Burger King, the same kids that you try to fit in so badly with because they think you are stuck up because you go to a Catholic school and this Burger King thing is the first time in your life that you feel like you don’t exactly fit in at all. Don’t blow your 3.5 GPA over these kids. It’s not worth it. You are going to screw up so bad in the next two years and everything you worked for since Kindergarten is going to go down the drain. You never get to join NHS, you never get to graduate with honors. Remember that you wanted to graduate with honors. Please, please do your homework and get up and go to class. And please stop thinking your SJA friends are lame. They are not lame. They all go on to four year universities while you become a teen mom who is struggling to pay her bills. And 10 years from now you will be a receptionist who makes $10.25 an hour and is still a freshman in college. Please just focus on school.
*You have no idea how much that postcard from Yale will still mean to you at 25.
*Stop being such a bitch. You will regret some of the things you did and the way you treated people when you lay in bed at night years and years down the road.
*After you get pregnant, which you will do because you will become a mom to the most beautiful and amazing boy you’ll ever lay eyes upon, please just ditch his dad and do it alone. Because you are going to do it alone anyway, and it’s easier to get rid of him before you talk yourself into falling in love with him. You can do better, please remember that you are beautiful and you can do so much better than him. Please don’t waste two years of your life on him. It will take you years to finally let go and you will never trust a man with your heart ever again. And if you don’t let go of him after you get pregnant, please don’t take him back. He leaves you when Nicholas is 10 months old.
*Follow your dreams. Try to become a singer. Keep writing those stories and poems. Don’t ever give up.
I’m sure there’s more that I could say, but I think that I covered the things that matter the most. I think I might do another episode before my birthday in December, but please feel free to share a few things you’d share with yourself if you could 🙂
XOXO
Season One, Episode Five: Just A Thought…
This makes me sad.
The state of Georgia executed a man tonight who most likely was innocent of the crime he was convicted, yet the biggest topic on my Facebook news feed is the new layout. In my opinion Troy Davis outweighs Facebook’s new layout any day.
There was so much outrage on the social network when Casey Anthony was acquitted of murdering her two year old daughter based solely on reasonable doubt, yet we all knew she was guilty. Anyone familiar with the basics of Davis’ case knows that his entire case was riddled with reasonable doubt, much like Anthony’s–no murder weapon was ever found, seven of the nine witnesses who testified against Davis recanted or changed parts or all of their testimony and claimed that they were coerced under duress, it is believed that another one of the witnesses was the actual murderer…and yet, Davis was found guilty of murder, and ultimately executed at 10:53 pm. Where is the outrage now? Where is the anger over the judicial system now?
It appears that any anger on my Facebook news feed is directed at the new layout, which seems to have pissed off plenty of people, excluding yours truly. I don’t have any issues with it. I can still do what I go on to the site to do, and if I couldn’t, well…I’d figure it out, like the last time Mark Zuckerberg changed things up. Change happens. Updates occur. Big deal. You adapt and move on…because you know in a few months or a year, Facebook will change things up again.
But Troy Davis will never take another breath. Troy Davis will never get to prove his innocence. Troy Davis may have been wrongly executed while the real killer, believed to be Sylvester “Redd” Coles, spends the rest of his life a free man because the state of Georgia will never investigate that trail and openly admit that they may have killed the wrong person. And the MacPhail family may never really know who killed Mark MacPhail that night at Burger King in 1989. We may never know if Troy Davis was the one who pulled the trigger.
And that, to me at least, is more frustrating than the way my news feed shows up when I log in on Facebook.
Related articles
- Troy Davis maintains innocence in final words (sfgate.com)
- The killing of Troy Davis (bigthink.com)
Season One, Episode Four: Extreme Makeover, the Follicular Edition
I’m bored with my hair.
I’ve been growing my hair out since late 2009, and it is right below my bra strap. Pretty long. I have been thinking about donating it to Locks of Love, so I’ve been on the fence about cutting it. It’s not long enough for me to actually have hair to have after cutting off the required minimum of 10 inches, so I have to wait, and I’d be really pissed at myself if I chop it off right before it’s long enough to donate. In my opinion, that would be like quitting the race right before you crossed the finish line. It’s taken nearly two years to grow it out and nearly three years to get rid of all the bleached highlights that I had since September of 2008 (Locks of Love won’t take hair that has been bleached). That is the follicular equivalent of training for a triathlon. Except in the follicular world, instead of lifting weights and cross training, you refrain from excessive hair dye and you deep condition.
I have had long hair and short, but I feel like I should inform y’all that my hair is thick, what my stylist calls “dense”, pretty coarse, and curly. To sum it up, I have a LOT of hair. And it is heavy. I occasionally (like at the moment) get headaches from the weight of it piled up on my head–I hate wearing my hair down a lot because it takes a lot of time to wrangle into submission and I hate having hair in my face, so I usually wear it in a ponytail or in a messy bun. And I have a bad habit of pulling it up while it’s soaking wet, so I have this huge wad of heavy, wet hair just chilling on the back of my head all day at work.
Fabulous. Add that to the stress that my job already gives me, and no wonder I get migraines at work.
So anyway, cutting it is out. So is dyeing it blonde, something that I’ve been itching to do since early early 2008, the last time that I had dyed it that color. I am currently my natural color, which I guess could be described as a medium brown with lots of natural blonde highlights and a slight tint of auburn. It’s pretty, but I am bored. In high school I dyed my hair religiously, anywhere from blonde to dark brown to reddish brown, and I cut it whenever the mood struck me. This being good thing is hard. I haven’t dyed it since June of 2009, and my hair is healthy, yes, probably the healthiest it’s been since I was like 11, but I want to do something new to it. I like the reaction you get when you do something to change up your look. And for me, dramatic is always the way to go.
I am kind of thinking about dyeing it darker. I saw Kristen Stewart (I don’t like Kristen Stewart, and I haven’t seen any of the Twilight movies) with this long, black hair for some Snow White movie she’s doing, and the wheels in my head started turning. What if I dye it black? And not with permanent dye, which would ravage the hair that I’ve worked so hard to keep healthy, but with a temporary dye that washes out in 24 shampoos and is supposed to be good for my hair? I might do it. I’ve never had black hair, so I figure this is a good way to test drive it. If I like it, I’ll just keep using temporary dye until I chop this all off!
XOXO
Obsession of the Moment
I want to try this so bad!!!!
I am infatuated with this stuff! I have to try it, I've heard nothing but great reviews.
I am a self-admitted LUSH-aholic, so I am kinda biased, but I’ve read that R&B is supposed to be amazing for angry, distressed, curly hair. My hair oftentimes can get angry. It is sometimes distressed. And it most certainly is curly. I need something that can keep my hair from drying out in the harsh winters we have here in Cleveland, and I like that LUSH doesn’t use any animal products in their stuff, so even though I’m not a member of PETA or anything, I still feel like I’m doing my little bit to help the rainforests and all that. I think I’m going to buy some with my next check, and if I do, I’ll be sure to share what I think of it!
Season One, Episode Three: Alaska, Chocolatey NFL Caketastic Deliciousness, and Tornadic Tubby Time
Today was a blissfully boring day.
I worked six hours today, filing all alone in an empty office. I know it sounds boring, but I love it. My favorite part of my job is when all the other girls in the office have gone home and it’s just me and my thoughts and a nice playlist that I burned playing in the CD player. I’m a social person, I love being around people and laughing and joking and having a good time, but I also enjoy having time to myself where I’m not subjected to country music and gossip about relationships and stuff that bores me. I’ve always been like that, to be honest, I prefer to be alone in my room with a book and music in the background when I’m not out being the social butterfly that society expects of me. I also prefer to go out places with Nicky and my mom now more than I do with my friends. It’s weird, but maybe that’s part of getting older. Maybe you develop more of a chill, homebody side as the years go by? I don’t know.
After work, I came home and watched football with my dad and ate cookies and nachos and this sinfully delicious chocolate cake–and I feel ridiculously stuffed and sluggish at the moment. Nicky came in and sat next to me, and we watched TV with his head resting on my arm all evening until it was bath time. Bath time is actually a lot more fun now that he’s older. I liked “bubble tubbies” when he was smaller, but he keeps more of the bathwater actually in the tub now, and he likes to wash himself up and wash his own hair. Next thing I know he’s going to be shaving, hahaha. I love that he still calls his bath a “tubby” 🙂 After his bath, I put on his favorite DVD, that show Storm Chasers, and we snuggled up on the couch until he fell asleep in my lap. In our house, we all know that Storm Chasers = Nicky is sleepy. He usually won’t make it through an entire episode. It’s actually kind of odd that my son watches a storm about chasing tornadoes to fall asleep. He’s my silly silly boy…Although weather intrigues me, and we will go out on our porch and watch huge storms roll in, so he probably got that from me, along with his love of cake and staying up late…and his sense of humor, his blue eyes, and his goofy, lovable smile. He’s definitely his mommy’s baby.
I’m currently in my pajamas, typing away at my keyboard in between texting one of my bestest friends, Destinie. After I’m done with this mindnumbingly boring entry I plan on brushing my teeth and curling up in bed with my favorite book, Looking For Alaska (by John Green) until I fall asleep. I was reading Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, but the story of Chris McCandless pisses me off and I’m not in the mood to ponder the sanity or motives of McCandless tonight. I will blog about him another day, because I could write an entire post on him and how I can’t figure out if he was an idealist that we all should respect to some degree or if he was a spoiled rich brat who wanted to rebel against societal norms and his parents.
Goodnight, and here’s to another blissfully uneventful tomorrow to make me smile 🙂
XOXO
Season One, Episode Two: Robot Cockroaches, Minty Face Masks, and Target Teen Mom Shenanigans
My blog would like to thank you for calling it back in a timely manner. It wants to tell you that it didn’t wait by the phone at all. Well…maybe once or twice it checked the caller ID to see if you may or may not have called. Simply because it was in the shower and didn’t want you to think it was ignoring you.
So, I am sitting here at my trusty laptop, my face slathered in Mask of Magnaminty from the ever wonderful LUSH, fresh from playing with Nicky and his newest little toys, these little robotic bugs called Hexbugs. They’re actually kind of cute (see photo below), and Nicky wants to get more from Target the next time we go. I like them because they teach him science in a fun way (he remembers when we went to the Robots exhibit at the Great Lakes Science Center a few years back, and was telling me all about robots earlier tonight), and they are fairly inexpensive. As a mother with a ridiculously low-paying job, you can’t beat that.
These are Hexbugs. They look like little robotic bugs, and they scuttle about like motorized cockroaches. Sounds gross, but they are actually kind of cute. Nicky named them Speedy and Follow.
Today was a wonderfully quiet one. I took the day off from work, relaxing and spending time with Nicky instead of working for ten long hours. We laid around for a good part of the day, then went to Target and the grocery store, which is always fun and excruciating, depending on Nicky’s particular mood when we go to Target. This shopping trip was okay, although Nicky seemed to decide to bring his outdoor voice inside and thought it’d be best to be smart-mouthed. I may or may not have gotten angry with him and gotten the Look from one of my mom’s old friends. I didn’t spank him or yell at him, but he was being an unruly boy who was probably tired of sitting in the cart section of the shopping cart (it’s easier to keep him in the cart still, especially since he’s six and easily distracted…Target has a large toy department and has a Halloween section set up already–he stays in the cart for both of our sakes), and got antsy and mouthy. I may have snapped at him to shut his mouth because I didn’t want to hear it. And this lady overheard me and so I got the Look. I loathe the Look. I was nineteen when I had Nicky, and I have gotten the “you young mothers don’t know crap about raising children and that’s the problem with teen moms” kind of look since he was born. I am funny about the term “teen mom” in my case. I was nineteen, yes, but I had already graduated from high school and was technically a legal adult. So yes, I was a teenager, but I wasn’t in the kind of category that would land me on a MTV reality show or as a real statistic worth studying. To older people who need to mind their own damn businesses, however, I am a teen mom who shouldn’t have had a kid because I suck at parenting. I guess they either never had children or forgot what it’s like to be a parent of a small child. I usually ignore them, but the Look I got tonight really stuck with me for a while. She looked at me like I was the worst mother ever and that I had no business with a child–I had the misfortune of being in the same aisle as her when Nicky had a minor meltdown about Hot Wheels last week at Target. Mind you, he’d been up over twelve hours that day because of school, and he stopped napping last year in Kindergarten. He was beyond tired, and I was cranky because I hadn’t slept well the night before. We were both on the edge, but she didn’t know that.
And to that, and to her, I say fuck you. You don’t know me. You don’t know the crap I do and the things I have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice to be a good mom. And I’m not a teenager anymore, so don’t give me that “Teen Mom bullshit Look” anymore. I’ll be 26 in three months. I’ve been a mom for nearly seven years. So shut the hell up and remember what it was like to have a tired and antsy kid at a department store. And if my memory serves me correct, you had like three kids. So you have no room to judge at all. All that matters is that Nicky is loved and clothed and fed and warm and has the things he needs in his life to be well-adjusted and to safely and easily assimilate into society. Blahhhh.
Other than that, we had a great day. We had a deep conversation as to why he needs to behave when we are in public, and then we had pizza with my parents (whom, by the way, we live with, thanks to my shitty paying job and the craptastic economy) and spent the rest of the evening watching old episodes of Benny Hill and The Three Stooges. It was a great day indeed.
Oh, and save that spare change for the parking meter. We’re going out on the second date soon 😛
XOXO
Webify Me
I took this cutesy little quiz they had on the Firefox homepage where you answered twenty questions about your Web antics and they compile a visual collage of sorts showing what your Web would look like. Mine is pretty awesome, so I’ll share it in the picture below:
My Web experience, in 16 items or less!
Chasing Lala, Season One: Pilot
I give this pilot post two thumbs up. And a particularly cheesy (and well-whitened) smile.
Welcome to the series premiere of my newest blog, Chasing Lala. The first post, in my opinion, is always the hardest because there is a lot of expectations for the blog that have to be introduced and concurrently lived up to in the first post (and then the second, and the third…hell, I guess for the remaining life span of this blog!). The first post is kind of like the first date. Or maybe the second or third, when you’ve decided that you’re going to have sex and you feel like you should bust out all your best moves, but then you wonder if your “best moves” are really that awesome. The first blog post is full of butterflies and nervous giggles and word vomit and bragging and maybe one too many glasses of blueberry vodka and ginger ale (soooo delicious, trust me).
That said, let’s start. This post is wearing its best push-up bra and racy-not-too-skanky-but-just-skanky-enough lace thong from Victoria’s Secret. This post shaved its legs and painted its toenails with Lincoln Park After Dark because it wanted to look edgy but not too edgy. Maybe edgy sexy chic. This post put on its sexiest-but-not-cheap-hooker-smelling perfume for you and is wearing its prettiest sheer pink lip lacquer. It’s feeling pretty and nervous and kind of vulnerable. Its also hoping that you brought money for parking because it totally forgot to.
First things first, my name is Lashawn. Well, really Lashawn with a capital S…LaShawn. I kinda hate the way that looks, so I spell it with a lowercase S when I type or print my name. But I sign it with a capital S because it looks dumb if I use the lowercase. It’s silly, but I’ve been doing it since I started eighth grade and it makes perfect sense to me. And reading those last few sentences makes me realize how stupid my explanation sounds. And that I pretty much wasted 1.5 seconds of your life that you will never get back. My bad…but anyway, that was a bit off-tangent. Focusssss.
I am the product of twelve (thirteen, if you count Kindergarten) years of Catholic school, including four years in an all-girl high school. I learned all the important things, like how to curse like a sailor, wear tube socks to avoid shaving more than once a week, fake having cramps/headache/upset stomach to get out of a test or a ridiculously boring class…Oh, and the Our Father, my Sacraments, and how to be a good little Catholic schoolgirl. I think that definitely shaped me into who I am now, a pretty intelligent preppy girl with a trucker mouth. I am a fabulous single mom to a hilarious six year old boy, Nicholas. Nicky is the greatest kid ever. I may be a bit biased, but I’m gonna say that he’s pretty awesome. Most of my life revolves around him. My birthday is in three months as of today (9/17), and I will be 26. Writing that makes me cringe. Ickkkk. I am slogging through my freshman year (which has taken like 1.5 years) of community college, which is going to take forever thanks to idiotic 18 year old me (I have a super sweet 1.7 GPA to work with). If I ever finish my stint at community college, I hope to eventually get my Bachelor’s in Anthropology. I want to become a socio-cultural anthropologist and see the world. My goal is to get my doctorate and become a professor with the most amazing field stories ever. I am currently a receptionist, which I sorta kinda hate and hope to not make a career out of, a sentiment I feel very strongly about after almost four years. I work at a car dealership, which is a love/hate kind of thing. I’ll get into that later.
I am feeling like this entry shouldn’t be too long, or I’ll bore you and you’ll close your tab that this is open in. So I’ll be brief and thank you for reading post uno. And I hope that you’ll come back for the next one, and hopefully the next 79846343838 ones. My Pilot post is thankful that you put money in the parking meter and that you laughed at its jokes, even the one about the priest and the rabbi that didn’t exactly make sense the first or third time it told it. It hopes that you come back. And it hopes that you aren’t mad that unlike me, it doesn’t ever put out on the first date.
XOXO
Chasing Lala 