Woohoo! Brenda Novak’s annual auction for Diabetes research has begun! There are tons of items from the best authors, publishers, editors and agents available. The money from this years auction will be donated to The Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami. Just about any and everything, from inexpensive to extravagant. So go bid on something and support this awesome (and certainly worthy) cause.
Oh, by the way, you have the chance to win this from me – Silk (yes, real silk!) napkins with matching chopsticks, a contemporary styled (and usable) tea set and matching wooden bowls.
…everything you need to create a beautiful Japanese place setting. Could be used for a theme party, or just to give your dining area an elegant twist.
I know many of you have seen this video before but I just love it. What brought this about? I was in Indianapolis for work at a customer site. As I walked through the cafeteria a woman I didn’t know caught me by the sleeve and asked, “Girl, are those sisterlocks?”
She was a beautiful woman…but her hair was thinning and breaking especially around the edges. She had a receding hairline where her hair should have been.
Been there, done that.
I spent a whole lot of years trying to get my hair to do something that it was never meant to do – be straight. I would go devotedly to the beauty shop, sit for hours (they double and triple booked in case somebody cancelled… but nobody ever did) for them to get to me so they could put a glop of grease on my scalp to try to protect it from burning when they put the lye relaxer in my hair.
Then I would sit with tears in my eyes for about fifteen or twenty minutes while they tried to get to the two thousand six hundred and forty nine women in the shop. I would get a rinse with some really good smelling shampoo followed by a setting solution that stung so bad the tears came back with a vengeance.
Next, my hair was rolled, slicked down or styled into whatever doo I was after, and I was off to sit under the dryer for an hour and a half so my hair could dry to a crackling, stiff-but-bone-straight consistency. After all that my hair was surprisingly soft, smelled great and was straight as I-don’t-know-what. And I did that every six to eight weeks for years.
Why? Because when I was growing up, curly, kinky or nappy hair was SO not in. Women of color were taught to straighten their hair. No doubt my hair was easier to manage when it was straight, but there was one little problem: My self-esteem became wrapped up in my hair. So what do you think happened to my self-esteem when my super-long gorgeous hair, after so many years of being practically burned out by perm solution, began breaking and thinning to the point where I had to wear hair pieces on my ponytails to even HAVE a ponytail? Hummph!
It seems to be a normal thing in society these days to be convinced that what you were born with is nowhere near good enough to be acceptable. If you have thin lips they tell you to go get ‘em plumped. If you’re a big girl, you’re told to get skinny. If you’re skinny, you’re told to get some hips. If you’re dark, you’re told you should be lighter. If you have straight hair, you’re told you need some curls. If you have curls, you’re told it should be straight. I mean, DAYUM!
I’d been toying with the idea of going natural for a long time but had no idea how to go about it. Then I met a fabulous author named Kimberly Kaye Terry. She’s a natural hair-wearing sistah who pointed me to some really good resources to research the path I wanted to go. It was encouraging hearing her story on what made her go natural. And it was something I wanted so much.
Me chillin’ in my office
So finally I found an answer to the kind of doo I wanted to wear. I have been sporting locs (no, not dreadlocs ’cause there ain’t nothing dreadful about my hair) for two years now and I couldn’t be happier. My hair is thick, long, strong and beautiful.
Check out this music video about how we women, all of us women, are more than what appears on the outside. I absolutely LOVE IT! If you can’t see the embedded video, visit this link.
Terry from Romance in the Backseat (ritbs.blogspot.com) captured me singing! Oh my GAWD! She said she was gonna put that video blog up but I didn’t believe it. ROFL!!!
This is so very cool! I embedded the video here, but if you can’t see it you can visit this link.
Where do you spend your time when you’re on the web? I’ve been finding myself enamored with Twitter. It’s so fast and so simple it’s almost irresistible. For those who have very little time to keep up with blogs and posts and websites in addition to ‘life’ stuff Twitter is a god-send! It’s the fastest communication tool I’ve ever used.
And it’s fun!
So that’s why I have a Twitter widget on my website now, so even if you don’t have a lot of time to comb through my website and see what I’m up to, you can always take a peek at the twitter-widget or hop on Twitter, take about 30 seconds (two minute tops) and catch up on what’s happening in the worlds of your favorite authors. Not to mention, there are plenty of good ole regular folks out there with interesting lives.
I’ve been converted! I am now a full-fledged Tweet-tee!
You know, I’d never paid much attention to Diabetes…until I was diagnosed with it during Christmas of 2007. What a present, eh?
I felt fine. No symptoms other than I kept gaining weight no matter how well I ate, how much I walked or exercised. So I decided to go in for a typical routine physical. The doctor called me back into the office a week later to tell me the tests had come back. And that I was just “over the line” enough in my blood work to be a diabetic.
It didn’t make a damn bit of sense. I wasn’t overweight (not by much anyway *smile*). Ate pretty healthy. However, I had allowed myself to totally stress, and I mean stress, over my job for a whole year, getting very little sleep, few days off, and hardly any exercise. And even though we all know stress does all kinds of nasty things to our bodies and causes the secretion of nasty hormones.
It took me a year of keeping my stress to a minimum, taking a blood-sugar control medicine and making my already pretty good diet even better. I went into the doctors office about six months later and received some good news. My blood tests came back non-diabetic. YAY!!
So I shared all that to say I really, really support what Brenda Novak is doing with her auction fundraiser for diabetes. And it is my fervent hope that you’ll participate, too.
So you’re probably wondering who the ‘us’ in the title of the post refers to. Click on the banner, hop over to the auction and take a look at what some of your favorite authors, editors, agents and publishers are doing this year.
These women are only part of the reason that curves are ‘In’. But I wonder what caused the transition from “stick is it” to “curves galore”?
But here are two women who command the red carpet when they walk down it – Beyonce and Shakira. Others are Jennifer Lopez, Halle Berry and Gabrielle Union. I used to include Angelina Jolie in that category but for some reason she’s almost down to twig size. Now is anything wrong with being really thin? Nope. But for a good long while the media made those of us with curves feel as if we were big fat unattractive blobs who should be running to Weight Watchers to get rid of our hips.
And what really gets me is that when someone else (Hollywood? TV? Who?) decided that hips were in, suddenly folks were running to the butt surgeon to have fat pumped into everything from the lips to their backsides. I for one don’t allow anyone to label me or tell me how I should look, act or feel. They can all kiss my big ‘ole…well, you know ;D
My grandma used to say, “Baby, as long as you’re living in that beautiful skin of yours, that booty ain’t going nowhere.” And the woman was right, thank the stars. Those words stuck with me while I was growing up and because of my gran-gran, I learned a long time ago to accept my hips, my lips and all the rest as perfect. Besides, I could slim down to “knock me over by the next stiff breeze” proportions and my ass would still be the biggest thing on my body! Everything on me is where it’s supposed to be (even if it’s beginning to head South now ;D).
Watch this video and tell me what you think. Hips don’t lie and these women look FABULOUS, big booties and all! (Ignore the commercial. Damned Yahoo.)
Yes, Beyonce’s song, Single Ladies, was drumming through my head as I wrote up this blog piece… but to see it you’ve gotta wander over to the Samhellion Blog (courtesy of Samhain Publishing) to see what this sistah’s got to say…and it’s not what you’re thinkin’ ;D
Just wanted to say HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of your and your families! Here’s to a stellar 2009! *tj raising her wine glass in salute to you* I actually made a video postcard to you all…but I couldn’t get the stupid thing to play correctly so I’m sending you all cyber-hugs and kisses instead!
As most of you know we moved back to the Pacific Northwest a few weeks ago. It’s a place known for temperate summers and mild winters.
But last night the snow started falling! It’s absolutely beautiful and white and fluffy…and I ain’t going out in it. See there’s one thing you should know about me – I don’t do snow. Period. I don’t drive it in. I don’t walk in it. I don’t shovel it.
