GUYS, I caved...

Sweet
Sweet 
Sweet
Coffee


Oh, how I missed you and your warmth

I love tea, I do but I can't help but cave and divulge in a cup of coffee from time to time.
There is still a district difference in my attention span. But

Oh. My.

So good!

The Race Card Project

Y'all, I'm a ranter.
When I have a point to make, it comes racing out really fast and passionate.
I can't stop.

I am currently taking a college class that deals with civil rights issues that makes us think about race in the United States and it's existence as a social construct.  
I think all my friends are tired of the civil right rants I've been on this semester.
So.. let me rant here :)

We've been looking into The Race Card Project and explaining how race has touched the lives of people around us.
A little about The Race Card Project: 1. You should totally check out their website
                                                            2. Michelle Norris found that race is a topic that people are
                                                                scared of talking about, yet she found them continually
                                                                wanting to discuss race.
                                                            3. She started an experiment where she gave people a blank  
                                                                postcard and asked them to explain their thoughts on race and
                                                                identity in 6 words.
Their website is filled with people's race cards and their stories explaining them.

After exploring, I decided to challenge myself to write about racism:

             I’ve sat and looked at this blank page for 5 days now.  I’ll open up my computer, sit down to write, and find myself at a complete lack of words.  How do I write a paper about how race has affected my life without filling these pages up with how awesome white privilege is while I scramble to explain how at some point in my life I’ve pathetically tried to understand racism from the eyes of others?  When I sit down and try to find highlights in my life that might be worth writing down to fulfill to the requirements of how racism is prevalent in our American society, there are only a few situations that come to mind.

            My sophomore year of college (2012-2013) I attended the University of Cincinnati where I was in a highly competitive industrial design program.  I moved there from my past university in Nashville and had to start over on my college experience with new friends in a new city.  This wasn’t easy especially since being denied housing; I had a month to find an apartment in walking distance of the university.  I ended up renting out a room in a four-bedroom apartment with 3 strangers.  The apartment was really nice and safe.  There was a keypad to get into the parking garage and into the staircase that lead to the apartments.  Unfortunately, the area around my apartment was far from safe and at times was scary.  I lived there for a year, 20 years old and walking home from my night classes while clutching my pepper spray and passing alleys where men (usually black) would holler and come at you while you walked by.  I watched people get arrested, assaulted, and shot from that Cincinnati apartment window.  I quickly learned to walk to the grocery store in a very specific time frame and had to go a couple blocks out of the way to avoid walking through a dark tunnel filled with homeless men and drug dealers to get there.  Now, I know you’re wondering what race has to do with this.  How does a 20-year-old woman feel about racism after living for a short time in a run down, primarily black community?

 To be honest, I’m not sure.  I was in a completely different culture than what I had ever been exposed to and it was obvious to everyone there that I didn’t belong.  I knew that I couldn’t understand what it was like to grow up in that community and not be able to escape it because I always had easy excess to new opportunities.  I had a hard enough of a time in this new community figuring out what the social laws were.  I couldn’t even begin to phantom what it would be like it that was all I ever knew. 

 I think a lot about the speech we watched given by Michelle Alexander over black criminality and how violence has grown to shape and define these communities.  She proposed that by building better opportunities these communities they could begin to heal from all the crime and become safer places to live and grow.  But yet, I went back to Short Vine Street, the same street that I walked home with groceries and had a couple black men corner me and whisper inappropriate things in my ear, that same street is completely different.  Brand new apartments for college students line the street with college bars and burger joints below.  What happened to the tattoo shop? Where did the odd to go Indian restaurant go that I’m still convinced was a drug front? They rebuilt this street with better opportunities but it didn’t benefit those who had previously camped out on its benches.  A new crowd now owned the street.  But where was the old crowd? Were they just going to shuffle over to a different dirty corner? Did they receive a hand-me-down part of town that was used into ruin by a different race, or as Michelle Alexander would call it: “ by a different caste”?

At this point of this paper, let me reevaluate a few things: I realize that up to this point, it looks like my Cincinnati story may be leading to a point where I admit that poor black men scare me.  But, they don’t.  I mean, I’m not ready to move back in but it is a completely different culture with a different set of rules on how to behave and respect others.

I haven’t thought much about my experiences in Ohio since moving back home.  I was really jumpy for a while and was laughed at repeatedly by my friends for instinctively getting out my pepper spray with my keys before walking out to my car or from jumping from the sound of AC units turning on.  But I relaxed and eventually stopped thinking of everything that I’d been exposed to.  My slice of home in Indiana isn’t racially diverse.  My friends are primarily white, all of my bosses except from my current employer have been white, and I’ve grown up in a family where the head of it, my grandmother, is extremely racist.  I moved back home, in my safe bubble of the world that lived apathetically in advantage of white privilege. 

Buonasera, Caffe

This month I have decided to try and cut coffee out of my diet.

coffee, not caffeine. I'm not crazy y'all.

I have a secret.  It's not that juicy of a secret and if you know me, you've probably already picked up on it.  But I have a really hard time maintaining focus and often forget my train of thought.  I forget things I have just been told, where I'm going, and loose stuff constantly.  I'm certain that I have ADHD.

Now, coffee makes this 60x worse for me.  My mind can not handle the amount of caffeine that coffee has in it.  I get overloaded and can't function smoothly enough to finish tasks or have a steady thought process.  Don't get me wrong,  I am SO much fun on coffee.  (dancing, leaping, and twirling about) but I'm not productive at all.

This decision to live more efficiently vs living sporatically came with hurdles.

I have to be awake.  This full time student and full time manager NEEDS CAFFEINE!

So, I've started:
 1. Eating cleaner:  Goodbye Jack's pizzas! Oh how I'll miss you, Dominos stuffed cheesy bread! Root Beer.. I don't                    know how I can live without you.. maybe we could have an affair behind Water's back.
 2. Drinking Tea: Green Tea, Herbal Tea, and Black Tea.


We'll have to see if I can keep this up.

But what I am enjoying is waking up in the morning and picking out what tea I want to start with.  I always thought that there was nothing like a waking up on a dewy morning and hugging a warm cup of coffee while listening to the birds wake up.
But I've found that sleepily dunking the tea bag, baptizing it into the steamy water while listening to my hozier pandora makes for lovely mornings as well.

Time for tea, Loves

Heavy Hearted Wine Wednesdays

Here I am.
Drunk.
It's 3 a.m.
On a Wednesday.
I have to be awake in 4 hours.
After smashing an entire bottle of wine (which I've never down by myself before) #winewednesday
About to break up with a man that I thought I was gonna marry.

I'm debating whether or not to edit this in the morning because if I edit it, then maybe y'all won't believe me when I say that I'm drunk.  I honestly can't remember the last time I was drunk by myself.  It's always a recipe for disaster.  There's no one to distract me from texting an ex or to talk to so I just sit here and refill my empty wine glass with tears.
But not tonight.

Truth is: This is the happiest I've been in a long time.  Am I going to hell for admitting that?

I hurt for him and I hurt for the person I used to be.  But I have been so burdened.  But yet, the happiness is brief and is immediately over flooded with uncertainty for the future.
Where do I go from here?
Maybe I should adopt some cats or start knitting again?  I do still have that blanket that I have to finish crocheting.  That would make an awesome Christmas gift... I could save some money. 

I feel like a completely different person.  I need a new look.. Maybe I'll cut all my hair off? NO, I'll dye it!  yea.. then I'll dye all my clothes black and splatter them with bleach so they get this edgy acid wash look to them! That's artsy and will make me look complex and brooding. 

I want to reinvent myself.  I want to be the furtherest person than who I am right now.  Maybe that will make missing him less painful.



SON OF A BISCUIT FARMER! I think I'm gonna hire someone to make tough decisions for me.  Like that one guy George Clooney plays in Up In The Air where he goes around firing people.. Yea, I need my own George Clooney. 


Things don't end unless they end badly.


"You'll find it that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy"

My Poems

Why do we start blogging?  I don't know very many people who blog but I feel like it has changed a lot from 10 years ago.
People used to blog because they had these deep thoughts that they wanted to share.
But blogs I see now-a-days are all about fashion or the 10 ten ways to live better.

I don't relate easily to words.
Maybe it's just my creative side talking but I enjoy colors and feels so much more.
Some days it isn't the words that matter but their tone and if they wind is blowing while the words are recited.

I'm a visual person, like most painters and drawers.

And these sketches are my poems.  Except they won't contain very many words.
Trust me, I'm doing you a favor.  My words often don't make much sense.

But I'd like to think my sketch book does.

Small canvas : coffee house series

I got these tiny canvases and loved that they were square and wanted to tell a story with them.

I've never been able to stay focused enough to do a series of paintings with a common theme.

Caution: The following phrase may contain hipster terminology and may not be suitable for anti-hipster audiences:  I love coffee houses.  The colors, the lighting, the smells, and especially how everyone around you acts like they are doing something really important and intellectual.  Just makes you feel like you are accomplishing shit, even if it really is just jack shit. 

two down, one to go.