08:35: Okay Raivenne, shower, make breakfast, change your sheets, do your slice, get finish the Project B you had wanted done by Thursday evening. but was a much larger mess than anticipated and it’s now Saturday morning. Then review, before you start Project C.
09: 47: Okay Raivenne, you’re showered, the sheets are changed. You’ve responded to the necessary emails. Eat breakfast, do your slice, finish B, review, slice and start C.
14:06: (Two phone calls, a visit from my bestie, and unexpected company – later). Idiot! You have a headache because you have yet to have breakfast and it’s now lunch. Stop and eat.
15:22: (Received all system go response on Project A after email delivery the completed Project B.) 2nd review of Project A. Uh, who approved that addition to Project A – that was not what was agreed upon. Check the SLA.
16:57: Research issue with Project A, intersects with information for Project C, needed but could have waited – fell down rabbit hole.
18:18: Project A satisfied on all parties? Excellent! Now I can do my sli… Wait… WTF! (phone calls and emails ensue)
21:29: (phone calls and more emails later) Come on people! How is Project C missing entire sections? Did someone from 1-800-junk came by and someone accidentally pointed at the files? Is there something a pixel divining rod to find it? FML
22:04: Oh gee, thanks. You lost the day, you’ll get it Wednesday – maybe.
23:28: Guess what is finally being done now? Hell, I didn’t even get to comment on Pi Day! Well, I have now.
Yesterday afternoon, Calliope and Erato went missing.
I was on the main floor about to leave my office building when I realized the two were gone. My right- and left-hand girls were not there! That initial wave of panic set in at the discovery. I blinked looking around stupidly. Of course, they would not be right in front of me, dammit! The girls wouldn’t be lost anymore if they were!
Calliope is a prankster. This will be the second time she’s pulled a disappearing act on me. The first time was bad enough. I thought I was more vigilant, but this time she’s taken her sister with her as well.
Okay Raivenne, breathe, you know the drill.
Step one: retrace my steps. I immediately do an about face, head for the lifts and back to my office. I search the ladies room. They are big girls. Noise would have been made had I dropped them off them there, I innately know this, but still I look. Obviously, I am not surprised to see they are not there. I look to the carpeted floor knowing it for the fruitless labor it will be. Had the girls been seen alone someone would have told me. Pretty much everyone knows those are my girls or knows someone who does know they are mine.
I make my way back to my desk and my work-wife sees my face.
“Calliope and Erato are gone.” I say the words before she can even ask what’s wrong?, all the while hoping beyond hope that by saying them out loud I have not given them veracity.
Calliope has been with me for five over years, Erato has been mine for nearly a year and a half. The two have been near inseparable since Erato joined the family. They have been to Canada, Cuba, Dubai and even Antarctica with me. She understands how I feel.
“Have you dumped y…” She stops speaking seeing I have already begun to do just that as I methodically empty my purse of its contents. I check my trouser pockets, I check my coat pockets. The girls are not there. I know I did not drop them, they are heavy and make noise. Erato once slipped from my finger and I still heard her amidst the din of a crowded street in Manhattan.
“They are gone.” I say forlornly.
She looks at me knowingly, but not having the attachment I do, gives me clarity.
They are not gone, stop looking for the girls and they will appear.
I take a deep breath, put everything back in my bag and head for home.
Because I am the person who occasionally puts things down but does not always remember to pick them back up; especially when in a state. I am patting myself down to make sure I have my metro card and especially my house keys before I get on the subway. As I pat myself down I feel two familiar lumps under my wool coat.
Wait!
Yes, I checked my purse. Yes, I checked my trousers. Yes, I checked my coat. What I did not check were the pockets of the jacket I wore under my coat.
THAT’S where you two miscreants went!
What? It was completely their fault! No one told them to wind up in the wrong pockets when I took them off as I went to the loo because they love to trap water.
Relieved, I put the girls back on my fingers where they belong, happily text my work-wife of their recovery and finally head home.
Calliope and Erato
Yes, I named my raven head rings Calliope (pink eyes) and Erato (purple eyes) after two muses of poetry from Greek mythology. Calliope is the muse of epic poetry and Erato is the muse of – well, you can guess what kind given her name.
As usual I let my laundry pile up, so now I’m doing laundry at a public laundromat to just be done with it all at once. Like commuting, when you go to the same place around the same time on a semi-regular basis, you start seeing familiar faces. Faces that you at minimum will nod your head to in acknowledgement and/or greeting. So when I say male neighbor here, I only mean someone who lives in my neighborhood, but not in my building with whom the following conversation happened:
Male Neighbor (from a country in Africa): Where are you from?
Me: Born and raised American. My family has been American for several generations for obvious reasons.
MN: Yes, but do you know your family roots?
Me (because I knew where this was going): What does it matter?
MN: It matters.
Me: Really? Let’s say a family from Mozambique migrated to England in the late 1800s. However, the descendants of from that lineage never returned to Mozambique and because of assimilation or for whatever reason, didn’t kept up with their “roots”. Is the family living in the Britain here in this century Mozambican or English after so much time? So I know my family tree is from this particular people in this specific country and we separated in the year of our Lord whatever. I repeat: other than as a talking point of reference and a place to visit – what does it matter? I am American.
MN: A person should always know their roots.
Me: Okay? Which side?
MN: What do you mean which side?
Me: The black side or the white side? Until you, your lineage has never left the continent so it is all African. My lineage has been in this country at very least within a decade or two or more before the Emancipation Proclamation. And let’s be honest the quote-Black-unquote blood lines on this side of the ocean have been very muddled through our history here to put it lightly.
MN: Exactly, which is why you should research, you should know.
*There’s another fifteen or so minutes of semantics in which I mention how in a weird reverse “one-drop” determination, there are some countries in my presumed Motherland that won’t even claim most Black-Americans as African at all because our blood lines are no longer “pure” even if I did know exactly whom to call family, but I will shorten it to the following:
Me: I would agree except there’s a point no one acknowledges.
MN: And what point is that?
Me: Which side? When I am asked do I know my “roots” it is always about my African roots and the query almost never comes from someone Black or African-American. Why do some Africans become so upset on what I do know or do not know, or just to piss you off, do not care to know of my quote homeland unquote? Do YOU know for a certainty that my homeland is in fact Africa and not of East Indian descent that then mixed once over here? It intrigues me that no one Caucasian has ever asked if I know my roots in reference to that end of the spectrum. Am I not equally entitled to know their side if they are also of my blood line? Is their land not also equally and potentially my “homeland”? I was born here. My parents and several generations before them were born here. Whether you like or approve it or not, and frankly I don’t care. If one was born here or in one of our territories one was American – period. An immigrant was from whatever country – unless they chose to become a full citizen and once sworn in from that moment on they were American – period. I am American. My roots are American. Because until the Late 70s – early 80s there was none of this Blank-hyphenated-American nonsense. And to swing this all the way back around to how this conversation began: other than as a lovely talking point and a place for me to visit – what does it matter right here and now in this laundry that has you in such a huff?
He left the laundry twenty minutes later. I’m still waiting for an answer.
I am sitting on the train, minding my business, reading a book when I notice a hand waving slowly to get my attention. I look up at the smiling woman standing before me.
“Hi!” “Good morning.” I return the smile. “I just wanted to say I love your outfit. It looks really nice on you.”
Before I could finish saying “Why thank you!” we hear someone just off to the side.
“You would look better if you had on heels and not sneakers.”This comes from a guy standing beside her.
“Who the hell asked you?” The woman glares at him.
“I was just paying her a compliment.”
“No you were not.” I shake my head, bookmarking my spot. Not that there is ever a good time for such nonsense, but it’s early in the morning and I haven’t had coffee yet! It’s a bit not good.
“I love your outfit is a compliment. And thank you again by the way.” I smile again at the woman, then turned back to him and continued. “You would look better if you had on heels is a completely unasked for critique designed to shame me into dressing the way YOU feel I should look for your acceptance and viewing pleasure. Neither of which I consented to. I guarantee you that when I made my clothing choices this morning my prevalent thought was not oooh let me put on some stilettos so I can be the objectified personification for some guy’s possible shoe fetish ideal of how I should look.”
Because I whisper like a fog horn, my voice carries. A few snickers verifies this, but obstinate, he presses his point, “Still, you have to admit it would look better.”
And now I’m annoyed.
“Even if I agreed with you, which I do not, do you expect me to run home and change just for you? Are you my…? Actually, wait…” I make a show of lifting my sunglasses as I look him up and down carefully assess him. “No, I’m right, you’re not.” I shake my head, having made my decision.
I let my shades fall back into place as I return to reading my book, mentally dismissing him.
“I’m not?” he asks, understandably confused, “I’m not what?”
The man sitting beside me face palms and shakes his head. The woman who complimented me is snickering lightly, both having gathered the point which has clearly sailed over the wannabe Project Runway‘s fashion guru Tim Gunn’s head.
“I took off my sunglasses to be sure, but I was correct in my initial assessment.” I explained with the exaggerated patience one reserves for speaking to a misbehaving child in which they are in no position to discipline. “You’re not my physician. You’re not my children. You’re not my best friend. You’re not a deity. You’re not any of my lovers.” His eyebrows rise at lovers, but I ignore him. “Not that it would necessarily change my opinions in regards to my wardrobe choices, but when it comes to the very select few whose opinions I would at least take into consideration, you’re not one of them. So sod off! But since we’re putting in opinions where not asked, let alone wanted here’s mine: you looked so much better with your mouth shut, can you go back to that look?”
I stare at him waiting for a retort. After a moment of annoyed silence from him, I don my best Billy Crystal impersonation:
“You look, MARH-velous dahling!”
I guess the next station was his stop, at least that is where he got off. It as better than my telling him where he could get off. <>==========<>
I am not going to lie, I have been relatively blessed health wise. Much to my doctor’s semi-joking chagrin I am proof that not every fat person has diabetes, hypertension or cholesterol. I am not running any marathons, but I can haul ass to catch a bus from a half block off, if so inclined, and not feel like I’m going to keel over for it. I’ve been to a hospital five times for my own health: the births of my two sons, the first time I had a migraine, when I fell down a flight of stairs and sprained my ankle and when a pharmacy misread pain medication for said sprain that had me feeling so off forty-eight hours later I went back. So yes, I’ve been blessed up until now. And that is the caveat – up until now.
I am fifty-six and I am beginning to feel the first signs of my body’s seemingly inevitable decline. I know it well. My right knee goes in and out of aches of its own accord. I can go months without a symptom, then bam! it’s back for a few weeks or so.
I went to see National Theatre’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” with James McAvoy a couple of weeks ago. It was a cold, cold, blustery a work day, which meant a long day as the event was after work. Worse it was a training day, so I was on my feet for a good portion of it. I had on my comfortable boots, and thought I was ready!!! At least I was ready until about 4pm when I felt that first twinge that told me there was going to be a problem.
Now add to that when nearly twenty ago I fell down a flight of stairs and sprained my right ankle badly. I was fine, or thought I was, until about 2012 or so when it manifested itself as arthritis in that ankle that seems to flare up only on damp days under 30 degrees. It took nearly three winters and springs for me lock down the pattern. When both aches are in active session it is a trial to simply stand some days, let alone walk or run anywhere.
At something to midnight when the event was over, my sassy strut had devolved to a sorry stumble. I took it in (painful) stride and had a great time regardless.Two days later, the pain had abated as if it never existed, but yeah it happens just like that sometimes.
I am a long way off from it, but there are days where I have taken the possibility of lack of easy mobility into consideration. Naturally, I hope, wish, and pray it does not comes to that, but I’m telling you now, I will crutch, walker and scooter, should it become necessary, and sally forth. There’s still far too much I want to do and the more things I do, the more things I find to do, so I’m going to do as many of them as I can.
And any words to the contrary will get this response:
Characters from “LOST” exclaiming “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!”
Because as painful as it can be sometimes to decline physically – I decline to let it stop me until it, well, stops me.
‘Rhyme Time’ focuses on the use of rhyme to build your writing piece. You will be given six rhyming words and need to use all of them (but not limited to these) in your response, which should be a poetry form of your choice.
This week’s rhyming words this week are mock, shock, stock, lock, hock, block
Muse offers a surprisingly succinct entry this challenge using internal and cross rhymes.
For the past couple of weeks when I stepped out the door to head to work, I’ve been mostly greeted with the dawn. On the clear days it has been wonderful seeing seeing the warm twilight colors on the way to the station of the elevated train I take. I have enjoyed it through the above ground stations until the train plunges into the ground below becoming subway. When I emerge at my destination the sun has fully risen and it is officially day time.
The weather was lovely and the girly in me won out: I wore my white. yellow and black graphic print skater skirt, a black lace blouse with yellow underlay, my black leather boots with gold trim and my short leather jacket. I was looking and feeling so good as hell, Lizzo would have been proud.
Thus I was quite taken aback, and truth be told more than a little miffed this morning when I walked out into darkness. What?
I mean hello?, all this goodness I had going on needed the spotlight called El Sol. Never mind that in another hour and change I will emerge from the subway like the phoenix in all my glory; that was not the point. My four block strut to the train station could not be equally enjoyed by the half-dozen faces encountered in passing. What was this sapphire sky nonsense?
I had forgotten about daylight savings that sprang me forward in the day, yet bounced me back into night skies for the next couple of weeks. Oh well, if some of the Venus Envy I observed was any indication, a few of my fellow train riders were honored by the privilege of seeing Le Raivenne feathered so gaily. I was a Rai of snark-shine in this COVID-19 environs, and knew it.
At least the strut home was more enjoyed, better luck next time morning peeps, see you in a couple of weeks where I will continue to be modest as I am petite. (Note: I am NOT petite.)
In a conversation with a female acquaintance yesterday, I mentioned that today will be International Women’s Day. The last thing I expected was a question of “What’s that?” from her. After a serious facepalm that actually hurt, I explained it. Since we women have come so far, yet have so far to go, I’ll grab my invisible lectern and give a mini essay here for others who may have a need to know.
International Women’s Day (IWD) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity that belongs to all groups collectively everywhere. It is not country, group or organization specific. From the early 1900’s it was originally celebrated later in the month of March. International Women’s Day as we know it was officially recognized on March 8 in 1911.
The color purple was chosen, because it symbolizes dignity and justice, which are the two important goals which IWD aims to achieve for all women in all parts of the world.
Some from a younger generation feel that “all the battles have been won for women” while many know only too well the patriarchy is complex and still very much ingrained.
With more women in the boardroom, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women’s visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life, one could think that women have gained true equality. Yes, much progress has been made to protect and promote women’s rights in recent times. Still, nowhere in the world can women claim to have all the same rights and opportunities as men, according to the UN. The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women’s education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men. Now would be a great time to learn some more about the problem and what is needed to reverse it.
The theme for 2020 is “I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights” for a reason.
As I said when I began this slice: we women have come so far, yet have so far to go. How can you help?
Learn about more women whose lives have made an impact and helped moved us forward.
Support women – there will be a lot of the events that will raise awareness to issues involving inequality.
A global web of rich and diverse local activity connects women from all around the world ranging from political rallies, business conferences, government activities and networking events through to local women’s craft markets, theatrical performances, fashion parades and more. There are Women’s Day Events in every city.
Celebrate the wonderful, powerful, inspirational women in your for being just that: wonderful, powerful and inspirational.
And if you happen to be one of those wonderful, powerful, and inspirational women, don’t for get to celebrate yourself.
I found this on fellow slicer Elisabeth Ellington‘s page at The Dirigible Plum. I liked the idea and decided to use it (Thank you Elisabeth!):
The highlight last month was: I finally- FINALLY – stopped letting, and I do mean letting, all of the little things get in the way of me concentrating on the book of poems I had been working on forever and worked on finish the first draft.
This month I want to feel more accomplished with the book and so far I am feeling really good with how far it has come compared to where I was at the beginning of the year. Hell, I am feeling really good with how far it has come compared to where I was at the beginning of last month.
I’ll be over the moon if by April I have it back from the editor so I can move on to the next step.
One thing I’ll regret not doing in March is not having the whole process completed so that I could have a physical hardcopy in my hands by April 1 which was my original goal date.
I want to give myself permission to not shoulder what is not mine to bear. Sometimes self-care means saying no loud and clear and not accepting feeling guilty for it.
If I get stuck I’ll remember that I do not have to do everything on my own. I do have resources and it is not a failure to use them.
Fellow Slice of Lifer, and friend in real life, GirlGriot recent posted a slice that touched on how classical music once felt “forbidding” to her. I partially understood that sentiment from the perspective of my enjoyment of thrash metal music, something that many still that think I as a 56 year black is crazy for it.
Popular television and cartoon shows were my earliest experience of classical music. I imagine like most inner city Americans over the age of 45, we likely first heard classical music, jazz standards and big band from classic Disney (“Fantasia”), Warner Brothers (Bugs Bunny), and Max Fleischer (Betty Boop) cartoons. There is a reason that for many, many, many years most Americans knew a particular piece of music not as the finale of the William Tell Overture, but only as the theme to The Lone Ranger.
Other than television shows and cartoons as a black inner city girl, born in the early 60’s my exposure to music primarily came from very specific sources: my mother’s record player that only played black gospel music as she did not approve of secular music; my southern grandmother’s radio which only played country music, and the radio that mostly played what was popular at the time (classic and soft rock, and of course disco). Songs on the radio were only heard at friends and neighbors homes as it was not allowed in mine. Everyone regardless of color/ethnicity listened to the same stations for popular music because it was all we had. Sans those who eschewed most secular music of course, what would eventually be dubbed urban (aka Black), adult contemporary radio had become the thing. From the mid-1970s, when such radio stations came into existence until the late 2000s, whether as a political statement or as personal choice, if you were black you mostly listened to 107.5 WBLS (contemporary and traditional R&B), and the now defunct 101.9 WQCD (contemporary jazz) and WKRS (dance, hip-hop and rap) stations.
Yes, they exposed Black-Americans to more or our own music and to artists who may have been marginalized and not broken through the glass ceilings of other (aka white) radio stations, but at the same time it bred a subculture that made it all but verboten to listen to, let alone enjoy, anything else. I distinctly remember standing in queue at a department during the holiday store happily singing along to Billy Joel’s “A Matter of Trust” on the PA system when I was asked why I was singing that and told I should not be supporting their music because “Listen, we don’t do that”.
Excuse me? Yeah, that conversation did not go down well for him at all, and thus the point I wanted to make.
GirlGriot had once felt listening to classical music forbidding. Her story is her own and I will let her tell it. In my case, classical music, world music, and the early emergence of metal were not things I listened to because I was not exposed to them. Though artists who had massive crossover appeal like U2, Eurythmics, Blondie, The Police, Culture Club and Wham! were notable exceptions. While radio stations such as WCBS (music from twenty years ago), WKTU (dance), and WLTW (soft rock and adult contemporary) that crossed genres and remained popular enough, in my then insular world where everyone mostly listened to Anita Baker, Public Enemy, and Michael Jackson on the radio I did not have regular exposure to Bach, Mozart and Rossini. Why? Though the words were rarely so blatantly spoken, other than the guy at the department store, it was implicit we don’t do that.
Then the advent of personal music players and MTV happened.
A co-worker was listening to this relatively new band on his Sony Discman. He was clearly enjoying the music, I asked for a listen. I was told I wouldn’t like, but I insisted. This most definitely would never be played on anything “urban.” I had never heard anything like it, yet I it felt lyrically and musically on a visceral level. I replayed the song and then listened to the remainder of the CD and was shooketh as the kids say now. I bought a copy for myself that same day.
I had just been introduced to four guys whose names were James, Kirk, Kurt and Lars. The song was “Master of Puppets”, the band was Metallica, and I have been a devotee of them ever since.
Still, for a while I felt I had to hide this new love, because we don’t do that. Then I remembered just how pissed I was at the department store guy who deigned to tell me what I should be listening to and stopped hiding it.
MTV introduced me to thrash metal, death metal and grunge by god I loved it. Come 2000, in the middle of the night MTV introduced me to a then little-known group called Linkin Park and I was shooketh once again. By then WWE was popular and my sons were as much into it as I because many of the popular wrestlers of the time made their entrances to the ring with rock and metal music. Because I listened to it and their heroes at the time listened to it, it never occurred to them that they couldn’t. Their generation was not coming up with the subculture of we do don’t do that musically. Their musical choices were as diverse theirs and theirs alone because of that exposure and I for was grateful.
My late-husband came home one afternoon while our sons and I were head banging in different rooms as we were spring cleaning. Every window was open, and Metallica’s “S&M (Symphony & Metallica)” CDs were on blast. We lived in a mostly Caribbean and Latinx neighborhood, he was shaking his head and laughing that he heard the music half a block away and knew it was our house before he pulled up to the curb. He walked up to me and yelled “You’re Black!” Because the cosmos indeed has a delicious sense of humor, his timing was perfect with the song that was playing, and I paraphrased the incoming chorus as I shrugged and sang “Where I play my songs is home!” and continued cleaning to Wherever I May Roam. Unlike the guy in the department store oh so many years ago I knew he was partially teasing because while he liked some rock, he was never a heavy/thrash metal music fan at all but was is his choice that he did not do that, not my sons and certainly not mine.
I was in my forties when I went to my first opera and my reawakening to pieces I didn’t realize I already knew thanks to cartoons. I made me search for more and yet a new musical interest in classical was sprung. It is not my strong suit as metal and R&B. Still, I enjoy it.
Though my first musical love remains Rock and Heavy Metal, they have happily shared space on my iPod with Country, Soul, Video Game Soundtracks, Jazz, Rap, Trance, Classic Rock, 80’s Hair Bands, 70’s horns, Blues, Pop, Movie Scores, Broadway Show tunes, TV Themes and so much more.
And all I had to do was be willing to listen beyond the forbidding listenwe don’t do that.
Raivenne-lations 