Discombobulated Diva

This Too Shall Pass...

2009-06-22T03:54:00.000-07:00

This Too Shall Pass by India Arie....

I've achieved so much in life,
but I'm an amateur in love
My bank account is doing just fine
but my emotions are bankrupt

My body is nice and strong
but my heart is in a million pieces
When the sun is shining so am I
but when night falls,
so do my tears

Sometimes the beat is so loud in my heart
that I can barely tell our voices apart
Sometimes the fear is so loud in my head
that I can barely hear what God says

but then I hear a whisper that this too shall pass
I hear the angels whisper that this too shall pass
my ancestors whisper that this day will one day be the past
so I walk in faith that this too shall pass

The one that loved me the most
turned around and hurt me the worst
Been doing my best to move on
but the pain just keeps singing me songs

My head and my heart are at war
cause love ain't happening the way I want it
Feel like I'm about to break down
can't hear the light at the end of the tunnel
is when I pray for healing in my heart
to be put back together what is torn apart
and I pray for quiet in my head
that I can hear clearly what GOD says

but then I hear a whisper that this too shall pass
I hear the angels whisper that this too shall pass
my ancestors whisper that this day will one day be the past
so I walk in faith that this too shall pass

All of a sudden I realized that it only hurts worst to fight it
So I embrace my shadow and hold on to the morning light
this too shall pass...

I hear the angels whisper that trouble don't have to last always
I hear the angels whisper even the day after tomorrow will one day be yesterday
I hear my angels whisperI hear my angels whisper
this too shall pass

its like she knew exactly what I was going thru when she sang this song...

Cold turkey…

2009-05-26T02:38:00.000-07:00

I gave it up; just like that… cold turkey… the definition for cold turkey, from wikipedia, is ‘the actions of a person who gives up a habit or addiction all at once. That is, rather than gradually easing the process through reduction’… I still can’t believe I’ve done it, if I’m honest the withdrawal symptoms seemed unbearable at first… but I’ve been learning to cope with things… what did I give up so suddenly… well it was an addiction to a man that I thought I could love, but wasn’t loving me in the way I needed to be loved… you see, we both know that we need each other around, at least that what we thought, but then I started to step back from the whole situation and surprisingly things got less cloudy and became much clearer… my head had been clouded for a while, but suddenly reality started to kick in and my eyes were open again and I was able to regain my balance… I was able to take a step back from the edge I’d been living on for a while… and once I did, I was able to refocus and see things for what they really were… maybe I wasn’t ready before, maybe that’s why I couldn’t do it, but I am now… out of nowhere, with no warning, I literally disappeared, it wasn’t an easy thing to do, but many things had led up to this… its never an easy thing to do, regardless of which side of the situation you are on… but I had to give my addiction of him up… it had consumed me for all to long, it had taken over in a way that wasn’t healthy… when he finally realized what I was doing, that was painful for me, cause I knew he was hurting, but I had to be strong… I had to be strong for myself, but also for both of us… right now, what he and I need is space between us… you see, the reason I know how much it’s hurting him is because he’s exactly like me and I know how much it was hurting me… only time will tell how things will play out, but for now I’m indulging in the space that I’ve created, because it was exactly what I needed mentally, physically and emotionally…

Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. ~Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Love the ones you can. Touch the ones you can reach. Let the others go. ~ Real Live Preacher

Our greatest battles are that with our own minds. -Jameson Frank

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go. Tennessee Williams

Forever, and forever, farewell, Cassius! If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; If not, why then this parting was well made ~Julius Caesar, Act V, Sc. I

“Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.” ~ Dr Seuss

Karma....

2009-05-22T01:42:00.001-07:00

Everything happens for a reason, regardless of whether or not I understand why certain events happen, I know that there is a divine reason to it… that there is a method to the madness in which we call life… aside from that, I know that I have the strength to make it through whatever comes my way, regardless of how helpless I may feel at a particular moment – I know the strength exist inside of myself, I just need to conjure it up… I haven’t had a terribly difficult life if I want to be honest with myself, but I’ve been in some rotten situations in my life… situations that have knocked me completely off of my feet, but here I am today standing just as tall as ever…

I use to handle things to badly, whenever life was difficult, I always managed to make it worse by being self-destructive, turning to things that would temporary make me feel better, but were ultimately bad for me in the bigger picture of life… and I’m not sure what’s worse, that I was self-destructive or that I knew I was being self-destructive and still did it anyways… as tempting as it may seem, self-destruction is not a choice for me anymore, the consequences are much too steeper now… the other side of self-destruction, or rather another form of self-destruction is revenge against those that have hurt me. Revenge is only a temporary happiness to see someone else suffer like you’ve suffered, but what’s worse than revenge is Karma… its karma, and my good-naturedness, that have always kept me from going down the path of revenge no matter how tempting or easy it would have been… in the current situation that I’ve found myself, I knew I wasn’t going to be self destructive, but I did seriously considered revenge, doing something that was completely out of my character so that I could have that temporary happiness to see the other parties suffer like I was/am… but my senses quickly got the better of me, and I realized that karma would take care of them for me, and that I didn’t need to do anything… also, in plotting revenge against them and stooping to their level, I was only setting myself up for karma to repay me later in life with an unpleasant surprise… so more for my sake than for theirs, I find myself taking the higher road again!

And one would think that as many times as I’ve taken the higher road, that karma would repay me with some pleasant surprises… well, maybe karma isn’t paying me back in the way I expected, but if I want to be honest I have nothing in life that I can complain about – and there are very few people who can truly say that, and if that isn’t karma working in my favour, than I don’t know what is… so as I continue my journey on the high road, I hope I can keep my focus on what’s right, and not on what would feel good right now…

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions....

2009-02-05T04:38:00.000-08:00

So, now that the new year has started been trying to think about what I want and what I need… I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to move back to the states in early June of this year, making my stay in London just 2 months short of 2 years… moving to London has been the biggest risk that I’ve taken thus far in my life, and also one of the best decisions I’ve made… London has been an emotional roller coaster on so many levels with its highs and lows, but will always be an experience that I can reflect on forever cause moving to London has forced me to grow and change in so many ways, and to discover myself in so many way that it is unimaginable… I’ve been told that you never really know how strong you truly are, until that strength in needed… and I never understood that statement til I moved to London by myself...

I think moving back to the states is gonna be a hard move, as I’ve settled quite nicely into life in London and being on my own here, but I think its time to go back home… I went home back to the states for the holidays, and I had such an amazing time! Nothing extraordinary happened, but it was just good to be back in Baltimore for a few days, and for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t ready to leave Baltimore to get back to life in London… usually I look forward to being in Baltimore, but after a few days there, I usually start to miss life in London and can’t wait to get back to London… but not this time around, this last visit was different… I just didn’t want to leave Baltimore to come back to London… and for me that was the last sign that I needed… I dunno if I do it mentally or subconsciously, but I always yearn to be back with my family when I’m heading towards the end of an experience. I haven’t quite decided which is the cause and which is the effect… in other words, I don’t if its because I want to be back home that makes me want to end something and move back, or is it that I feel that the experience I’m dealing with is coming to an end, and I naturally prepare myself to head home by yearning for it… but its always worked that way, maybe its just my conscious wanting to be back in a place that I know is safe… and seeing my some of my siblings and mum this past weekend on my mini holiday just made me miss them more, we (my siblings and I) did all the usually things we did when I lived in Bmore… from consultation of outfits to making dinner plans to going out clubbing together… it was really good…

for me, home is always safe… and nothing makes me want to be safe more than after an experience that’s forced me to change drastically which moving to London has done… while I yearn to move back to Baltimore and be back in that ‘safe’ place, I also desperately want to move to Nigeria to live and work.. and there in lies one of my main issues… one of the issues that I deal with when I make any life changing decision… how will this affect my family… While I’ve expressed that I do want to move there, I’m not sure I can do it on my own…. Actually let me rephrase that, I know I can do it on my own, but I don’t want to do it on my own… and while I have to live my life and do what’s best for me, I need to consider my family and what’s best for everyone as well… what’s a girl to do! I just hope that things become clearer for me in the next couple of months… I don’t want to make any hasty decisions...

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Quotes of the Day

"Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life." ~Herbert Otto

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." ~Joseph Campbell

"He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life." ~Muhammad Ali

"The only things in life you regret, Are the risks that you didn’t take. "~Anonymous

Sunny Side up!

2009-02-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

Dubai for the weekend…

Spent the last 5 days or so in Dubai, in the sunny hot weather enjoying life… it was great… went to Dubai for my cousin’s wedding and it was great… where do I start…

1. Hmmm, it was my first trip to Dubai… to say I love that place would be an understatement… its absolutely gorgeous there… it’s a nice change from the unpredictable and miserable weather of London!
2. The wedding was spectacular to say at the least… the wedding was very well prepared and everything was just amazing… was/am on a diet, so couldn’t eat as much as I wanted, but from what I did taste, the food was amazing…
3. It was great to be around family, my sister, brother and mum flew in from the states, and a lot of cousins from Nigeria and different places of world were also around, people I hadn’t seen for years… it was great to catch up!
4. Met some new people over the weekend… hmmm… I’ll leave it at that for now… but it was definitely interesting :-)!!!
5. Definitely made some new friends… and planned some trips for the future to go visit… so we’ll see…
6. I was having so much fun, I didn’t have time to sit down and sort out of my life, but maybe I did… maybe the issues that I am fretting over are not that important, cause if they were then I would have dealt with them right… maybe I’m just worried for no reason!
7. Will definitely be making my way back to Dubai soon!!!
8. Was definitely not expecting to come back to a snow blanketed London… and although it has immobilized most of London, it’s still an amazing sight!

So all in all… my trip was great, had a great time with my fam, and with old and new friends… no really decisions were made… but that’s okay for now…

Me… Charming?

2009-01-26T04:41:00.001-08:00

Yesterday someone told me I was charming… and I thought me? Charming? See the thing with me is that I am by no means lacking self esteem, as a matter of fact, I am my own biggest fan, but I am also my own biggest critic… and its not easy when you have that relationship with yourself… you see I know I can be sociable, actually its so much apart of who I am, that sometimes I need to restrain myself from striking up conversations with people and just interacting with people in general… its so much apart of who I am, it actually defines me… but anyway back to the idea of me being charming, its not that the though is ludicrous or anything like that, but its always been a bit difficult for me to accept compliments from people, not everyone, but from most people, and the odd thing is that I actually love being the center of attention, so hence the oxymoron…. And if you ask any of my good friends, they’d say I’m more than confident (I’ve trained them not to call it being vain, but rather confidence!!). And with so much confidence, I don’t understand why hearing someone else, other than myself, give me a compliment is hard to take at times… I guess in hearing a compliment or a statement about me, its actually gives me a glimpse into how other people see…

I’ve always wonder what people’s perception of me are, I wonder if it matches with the perception that I intend to give off and how it matches to how I really am in reality. I have some ideas of what some people think, but the perception that my friends have of me have been built over several years and shared experiences, but I am interested in how people initially perceive me, and how their first impression of me differs from the person I really am when they get to know me. I personally think that I am very multi-faceted, but that there is a consistency in all of my sides, and because of that underlining consistency it makes sense when you examine all of them and take a look at who I truly am. I was having a similar conversation with a friend over the weekend, I was telling him that the perception that he projects is quite different from who I think he really is. It wasn’t a bad thing, because neither the projected image nor his true self were bad, they were just different to one another. And because I was acting on the initial perception of him, it often confused me when he did something that wasn’t in line with what I thought he would do or what I expected and because of that I found that he was hard to read, but none the less I still drive myself crazy analyzing him…

Anyways, so part of reason I decided to start blogging again was because I was confused about some things, and I am at a point where I need to make some decisions about what I want in the future. Been trying to make some decisions, but I’ve left some things open, which make making a decision hard to do, at least for me… and so I’ve decided that I need to get a handle on current situations going on in my life, as hopefully that will give me perspective and allow me to be able to make a more assertive decision about what path I want to follow. Heading off for a mini-holiday on Wednesday, going to go lay on some beaches and think some things through… I think it’ll help me to get away from the everyday stress and just relax and think about what I want and where I want to go… while I’ve know I’ve done good for myself thus far, I’m a person that needs to have a direction or focus, I need to be working towards something, and not get too comfortable where I’m at… that’s not to say I don’t enjoy my successes and life experiences, but I also need to be working towards my next goal as well, I need to feel like I am making some type of progress. And there in lies my main issue, I don’t know what my next goal is suppose to be, and it’s hard to work towards something when you have no idea of what it is!

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Quotes of the Day (couldn't decide!):

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. ~Dr. Seuss

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you. ~Richard Bach

Oh, how I've missed my blog :-)...

2009-01-22T01:53:00.001-08:00

Its official, I’ve abandoned my blog… sorry… this was the blog that got me thru so many crazy situations, the blog that I expressed all the manic thoughts that were rushing through my head with no judgement… well, it’s the start of 2009, and I’m just reflecting on 2008 and what it was!… I know the quarterly updates are not ideal, but for some reason these days it so hard to find time to sit down and make a quality entry, although I’ve tried many times…

Since turning in my dissertation at the end of September… I’ve been doing a lot of new things… I started trying to find what my passion was, I’m done with school at least for now or at least that what I thought… but then I realized that I have this burning desire to continue to learn, as well as to share my knowledge with others, which led me to taking a part-time teaching position, just to see how I’d get on… and believe it or not, teaching is such a great joy and I completely understand how teachers can put up with all the crap they get, cause it is such a rewarding career. So I do that part time, and although I said I was done with school, I’m thinking I may be done being the student in school, but I’m not completely done with school… thinking I may one day become a professor… and just last night, a really amazing guy I know said I should go do my PhD and really get into teaching… and not that this was the first time someone has told me to go and get my PhD, but for some reason it was different from him… and I’ll tell you all about him in a bit… anyways, so why not teach about what I already know… IT and computers… it makes perfect sense… so we’ll see how things shape up for me in the future, only time can tell…

Aside from teaching, I’ve been so busy with teaching and still doing my full time job, that I totally found myself too busy to find that boyfriend that I was suppose to be focused on, and to be completely honest, it didn’t really bother me, as I’ve found, I attract the more appropriate type of guy when I’m busy working on me… so I knew it would only be a matter of time… So one of my friends told me she has a dream about me and one of her male friends, and she thought we would be really good together. And at first I hesitated cause I’m not big on people trying to set me up, actually I’m usually completely against it, but for whatever reason I went ahead with it… and much to my surprise on the other side of the love match was one of the most amazing men I’d even been introduced to…. And trust me amazing is an understatement to describe this guy... there was something different about him… and the more I got to know him, the more compatible I found him… funny thing is that when my friend, A, started talking about introducing me to this guy (KD) I had the usual questions of what’s he like, what does he look like, how tall he is and so on… everything was on point, well except for the height thing, but i didn’t think it’d be that big a deal… well, me and KD eventually spoke on the phone, and one phone call led to another, which led to another til we got to the point of texting each other everyday and talking on the phone everyday… not quite sure how we got from strangers to the point of talking every day, usually for an extended period time, even hours… it was a good sign, everything pointed in the right direction, the only thing that was left was to actually meet each other see if we got on… I was nervous that all though we get along great on the phone and we both seem to be interested in where things may go between us there was always the possibility of us not clicking when we met in person… being his usual sensible self, KD told me not to worry that everything would be fine… which it was, except for the height thing, turns out when I wear heels, I’m become slightly taller than him… and although I wasn’t bothered by it cause I felt so comfortable with him and around him (even though it was just our first date after weeks of talking and getting to know each other), he had an issue with it… said he wasn’t sure he could get over it… next time we hung out, I had on flats just to show that he was really taller than me, which helped alleviate some things on that note… its been a few weeks since that first date and the last time we hung out (as he lives outside of London.. and we both just got back from travelling) and we’re still kinda just going with the flow, but things have definitely slowed down quite a bit… I think we’re both trying to make sure that we want the same thing in life and in a relationship, so I guess we’re working on our friendship and we’re gonna see how things develop in the future…

At the moment, I’ve been trying to decide if I want to start another blog… I love this blog, but I’ve changed so much since I started it over 3 years ago, I dunno if it still fits, but on the other hand, this blog is my history and is a great reflection on some of the things I’ve been through in life, and some of the things that have helped to shape me as an individual… and no one want to lose that, well at least not me… so after some serious contemplation, I decided to keep this blog… just make it a bit more sophisticated, shall I say! Besides most people already know me as DD… and it’s hard starting over…

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Quote of the day:

It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not. -James Gordon

Where in th world is DD???

2008-09-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

Its been ages since I’ve written or even checked on my blog… a lot of things have happened, but what’s been keeping me so busy that I’ve had to abandon my blog… I’ve been working on my Dissertation which I’ve finally finished and prepare to turn in in a few days… other than that, there have been a few ups and downs… so I’ve give just a brief update of the ups… this summer was a blur, there was a lot going on, I was busy trying to be studious and work on my dissertation, but in the mist of that I manage to travel the around the world as well… I went to the states for a week and a half for my sister’s wedding and then I flew around the world to China to meet up with my friends and watch the Olympics… The Olympics was an amazing experience, and visiting China for the first time was also amazing… never seen so many Asian people in my life… it was a bit of a culture shock, but it was a really good experience and I got some good shopping done while I was there…

Aside from my trips, things in London have been interesting! I’ve met some interesting guys over the summer, but none that I was interested in really pursuing anything with only because I was focused on my school work and traveling… but now that I’m about to hand in my dissertation, and I’m done traveling, I have no excuses as to why I’m single, so as my parents gently reminded me I need to focus on that part of my life… but to be honest, its not like I can make someone fall in love with me or I can’t fall in love with someone that’s not good for me, just for the sake of being with someone. The added pressure doesn’t help the situation much. I just turned 26 a few weeks ago and its not that I’m not aware that I’m getting older, but as I said I can’t force something to happen…

So now that I’m just about done with school here in London, now I need to decde what I want to do next… what the next steps are for me… do I want to stay in London for a bit, pack up and move to Nigeria or go back to the states (the states which I miss so much)… I know I’m gonna be in London at til early 2009, but I need to start thinking seriously about what my next move is… I would like to stay in London for a bit longer so I can enjoy the experience without the stress of school for a bit, but I do miss the states and not having my family around!

What other updates are there to give…. So my ex, TA, I still him around, he’s been on my mind lately, not in a romantic manner, just been wondering how he’s doing… I do talk to him occasionally, I give him a call every once in a while just to check up on him and see how’s he doing… we don’t really see much of each other these days cause I don’t go to the same clubs he usually goes… been exploring London and trying new places, which has been a good experience thus far…
On the guy scene… well lets just say that there is a guy on my radar, but I haven’t focused too much attention there just cause I’ve been so distracted… but once this dissertation is behind me, I’ll see what happens…
Aside from that, i can't wait to get back to socializing and just being me :-)...

I'm gonna try to get back into blogging... let's hope i can keep to my word!!!

MY SATC friends...

2008-06-09T07:45:00.000-07:00

So, I went to go see the Sex and the City (SATC) movie… and I don’t care what anyone says, it was a great movie… I cried and I laughed and I carried again and then I laughed some more… it was such a good movie, I truly enjoyed it… but then again I never doubted it in the first place, I knew the movie would be of good quality! I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to be entertained and appreciate a good movie…

The SATC movie reminded me of me and my girls… my girls from DC… it was usually four of use that hung out together, there were the 3 main girls, me, AB, and NM (it was me, AB, & NM that trained and ran the marathon together in January 2007) and then the fourth girl always rotated for various reasons… the 4th girl was usually a girl we went to college with and had just moved into the area for a short period of time.. so over a period of about two and a half years, we had three different 4th girl, it seems as one girl was leaving for one reason or another, a new girl from college would pop up and fit right into the crew…it always worked out well, since we all went to college together, although we all didn’t hang out together in college though… but last summer the crew began to unravelled… as we all began to realize were getting old… some how, turning 25 hit us all a bit hard… it was time to start making some life decisions… college was long over, we’d had our fair share of fun since then and it was time to start focusing on the future… one by one, we all started to pave our own paths… I was preparing to move to London… NM was preparing for the LSAT and going to Law school and AB was trying to find the right career… the other girls (the ones that made the 4th, 2 had obviously moved on…), but the current 4th girl, L, was just finishing grad school and preparing to get into her chosen field of study. I have to admit, it was sad when I left, having my last dinner and clubbing night with the girls was fun and simultaneously sad… it was the end of an era… every time I went back home to the states, it was a must to see my girls… it was a necessity, as it was to see my family… if nothing else, I made time to see those girls… they helped me shape such a memorable part of my early twenties… less than a year after I left NB packed up all her stuff and head to Law school in New York… and now its just AB and L left in DC… This weekend I spoke to NM, she had just started her first week of law school in NY, and already the work is piling up… we reminisced about all the good and crazy times we had in DC… the memories that can’t be replaced… the late night & early mornings, the brunches & dinners, the drinks & dates, the men and relationships… between the 4 of us, we saw it all… and we enjoyed it all! Sometimes it makes me sad that that part of my life is over, but I do realize that I shouldn’t be sad… I realize that it couldn’t have lasted forever, but that I should take those memories and simply appreciate them for what they’re worth… the pictures we have tell a million stories… the evenings you wish you could forget to the evenings you wished would have lasted just a few more hours… the secrets you shared, the secrets you kept… the fact that your friends know you well enough to know when to say when and when to let it go… the expected and unexpected things… if anyone knew me, they knew my girls… the double dates we use to do… ours was always a bit different, it was more like one of us would crash the date of one of the other girls, especially if you weren’t sure about the guy… and funny enough we never saw any issue with it, sometimes it was the guy that felt like the 3rd wheel, but we figured you might as well get use to having all our friends around since we hung together so much… it was like the date that you invite your girl friend on, without warning the guy is always a lot of fun… and boy did we have a lot of those… or how about the ‘Save me from this guy’ look/call… those were priceless and also necessary!

I know I haven’t written much about my girls, I may have mentioned them everyone one in a while, but the majority of things I did were with my girls… the marathon, my birthday party, the drinks, dates and so on… most of my weekends were always with the girls… they were so much apart of me, I assumed that everyone knew that they were always around… so much were they apart of me, their respective homes were my second homes, I pretty much spent about 1/3 of the year at AB’s place… and also at NM’s place as well… And I can’t even begin to mention the emails we use to swap at work, it was ridiculous how much we emailed each at work , trying to look busy at work, while really we were making plans for the evening/weekend… do I miss them??? more than I ever expect too… but I know that people grow up and apart and that people move away and must follow their own paths, but sometimes… every once in a while, I wish we could go back to the good old days… but I must admit when we get together theses days, from all over, we still have an amazing time, its as if nothings changed… but it certainly has… the places we choose go to are slightly different, the way we carry ourselves is a bit more mature, the things we talk about a bit more sophisticated… but the one thing that doesn’t change is the love we have for one another… the love that makes us tolerate, but more importantly accept, each other… the bond we have, although different, is still strong… and I know they’ll always be apart of my life… whether they’re close in distance or not… and when I walk down the aisle (whenever that will be), I’ll be looking over my shoulder at AB and NM, making sure that my bridesmaids are doing just fine…

Me lately...

2008-05-30T06:10:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on a hiatus… of course without fair warning, I just disappeared from the Blog world… this is because of many reasons… I started this Blog as a means of getting the thoughts in my head out of paper and well, out of my head… a means of expressing how I was feeling and my opinions and being able to go back and reflect on them, a way to keep up with my life and the excitement, a way to look back and think about my past mistakes and so on… when I started this blog, I was going thru what I called a Mid-quarter Life Crisis (please refer to my first blog entry)… but since then, a lot has changed in the last two years… I’m not necessarily closer to actually knowing what I want to do with my life, but I am much more aware of what I don’t want… actually that’s not a true statement, I am closer to figuring out what I want, its just that the path I’ve taken is not the one I originally expected to take and because of that, it has made all the difference… and well, isn’t that what life is all about, taking each experience for what its worth… I’ve been thru a lot of stages and phases in my life for the last 2 years… some of them really good places and some really low places… fighting, what at the time, felt like a losing battle with my emotions, my desires, my goals and life in general… I started this blog in a state of confusion… confusion on what I was suppose to be doing with my life as a young 20-something year old… and well, 2 years later I’m a little older and a little wiser… still perplexed about life in general, but now with a better sense of awareness, a better appreciation for life and all of its challenges and opportunities… desperate to enjoy life, but not to repeat the same mistakes, anxious to protect my heart and listen to my head, but wanting to throw caution to the wind and enjoy life for what it is… a contradiction in everything that I say and want, an oxymoron between what the head wants and what the heart needs, inconsistency between how I felt then and how I feel now… a hypocrite in every sense of the word, but yet trustworthy and dependable in every sense of those words… you see, I’ve grown… I’ve changed… to grow and to change are not the same things… I’ve grown in being who I am and fully accepting and loving myself for that… I’ve changed, I’ve changed into this person who’s realizing that I can’t change the world, I can’t change anyone, and that the only person I can change in myself; I’ve learned that I can be more tolerable than I think, I can be more giving and caring than I ever imagined, that I am more sensitive than I will admit, I am more vulnerable than I want to be, but also that I am stronger than before, that I wiser than before, that I can forgive people, who don’t necessary deserve to be forgive, that I can find the good in anyone, cause surely there is some good in all of us…
Here I am almost two years after starting my blog, and I’ve been thru a lot of crazy little escapades in life with my friends, family, and relationships… but when I look back, I can laugh at some of those things, smiles at some, shake my head at some (for how silly the situation was), but more importantly, I can see progression in myself…

At this point in life I am happy… I’ve never really been in a terribly bad situation in life, but in relation to some of the other times in my life, I am truly happy… I’m in a state of which I accept life as it comes to me, I go after what I want, while also learning to realize not to chase the things that are not meant for me, and I continue to take everything as an opportunity or as a lesson learned… I’m single, and I must admit that I’m loving it… I’m enjoying London… I’m getting the chance to meet new people, explore new things and just to take in this entire experience… as the saying goes, you only live once, and I plan on enjoying it to the best of my ability…

And while I don’t make entries into my blog, as often as I use to or as often as I’d like to, its not because I love blogging any less, its just that I have less crazy stories to tell, less complicated situations to sort, and to be honest I’m out and about enjoying myself :-)…

Update....

2008-05-19T04:11:00.000-07:00

TA and I have been broken up for about two months, and to be honest, I am completely enjoying life without him… when I was with him, a majority of my life revolved around him and his wants and needs, which I didn’t really like… recently though, I found out some information about TA, that was not so good and it only reinforced to me that I made the right decision about him and I… I’ve forgiven him and moved on with life, I mean honestly what else can I do??? TA has been making appearance in my life again lately, we’ve ran into each other a few time times in the last couple of weeks, and well the interaction gets more and more interesting… The last time I saw him, which was just this past Saturday. I have to admit, we did spend a good amount of time together in the club dance together and we flirted a lot, but that was it for me… I was just enjoying myself in the club… he told me wants to talk, talk about things and just clear the air… so we’ll see what he has to say, if he ever does get around to clearing the air… although I have every reason to never speak to TA again, cause he was shady, when I see him I still speak to him and ask of his wellbeing, that’s just the type of person I am…. Yeah I know he did me wrong, and while I may not want to be in a relationship with him, I still care about him as a person and wish him all the best… TA and I have very different ways of thinking… I use to hold grudges and so on, which is what TA does, but I realized it so much easier to forgive people and just move on with life… life is just too short to be holding on to anger, if someone upsets me, I tell them and then I forgive them and move on… that’s all I can do… trust me, I forgive people for self reasons, I forgive people so I can move on… and besides karma will take care of them, cause whatever they do, will be returned to them, so no need for me to be holding grudges… TA doesn’t understand why I even speak to him after what he did, and I told him, one day he’ll realize how my brain works and he’ll finally understands me…
Anyways, despite his past actions, I do hope that one day TA and I can be friends, I actually think it’s a good possibility for the future… as long as he doesn’t misinterpret my kindness as a signal that I want to get back with him, then things between him and I will be just fine…

The single is great… and I mean that in every sense of the word… being single in London is such a great experience… this isn’t to say that I don’t want a relationship, I do, eventually… but right now I’m enjoying myself… I’m hanging out with my friends, catching up my cousins, exploring new things to do in London and so on… its nice to be able to plan my social calendar with out always consulting someone else, especially if that person is a bit controlling… well, I’ve been managing to visit a few new clubs so far… finally went to Carbon Bar – Love it… also tried out Babble – nice place, nice crowd and good music... more place to come soon... :-)...

MIA.... again

2008-04-30T08:44:00.001-07:00

Been MIA for a little bit… well, alots been going on… was dealing with some family stuff to deal with, went back home to the states to visit my fam and then been trying to settle in to this new job and classes and coursework has been crazy lately… sometimes I don’t know how I do it… been meeting some new people lately, and been truly starting to enjoy London… and trust me I have to complaints!!!

Going home was great, its always great to see my family regardless of the circumstances of why I have to be there… anyway, the gist of things is that my dad needed to have an operation, and it was a major operation and I wanted and needed to be there… it was hard seeing my dad in the hospital, especially right after the surgery, but within a few days of the operation, he was up and about and getting back to normal, and to say that I am beyond grateful that everything was a success is an understatement. He was still in the hospital when I left, but they discharged him from the hospital the after I left, and he’s doing quite well. As for the rest of my family, it was great seeing them… my nephews and niece are so grown, they grow up so fast… I look forward to being around in the states next year so I can be around them more… my siblings are great, and of course when I arrived in the states, it was as if I’d never left, with them ordering me around and sending me on errands… I guess some things don’t change and I’m not sure I want them to… everyone knows their place in my family!

Back to London life, and my list of clubs to visit… this last weekend, one of my friends and I went to this club called Aura… the club was ok, the music was cool, but some of the people in the club were quite entertaining… this one white girl in a black mini skirt felt it was necessary to do a split on the dance floor and then bounce up and down while in the split, so unladylike and uncute, I had to no words for that… then there were these two black girls who apparently thought they were putting on a show and we over the top… but I guess you can’t blame them… although the club was ok, I won’t be heading back there … the door man was being blatantly racist and was trying to make my friend and I pay although we were on the guest list, while he didn’t enforce that same rule to the groups of white or mixed girls… I mean I know racism still exists, but it still shocks me when I experience it in such a blatant manner. I clearly told the doorman what I thought of his little rule and how it was obvious what he was doing and that I didn’t need to get into this club cause there are tons of other clubs in Mayfair that I would have a good time at… after a few minutes he changed his so called rule and let us in free, I was already irritated at that point which put a damper on the evening…

Why in the hell did I decide that I need another degree, I’m so tired of school and the master’s program that I am in... one day I’ll go thru all the issues that exist with the program that I am, but I’ll wait til after I get my degree, cause I’m trying to jinx myself… anyways, just been busy working on an assignment that’s due in a few days… I had about 2 months to do it, but of course I waited til the last moment, but what else is new…

Work is work… but at least I like my new job…so far!!!

the weekend gist...

2008-04-14T02:33:00.000-07:00

Well, the weekend was good… actually great, to tell you the truth… Friday night went to a club in the west end called Kabaret… it was okay, not exactly what I was expecting, but the entire evening was entertaining to say at the very least. The train ride to get to the west end was full of weirdos that were apparently drawn to me and my friend, S… anyways, S is here for a few days from the states, so I wanted to show her a good time… so the night started off pretty normal, but as we started our journey to the west end, the night took a strange turn… first we got on the train and there was this weird white guy that got on the train with us and proceeded to sit next to me… and tried to carry on a conversation when it was more than obvious that I was not trying to pay him any intentions… he was making on kinds of comments and at one point turned to me and asked ‘can we sing now’… WHAT??? Ok, so I closed my eyes and pretended I was taking a nap, but this guy had the nerve to ‘wake’ me up when he was getting off the train to get me to come with him??? Anyways, he finally gets off the train and then just our luck another weirdo gets on the train, this one was an average looking Asian guy… he sits next to my friend, S, and proceeds to start talking to her… and making dance moves… it was the funniest thing I’d seen in a long time, I couldn’t contain my laughter it was too much… so our stop finally was here, we ran off the train asap… as soon as we got thru the barrier and was headed outside, some random white guys see my friend and I, and starts hopping around, clapping his hands and singing Rihanna’s Please Don’t Stop the Music… now this was hilarious… the rest of the night was cool… we finally found the club and we went in… the club was cool, the music was ok, not as good as L promised me it would be… but you know clubs are unpredictable… we finally made it home at like 4 something and boy was a tired…

Saturday, we went to the Camden Markets, which I’d never been to, but it was amazing!!! There was so many shops and amazing things to see and buy… managed to get some things for my sisters and brothers and a really nice leather jacket for myself… been trying to get this jacket for weeks, but hadn’t found one that fit me perfectly til Saturday… it was a really good buy… after that we headed to Oxford circus to do some shopping and meet up with one of S’s friends… the afternoon was cool… later on we went to this club in Paddington, although I had decided I wouldn’t be visiting that club for a while cause it was a sure thing that I would run into TA there cause that’s his spot and he’s there every weekend, I decided to go after one of my male friends convinced me it would be fun and since one of our friends was having a party there, we had a table and everything, I decided it was worth it… I got dressed to the tee and I was looking good, knowing I would run into the dreaded ex… it would be the first time we’ve seen each other since we split… anyways, I was dancing my life away in the VIP section, when I looked over and saw TA, at first wasn’t sure what to do, so I kept dancing… after a few I went to the bathroom to do a makeup check and then I headed over towards him to say hello… but I ran into his best friend first, B… B is an amazing guy, so down to earth and easy to get along with… anyways, he was happy to see me to, so we gisted for a few minutes. B asked me if I was truly happy with my decision about TA and all and I told him that TA wasn’t willing to make small compromised to make me happy and I couldn’t live with that, and he said he understood and that he knew what type of person TA was… anyways, B encouraged me to go speak to TA… so I went up to TA, and well he acted just like I expected… he gave me a hand shake and said ‘how are you’... and I was like, I don’t even get a hug and he said why would that matter, and there truly wasn’t much else for me to say, so I said ‘I guess it doesn’t matter’ and turned around and walked away… and that was that… went back to talk to B, and told him that TA is still being an a$$... so its whatever… B and I gisted some more and then I went about dancing and mingling and doing my thing… B didn’t really know how things with TA and I ended cause he was in the states when it happened, but I gave him a quick run down… anyways, he was like keep in touch… which I plan on doing cause there’s no reason he and I can’t be friends… anyways, I was glad I finally saw him and got that out the way… anyways, the music was great that night at the club, and there was a lot of cute guys… the night was really good… had a good time, everything that run in with TA wasn’t enough to ruin my mood or the evening… I had a blast dancing, flirting and just chilling… didn’t get home til past 5 am… it was definitely a good night!!!

Of course there’s more gist about why the night was so great :-), but this post is getting to be long… I’ll continue in my next post…

finding the right spot...

2008-04-11T05:19:00.000-07:00

So… the next couple of weeks are gonna be fun… at least I hope so, I’m on a mission to get into some London’s hottest night clubs and find my new hangout spot… I’ve narrowed my list down to 12 places that I must visit before the summer ends… now that may seem like a long time, but the issue is that several of them are known for particular days, there are about 4 or 5 that great on Saturday… and 4 that are great on Friday nights, and the other are random days of the week or special event type places… and I seriously doubt that I will be going over EVERY Friday and Saturday… to be more realistic, I’ll probably go out once during the week and either on Friday or Saturday night (unless I have friends visiting, then its every night they’re in town for :-))… and its starting this weekend… heading out to check this club that my ex, L, told me about a while ago… since I’m on the topic of L (ok, not really a smooth transition, but whatever… btw, ‘But Whatever’ is my new saying… when I’m done with something or tired of dealing with it, I say my peace and end it with ‘but whatever’… ) ok, anyways, back to L… L’s in Nigeria for about a week and a half and well I miss him… not miss him like that, but miss him in the sense that he’s my email buddy, always has been for years ever since we dated back in 2004… its always a nice distraction when I’m emailing L… and my other recent email buddy is between contract jobs, so I can’t email him all days and expect him to sit in from of his computer at home for the sole purpose of replying to me email (I mean I could expect that, but I have a feeling I would be disappointed cause I doubt he’d do it… lol)… anyways, since he’s been going for a week, I’ve emailed him a fews, the first two times was cause I forget he wasn’t around and was wondering why I didn’t see him church and to find out why he hadn’t emailed me… anyways, I realized that when he moves to Nigeria at the end of the year, chances are he probably won’t be my number one email buddy again, unless he gets a good IT job in Nigeria which will allow him to sit in front of the computer and still email me (that would be ideal for me!) otherwise I’ll have to get a new email buddy… I mean I could just walk around the office, but that obviously says ‘I’m not working’ where as emailing people all day can make you appear as though you are working diligently at your desk… well expect for the random burst of laughter that I am prone to having… my email buddies send me the most random and funny things… and my email buddies in the states are 5 hours behind, so that leaves me bored all morning (now that L isn’t around and my other email buddy in London isn’t working at the moment)… I know, I could just do some work to make the time pass by… but Y would I do that??? no, but seriously I actually get a lot of work done between my emails… its amazing how I can multitask when I need to, but some how be completely clueless of my multitasking skills when its not an urgent or relevant matter…

Anyways, I’m rambling… back to my search for the right hangout spot… as I said it starts tonight, and although its raining quite hard at the moment as I look out the window, I don’t care… the rain can’t stop me J… besides, I’ve managed to stay in a good mood despite the fact that I only managed to get about 5 hours of sleep last night cause I went out and about… there’s still something about walking thru Piccadilly circus and Leicester Square at night time with all the lights and people around that fascinates me…. I’m off to focus for these last couple of hours at work before I go running out the door to find a killer outfit for tonight :-) …

I'm Good

2008-04-04T07:40:00.000-07:00

Parade of pity… well no thanks… every time someone asks me, oh how’s TA doing, hope things are going well with you two and then I respond, oh we’ve gone our separate ways, they always say sorry or I’m sure you’ll find someone else and so on and so on… and I reply, no need to be sorry, I’m not… I’m not looking for a pity party, by all means I’ve had my fair share of break up and pity parties (which I normally welcomes to get my mind off things), but this time around, no thanks… I don’t need or want a pity party cause I think that things worked out the way they were suppose to and I have no regrets… I’ve been meeting so many new people lately and making time to hang out with the friends that I had slowly abandoned once I got into my relationship with TA… not typically me, but I was just got sucked into the relationship, which I guess should have been another sign… anyways, I’ve been to a few new places that I’d never even heard of, and probably wouldn’t have ever had a chance to go to in my previous situation…. Now TA and I didn’t end on the best of terms, actually we were both a bit upset, but there’s nothing I can do about that now… and while I’m good (as Kanye would say), I’m not going to pretend that my entire relationship with TA was bad or horrible, that would be a straight up lie… obviously there were enough good times, hence the reason we were together… and granted I haven’t seen him or spoken to him since we split, but I’m sure the day will come when we’ll run into each other… and when that time comes, I hope we can smile and chat like friends do, but if not then I at least hope that we can exchange pleasantries and then go out separate ways with no unnecessary drama… I honestly would like to be friends with TA, but I doubt he’d go for that… especially not now… maybe in the future… either way, I don’t like burning bridges, and as I said there were plenty of things about TA that I fancied so I’m not going to be bad mouthing him, despite some of the very unpleasant things that he did… aside from that I felt like we had built a good friendship with our relationship, so maybe one day we can be friends again, but til then I’m good… at the same time I’m not gonna deny that some times, random things remind me of him or that I don’t think about him, especially when I lay my head down to go to sleep at night, that he doesn’t cross my mind, but for me I expected that, what I didn’t expect was that it doesn’t make me cry… I would have normally expected a tear or two, but I’ve got nothing, which if nothing else is a self check that I made the best decision for me at the time…

Last night I when to a Soca club in central London… the music was great, the dancing was energetic and amazing and I just had a really good time… hadn’t danced like that in ages and it felt good to just go out dancing with some friends… not looking for a man or anything of the sort, just hanging with the girls and having a good night… and while I had a great time, I sure did regret it this morning when my alarm went off at 6:45am and I had to get up for work after like 4 hours of sleep…. I am on my second cup of coffee and its not even 10am yet… going out again to night with a different friend, going to get some drinks and then heading into the city to see what’s happening…

Life goes on and I only have two options… sit back and regret over what’s happened and let life pass me by or get on with my life knowing that I did what I thought was best for me… well if you can’t tell, I’m getting on with life and enjoying myself in London… so one of my friends is coming to visit from April 7th til the 16th, then I’m leaving with her and going to the states on the 16th til the 25th, then one of my best buddies is coming to visit from April 30th til the 5th of May, then my sister and her friend come at the end of May… even if I wanted to be sad, I don’t have the time, between making new friends, catching up with old ones, having my friends and sister coming to visit me, school, my new job (I’ll write more about my new job later) and exploring the social scene in London… so as I said.. I’m good

Its all over...

2008-03-25T02:28:00.000-07:00

Hmmm... Easter weekend was great... 4 days of relaxing and chilling, couldn't have asked for a better weekend... except for having to do some work for school...

Btw, TA and I broke up, we've gone our seperate ways... so hence the title of my entry... its all over now... crazy thing is that i'm okay with this decision, at least i am for now... let's see how i'm holding up in a week... but i have a very sneaky suspicion that i'll be doing just fine :-)... besides, I know that everything happens for a reason, whether I understand the reason or not...

friends with an ex...

2008-03-13T02:46:00.000-07:00

Friends with the ex… it is possible… at least I think it, actually I don’t think it is, I know it is… I’m friends with most if not all of my exs… the thing for me is that an ex usually get to know me and understands me, so its earlier for me to ask them questions that I can’t ask a close female friend cause they don’t have the same experiences with me and an ex would… like for example, my friends think that I am very outgoing and friendly, whereas my exs tend to think I am flirtatious (and maybe I am), but the perspective is different when it comes from someone you’ve dated in the past… some of my exs turn out to be some of my really good friends simply because they already know me so well and I feel comfortable with turning to them for advice… and in return, my exs know that they can turn to me for advice or whatever cause I know them and can give them my honest opinion because we have a caring, honest, direct and straight forward attitude with one another…

anyways, I’ve always managed to be friends, or at least on good terms, with every guys that I’ve dated in the past, I don’t like burning bridges and obviously I liked you the guy at one point and there was a reason we dated and simply because we decided to go our separate ways doesn’t mean that I still don’t like or appreciate the guy as a person or as a friend… depending on how long you’ve been following my blog, you know that I have an ex in London, L… L and I dated years ago, and since we parted ways we’ve managed to become friends, very good friends… but lets be clear, we’ve friends and nothing more, we’ve never crossed that line since we broke up years ago, we’ve had our opportunities in the past (before I moved to London), but I think we’re both ok with just being friends… anyways, I was talking to a male friend yesterday and he said that type of relationship with my ex would make him a bit uncomfortable especially seeing that L and I didn’t break up on bad terms or over cheating or anything of that sort… and while I do understand his point of view, I still don’t see anything wrong with me and L being friends… I’m not the cheating type and neither is L (as he has a girlfriend, who I think he will probably marry, as they are quite happy together)… so I don’t see the issue… but to be fair, if I was on the other side of the situation and my boyfriend was really good friend with an ex, then I’d probably be a bit worried/jealous, but if I felt I could trust my man, then I’d eventually get over it… or at least I hope I would get over it…

I still talk to like 1 or 2 of my exs on a regular basis, for no other reason than just calling to say hello and see how they’re doing and vice versa… a lot of times, I forget the fact that I’ve dated them and just consider them as my friend and not as an ex… I must also mention that my exs do know that I don’t like to double dip, meaning that once I’ve parted ways with someone I usually don’t tend to attempt to make it work a second time (especially if the reason for us breaking up is a reason that’s unfixable, such as cheating or whatever it may be)… I dunno, I just want to get the thoughts of other people of this subject, my friends (my 2 girls that I always hung out with back in the states) always found it odd that I was able to remain such good friends with my exs, hang out with them and just carry on with a normal friendship with them and have them support me and vice versa… I don’t think it’s odd at all, but that’s just me…

2008-03-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, I’m still alive… sorry for the disappearing act… for some reason, I feel like I’ve been apologizing on my blog a lot lately… I’m sure that has to do with the fact that I keep disappearing for weeks at a time… well, school is going as usual… sometimes I really wonder why I decided to go back to school…. who needs another degree? then sometimes I think about going back to get an MBA in the future, then I remind myself how miserable I am at times with school, so I’m pretty sure this is gonna be my last degree… Well, work is there… its work… I’m currently looking for something else cause I’m not happy where I’m at, so I hope everything works out and I can move somewhere better than I currently am… my family… I miss them, not as much as I use to, guess I’m not feeling as homesick as I use to feel, but every now and then I really miss them… talked to my nephew this weekend, he’s three years old, he’s fully of energy, spoilt and just the most adorable human being I’ve very seen, and I called him and he’s like ‘Hi DD, I miss you’… and nothing else made me more homesick than that, I miss playing with both my nephews and my niece… but I’m heading home in April and I can’t wait… gonna buy my ticket this week, once I get paid…

TA… hmmm, where do I start… I dunno about him, that’s all I’ve got to say… its weird actually, cuz the less he’s around, the less I want him around, but on the other hand the more he’s around and the more time I spend with him the more I want him around… does that make any sense at all, I guess I just have one of my moments sometimes… I do care about him a lot and I know he cares about me as well… I’m taking things one day at a time, that’s all I can do… but what I’ve come to realize lately is that he can predict me, just as much as I can predict him… which I think is quite interesting, cause that means he pays attention enough to know how I’m gonna react to things… I can’t wait til the weather gets better so we (TA and I) can go out and do things outside (yes, I know that’s random, but the weather in London sucks, and I’m not about to start walking to the train station in the rain or etc… besides a lot of the things I want to do can only be done in decent weather, like going for a walk in the park, or going to local markets, doing some tourist stuff and so on)… which leads me to another point, how do people stand the weather here... its just ridiculous... I woke up this morning afraid to leave my flat (apartment) cause it was so windy, cold and rainy, i honestly just wanted to cuddle under my duvet for the day... where is Spring already?!?! and apparently last year, summer only lasted for about 2 weeks!!! oh that better not be the case this year cause I'm looking forward to a nice summer with warm sunny days!!!

anyways, i hope everyone has a good week... cheers :-)...

Catching up with Miss DD

2008-02-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

So I’ve been MIA for a few reasons… work is killing me slowly (but that should end soon, as I am looking to move on to a better job soon). grad school is starting to take it toll on me, I’ve got this horrible cold/flu which sucks, I’ve been getting back headaches lately, and for a change, TA, hasn’t been stressing me out… I know it’s a bit delayed… but my V-days was really nice… TA come over in the early evening and we spend the evening at my place, we ate, we drank and we talked for hours and hours… it was a nice way to end a stressful weekend, cause the days leading up to V-day weren’t so rosy, but we sorted ourselves out and have a great evening together… Things with TA in general have been going well… I feel like we’re both, or at least I am, trying to see the direction in which things are going with us… just trying to get a feel about my own thoughts of TA and I and the future in general…
Other than that, I’ve been on a mad hunt to find a new job, the project manager and immediate supervisor are probably the worst set of supervisors that I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a few different types… anyways, I dunno if its the culture difference or what, but I can’t deal with them anymore… the funny thing is that as human being, they’re both perfectly fine and I can tolerate them, I can even go as far as saying I can enjoy their company, but when it comes to the project we’re working on, its unbearable for me, and I hate to take the easy way out, but I’m heading towards the door… and I’m not sure if they know it… I would hate for it to be a surprise, but I just can’t deal with it anymore and the situation is just getting worse for me… and well, I gotta do what’s best for me… Just started working on the dissertation for my master’s program… after waiting til the last possible moment to decide on a top, I choose something that seems vaguely interesting and wrote my proposal about… and not I’m waiting to hear about my program director as to whether my topic has been approved or if I have to go back to the drawing board!
I’m still running, I manage to run about 3 miles about 3 to 4 times a week… did I mention I have plans to go to Spain in Earyl-April, and I plan to be laying out on the beach… My cousin goes to grad school in Spain and he's having a party for his girlfriend, so why not go and help them celebrate :-).... so anyways, I need to get myself together so that I can walk on that beach confidently…

random drive by posting...

2008-02-21T09:14:00.000-08:00

its random... its quick... and its senseless (that's the purpose of the title of this post)...

things r good... surprising Valentine's day was good... TA is well, things with him are still going... Work is killing me slowly... school is ok, it'd be better if i stopped procastinating on doing my assignments... you'd think i would have learned by now, but not yet... I'm still just as much of the procastinator as I've ever been...

gotta run, but i will put in a proper post this weekend about what's been going... and so on and so on...

hope everyone is good...

DD

running... thru my mind...

2008-02-12T01:40:00.000-08:00

So I went running on Saturday morning… it was such a beautiful day and I was trying to get myself exercising again… so me being me, I pushed myself and ran roughly a little over 3 miles… well, let’s just say it was quite difficult getting out of bed on Sunday morning, which I expected… but then when I rolled over this morning, it was even harder to get out of bed… but seeing at though I had to go to work and I couldn’t call out cause of a few sore muscles, I managed to roll myself out of bed… I’m went running again last night after work and I’m going again this evening… and while I’m looking forward to the exercise, I know it’s going to be torture cause all my muscles are still sore, but I know if I don’t get back out there soon, I won’t be motivated to go again for a while… so wish me luck, and if u don’t hear from me it cause I’m in too much pain to type…
other than that, I had a nice weekend for the most part… just tried to relax and chill… nothing too exciting… I was meant to start working on my proposal for my final project for my masters, and I tried… but being the procrastinator that I am, I found every excuse to do something else but sit down and write my proposal… the other issue is, that well I have NO IDEA about what I want my final project to be on… and did I mention my proposal is due in a week… don’t worry, I’ll get it sorted out (I hope)… I’ll work on it this week and upcoming weekend, well I don’t have a choice since its due next Monday…

I’ve had a lot of things on my mind lately… especially with the whole going with the flow post I made last week… I’m feeling unsure about some things and I personally don’t like that feeling… i want one of those people that like to be in control, that like to know what’s going on and being in a state of limbo is not an ideal position for me… I was talking to one of my good friends, one of the few people I confide in (other than all my blog readers) and we were talking about relationships in general and valentine’s day coming up and so on and so on… and she asked me a random question, she just said do I think TA sacrifices or compromises to meet my needs as much as I do to meet his needs… and of course my initial reaction was to say of course he does, he really cares about me… but I thought for a second and I couldn’t give her a straight forward easy answer… the truth is I don’t think that he does, at least not in the traditional way… I know TA is an individual and he’s a complex one at that (even though he thinks he’s not complicated)… and I know he does try and that sometimes, just sometimes, he does his best… and there’s this old quote that I love that says, just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to, doesn’t mean they’re not loving you the best that they can… and I try to keep that in mind at times, but on the flip side, I don’t know if I can be happy if I don’t have someone to love me the way I need to be loved…. I hope that makes some sense… anyways, Valentine’s day is just a few days away… and I know its not really a big deal, but I really hope he does something nice… to tell you the truth, a card, flowers and a quite evening at home together would be all that it takes to make me happy… I’m ok not going out to dinner, cause I do that with my friends all the time and he’s not a big fan of going out to dinner and that’s fine… I used to say that I demand a lot, but I’ve come to the realization that I don’t really demand that much and it doesn’t take a lot to make me happy in a relationship, but because I’ve always had the impression that I demanded a lot I tend to hold back on asking for a lot (relationship wise), but I realized that because I didn’t demand a lot in a relationship, I got even less… and once you’ve started a pattern with someone its hard to change it…

Anyways, we’ll see what happens v-day… TA says he’s spending the day/evening with his boys and not me… I think he’s just messing with me, but only time will tell… so we shall see…

Going with the flow…

2008-02-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

Have you ever felt like sometimes you just wanted to go with the flow… and sometimes that’s cool… but exactly when do u stop going with the flow of life and decide exactly what you want for yourself… if you go with the flow, you’re just accepting things as they come, instead of going after the things in life that you truly want and need… same thing with relationships, exactly how long can you go with the flow of things before either rocking the boat by asking what are we doing or where is this going… at the moment, I’m not ready to rock any boats, at least not in the relationship side of things, but I’m not sure if that’s cause I’m comfortable with continuing to go with the flow of things and just let things develop naturally with TA or because I’m not ready to ask those questions cause I’m scared of what the answers maybe… and that worries me… it worried me more before, but now I’m a bit more confident in the sense that even if I did ask those questions and I didn’t get the answers I wanted, truly I’d be disappointed but not devastated… I hope that makes some sense…

For me, I’ll go with the flow for a bit, just til I can decide what I really want or at least realize what I don’t want… that’s how I’ve always been… I don’t always know what I want, but I can usually detect what I don’t want and eliminate it as soon as I can, for me recognizing something I don’t want, helps me to get closer to realizing exactly what I do want… Sometimes I can get comfortable with things and sometimes change is a hassle that I can’t be bothered with, but I guess that’s human nature isn’t it… but I know that sometimes change is necessary, it pushed me to grow and try, it pushed me challenge myself…

"Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings." ~Arthur Rubinstein

"Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution." ~ Deepak Chopra

back in action... again...

2008-01-31T03:47:00.001-08:00

yeah, I know I’ve been MIA again… but I’ve had some legitimate reasons… I moved again about a week and a half ago in to a 1bdrm flat (apartment)… 3 place in the 5 months that i've been in London... crazy right, but i think i've finally found the right place... and I’ve just been getting myself settled into my new place… to be completely honest, I do love my new place… everything about it feel right… when I wall through the door, it feels like home (at least my home away from home)… so aside from moving into a new place, what’s been going on with me… well I’m planning a small get together of some friend, a small house warming, this weekend coming up… nothing too big, just a few friends, some drinks, music and of course food… that should be fun, I am definitely looking forward to it! other than that…

hmmm… I’m sure you’re wondering about TA… what can I really say, other than I am taking things one day at a time with him… some days he makes me the happiest girl in the world :-), some days he really get under my skin and I’m irritated, but its only natural (there are very few people I think I like ALL the time, including myself)… but when I do look at the big picture, he makes me happy more times than not, so for now I’m just going with the flow, cause things are good… I notice that I am finding myself more and more comfortable around him, that he allows me to be silly and just be myself, without feeling like I have to be anything else, which is a great feeling… I think one of the things that I really appreciate most about TA is that we don’t have to always be talking when we’re together, in the sense that we could be chilling and watching tv or something for hours with very few words, but there’s no awkwardness, and then there are days that we can talk on and on forever into the wee hours of the early morning about any and everything as that feels so natural as well…
the other day I was sitting in a training course for work, and I guess I was day dreaming and I pictured this great future for TA and I… that scared me a lot… scared me cause I could actually see him in the future, but as I said I’m just taking it one day at a time… not rushing into anything, not jumping any steps or anything like that… the fact that that thought came in my head did make me a bit nervous though… but what can I really do about that… anyways, one day at a time…

well, I’ve been on my new BC pill for about 3 and a half weeks so far, and so far so good… my emotions are much much better, I still get emotional at times, but at a normal rate, not like before where I felt like I couldn’t control my emotions… I’ve noticed that my appetite does funny things though, I go for days without really wanting food, but then I go days where I’m craving different foods… its odd, but I’m hoping that that will eventually go away… and as u may have guess, I did jump on the scale just to make sure I wasn’t putting on any pounds… and boy was I relieved when I saw that the scale had actually gone down:-)!!! I haven't noticed any other major side affects either, so i'm praying that this one doesn't cause any other issues!!!

Anyways, can’t believe February is here already… shucks to tell you the truth, I’m still trying to get use to the idea that its 2008… time seems to be flying by… but I’m trying to enjoy it as it goes, but also make sure that I plan for the future…

finally, my 2008 goals...

2008-01-14T08:06:00.000-08:00

Went to church on Sunday, and heard a very inspiring message… the message was about one’s hopes and desires and how to ensure they come true… the message emphasised on making goals that are realistic and attainable, assessing where you are and where you want to be and determining if you’re willing to make the sacrifices necessary to get to where you want to be… also, write your goals down so that you constantly know what you’re working towards… so I decided to do just that… write my goals downs, the things I wanted to do and accomplish this year… but not just lofty goals, but achievable and measurable goals… with measurable timelines...

New Years goals:

Lose 10 to 15 lbs by April 1st, but hopefully sooner.
Visit two places in Europe that I’ve never been to before
Complete my master’s program
Make more of a conscious effort to save (make at least one sizable deposit (hopefully more) into my saving account every month starting in February)
Learn to budget better… I can spend with the best of them, but as I get older I need to be more responsible… not to mention that now that I live on my own, I have my own ‘real’ bills to pay.
Payoff at least one credit card by June 1st

Update... I've been on the new BC pill for a week now... and so far so good... mood swings and irrational thinking (at least irrational for me) are gone... feeling more like myself, usual smile on my face, optimism is back and just better in general... thank goodness... let's just hope that things continue in this manner... its still early, but i'm hoping for the best...

its official... i'm not going crazy...

2008-01-09T02:49:00.000-08:00

Its official… I’m NOT Crazy… YEAH!!! time to go celebrate…. ok, let me take a few steps back and explain before I start celebrating… I dunno if this has been apparent in my posts, but I’ve been overly emotional or over dramatic for the last couple of weeks… at first I thought maybe it was just the winter blues or maybe I was just feeling lonely from moving to London and so on and so on… I mean, I thought I was going crazy, having mood swing left and right, not to mention getting some acne which I don’t usual get… I managed to keep them mostly to myself, but I’m sure TA got some of the brunt of my mood swings… but only recently did I decide to reflect on all the changes that have happened in the last couple of months, all the issues I’ve dealt with and so on… and yesterday it clicked… I started taking BC pills (birth control pills) for the first time a few months ago, after I moved to London, and a few weeks after I started the mood swings started, the irrational thinking and so on… I really did think I was losing my mind… I even asked TA one day has he ever felt that he losing his mind or going crazy… that was the only way I could explain it… I know I am a sensitive person, but not an emotional person… if someone hurts my feelings; I’m not the type to show it especially not in public… I’d deal with it in private… but when I stated tearing up over stupid things and things of that sort, it took me a little by surprise, but I just though that maybe it was all apart of the changes that I had to deal with as I got older and mature… yeah right… I spent most of work yesterday doing research on the PC pill I was on and I found tons on information, especially stories from females who had experienced the things that I am going thru (oh, goodness… I’m tearing up again :-( )… luckily I had already schedule an appointment with to see my GP (doctor) for later in the evening and I thought I’d take this opportunity to discuss all of the issues and concerns I had about my health… imagine my relief when he told me that he seen this before and was more than happy to discuss the various options available… he switch me to a different BC that I started using today, he said that basically each person’s reaction to the BC depends on their individual body make up… if I start getting adverse side affects from this, I can try another BC, but if this new prescription doesn’t work, I’ll talk to my sisters to see what they use and if its working fine for them, I know it does depend on each person’s individual body, but since we’re related and genetically closer to each other, maybe what’s worked for them will work for me… who knows???

So, since I’ve move to the UK, I’ve had more health issues (in the past four and a half months) than I’ve had since… well never… the last time I had a health problem was over a year ago when I sprained my ankle while training for my marathon… but since I’ve been in London, its been one thing after the other, and while I know that TA is there for me and to support me, it makes me feel like a weak person cause of all the issues that I am having… I feel like its always one thing or the other with me and sometimes I just don’t want to tell him when or if something else comes up, cause one I don’t want to give him something else to worry about and two and I don’t want to feel like a liability to him (if that makes any sense at all)… besides I’m not use to leaning on people, I just handle things on my own and go on with life, that’s how I handle things… that usually works, at least it did when I was in the states cause I had some many people (friends and family) around and responsibilities to help me forget about what issue I was dealing with, so it was never necessary to actually tell other people or confide in other about issues, at least not all the time… but here, it’s a bit different... but i'm learning...

back to work... back to reality...

2008-01-07T06:56:00.000-08:00

First day back at work… its takes me back of returning to school after Christmas vacation… I had the same feeling… tool forever just to get out of bed and get myself motivated… not very excited… once I got to work though, it wasn’t so bad, actually it wasn’t bad at all… its definitely good to see my co-workers… I actually like my co-workers, they are interesting people and they help the day pass by so much faster… always something interesting to chat about with them… and it was a nice surprise to have my new laptop waiting for me when I got to work today (I ordered it way back in October… talk about a delayed response time)… but its still work… to be honest, I like my job as well, not overly challenging, but not too dull either (most of the time at least)… I probably could be a better employee in a job that pushed me a lot and challenged me all the time, but I dunno if I could handle that ALL the time… so my current job suits me quite well, I’ve learned a lot since I’ve been working in this position, but as I said its not the most challenging job in the world… anyways, as I chatted with various people around the office, talking about the holiday and so on and so on…

This isn’t necessarily where I saw myself at 25… or in 2008… Not to say that I’m in a bad place or anything like that… I’ve done a lot for myself at my age, I have a good academic background and a good professional career… and yeah I am proud of my accomplishments, but still this just isn’t where I saw myself… well, you see I had my life planned out at 16, or at least I had my life planned out until I was 24… but nothing after that… I mean, I know I would get to 24 eventually and older, but I didn’t plan for it, like I planned for everything else so now I feel like I’m just going with the flow and not necessarily working towards anything in particular… I’m just waiting for the right thing or the right person that will show me the direction I should go in and that’s not how life should be… at least I don’t think that’s how it should be… I dunno where to begin… but this is going to be my year… so much potential that I’m not putting to good use… and I’m going to make a discerned effort to push myself more for the things that I want and need to make life more enjoyable… this is my year…

***I should have mentioned this earlier... but one of my uncles pasted away 2 days after Christmas... he was one of my uncles that lives here in England... although i've been in London for about 4 months, I hadn't made it to visit him cause he lives outside of London... now i wished i had taken the time to go and see him while he was still around... what makes me feel even worse is that a few days before Christmas he left me a voicemail, checking up on me, saying he hadn't heard from me lately and wanted to see if I was doing well... i told myself that I would call him before i left for the states, but i forgot, and i made a mental note that I would call him in the new year and go visit him... i guess i'll never get that chance, so that's been on my mind as well...

starting the new year on the right foot... hopefully...

2008-01-06T10:55:00.000-08:00

I finally got back to London on Thursday morning… being at home was great… my holiday was great, I was a bit distracted, but in general it was a really good holiday… finally say TA yesterday (Saturday)… it was good to see him, I missed him while I was away… poor baby was sick most of the time I was in the states, he’s still a bit sick, but at least he’s getting better… it was really good to see him (yeah I know I said that already, but it was)… anyways, we spent a couple of hours talking about a bunch of different things… I enjoy his company, even when we’re just sitting around his flat and talking about nothing and everything… actually those are the moments I enjoy the most….

Anyways, back to work tomorrow… first day back to work in the new year… I like my job, but I’m not looking forward to getting up early and all the stress of work…

So I wanted to take a look back at 2007, to see what goals I set for myself and here they are:
My list of personal goals for 2007:
1. Lose these last 10/15 pounds that I’ve been playing with for a few months
2. Travel to 2 places I’ve never been (one being Atlanta - cause I’ve never been…)
3. Participate in another running event (Aside from my Marathon at the end of January)
4. Go back to school

I managed to do 3 out of the 4 goals I set for myself last year… guess which one will appear on my list again this year… well you’ll find out soon enough… I should finish my list of goals in the next couple of days or so…

Anyways, I hope everyone is having a great start to the year… as for me, I’m just taking it one day at a time…

celebrating a new year 2008....

2008-01-01T08:54:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year...

I hope that everyone have a safe and fun New Years Eve.... I had a great New Years Eve, despite all of the things going thru my mind... Partied til 6 am, two of my really good friends came thru to hang out, one came fron NY and the other from DC... it was great to see them...

Starting a new year, and i'm hoping that 2008 is better than 2007... i had a lot of successes and accomplishments in 2007, but i also had alot of toils and trials... but hey, i survived the year right, so it should make me a better person right... I haven't made any new year resolutions... i gotta go back and take a look at my list from last new year's even to see if i accomplished the things on my list... this year i'm not going to necessarily make new year resolutions, but rather small achievable goals for myself...

There been alot of things that I'vebeen thinking about and trying to deal with... my last post talked about me giving my blog address to TA, i kinda wish i hadn't given it to him, but he read it and he gave me his opinion... he also said he deleted the blog url, which i really hope he does, but if he doesn't well there's nothing i can go about that right... i considered from a while shutting down my blog, that's why i hadn't made an entry for a couple of days... wasn't sure what i really wanted to do, but after some consideration decided that i wanted to keep my blog and i'll figure something else out about TA having the url...

anyways, what's really on my mind... well, everyone wants to be happy... and maybe some times I sabotage myself or my own happiness in relationships... my friend JD says that once i find the right guy, then i won't sabotage myself or my relationships, but i don't know... its not that's i'm not aware of what i do, I'm quite aware of it, but i can't necessarily help it... maybe it'll stop when i do find the right guy, or maybe it'll stop when i stop running from relationships, or maybe when i just start working on it (obviously the last options makes the most sense)...

okay, so my current issue, for some reason, sometimes i feel insecure about TA, sometimes its about the things he does, sometimes its just me being insecure... for some reason lately, he's bring that side out of me, and trust me i'm not an insecure person in general... now i want the best for TA and I want to be there for him, but i can't be supporting him if its hurting me to do so... maybe its cause i'm away at the moment, maybe because its that mental time mark when i usually start finding faults in a guy so i can find a reason to end it or maybe its the truth... and honestly at this point, i just don't really know what it is... anyways, i'm going to take it one day at a time... i just need some time to myself to get my thoughts together, to evaluate my feelings and see what i really want...

I want 2008 to be a great year... 2007 was an amazing and progessive year (both in a positive and negative way).... i accomplished alot, learned alot especially about myself and I grew thru various experiences... entering into 2008 i can only hope that i take the time to really focus on the things that are important to me, my family and my success.

Anonymity

2007-12-21T03:20:00.000-08:00

Ok, so my blog is an anonymous blog… I don’t think anyone actually knows who I really am, maybe one person I can think of knows that I am DD, but I’m not really sure about that… anyways, TA wanted to read my blog… and while I’ve managed to put it off from actually telling him… I don’t know, ok I do know why… he’ll get to see how random I really am, get to explore all the crazy thoughts I have, get to see how I reason thru things, get to see a side of my that I don’t really show people who know me… he’ll get to see about all the things I’ve written about him (lucky for me its been mostly good things)… but he’ll be able to go thru my past blogs and get to really see things about me… I don’t know if that makes me more nervous or if by allowing him to read my blog, he’ll get a better understanding of me… I don’t really talk much about my blog… but the one or two times I may mention it by accident, the person always wants to know my blog address so they can read it… what if I disappoint them… what if I’m not as good a writer as they expect from a blogger, what if they think I write and worry about trivial stuff… what if… the possibilities are endless of what ifs… I guess the one way to avoid the what ifs, would be not to let people know I have a blog or even if they know, not to give them the blog address…

well last night i gave TA my blog address out of anger and not out of trust... i gave him the blog address cause he was questioning about things that i didn't really understand, and i told him if anything has happened to me, then its in my blog and he can go read it if he doesn't believe me... i only wanted to wait to give him blog address cause i wanted to be completely sure and i wanted to be sure i trusted hm enough (not to say i don't), but i wanted to give it to him in my own time and not when i felt forced to do so, forced to do so in order to prove i was telling him the truth....

now, i don't know if TA has actually read my blog since i gave hime the address, in some ways i hope he does read it to see and understand how i really feel and to try to better understand who i am, but on the other hand, i hope he doesn't read it only to see if i'm telling him the truth or to judge me...
i hope that knowing he reads or can read my blog whenever he wants to won't change the way i write, i hope it won't keep me from being candid, honest and open about my thoughts and feelings... i hope...

Some days I think about giving up my blog… at times I take a small hiatus from my blog, sometimes life just gets too busy, sometimes I don’t have time to analyze things, sometimes I can’t out how I’m feeling or my situation in meaningful words… and sometimes I just simply forget about it… but I know this blog gives me an outlet to get my feelings out and to analyze things, it helps me get thru some situations, some things that I can’t tell my friends or family… it’s a form of therapy…

learning to be happy...

2007-12-21T02:29:00.001-08:00

I’m continuing to learn that just because he doesn’t always show how his feels exactly the way I want him to doesn’t mean he’s not showing it in the best way he knows how to… he gently reminded me of this the other night as I feel asleep in his arms… there are things that he does for me that he wasn’t willing to do in past relationships, and his intentions are well noted… I don’t want him to think I take those things for granted, cause I know he tries… but as he said, he’s very traditional and old school… and as I said, I’m very new school and we just need to find a way to meet half way… which I think we’re both starting to learn to do… he’s doing the little things I ask for, but definitely in his own style… his intentions are known and his reasoning are understood, but of course he does it in his own style, and I wouldn’t expect him to do it any differently… he’s meeting me half way to make sure that we both stay happy, and that makes me very happy… and I’m gonna do all I can to make sure I keep him happy as well… and I’m learning to stop stressing so much about everything, and just enjoy things with him, cause he makes me happy…
(Can I mention, I’ve been hit on by men more this week alone, than I have in the last month… interesting the things you notice when u stop focusing ALL of your attention on one person or one thing…)

update...

2007-12-17T01:48:00.000-08:00

So it looks like I’ve abandoned my blog, but really I haven’t… just been caught up with life lately… quick update… Okay, so may be I was being a bit melodramatic in my last post… I admit it, and these winter blues aren’t doing a damn thing to lift my spirits… but I finally talked to TA that following Tuesday night… went to go see him and well he lifted my spirits… connected with him in a way we hadn’t connected in for a while, felt like we were one again and we were happy… as I told him in a text this morning… ‘he put a permanent smile on me face’… and not just because of what you think, but more because I think we really connected yesterday, found a new level of comfort with one another… and hopefully we’re closer to one another than before… I told him that I’ve missed him, not missed him in the sense that I hadn’t seen him, but missed the sensual, soft & kind side of him that I saw that Tuesday night, the side I hadn’t seen it in a while and it made me even more attracted to him… made me want to be with him even more… made me realized how much I care about him… and hopefully it did the same for him… but since then, in the last two weeks, things with TA have been interesting…

I thought I had commitment issues, but little do I know that everyone has their own set of emotional luggage that they carry around with them, even guys… I don’t necessarily understand TA or all of his actions, but I know him well enough to know what he’s gonna do… wait, let me rephrase that, I understand what he’s going to do, but I don’t always understand the reasoning or logic behind everything he does… he’s not a simple guy, although he claims that he is, he’s just as complicated as the rest of us, dealing with past relationships and failures, and trying to ensure he doesn’t repeat the same mistakes… I know he cares about me, and that he does things for me that are unusual for him to do in a relationship, and don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate all that he does, but I know I do a lot for him, I give him more effort than I’ve given to any other guy in a long time… I see him struggling not to get attached to me and trying to keep me at arms length, just cause he’s not sure about things yet, but on the same note he’ll do a complete 180 and does all the loving things that a bf would do… then he starts talking about the future (which to be honest, scares the living day lights out of me, because that involves planning and implies that we’ll be together long enough to see the plans come to fruition… not long term plans like years or anythng, but weeks away) He’s been talking bout us spending Christmas together for weeks… and at first it wasn’t gonna happen cause I was gonna go to Nigeria, but of course I procrastinated and then changed my mind to go back to the states instead, so I leave for the states the day after Christmas (there better be some left over turkey in the fridge when I get back to Bmore)… so anyways, we’re gonna spending Christmas together… which I do look forward to, but at the same time, I feel it will make me feel more involved with him and I don’t know if that what he wants… while I keep telling myself not to get too attached, the more time I spend with him, the more involved and invested I become… realizing that you depend on someone else to get thru the day is not a realization that’s easy to make, so I started taking steps to get back to my old social able self… I was talking to one of my friends on facebook, and he was asking how London was and so on, and I told him its going good, but its difficult starting over, and his reply was “...must be a different feeling having to start over from scratch. u’re personality allows it to happen seamless tho, u’re a great easy going person…” and on a normal day, I’d agree with his statement and compliment… but I’m not the same person that he knew many years ago, and many times I wish I could go back to that person he described in the email… i just want to be happy...

he's M.I.A.

2007-12-04T08:46:00.001-08:00

Well, it been two days since TA and I had our little disagreement… and well I haven’t heard from him… yeah I’m a little distraught, but what can I do… I can’t make him call or text me, can’t make him pick up my calls so all I can do is wait… which is something that I’m most definitely not good at wait… I’m impatient, something too impatient for my own good… but what can I do… but I can’t sit here and blame myself for ever… ok, he didn’t like what I said… I apologized (more than one… more than twice… more than I ever do)… isn’t this where we’re suppose to talk things thru and work it out… well its suppose to be, but TA has disappeared, haven’t heard from him since he left my place 2 nights ago… not one word… if u can’t be a little patient with me, then we’re definitely gonna have some issues… I’m not the most patient person, but for the person I care about, my patience can become an never ending ocean of compassion and understanding… but I guess that’s not how he see it… at this point I really don’t know what to think… I can’t stand the silent treatment, it gets under my skin, I prefer for someone to yell, fuss and get it out of their system, so we can move on from the situation… but with the silent treatment, they keep all the aggression and anger inside, just waiting for one day to explode…

This is killing me… and I know myself, the longer it takes TA to come around, the more upset I’ll be, and the more likely I will say something even more inappropriate to him…

The Winter Blues...

2007-12-03T09:03:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally moved into my own flat, a one bedroom flat in Swiss Cottage/Belsize Park… it’s a great area, very local to everything, and it’s a short commute to work… my apart, at the moment is a disaster! Everything is still packed up in boxes, bags and suitcases… lots of suitcases…. Hmmm, so I’m in the process of trying to sort things, but I know its gonna take a while, hopefully I should have my place sorted out before I leave for Christmas (and don’t ask… I don’t know where I’m going for Christmas yet, don’t have a ticket to Nigeria or to the states, but I know I’m not staying in London without my family, that’s for sure)… anyways, I still need to order my sofa, put my wardrobes together (now, TA offered to help, but since we got into a tiny row yesterday after putting my bed together, well sue me if I’m a bit moody… well there’s no telling if he’ll come around to help with the wardrobes… but I’m a capable woman, so no worries)… I’ve put together lots of Ikea furniture on my own in past, so its not impossible, but it would have been nice to have a man around to help me… or I can always just hire someone to come do it, but the holidays are just around the corner and I’m not trying to spend any unnecessary money… need to buy gifts for the little ones (nieces and nephews J)…

So I’ve been in a funk for the last couple of days, at first thought that it was from the lack of sleep and all the stress from last week with work, school, and moving… I’m sure that added to it, but it doesn’t explain why I’m so gosh darn (not the words I really wanted to use, but can’t be using his name in vain) emotional… No its not me being homesick… No, its not that time of the month… … but it is that time of the year… that time of the year, where its cold outside, it rains a lot, the sun goes down before its even 5pm… its Winter time… and I wish I didn’t have it, but I think I’ve got the winter blues… its not the first time its happened, happened bout 3 years ago in 2004… was overly emotional about any and everything, felt it hard to pull myself together sometimes, hard to participate and so on… and well, it feels like that again… so what’s a girl to do, when all I really wanna do is go back to my flat, lay under my duvet and read a book til I doze off… I’m not the usual me, the happy, fun person to be around… not sure where she went or even where to begin looking for her or me rather…

There's No Place Like Home...

2007-11-26T06:46:00.000-08:00

What a great weekend… there truly is no place like home… welcomed with open arms and smiling faces… going home back to the states for Thanksgiving was great… actually great is an understatement… it was wonderful… it was like things were right back to normal as soon as I got there… it was great to lay in my own bed, watch my own tv, walk around my own home and be completely free… I got there on Thursday afternoon… walked in the back door, could smell the turkey cooking, potatoes roasting, jollof rice burning on the stove, and a mixture of other great smells… my parents were so happy to see me, more than I expected, but I’d missed them a lot, so the feeling was quite mutual… slowly, the rest of the siblings and family members trickled in… the sisters and boyfriends, the brothers and wives and children, before long we had a full house… and it was great… great food, great wine and great company… I couldn’t ask for anything else in that moment… being with my family was all I needed. For a bit, I did feel like I was missing out on so much by living in London, but as I interacted with my siblings and parents, it became more and more evident that they were proud of me for doing what I’m doing and being successful in London… it reaffirmed that I made the right decision to move to London… but sometimes, you still can’t help but feel like you may be missing out… but as I hear them all describing when they are coming to London next month of their way to Nigeria and how we’ll have so much fun when they come to visit me, it gave me something more to look forward to…. By like 7pm, I could barely keep my eyes up, tired and delirious from lack of sleep and jet lag, I was struggling… got up crazy early the next morning to do the black Friday shopping things…. Madness in all the stores my sister and I went to… but needless to say, we got some pretty good deals!!!

I was having a discussion with my dad about Christmas… he told me that in America, they don’t really celebrate Christmas in the same ways as other parts of the world, that its too commercialized in the states… and if I didn’t go to Nigeria 2 years ago for my first Christmas in Nigeria and didn’t living in London now, I would have blatantly disagreed with him… although I do have to admit, I notices as I was growing older in the states, that the spirit of Christmas was not as joyful as it was when I was much younger… I just thought that was the natural progression, that as you got older, you got more serious and paid less attention to holidays and things of that nature… I almost let that rob me of my Christmas spirit…. But some how I always managed to find that spirit and spread it along to my sibling and parents, whether they wanted it or not… when I was growing up I remember Christmas as being so exciting and joyous… huge Christmas trees, decorations everywhere, waking up at 6am to open gifts, having breakfast with the family, watching the parade and going to church later in the day… then going around to other family and friends’ homes or having them come visit at our home… lots of children running around in their new clothes and showing off the new gifts they just got, lots of Christmas lights, good food, great company and just happiness everywhere… I do miss those Christmas days… I do miss the good old days… but as I spent my first Christmas in Nigeria 2 Christmas’ ago, I am eager to go back… of course Nigerians know how to celebrate, but the Christmas spirit is still well and kicking in Naija… even in London, its clear that the holiday season is here… Christmas lights and decorations all thru central London, illuminating the streets and never letting you forget that Christmas is right around the corner… anyways, maybe all of this is just my experiences, but I feel that as I get older, that the experience of Christmas is just much different…

My Range of Emotions... What a Roller Coaster!!

2007-11-19T08:06:00.000-08:00

Hmmm, what a weekend… well, I’ve been thinking that TA has been acting a little weird lately… and well he thought the same thing about me, we had a conversation on Wednesday evening, cause I was trying to make plans for Thursday evening after I got off work cause my friends were leaving on Thursday morning… anyways, we kinda straighten things out.. cause I asked if everything was ok and so on and the asked what was up with me and why I’d been acting weird lately… and my reaction was that I thought he had been acting weird… so anyways, we talked about it and left it at that… so Thursday afternoon TA texts me saying he was gonna be home in the evening… so I made plans to go visit him after work… let’s just say that it was a very interesting evening… remember this blog entry ‘Everything Happens for a Reason’… well although I was dealing with a major issue (at least it was a major issue for me), I failed to tell TA about it… I had plans on telling him, but I was nervous… actually I was more scared and confused than nervous, and being the type of person that I am, sometimes my pride gets in the way of allowing me to ask for help, assistance or support, even when I really need it… well I dealt with the situation on my own and never told TA… and well thru some discussion, it came out and TA was livid with me… actually livid was an understatement… I almost thought he was through with me… he was quite upset that I kept something so significant away from him… he said I should have known better and that if he’s in, then he’s in.. meaning that I should have known that I could have turned to him in my time of need and we would have dealt with the situation together… hmmm, what could I say… there’s was nothing to say, even though I tried to explain it to him, but nonetheless he was upset with me, which I understood… well, all that said and done, we talked about everything and I think we’re gonna be just fine… and its great to know that I can turn to him for advise and in my time of need, without being afraid that he’ll run away…

I guess its just my personal style to try and handle everything on my own, its how I’ve always done things… there are very few people that I turn to for help, and even fewer people outside of my family… so its hard coming to terms that I have him to turn to… aside from my personal stubbornness, its very difficult for me to trust people, especially when it comes to personal information about me… I’ve seen how people can turn on you and use that information against you, not me personally or any of the people that I’ve entrusted in, but I’ve seen it happen to other people and I can’t imagine that type of betrayal… my heart can’t handle that type of damage at this point in my life… which leads me to another thing, lately I’ve been over emotional… the littlest thing can set me off, not in an angry way, but in a teary-eyed way… the smallest things seem to get me all emotional… NO IT’S NOT PMS… for example, I was reading a book about fathers, and all of a sudden I got all teary-eyed as I was thinking about my dad and how I can’t wait to see him when I go home next… believe it or not, I got teary eyed just writing that last sentence about my dad…

Home sweet home… I’m going home for Thanksgiving… at first I wasn’t going to go cause I thought it didn’t make sense to go home for like 3 and a half days, but then I realized that it was more than worth it to go home for a few days if I get to see my family and friends, even if its just for a short period of time… in 3 days time, I’ll be back home in my own house, room, and bed… I’ll be surrounded by my loving and supportive family (especially my cute nephews and nieces) and by some of the greatest friends that one can ask for!!! Excited is an understatement of how much I am looking forward to going back to Baltimore :-)… Get some good home cooked food, spend time with the fam, relax, drive around (and not have to wait for a bus or train!!!), go shopping at decent prices and so much more. I just need a break from London, just for a little bit… I’m hoping I’ll be re-energized when I come to London… all this said, I will miss TA and I’ll miss London a little bit (it is my new home for now), even if its just for a few days…

Paris for the weekend...

2007-11-19T07:37:00.001-08:00

Ooh la la… Paris for the weekend…

I went to Paris for the weekend, 2 weekends ago, with one of the friends that came to visit from the States… it was an interesting weekend to say at the least……

Jean Marc… that’s the name of the French man that I had a rendezvous with this weekend while in Paris… ok,ok, I didn’t really have a rendezvous with Jean Marc (or any other French man while in Paris), but it did sound nice for a quick second… also, lets not forget I am spoken for … but I did meet a very attractive gentleman name Jean March…… tall dark, and handsome… well, let me explain, my friend, R and I were all dressed up in central Paris, and it was about 1:30am, we’d been other there for about 45 minutes, trying to find a nice club to go to… we spoke to a few people here and there, but we felt that most of the people walking by were two young… but then here comes Jean Marc and his 2 friends… they we cute, they looked mature… so we stopped them asked if they knew of any good parties/clubs in the area… well, being the gentlemen they were, they invited us to go to the club with them… the were walking up the street to a club that play hip-hop, reggae, R&B, and so on… sounded great… so R and I tagged along… the club didn’t actually open til 2am, so were were just chatting outside while we waited for the club to open… so 2am finally rolled around… and in we went… the place wasn’t big, but it was a decent size, the music was good and the crowd was really good… so no complaints… I ended up dancing with Jean Marc for most of the evening… he spoke little English and I spoke even less French… but some how we managed to communicate through out the night… Towards the end of the nite, he asked for my email address, which I gave to him… he mentioned that he came to London often and would it be possible to see me if he came…. Well, amidst all the fun and games, ummm I had to make it clear that I was not interested in anything with him, at least nothing more than a friendship… I hadn’t mentioned it before, but it felt appropriate to let him know that I was seeing someone in London… and since I don’t believe in cheating, there were no other options than for us to be friends… as you can guess, I haven’t heard from him, but I didn’t really expect too… especially after I told him I was seeing someone… oh, well… that’s life right!

Anyways, Paris was great… it was great to have my friends around for a little bit… my friends left on Thursday morning… and the first thing on my mind was to see TA, seeing as that I hadn’t seen him in a week, just cause my friends were around and we were busy doing all the tourist stuff…

So what...

2007-11-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

So what…. So what if I haven’t seen Scarface or The Godfather I, II, or III… so freaking what… what’s the big deal… I appreciate that they are classic movies and they are great movies and so on and so on… but so what I haven’t seen them… well the fact that I hadn’t seen any of the aforementioned movies drove TA absolutely crazy, I mean to the point of being upset… Y??? I’m not quite sure, but he really took it personal… I mean if you told me you’ve never seen Clueless (one of my all time favourite movies and a classic from the teenage years), I wouldn’t blow a gasket over it… but no, not my TA, he decided to take it personal… really… then I said, well this would be a good opportunity for us to watch it together… and his response… NEVER… I’m not on his level he says, he can’t be explaining the movie to me… blah blah blah… so NO, that was his answer, He's not gonna watch them with me!?!? He was like u need to go rent those movies and watch them… and I looked at him like he was crazy… Y??? anyways, he really felt the necessity to understand why I hadn’t watched Scarface or the Godfather… and I didn’t really have a real reason, except that I never had the opportunity to watch it and when I go to rent movies, those are not movies that are at the top of my ‘must see’ list (please, they barely make the ‘maybe if I’m bored, I’d watch that movie’ list)… so after criticizing me about the fact that i'd never seen those movies, and so on, I started to get annoyed… Geez, I got the freaking picture… why are you being so mean about something so silly… then he tried to pull me over when we were watching Titanic (which I’ve seen b4 by the way) but I was too annoyed with him to cuddle… who wants to cuddle with someone who’s just spent the last 30 minutes going on and on about your choices of movies (There’s nothing wrong with Harry Potter)… but I guess he didn’t think I’d take it so personal, and to be honest, neither did I, but it just kinda hurt my feelings… and I guess he realized it so he apologized and then offered to watch the movies with me… talk about a silly reason to have a disagreement about… but he made it all better… we did manage to watch Casino and the Usual Suspects… two classics (that I’ve never seen b4)… they were really good movies actually… and while they’re not my typical choice of movies, I enjoyed them and I enjoyed them more watching them with TA… and we got thru after of Titanic before I decided to go to bed…. And I expected TA to finish watching the movie, but being the sweetheart that he is; he stopped the movie and came to bed as well…

I must admit, after we made up, and we were watching the movies and just chilling in at his place, I could almost see myself doing this thing for the long run... I mean, it’s rare for me to admit that type of thing, but it’s possible… but lets not get ahead of ourselves!

On another note… two of my friends are here from the states to visit… we’re heading off to Paris in the morning for the weekend… then returning on Monday morning… they’re gonna be around til the end of the next… I am so excited to have them around… its nice to have some familiar faces from back home… and I’m even more excited about possibility going back home in 2 weeks for thanksgiving (where I plan to stuff my face with food, before I start a proper diet on my return to London)… EXCITED :-)!!!

some thoughts...

2007-11-06T02:29:00.000-08:00

Hmmm… my ex, L, wants to meet the guy I’m seeing, TA… LOL… yeah right, like L thinks I ever gonna let that happen… especially since I know that L knows ALOT of people and may already know the guy I’m seeing, but may not that he,s the guy I’m seeing… thru discussion I’ve realized the L knows a lot of TA’s friends, so logically it would make sense for him to know who TA is as well… why he wants to me meet my TA, I don’t quite know, guess he’s curious as to what type of guy I’m with, who knows… but I’m surely not going to be the one that sets up an outing and invite the two… but if we all happened to be at the same place at the same time, then by all means, its not a problem… besides TA and I have never discussed any of the exs and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know that I have an ex in London, not because I’m hiding it or anything like that, but simply cause it hasn’t come up, especially since L and I dated some three years ago… so no biggie… right!?!? Anyways, if it ever came up, I wouldn’t hesitate to tell him cause I’ve got nothing to hide…
Hmmm… my friends are coming to visit from the states this weekend… so we’re headed to Paris for the weekend… which should be fun… a break from London is necessary… although my friends’ visit means I won’t really get to see TA that much for the next week or so, unless he comes out with us, it kinda leaves me a little sad… we haven’t been spending as much time together… well, this weekend I was dealing with some things and needed to be by myself, and now we’re both looking for flats to move into (separately, we not moving in together… I’m not crazy!!!), so between school, work, looking for flats, and sleep… there leaves little time left for couple time… but its cool, for now cause I’m sure we’ll make up it up :-)….

Hmmm… yeah looking for a new flat to move in… I’m looking for a studio or 1bdrm flat to move into… I simply need my own space… or to move into a flat share with like minded people… housing is ridiculously pricey here in London… and being the picky person that I am, I just can’t settle for anything… it must be up to my standard… I’d rather have a small and neat place, then a large sloppy & ugly place… I’d rather spend a little more on rent for my peace of mind, then be cheap and uncomfortable… If I’m going to live in London, I need to do it right or at least my way!

the men in my life

2007-11-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

Things with TA (the guy I’m seeing) are going good… he’s not your typical guy, but then again, I’m not your typical gal… so I guess we’re a good match… but I haven’t really spoken much about him, and I probably won’t, since he doesn’t know I have a blog and I wouldn’t want to put too much of his business out there… anyways, TA comes off as ‘one of the guys’ type of guys, but he’s just as considerate as can be… it’s the small things that he does or doesn’t do that makes me appreciate him… for example, one Friday evening, he was having a guys nite at his house, but I didn’t know that and I told him I was gonna come by later after I was done running some errands… and he was like of course come by… and of course I took much longer than expected… and some of his boys were over at his place, they had made a run to get food and alcohol… and he being the considerate guy that he is, he brought me dinner and got me some nice wine (cause I don’t drink what him and his friends drink)… and it was just such a sweet gesture… I know his friends probably looked at him like he was crazy while in the liquor store when he bought the bottle of wine… and trust me, I know its such a small gesture, but for me, it’s the small things that matter the most :-)… like knowing what I like and making sure you have it around the house when I come over, even if its not something he likes… and sometimes when I question myself when we’re apart (you must remember, this relationship is quite young), I always remember how I feel when I’m with him and the constant smile on my face, and the great conversations about every and anything and then I’m rested assured, things are good… I could go on and on… but I know u all don’t want to hear about all the little things he does that I appreciate… but I do find it quite odd, that we don’t really talk on the phone that much… but when we’re together, we always have something to say to one another and the conversations range from silly to thought provoking to life desires and so much more… so I don’t think that’s a big issue, he’s not a big phone person and neither am I, unless you’re one of my girls and we’re gossiping :-)….

Its odd… me and my ex, L… we work for the same company in London… just a coincidence… anyways, our relationship is odd…. We talk about a variety of things that friends talk about, but then we also talk about other items, that I wouldn’t necessarily share with even my closest friends… I guess it has more to do with the fact that, we’ve already crossed those lines and boundaries years ago, so we’re not as shy to discuss some topics that wouldn’t normally come up with regular friends… I must admit, since I don’t have a proper female pal yet in London, its nice to be able to talk to him about some of those things… but sometimes it’s a bit odd… like telling I was seeing someone was difficult… even though we talk about him and all the girls that are chasing him all the time and all that… it took me a little while to getting around to tell him that and when I finally did… he was surprised… we were in the mall after church talking when it came up… I do miss having my girls around or my sisters around… I mean I talk to them all the time in email, texts and on the phone, but its not quite the same cause they’re not here so they can’t truly understand what’s going on or meet the guy I’m always talking about and so on and so on…

Everything happens for a reason...

2007-10-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

The last couple of days have been a complete blur to me… I’ve had so much happen that I don’t know what to begin… I found out about some information about my life (it’s a bit too personal for me to share), and it was big enough to threaten life as I know it… confused and dazed, and with no family in arm reach, I was left to make some hard decisions on my own… I was left to suffer the consequences of my actions… and as I struggled for the a few days about what I needed to do, what I should do, and looking for who to turn to, I found no answers for any of the questions… but then I went to church on Sunday… now usually have a long nite out of dancing and drinking on a Saturday evening, church usually didn’t happen the next day, but for some reason I woke up quite early on Sunday morning, tried to convince myself to go back to sleep, but it wasn’t working… so I reluctantly got out of my bed, go dressed and made the 45/50 minute commute to my church… and boy can I say that I’ve never been happier to go to church in my life… I go to Jesus House in Brent Cross, and it was only the second service I’d been to, but the sermon that pastor preached on Sunday touched me in a way that no other pastor or sermon had every reached me before… maybe it was because I was going through a tough time, maybe because I’ve never felt so alone in my life, or maybe because I needed to touch my heart… I simply don’t know… but as I wept (yes, little old me wept in church), I’d never felt so at peace with things in life… As the day progressed, I realized that I didn’t wake up early because I wasn’t tired or because the sun was shining into my room or because of any other reason than the fact that God knew that I needed to hear that sermon on Sunday in order to help me get thru my situation… me, not being one that likes to really show my emotions or vulnerable side, especially in public, was sitting in touch crying because I had been touched so much by the messaged preached on Sunday afternoon.

I know that everything happens for a reason… and although we may not be able to always understand or see the reasoning for certain things happening, I have no doubt that everything does happen for a reason. Am I going to become that overly religious person that preaches to everyone, everywhere, all the time… nope, its not in me to be that person… but I am becoming that person who is more guarded about the special relationship she has with God, making sure that nothing and no one comes between her and her creator… a person who has restored faith and hope, not only in life, but more importantly in myself… a person who see a light at the end of the tunnel, that just a few days was so dark… a person at peace with what life has brought her and how she has responded… a person who understands that you can’t truly know happiness unless you’ve truly known pain and sorrow… a person who can rejoice because she’s seen trials and tribulations and has survived to become a better and stronger person because of it… a person she can look at in the mirror everyday, smile at and respect… a person that is stronger than she ever thought possible…. a person that knows she’s going to try her best to be all she can be, but realizes that no one, but God, is perfect… a person that knows that life works in mysterious ways, and it is not my place to try to understand, but rather my place to have faith…

“Love truth, and pardon error.” ~Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

“Desire, ask, believe, receive. “~Stella Terrill Mann

“Sometimes it seems like God is difficult to find and impossibly far away. We get so caught up in our small daily duties and irritations that they become the only things that we can focus on. What we forget is that God's love and beauty are all around us, every day, if only we would take the time to look up and see them.” ~Matthias

“I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.” ~Mother Teresa

“EVERY path may lead you to God, even the weird ones. Most of us are on a journey. We’re looking for something, though we’re not always sure what that is. The way is foggy much of the time. I suggest you slow down and follow some of the side roads that appear suddenly in the mist.” ~Real Live Preacher

so much to share....

2007-10-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

where do i start... loads had happened since i last blogged, which was just 5 days ago... i'll start with the highlights and work from there...

I seeing/dating someone, T... its official... how long did that take?? really, i've been in London for all of a month and a half and i'm already seeing someone... i have to admit, he is one of the few guys out of all the many that i've met, that really intrigues me.... we met my second weekend in London... well apparently we met, to be honest i don't remember really meeting him or talking to him for that long, but apparently we met at this club in London, we were all in the VIP section celebrating a friend of a friend's birthday... anyways, then we ran into each other again a couple weeks later, and this time he pulled me to the side and we talked briefly, exchanged numbers and went about our ways... he never called and I didn't think twice about it (with the whole 'American' accent thing, i was getting loads of attention :-))... then one day i was hanging out with a friend, D and my friend said that his friends were coming to pick us up to go out to get drinks and go to a club... i wasn't particularly in the mood to go clubbing and was about to call a taxi to go home, but i changed my mind... and when the taxi got there, with D's friends in the car, low and behold, there was the same guy, T, who i'd met before... anyways, at first destination of the evening, he promptly pulled me to the side to apologize for not calling, saying alot had been going on... and i simply replied 'that's cool, no biggie'... but he was determined to let me know he was still interested... when we finally got to the club, he managed to get me all to himself, which i honestly didn't mind... actually to be truthful, i really enjoyed :-)... and well we ended up hanging out together at the club the entire nite... we even managed to snug once or twice (so snug is a new lingo i've picked up since i've been in London, anyways, it means kiss)... yeah i know not typically my style, but for some reason he and I really clicked and it felt quite natural... and as i rode in my taxi home after the club, i hoped that he would called the next day as promised... and he did and the day after that and do on... and well, now we're dating :-)... now, all of this leads me to a conclusion that i realized the other day (ok, i didn't just realized it, i always knew it, but I would never admit it)... i'm scared shit less of commitment... i guess it scares me cause he brought it up, and it wasn't me that was asking about it... it does scare the living day lights out of me and now that i'm sorta committed to someone, it scares me... and you can bet that i shared that with him... not the part about being afraid of commitment, but rather about how everything scared me a little... and he replied saying 'but why, there's no need to be scared'.... and that calmed my nerves... but still...

imagine how surprised my best friends were when they heard the news... little Miss DD is committed to someone... they couldn't believe their ears and trust me, i don't blame them....

aside from all the hoopla about guys and this whole commitment things... i'm looking at the possibility of moving out of the flat that i'm currently renting... truth me told, i want to move a little closer to central London, I want to be closer to work (or at least live where its a better commute) and finally i need my own space... i have 2 flat mates, T & C... C is hella cool, quite and down to earth, really easy to get along with... no issues... T on the other hand is well... i just can't deal with it, the thing is we get along, but she irritates me and i can't take it anymore... i've tried to overlook it, but its difficult and i'm slowly losing my mind... you can tell that T was the only girl in her family, cause she's not use to sharing or being considerate of others, but then that doesn't make sense either cause she clearly shared accommodations with others when she was in undergrad, so i just don't understand... i don't like to nag and that's why i don't mention most of the things, but i can't be anyone's mother and be cleaning after people and so on... its not my style and something i am simply NOT use to ( i am the last born you know)... anyways, currently i live in Northeast London, and I'm looking to move to Northwest London... better locations and closer to the things that i need... and apparently i'm paying too much for the room that i am renting... i thought it was a little high, but not too bad, but it was cool cause i had a big enough walk-in closet (which is very important to me) and i was suppose to have my own bathroom attached just to my room.... well, i got the closet, but bathroom yet, the room is there, but they haven't out the bathroom yet , and no there's no deduction of my monthly rent... and the more i thought about it, th more I realized that i was being ripped off a little... they least they could do is take some of the monthly rent until the bathroom is built... anyways, all that aside, i think i'd be happier living by myself, especially since i've never really lived by myself, i think this would be a good opportunity since i'm getting to know my way around and adjusting to life without my family at a stone's throw... anyways, the goals is to start looking and move out by the end of the year... i just have to figure out a way to get out of my lease....

anyways, i should get back to doing my homework, cause that's what i was doing before i decided i need to update the blog world...

the first days of work...

2007-10-16T13:45:00.000-07:00

so today was my second day of work... the work environment is okay, gonna take a little getting use to thought... its an open floor plan where i can see all my supervisors, managrs and co-workers... which means that they can see me as well :-/.... i guess it'll help to keep me focused on my work and all... but i do miss being in a cube and having a little privacy, but i must admit the open floor plan forces you to be more socialable and get to know your surrounding co-workers (whether you want to or NOT)... so far just been doing alot of reading of manuels and documents... not very fun, but necessary i guess...

anyways, i guess as the weeks go on, I'll begin to explore the work office and building... meet new people not on my floor... hopefully find some good eye candy :-)... and just interact with others within the company... the dress code for work is 'smart'... which is such an english term.... usually the american way to describe it would be work business casual... anyways, i do like that the dress code is business casual... my past jobs have been more casual dress... jeans and etc, even though my past jobs were in the corporate world, it was just a relaxed worked environment.. anyways, this business casual dress code will allow me to dress up more frequently... also give me more reason to go shopping :-)...

anyways on to other things..... tomorrow I'm going to lunch with the ex, L ... we work for the same company, but not in the same building... so he's treating me to lunch tomorrow... we're meeting for lunch and he better be treating me to lunch!!!

hmmm, so let me ask a general question... what's the deal with people you meet thru an online community such as Hi5 or Facebook... I guess my main question is, would you take the person serious or does it depends on the person and situation... i'll elaborate more on this topic soon.... and of course i do have a reason for asking ;-)...

i quite tired and will be back to write some more meaningful post in the next couple of days... but for now i'm off to bed...

off to work tomorrow...

2007-10-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

tomorrow is my first day of work in the UK... i'm all prepared... i have my high waisted skirt, with my white and black pin striped shirt from Hawes & Curtis... my black heels... my carrying bag... to say i'm excited is an understatement... can't wait to see how things work out tomorrow... let's hope there's some good eye candy in the office...

anyways, what a night last night (saturday) was... lets just say that the 'date' i went on didn't go so well.... but i'll devulge of that information on my next blog entry... til then... ta ta...

~DD

lazy Saturday days....

2007-10-13T04:49:00.000-07:00

So a nice lazy Saturday day… isn’t this nice… it would be except that I miss my little nephew waking me up at 8 something in the morning, and even though its quite obvious that I’m asleep, but he proceeds to have a conversation with me and then proceeds to jumping on my bed… and well it hard not having a list of things to do and places to go. So I guess its cause I haven’t started work yet and schools and just getting started so my schedule isn’t as packed as it usually is…

Today my day consists of hanging out all day doing nothing…. Running to the shopping center to pick up some items… and then going on a date… a date that I don’t really wanna go on… well its not that I don’t want to go, but its that the guy wants to be more than friends, and well I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not just that interested… for me, I usually know right away whether or not I like a guy, its not a process of getting to know him or not, its usually its immediate or not… that’s not to say that in the past that I haven’t grown to like some guys in the past, but it was usually over a long period of time, such a years and not necessarily weeks… and well since I’m only in London for a year and a half, well lets be honest its probably not gonna happen…

I miss my family and friends… I miss my old life style and everything in the states… sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision to move to London… why give up the good job, great friends, free living and everything else I had in the states, to basically come here to start all over… but then again the experience so far has been good… I’ve learned so much about myself and how I can adjust and adapt to things… life is quite different, but its different good…

I’m not gonna turn this blog into a miss the states and my old life blog, but more of a blog about my adventures in London… and my adjustment to the culture…

Back In Action... in London...

2007-10-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

Where do I start…. So its been forever since I’ve written in my blog…. Due to a variety of reasons… including no time, limited access to the internet, moving to London, school, work, getting settled in and on and on…

So anyways, on to more important things… I made the move to Londo.n… moved here the first week of September… got a full time job offer the second week of September… so I started to get settled in and adjust into life in London…

London is good so far… so many things to say and I don’t know where to start…

Okay, so I knew that the move would be drastic and would take a little while to get use to things here… its not the big differences, but rather the smaller things that get to you… the small things like the lingo/slang, the fact that they don’t have biscuits at KFC (yeah I know, its crazy), they call fries ‘chips’, there are no preserves in the food (so everything goes bad within a few days), its crazy hard to get a bank account, walking around in 4 inch heels are a negative and well, the people are rude, and well the list goes on and on and on…. But while complain :-)…. There’s so many good things about London, the accents are amazing, everyone is so amazed by my ‘American’ accent (that they are extra nice!!!), the fashion is unbelievable, the shops are amazing, people can be very nice and accommodating, the public transport is great, they show a lot of American shows and so on and so on….

My adventures in London have been many since I landed here about 6 weeks ago… its been non-stop relaxing and chilling for the first 5 weeks… I finally started school this week and I start next week… so I guess I’ll be getting settled into a routine soon and won’t be sleeping in and going out all the time anymore… oh well, it was good while it lasted, but to be honest, I’m ready to get back to working after a 6/7 week vacation….

School so far is good… can’t really complain yet… the classes are good and engaging most of the time… I haven’t started work yet, but I guess its worth mentioning that my ex, L (click here to read more about him or here) works there as well… no I’m not a stalker (LOL)… he only started working there about a week or 2 before I got the offer, it was just mere coincidence that we both got job offers from the same company… and as much as I like being around him, I’m glad that we’re not working in the department…

Anyways, I’ve met an interesting assortment of guys here so far…. I don’t know where to even begin with the guys… but so far they’ve made my stay in London interesting and engaging, as an understatement….

Anyways, I’ll be doing a much better job of keeping my blog updated…

Hiatus....

2007-08-21T16:49:00.000-07:00

wow... i can't believe its been almost a month since i last posted... i have not desserted my blog... just taking an hiatus for a little bit... time has been flying by... 2 weeks from today, I'll b getting on the plan and heading to London... I'm nervous, excited, scared and even more excited....

I can't believe that the time is almost here for me to pack up all my things and move abroad to LONDON...

I promise that i will gt back into blogging once i'm not so busy... and even if i'm busy i'll find time to blog... i plan on sharing all my advantures of moving across the world with ya'll...

gotta run.... being the procastinator that i am, i'm just purchasing my ticket tonite... yeah i know... but everything is falling into place and once i buy my ticke tonight, it'll be more real... OMG...

aiight, i'll be back soon to update, fill in and so forth.... hope u all are doing well... i'll be back soon!!!

~DD

I forgot...

2007-07-27T07:32:00.000-07:00

I literally forgot about my blog in the mist of trying to find a flat, flat mate, a part time job, making decisions and just with getting my life straightened out here in the states before the big move...

I still can't believe that it’s the end of July, and in a few short weeks... I’ll be moving to London...
When I first started contemplating the idea of moving, it was just that an that, an idea… but now that it’s almost reality, I’m excited, nervous, sad, hopefully, encouraged and so much more…

Suddenly its not as important to go out to parties and I’m cooling just hanging with the fam… man, I know I have a very close family, but I just didn’t think I’d get this sad about moving away for a year… as excited as I am about the move, I’m more excited about my family and friends coming to visit… everyone has already started making plans to come and visit in London… While I believe that London is going to be a phenomenal experience, I can’t help but feeling a little sad about being away from my family… this will be the furthest I’ve ever been away from my family for an extended amount of time… and being the baby of the family I enjoy my place in the family and its gonna be hard not to be around my siblings… we hand out every weekend… so that’ll be a change that’ll be hard to get use to…. I think I should buy some stock in phone cards as much as I know my family and I will be using them J….

I’m a little stressed though… I haven’t quite decided what I’m gonna be doing in London… crazy, yeah I know… I’ve been accepted to 4 schools: Manchester U, Imperial College, City U and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (University of London)… and I’ve been accepted in an Internship program that comes with a graduate certificate from Cambridge… Options are great to have, but I’m stressed as to which to do… I’m going to pray on it and just take it from there… either way though, I need to make a decision ASAP… so I’m going to take the weekend to pray and think through all the options available to me and take it from there….

Here’s my update so far… I’ve found a house mate and a house to live… she’s a young Nigerian girl who’s starting med school this fall… and from the interactions we’ve had, she seems pretty cool… someone that I’ll get along with… so I’m very excited about that…

Hope you are all doing well.... I’ll update again soon :-)….

One year Anniversary... NEED FLAT TO RENT!!!

2007-07-17T13:56:00.000-07:00

So... i first published my first blog a year ago today.... wow, it's been a whole year already... time sure does fly... i'm honestly not sure where the time went!!! anyways.. happy one year anniversary to me :-)...

Hmmm... i'm moving to London... I'm looking for a flatmate or house mate... preferrably someone nigerian, a female, and someone that's sane :-) ... if u know of anyone looking for a flat mate to move in around mid-august/early september, please let know ASAP...

I'll be back very soon to reflect about my year of blogging and to catch everyone up on my move to London... only 4 and a half more weeks!!!

~DD

randomness...

2007-07-05T07:24:00.000-07:00

The 4th was cool… did some much needed relaxing… small family cookout with the usual people, it was cool… weird that the holiday was in the middle of week… but I’m not complaining about a day off, I’ll take whatever I can get!!!

London here I come… so I’m still awaiting word about my internship program in London… I’ve been accepted into the program, but now I’m doing interviews with companies… so things are definite until I get a job offer from a company in UK… but of course, me being me, I had a back up plan!!! I found out on Tuesday evening that I got accepted into a Masters Program at the University of London… excited… I’ve also been accepted to City University and Manchester University… I ended up turning down the offer Manchester cause they made me an offer really early in March and I have to give them a decision by May, before I heard back from any other programs I had applied to. I’m still waiting to hear back from Imperial… but most likely if the internship doesn’t work out, I’ll be going to the University of London…. I am determined to move to the UK…

Hmmm… so RFM and I hung out Tuesday evening… after we had our discussion and we decided to be just friends… well apparently he forget within the short 24hr period about the discussion, but I gently reminded him… its an interesting situation and we’re working thru it… but I have to admit that for some reason I am more attracted to him now that we’re just friends, cause he’s more of himself and I’m more me… but I plan on just keeping it friends… i'm good at keep things platonic with exs, not perfect, but i handle it well...

Just Friends...

2007-07-03T06:36:00.000-07:00

So we (RFM and I) finally talked, and much to my amazement it went ok… it went from ok, to bad, to funny, to cool… no need to get into the nitty gritty details… but we discussed things and I said I think we’d be better off as friends… of course we talked about it and he asked where did it come from and I tried to answer his questions as best as possible… and I didn’t have all the answers and I didn’t want to go nit picking about everything that bother me, but I did get a couple of the major things that bothered me off my chest though, which I think he may have needed to hear… but I did it in the most non criticizing, constructive manner that I could… and he took it quite well… and then he started opening up, which felt like miracle to me… we talked about things, said we would be friends (I’m friend’s with most guys that I have ever talked to or dated)… so I told him, he should feel free to be open to me and to having a friendship… that I’ll be there for him cause I do care about him and I do think he’s a great guy… so after all that was said, it was like we were friends immediately… all the posing, all the hesitation was gone, and our conversations flowed so much better and it just felt right again… its weird, I instantly felt comfortable with him on the phone as soon as I put him in the friend’s category… I was able to just be me… goofy, outgoing and normal without hesitation, and it felt great… and it was clear that he let his guard down as well and he was just so laid back and easy going (and for a few minutes there I remembered exactly why I was attracted to him in the first place)… so out of no where he asks if I wanted to hang out tomorrow evening… and well it works for my schedule, so why not… so we’re gonna hang out tonight… and don’t go getting any ideas… we’re just friends… and I’m cool with that for now….

Luving 'The A'

2007-07-02T06:34:00.000-07:00

Ok… so I’ve underestimated Atlanta… can I say that Atlanta is definitely off the hook… it took forever for me to get out of BWI airport on Thursday evening… but I eventually got to Atl a little before midnight… went to pick up my rental car, got a free upgrade to a mustang and I must admit I was looking good in that white mustang… made it to my lines sister’s place around 1am… it was good seeing her and spending quality time with her… I miss her and didn’t spend nearly as much time with her, but it was great seeing her… met up with my home girl, AG on Friday, she was the reason I went to ATL in the first place… she picked me up Friday afternoon and the party was just getting started… we spend Friday grocery shopping for this huge cookout she was having on Saturday… then off to happy hour with some friends from college… then off to the clubs… had a great time Friday… and Saturday, woke up early to start preparing… we were expecting bout 200 plus people for the cookout, so there was a lot of work to be done… while AG was off getting her hair done and running errands, she left me to do the dirty work… I was left to seasoning all the food, and cooking and making sure everything would be ready… it was cool though, cause well I enjoy cooking and AG’s is one of my good friends, so I knew I’d be there to help make sure everything went well… anyways, abundant people, food and drinks is an understatement… the pool party was great, the turnout was unbelievable and well, lets just say the drinks were flowing… or rather overflowing… it was amazing to see so many of friends, some whom I haven’t seen since I left college in 04, some since the last homecoming…. Anyways, after a long day and an even longer nite of partying, we were all up pretty early on Sunday morning… and I was sad I was packing… a bunch of people crashed at AG’s place… it was like 7 on us there just chillin the next morning… anyways, I thought about changing my flight so I could extend this much needed vacation, but it turned out I couldn’t so I quickly packed up my bags and head for the airport around noon… made it home later in the evening… I was knocked out on the flight back to Bmore, cause as I said; I got little sleep over the weekend... back home and back to reality… hmmm… but I totally understand why my girl, AG loves Atlanta… it was cool

anyways, I was ready to deal with the whole situation with RFM… but when I called he didn’t pick up… and he finally called me like some fours hours later around midnight talking about ‘what are you up to’…. Really, at midnight on a Sunday night, what the hell do u think I’m doing… I was half sleep… but I managed to say that I wanted to finished the convo, and well he managed to put it off again, saying oh, he’s driving can we do it some other time… and I said sure, how does tomorrow sound… and he got all stressed and ask was I coming over… hmmm, in my mind I was thinking the phone would do just fine (cause I was not planning to go to his place)… but I told him I’d call him from work and let him know, that it depended on how much catching up I had to do from leaving work early last week… if you know me, you know that work is NOT my first priority, the moment that excuse came off my lips, I realized that I was done cause I never use work as an excuse unless I’m REALLY trying to get out of something… anyways, I’ll call him later and see if we can meet half way or if he wants to come to Baltimore, I’m not trying to drive the 30 minutes to get to his place…

On a completely different note, I talked to my ex and very good friend, L… L lives in London (no don’t go getting any ideas)… it was cool catching up with him; we talk fairly often actually… When I get to London I will definitely be his side kick for a minute til I get use to things on my own… but he already knows that….

Anyways, I’ll blog about some of the things I saw and experienced in Atlanta thru out this week…

ATL...

2007-06-28T05:09:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Atlanta... (or the A or ALT as some may call it :-) )... anyways, i've worried myself enough about things with RFM... and i've come to a point of acceptance... i'm done with the situation... me and RFM have not finished our conversation and to be honest i don't if we ever will... i called him briefly last nite to say hello and see how he was doing... we spoke for a couple of minutes... i asked did he want to finish the conversation from Sunday and he said can we do it later... and i said of course that's fine (only because i know he had a long day at work)... but in the last 24 to 48 hours i'd made up my mind... i'm done, i can't do it anymore... so that's that... at this point, i'm not sure if its even necessary to finish the conversation, i feel like i've reached out to him yestersday and its his turn to do the same... but as i said, I'm done... (would it be okay if i just send him a text or email, saying no need to finish the convo, lets just go out seperate way??? i mean why not use technology in my advantage)
(btw, the name RFM stood for Right For Me... well because i thought he was right for me at one point, but sadly i was mistaken... in all the excitement of a new love, it is easy to get carried away...)

so anyways... off to Atlanta tonight... i'm excited!!! its my first weekend that i'll spend in Atl... I've been there once before, that was earlier this year but it was for work, it was in the winter time and it was in the middle of the work week... i really excited because i get to spend time with my line sister as well as spend time with a bunch of my friends that live in Atlanta and my girl is throwing a pool party on Saturday and I definitely plan on enjoying myself... besides i need an extended weekend and a mini vacation from the drama in my life and all the stress that i've been putting myself thru...

have a great weekend... because i know i will... stay blessed!!!

The Talk...

2007-06-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

I’m not crazy… I promise you all that… i'm just confused about what i want, that's all...

Anyways, we finally had our talk on Sunday evening… I wanted to have it earlier, but we we’re celebrating his birthday on Friday night and bunch of his friends were coming out of town and I didn’t want to ruin that for him… so anyways, after a long weekend we finally got a chance to talk last night as I was cooking dinner for us… I sat him down and I asked him all the questions that were going thru my head about what I saw in the trash in his bathroom, that suspicious phone calls and so on… and then I said that maybe it would be best if we were just friends… and that’s when things got interesting… he didn’t understand why or where it was coming from… we talked and talked… and well here it goes… he said that he really didn’t understand why I wanted to be just friends or rather associates, that he’s being honest with me, that he’s not talking or seeing anyone else… that he’s been honest and open with me from the beginning and that why would he start lying to me now… he went on about what did he do and how can we fix it and so on…. And to tell you the truth, that broke my heart to hear him asking those questions… it hurts me just thinking about it again… and now I’m confused… he answered every question that I had for him and they were reasonable answers… and I told him I wanted to believe him, but it was hard to… so we stopped talking… we ate dinner… and then we started talking again… he said he understood where I was coming from, but just didn’t know what to say or think…and I felt like we were going in circles, cause at that point I didn’t know what I wanted either… and well I still don’t… and so we left it at I should think about where I want to go with things and he should go and think about what he wanted…

And well, what am I thinking…. I’m thinking I really truly care about this RFM, and that he’s a great guy… and even if he is telling me the truth about everything (which I think he is), I’m thinking he just may not be the right great guy for me… maybe I just need some time to think things thru and figure things out in my head… and then I’m thinking maybe I’m just being typical me and ending what could be a really good thing… or am I making the right decision because I know that as great as RFM is, there are some things that I can’t necessarily deal with… and that maybe we’d both be happier with other people that we would be more compatible with… and so I just don’t know…

That chick... you know which one i'm talking about...

2007-06-21T07:21:00.000-07:00

That chick…

First let me say, because of this posting you’re about to read, I will most likely never reveal my identity and always keep my blog anonymous… this posting is looooong, but definitely worth it for the gist… anyways, on to the story…

We all know her… some of us have even been her, myself in the past included… but at my age, with my experiences, and with all that I have to offer, I refuse to be that chick…. Now, who’s that chick I’m talking about…. She’s the one that has some doubts about her man, has a sneaky suspicion that he’s cheating on her or that he’s up to no good, she’s the one that ignores all the little signs in hopes of not connecting the dots to reveal that her man ain’t no good… thats who that chick is (please note that there are many, many levels and variations of being that chick, this is just my description of it at the shallowest level)…

I know this seems to be coming out of left field… but what can you really do when life throws u a curve ball… lemme explain… went to go see my ‘boo’, RFM last night… haven’t really chilled at his place in about a week and a half or so, maybe 2 weeks, just cause life’s been busy for both of us and so on… before I go on, I know my own faults as a person, and I will point them out to others as to alleviate them having to discover it later… but one of my things is that I over analyze, I watch and observe people very closely… I do it so naturally that its very difficult for others to realize that I am watching and analyzing their every move, word, gesture and so on… and yes I’ve mentioned it to RFM several times that I’m very observant… anyways, as we chilled at his place after we finished eating dinner… I was watching TV and he was by the counter doing something on his laptop when I heard him talking on the phone (his phone is always on vibrate, so I didn’t hear it ring), but the minute I heard his voice, my ears perked up… first I could hear that it was a female on the other end of the phone and then he spoke in a lower, slightly deeper voice (that was the first alarm), then when he said hello he didn’t say the person’s name like “Hello So and so” he just said hello, now normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but we’re ALL creatures of habit and he normally says hello with the person’s name at the end, so why the change (alarm number 2 went off in my head) and then he straight up lied to the female on the phone and said “I’m still at work, I’ll call u later” and he hung up… first thing that came to mind, why lie? But more importantly why all the different behavior… I didn’t say anything about it, I let it go…

As the nite went on, things got even more interesting… we were upstairs chilling in his room, and well u know how that goes… but then out of no where, he says I don’t have any condoms… in my mind I was like What?? cause I distinctly remember there being some left over in the dress my his bed, that’s my side of the bed and its where I put my stuff and I definitely remember there were some left (alarm in my head… where’d the condoms go???) and then he said he has some in his care (alarm in my head… why do u have them in your car? Then he gave me this BS story that since he’s younger (much younger) brothers were around for the week that he didn’t want to leave them laying around so he put them in his car (which is what he used to do to prevent his mother from finding them… ok, sure)… so I left it alone, it sounded believable enough…

So he went out to the car to go get them and then I went to the bathroom and was about to walk out the bathroom, but I needed a trash can (but then I remember he doesn’t have one in his bathroom, which I thought was so annoying)… anyways, that’s when I noticed that he had a bag on the back of the door that he was using as the trash bag, well it was two bags, so I looked in to make sure I threw my trash in the right bag because both looked almost empty, and low and behold… what do I find… two empty condom wraps… mind you, this trash bag was not there when I came to visit a week and a half ago and it was fairly empty… all kinds of thought ran thru my head… (now, lets be real, if you were really trying to hide the condoms from your younger brothers, why would u have empty wrappers in the trash that everyone uses…) so when he came back I asked him you know what’s up, is he sleeping with other people… and with the straightest face he replied no and where did that question come from… I told him it just came to my mind cause there were some left last time I was around and also when he said he put the condoms in the car, NO I never told him I saw the empty condom wrappers in the bathroom trash, couldn’t bring myself to say it and really put him on the spot… he went on saying he didn’t have a reason to lie to me about it and started rambling and that was a little out of character for him, which I of course noticed… then we talked about it and then I left the topic alone… we kissed and made up and I left a little bit later…. But I did realize that later on in the evening (before I left) he went to the bathroom to throw something away and spend an abnormal amount of time in the bathroom, I think he saw the condom wrappers in the trash as well and he may think I saw them, cause once he came out of the bathroom he wasn’t himself and it was obvious… but he didn’t say anything about it and well, neither did i… me I acted as though everything was normal and was as sweet as I could be… trust me, I have my reasons though…

Now… a couple of my previous posts about RFM were full of me doubting things and thinking about ending it and while I never really explained where those feeling came from, I will now (I mean, I’ve already put everything else out there on the table right)…

I had a dream about RFM and how he went on a date with a girl. In this dream there were some specific details, such as he ordered shrimp and other stuff… I mentioned it to RFM jokingly of course just to gauge his reaction… he laughed it off and gave me an explanation that had waaayyyyy too much detail about him staying at home to watch the NBA finals alone and then he was like I don’t really like/eat shrimp … really cause on our first real date, he ordered shrimp (caught in a lie?)… and normally this wouldn’t be a big deal… but with two distinct relationships where I was being cheated on, I usually had a dream that foretold the future… like I would have the dream and then everything would fall out with the next week or two… its actually a little scarey… its like I don’t trust my own instincts and my inner being feels it necessary to show it to me in a dream… I don’t dream often, but when I do dream, especially about someone I am dating, what happens in the dream usually always happens… so for me to see him on a date with another female in my dream was a Hugh red flag for me… and of course I brushed it off as me being paranoid, but in reality I knew I wasn’t being paranoid, I’ve had two previous experiences to rely on, y doubt myself now…
RFM and I were at a party that I was promoting/working at, and he was chatting up this girl, and at one point I thought I saw him get her number cause he was playing in his phone as he walked away from her… I really did convince myself that he was just probably just looking at the time or something…
Another example, a bunch of us went to brunch one day, it was about 8 of us, and RFM and I didn’t seat next to each other (no big deal, it was actually my own doing that that happened), anyways, he spent half the lunch texting somebody and I mean serious texting, like every few minutes over a 2 hour brunch, and it wasn’t me he was texting..
I’ve had a gut feeling that things weren't as they seemed… suspicions that he was talking or seeing another girl, but I thought that maybe it was just my imagination and that I was being to critical...
He makes me feel insecure about things between us, now I’d never admit this to him, but he definitely doesn’t make me feel secure about things between us, some of these feelings may be from that whole fight we had, but not all of them… now you must understand this insecurity may not sound like a big deal but it is, especially since its so hard for me to feel insecure about things such as a relationship…
He’s made me feel so insecure some times that I turn into the jealous girlfriend, which I absolutely hate with a passion… I can’t be with someone who brings out the worst in me…. (note: I know I can be a jealous person, but I’m usually not because I’m hardly put in that position where I have to question everything about him, me and the relationship… its just to much stress and anxiety)
More and more I realize that we don’t spend as much time together…

Its not that I didn’t see all of these things before, but I never sat down and really thought about it… I didn’t really take the time out to analyze where my insecurities about our relationship was coming from and once I did that last night after I left his place, it was crystal clear… am I crazy, maybe… but this situation is driving me crazy… and i have to put a stop to it!!!

And can I be completely honest… RFM is a great guy, but he may not be the great guy for me… you see on some subconscious level I know that RFM is probably not for me, but he had everything that’s on my imaginary checklist for a guy, of course there were some minor things, but I was willing to work on them with him and just settle… I know, I shouldn’t settle… but as I said he had everything on that imaginary checklist that I look for in a guy…. I don’t know how things are going to turn out, but my friend gave me some great advice last night, she said it may be time to throw away that checklist girl… and she may very well be right… should I settle with him, even though I know there are some things lacking from the relationship simply because he has everything on this damn checklist in my mind, well I was willing to do that… don’t get me wrong, I do like him and I am attracted to him… but my feelings for him do not even being to compare to the two people I’ve ever been in love with… and well I thought I could make it grow, but maybe not… for example, the first guy I truly fell in love with we dated for a while, and even 8, 9 months into the relationship I still got butterflies when I saw him or when he called me, I still felt like we were on cloud nine, and most people know the honeymoon phrase is usually over some time between 3 to 6 months… anyways, as things continue to unfold in the next couple of days, we’ll all have to wait and see how things play out… but I do plan on telling him this weekend that I want to call it quits cause I can’t be that chick, but I’ll wait til after his birthday things on Friday, don’t want to ruin his 25th birthday… so hopefully Saturday or Sunday I can get some face time with him and just talk things thru… and better believe that I will tell him all the things that I mentioned about… I really want to hear his explanation about the empty wrappers in the trash bad…anyways, only time will tell, but I know I can’t continue to go with my eyes closed, I refuse to be that chick…

what r your thoughts on this whole situation....

smooth sailing...

2007-06-19T08:08:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on hiatus for a bit… and now I’m back… let’s see where do I start…

Mr. RFM and I… are…. still together… we’re still working on things and making it work… I have to be honest, for a little bit there I thought that it was about to come to a screeching halt… that things would not be able to be fixed… anyways, after a week of not really talking or communicating, we sat down and had face to face conversation about things… and well it went better then I expected… we have different communication styles… when I have a problem I want to fix it immediately (at least most of the time)…. Where as he wants to take a step back, re-evaluate things, let things calm down and then try to move on (without really discussion)… and I had to let him know that that drives me crazy and that we need to find a compromise to deal with issues… so we talked things out, we both said what we had to say and we kissed and made up… still wasn’t sure if things were back to normal, but as we spent the next couple of days together, things seem to fall right back into place…. And now I feel like we’re actually closer than before… I feel like I can open up more to him then before… which is definitely a good thing…. Things are good… we’re smooth sailing…

Ok… so I know that you’ll have heard of the ‘representative’ in the early stages of the relationship… well I think we’re definitely past that now and we’re comfortable with one another….

At first I didn’t use to think that the whole representative thing exists, you know how people put up an ‘act’ and are on best behavior when you first meet… but I guess it true… but usually the representative is not too far from what the person is really like… I’ve come to the realization that RFM doesn’t know all the sides of me yet… some more pleasant than others… he saw one of them during the argument we had a few weeks ago, but he hasn’t really seen my party side… not to say that I party like that :-)…. But I do like to have a good time… and well he’s gonna get to see that side of me this weekend… he’s turning 25 on Saturday and we’re going to celebrate at Love (Love the Club formerly known as Dream)… anyways, we got a table there and some of my girls are coming thru and a couple of his boys are coming into town to help celebrate… and its gonna be a lot going on that nite… excited cause I haven’t really been out to a club in a minute, just been going to lounges and house parties and the sort… but I’m looking forward to Love, haven’t been there since January of this year, and it use to be my old stomping grounds back in the day…

On to a totally different topic… I’m still scheduled to move to London at the end of the summer for an internship / graduate degree program… I’m currently doing interviews with different companies in hopes that I’ll get an offer… once I get a job offer and get all of that sorted out, things will be more official… but I’m scheduled to leave in 8 ½ weeks… man, that blows my mind… its only 2 months away…. EXCITED!!!

some quotes to think on....

There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity. ~General Douglas MacArthur

Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action. ~Napoleon Hill

If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it. ~Brendan Francis

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possiblity. ~Oprah Winfrey

Our first big fight...

2007-06-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

So the RFM and I are having (you I said having and not had as in past tense) our first real fight… you know that fight that decides if we’re gonna try to stick it thru and go our separate ways… that fight where u may learn some unpleasant thing about your significant other… you know exactly what I’m talking about don’t you… well, I’m not going to go thru all the details of our first fight… but let’s just say its been going on for about 6 days now… six long, hard, tortuous days (maybe I’m being a bit dramatic…) but it has been a long six days… and well, to tell you the truth I feel that the fight started with something RFM did, and he believes that I escalated the whole situation and blew it out of proportion… and he didn’t like the way I reacted… what’s funny, well not really funny but more hypocritical, is that he reaction to be ‘blowing things out of proportion’ has been blown out of proportion… how can u be mad/irritated/annoyed with me because u feel that I overacted to something, only for your own reaction to be overacted as well… isn’t that a little backwards… so anyways, that’s what’s been keeping me busy and away from blogging.. I hope to get this situation resolved soon and very soon, but only time will tell… anyways, I’m off to try and get things resolved (and for once I actually do want things to be resolved, instead of me just leaving the situation alone and stop talking to the guy…)… there are only 2 things that i see possible that can happen... either we learn from this situation and continue to grow together from it or we go our seperate ways and just be friends/associates... I’ll be back… and hopefully things will work out the way that I hope they will...

P.S. yes, I know my last post about me tripping when things start to get a little serious, but I honestly don’t think its me this time… and I’m more than willing to work things out cause I truly think this could work out…

confessions of a commitment-phobic

2007-05-31T08:09:00.000-07:00

Have you ever met a female that has relationship issues… I’m sure you have, but if you haven’t let me introduce you to myself… I’m Miss DD… won’t keep a guy for too long because she’s afraid that she’ll get hurt again like she did in the past… quick to find a fault or reason as to why things can’t or won’t work between her and the guy and when she finally finds a great guy that she’s comfortable, she’s ready to break it off because she’s afraid she’s gonna hurt him… where’s Dr. Phil when I need some advice… well since he’s not around to advice, I’m gonna have to dissect this on my own… but boy oh boy, where do I start…

Scared, nervous, and worried are a few ways to descript by attitudes towards relationships… let me give you a quick run down… mentally; I have a time line… I don’t know why, but I need to break away from it… a guy gets an initial 2 minutes for me to see if he peaks my interests (its usually obvious in the first 10 seconds)… if so, and things progress, then he gets an additional two week trial period for me to get to know them and see if we click… and after that I try to go with the flow… but somewhere around the 2 month mark, I start tripping… yes I’m admitting it, I START TRIPPING…. It could be almost anything, I’ll find a reason… why you may ask… here’s how I’ve always thought of it… once two people have been dating for about 3 months or so, they start to get out of the honeymoon phase and start developing a more serious relationship… they’re not floating on cloud nine anymore, but they start dealing with everything, all the small flaws and issues… you can’t just stop calling cause at this point you have to deal with it or ends things cause you’re in a semi-serious relationship… am I afraid of commitment… maybe just a little… maybe I just enjoy the honeymoon period of a new relationship so much that I just don’t want it to end and maybe that’s y I go from one relationship to the other, always give a legitimate excuse or reasons as to why it can’t work between me and him (whomever the guy may be)… or is it that I go into these relationships knowing that it wouldn’t work, but still wanted to enjoy the honeymoon period before it got too serious… I just don’t know…

How can I hope to ever have a successful and lasting relationship if I can’t seem to get out of this loop that I’ve gotten myself into…
But now that I’ve found someone, RFM, (RFM is the consultant, just changed his name) that it could truly work with, I’m scared shitless… I don’t want to hurt him… I know I’ve hurt some people in the past, but by no means was it intentional… but still it happened… and I don’t want to do that to him… RFM and I are good together, we compliment each other… he’s more reserved, while I’m more outgoing… he’s laidback and well, I’m not as laidback… and so much more…
And incase it hasn’t clicked, me and RFM have been talking for a while now and we’re coming up on 2 months, and I’m doing everything in my power to stay positive, go with the flow and pray that things work out the way they’re suppose to…

I’m sorry I’m just rambling… confused and rambling…

Some Quotes that i felt were appropriate for this post:

"Half of our mistakes in life arise from thinking when we ought to feel and feeling when we ought to think." ~Anon

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." ~Rainer Maria Rilke

"The quality of love and the duration of a relationship are in direct proportion to the depth of the commitment by both people to making the relationship successful. Commit yourself wholeheartedly and unconditionally to the most important people in your life." ~Brian Tracy

"Where once I gave all of me, fearless of the risks and confident of the reciprocity, I now hold a little back… should in case I might need that untouched kernel of self again… someday, to begin to rebuild myself…" ~anon

"If you want to experience love, you have to take the risk. Love's always worth the risk. And the trouble is if you don't risk anything, you risk even more" ~Anon

"There are two things to aim for in life: first to get when you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second." ~Logan Pearsall Smith

"Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk" ~The Dalai Lama

"The best way to love is to love like you have never been hurt" ~Anonymous

"Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness." ~Bertrand Russell

the long weekend...

2007-05-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

Memorial day weekend was good... I needed the 3 days weekend… drove down to NC for the first half of the weekend for a friend’s wedding… me and the bride graduated together in 2004… even though I was there I still can’t believe she’s married… she’s not the first of my friends from college to get married… but it makes me take a step back and re-evaluate things in my life… marriage is something that I aspire for, its something that most people aspire for, but sometimes it seems to out of reach… I thinks she’s happy with her fiancé… they met after college and have been dating for a while… and as long as she’s happy and he treats her well, then I wish them all of the best… the other thing about weddings is that they are mini-reunions for you and your friends… Although it wasn’t too many familiar faces, the ones that were there were good to see… the wedding was quite small actually, but it was so beautiful… it was held outside in a park in a gazebo and then reception was held at a nearby hotel… it was very classily, which I’m not surprised about cause she’s definitely a classily chick…

The consultant (and he needs another names, cause so much more than just a consultant… so from now on I’ll be referring to him as RFM, which I will explain one day, but for now that’s what I’ll call him) came back home (to MD) yesterday… he’s been away on travel for work for the last two weeks… and I just couldn’t wait to see him…. Needless to say, I missed him… we spent most of the day together, doing absolutely nothing and it was wonderful… we ate lunch and just relaxed for most of the day… a couple of people stopped by to see him, which was cool (especially since he asked me if it was ok with me before they came over)… he’s comfortable with having me and his friends interacting, which I like… and yesterday as we were chilling at his place, doing nothing really, I realized how much I really missed having him around, and how much I’m gonna miss having him around when I move to London…

“The quality of love and the duration of a relationship are in direct proportion to the depth of the commitment by both people to making the relationship successful. Commit yourself wholeheartedly and unconditionally to the most important people in your life.”~Brian Tracy

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” ~Morrie Schwartz

the random thoughts in my head...

2007-05-18T06:33:00.000-07:00

Where do I begin… many things are running thru my mind at the moment and not quite sure where do I begin so that I don’t lose you in the mist of the craziness in my head…

Tall, dark and handsome… but much more… sincere, considerate, attentive and so much more…. Passionate yet quiet, amazing yet humble, loving yet not overbearing… these are the thoughts that come to mind about him… him, the consultant… although I try not to look to far ahead, but sometimes I just cannot help it… with him I see that a future is possible… we talk in future tense, but I try to be careful not to get my hopes to high, but I want to… I want to believe that he’s the one… my heart says yes, but my mind says no… my mind reminds me of how being too hopefully has hurt me in the past, while my heart only considers the feeling that I have for him and not the mistakes of the past… the more I realize that I’ll be leaving for London in a few months, the more I wonder as to what’s really going to happen with me and him… he comforts me and says that its only a year and we’ll both visit and so on… but in reality I don’t want to get my hopes up to high, but I truly hope that it works out….

I’m scared, nervous, and anxious… in less that 3 months I’ll be packing my stuff up and heading to London… every now and then it hits me hard, that I’ll be away from my family, friend and my comfort zone… they say change encourages grow and I hope they’re right… I know I’ll be forced to learn new ways and adapt to a new culture which I think will be a great experience… I just hope that it turns about to be the opportunity and experience that I want and need… Despite all the worries, I’m also excited, eager and looking forward to moving to London… I can’t wait to be immersed into the culture….

I got my promotion at work yesterday… a promotion that was more than six months over due… but I got… as the saying goes its better late than never… so I’ll take my promotion and be satisfied for now… because I know that my time with this company is limited…

And well the weekend is here… it took long enough to get here… but I’m grateful its here… its been a long week and I am drained... emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted… but there is no rest for the weary yet, there’s still so much that need to be done… this weekend I’m going to try to catch up on some sleep and try to relax a little… but I am definitely looking forward to memorial day weekend… one it’s a 3 day weekend, secondly I’m going to meet up with some college friends and lastly and most importantly, the consultant will be back from his business trip/training and I can’t wait to see him…

Anyways, have a blessed weekend…

reality sets in...

2007-05-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

Reality has began to sunken in…. my uncle is gone… as I’ve spent everyday from the last week at my uncle’s place… being there to support my cousins and aunt, and just being there to help out… reality has really hit home… and it was all a bit too real… and as my mother got a last minute flight out of Nigeria over the weekend, she arrived on Monday afternoon, and well it was tough… its tough to see your mother in such pain, knowing there’s nothing you can do besides just being there for her and supporting her… I know its even harder for her to accept that her younger brother is gone… and while there’s nothing I can do to help ease any of their pains, we know that he’s in a better place… the two oldest children of my uncle are both graduating from college in the next week or so… its sad that their father, my uncle, won’t be there to see them reach such an accomplishment… and the other issue at hand… how do we tell the youngest child… she doesn’t know yet, but I’m sure she’s aware that something is going on with, but she doesn’t know yet… she’s merely only 8 years old and now her father is gone… how do you explain that to an eight year old in a way that she can understand, in a way that won’t totally destroy her… that is the task at hand now ….

And of course we have to lay my uncle to rest, but we have to do it in the right manner… details are still being sorted, but its hard… some hard decisions need to be made by people who are emotionally unstable at the moment… but they do have to be made… I pray that my family gets thru this crisis and that we become a stronger and closer family because of it… I’ll learn not to take people for granted because life is simply too short to do so… and while I may never see my uncle again, his memory will live on in all of our minds, in our pictures, in our stories, but most importantly in our hearts… he’s left an impression that will never fade, so I hope that he will lay in peace knowing that and also knowing that his children are in good hands and will be taken care of… and so while we all continue to grieve for this tragic lost, we’re also celebrating the great life that he had, the great person that he was, and the legacy that he leaves behind…

~Stay blessed

taken away too soon...

2007-05-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

So yesterday, on May 9th 2007 my uncle pasted away, my mother's younger brother, the same uncle who use to live with us when him and his entire family moved here from Nigeria in the mid-ninities... and well, i'm at a lost of words... trying to make sense of life... trying to support and comfort his children, my four younger cousins, my mother and her sibling, and everyone that has been affected...

I don't understand and I know its not my place to understand or question, but I still wonder, I still question, and i'm still in alot of pain... I know he's in a much better place now, but for some reason that doesn't bring me or anyone around me any comfort at the moment... so in time i guess it will come, but til then I just don't know what to really say or do...

a little clearer...

2007-05-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

What a weekend… it was just crazy busy with work and life… got to spend some quality time with the Consultant… and believe it or not, he met my oldest brother this weekend… now, this is quite significant because I happen to look up to my oldest brother a lot… he’s a very important factor in most of the decisions I make in life… so anyways, the consultant met my oldest brother, and well it wasn’t awkward or anything like that… I also got the go ahead from my older brother about moving to London… he’s afraid that if I move to London for this internship program that I won’t want to come back… but I reassured him, although nothing is guaranteed, I did ensure him that I had every intention of coming back to the states, and with that said he gave me his blessing on my decision and we started to make a plan of how things would work once I left in August… and well he saw that I had already thought things through and already had a good game plan that he could back up… so that was a lot of stress off of my shoulders to know that he (my brother) is happy for me and supports my decision to go away to London… as I stated, my brother is very important in my life and there are many things that would not be possible without him, so his support is quite important to me…

So I made my decision (incase you haven’t guessed)…. I’m headed off to London, I accepted the offer from the internship program…. So I’ll be working in London for a year and getting my graduate certificate in international business… when I took a look at all the pros and cons, it just made more sense to take the internship program instead of going back to school to get another master’s degree because I already have one, and the international work experience and business certificate would look great on my resume… so, my mind is made up… now that I’ve accepted the offer into the internship program, I just have to wait til they place with a company in the field that I’m interested it…

So what’s gonna happen with me and the consultant… well, to tell you the truth I don’t know, but I do see a bright future with him…. I’ll continue to get to know him and grow with him over the next 3 and a half months… and with the discussions we’ve had, I’m pretty sure he’d want to try the long distance thing…. But we’ll deal with that when the time comes closer for me to leave, a decision will have to be made… but for now, that can wait… I’ll just enjoy him while I’m still here and leave the future in the future for now…

“Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth” ~Robert Southey

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable” ~Sidney J. Harris

“Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will work” ~Dr. Robert Anderson

Decisions...

2007-05-03T06:29:00.000-07:00

Life is about decisions…. Decisions, decisions, decisions!!!
Tuesday morning I got the news that I was accepted into the London internship program that I really wanted… but the acceptance wasn’t as joyful as I thought it be…. Now I have to make a decision… no more putting it off… I have a week to get back to them with my decision….

So, when exactly do you start letting other people influence your decision… and other people I mean significant others… of course its appropriate to ask for advice from the people you respects and look up to (like parents, siblings, close friends and etc)… but how do significant others fit into the picture… especially if its still early in relationship and you don’t know what may happen in the future… usually I’m the type of person who makes her decision on what’s best for her and her immediate family… I don’t consider too many other factors in most of my major decisions because lets face it, I can be a bit selfish as times, as we all can be, and not to mention that I’m the last born so my family tends to accommodate me for a lot of things (this is a blessing that I am thankful for every day)… anyways, so when making a major decision, first I look at how it’ll affect me family, and once I see that it won’t affect them in a negative way, then the rest of the decision is based on what I want… but for the first time in a very long time, aside from considering my family and my own feelings, I’m considering someone else’s stake in my decision about moving to London for a year… why am I considering his (the Consultant) position in all of this, well… truth is I like the Consultant a lot, things have been really between him and I.. and if things continue to go in the direction that they have been then who know what can happen… and doing a long distance thing is hard… anyway you look at it, it hard… but if you’re willing to put in the work, things could work out wonderfully… this guy is super supportive, and encourages me to make the best decision for me… and because its so early between him and I, neither one of us want to bring up the whole long distance thing yet but its quite obvious… I’d rather talk about it in person anyways than over the phone… so may this weekend or the next… who knows… but for now I’m busy contemplating on m decision… As my girl J told me… if it’s meant to be, then it’ll be…

**********************************************************************

So I’m sure I never concluded on the whole situation between the accountant and I… but I came to the realization that he has more baggage than I can handle in my life… he still needs time to work through his trust issues and relationship issues… aside from that, the more we talked the more I realized that we were looking for different things in life… so I decided that it would be best for me and him to just be friends and leave it at that… all these decisions were made a few days before I met this new guy that I’m talking to now…

"Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life." ~Herbert Otto

All of our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. ~Walt Disney

For what I have received, may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I have not received. ~Storm Jameson

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise. ~Robert Fritz

Quote this...

2007-04-30T11:27:00.000-07:00

So, I collect quotes… I don’t know exactly how I got started in collecting quotes but it’s something I’ve been doing for about 5 to 6 years… I look for those quotes that reach out to me… words so eloquently put together that it cause me pause for a minute, re-evaluate and grasp the understanding of the what the author is saying...

I have quotes on just about every subject, especially my favorite subject… Love and relationships… I had a ton to choose from… my I managed to narrow it to the shortest list that I could have… Since the quotes were gathered over the last 6 years, they span different asks of love and my varying attitude towards love and relationship…

Enjoy….

Forgiveness does not always lead to a healed relationship. Some people are not capable of love, and it might be wise to let them go along with your anger. Wish them well, and let them go their way. ~Real Live Preacher

What we love to do we find time to do. ~John L. Spalding
[this is one of the truest statements when it comes to love and relationships… if someone loves/likes you, they will find time to be with you… being busy is an unacceptable answer at any point… granted people do get busy, but if they are using that excuse with you ALL the time, then its time to move on… no one is too busy for something they value]

The quality of love and the duration of a relationship are in direct proportion to the depth of the commitment by both people to making the relationship successful. Commit yourself wholeheartedly and unconditionally to the most important people in your life. ~Brian Tracy

There is always something left to love. And if you haven't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. ~Lorraine Hansberry

The best way to love is to love like you have never been hurt ~Anonymous
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. ~Bertrand Russell

"Love yourself first and everything else will fall in place. After all, if you don't love yourself, than why should you expect others to love you." ~Lucille Ball

A proof that experience is of no use, is that the end of one love does not prevent us from beginning another. ~Paul Bourget
[I agree and disagree with this quote… while my past experiences won’t prevent me from loving again, at least I can learn from my past experiences and not make the same mistakes that I made in previous relationships…]

"When love hurts you, dare to love again." ~Steve Maraboli, from Dare To Be

Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you have to be involved with them. Love is not a bandage to cover wounds. ~Hugh Elliott

The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. ~Morrie Schwartz

Love the ones you can. Touch the ones you can reach. Let the others go. ~ Real Live Preacher
[I’ve learned this the hard way… I don’t like to burn bridges or end things on a bad note, so I always try to be friends with my exs, but not everyone is capable of that. After continuously trying to be friends with them, I realize that its not going to work and there are those people that I simply had to let go of… ]

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it unless it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering. ~Jane Austen

If a relationship is to evolve, it must go through a series of endings. ~Lisa Moriyama

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. ~ Jong, Erica

I understand all your doubts and fears; Of laying your heart on the lineBut aren't you afraid of just throwing away; A love like yours and mine? ~Leap of Faith

If you want to experience love, you have to take the risk. Love's always worth the risk.
And the trouble is if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
[regardless of all my experiences, I do believe that love is always worth the risk… ]

"When you leave, remember the place where you have left me. If you go back and I'm not there, it doesn't mean I don't love you anymore, I just love you so much that I've left to search for you." ~Anonymous

"..contrary to what the cynics say, distance is not for the fearful, it is for the bold. It's for those who are willing to spend a lot of time alone in exchange for a little time with the one they love. It's for those knowing a good thing when they see it, even if they don’t see it nearly enough..." ~Article in Oprah magazine

"You don't stop loving someone; you only get used to living without them there." ~Anonymous
"Distance between two hearts is not an obstacle; rather a great reminder of just how strong true love can be." ~Anonymous

"Distance never separates two hearts that really care, for our memories span the miles and in seconds we are there. But whenever I start feeling sad, because I miss you, I remind myself how lucky I am to have someone so special to miss." ~Anonymous

The hardest thing about growing up is that you have to do what's best for you even if it means breaking someone's heart. Including your own. ~Anonymous

Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.~ Deepak Chopra
[I believe this quote is so true… the relationships that I've had have always tend to teach me something that I needed to learn]

I have loved to the point of madness;
That which is called madness,
That which to me,
Is the only sensible way to love.
~F. Sagan ~

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ~ by 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 ~

"The one who loves the least, controls the relationship." ~ Robert Newton Anthony

"[On love:] I have no respect for anyone who says they've given up, or that they're not looking or that they're tired. That is to abrogate one's responsibility as a human being."~Harlan Ellison

"When the satisfaction or security of another person becomes as important to one as one's own, then a state of love exists." ~Harry Stack Sullivan

Where once I gave all of me, fearless of the risks and confident of the reciprocity, I now hold a little back… should in case I might need that untouched kernel of self again… someday, to begin to rebuild myself… ~Anonymous
[This quote hit right at home after I broke up with my ex, L… there was no other way to perfectly describe how I approached relationships after L and I broke up]

You can close your eyes to things you dont want to see, but u cant close your heart to things you dont want to feel. ~Anonymous

All you can do is follow your heart, no one can predict the future...~Anonymous
[no one can predict the future.... ever since i found this quote i've lived by it... I follow my heart, that's all i can do... if I don't risk it, then who knows what great love or relationships I may miss out on... things don't always work out as i hope, but the experiences that i've had have been good ones]

Maybe you’re not the man God meant for me to with, but I know that you were sent my way to restore my faith in Love and in men… I had given up on the idea that I could truly love and care for someone so freely and have it reciprocated so much... thank you… thank you for being you and giving me hope againJ… you’ve changed my life in a way that unimaginable… ~Discombobulate Dive
[I wrote this about my ex-boyfriend, L, that live in London… once I was over all of the pain on us breaking up and able to see things in the proper light… although we broke up, we are now the best of friends and after our relationship, I always remembered that he restored my faith in guys… I dunno if I ever told him this or if I ever sent this paragraph to him, but that’s one of the reasons that I cherish him as a friend and I’m so grateful my experience with him…]

feel free to add your favorite love quotes...

So grateful...

2007-04-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been thinking about the last couple of months in my life, just reflecting and I’ve realized that I’ve done a lot in my short years alive, but even a lot more since I’ve turn 24 last September… there’s this grand list of things that I want to accomplish during my life time, and I’ve been making strives to do those things… two major things that I’ve done since I turned 24 were running and finishing my first (and probably only) marathon and the second being that I got a chance to drive cross country from MD to Cali… There are many other things on my list of things to do in life, while some of them I have to accomplish on my own and before I settle down but most of them are things that I hope to be able to accomplish with my family (husband and children)… such as traveling the world (like taking a trip to South Africa (which I have planned for 2010) and a trip to China (which is also in the works for 2008)… I’m excited about the trip to China, my friends and I are going to China for 11 days, where we’ll travel to Beijing (and attending some Olympic events), as well as going to going to 4 other major cities including Shanghai )… anyways, I just realize that sometime when I’m having one of my quarter life moments about not having direction in my life, not doing anything with my life and feeling lost, I forget to take a step back and take a look at the amazing life that I have and be appreciative of everything that I’ve been given… and today, although I don’t know what my future holds for me, I am grateful for everything that I have…

I’m grateful that I have options to choose from about whether I’m going to the UK or not and if I do go I have options of where and what I want to do, I’m grateful for having a family that understands my selfish needs to explore the world and for encouraging and supporting me in whatever endeavors that I want to pursue as long as it is a positive one… I’m grateful for having some of the best friends in the world, they are like my personal cheerleaders who are always straight with me and tell me like it is and I love them for it. I’m grateful for being a strong individual who has high standards, who expects a lot from herself and her loved ones and a person who is motivated to try and experience new things… I’m grateful for all the opportunities and experiences I’ve had thus far, they’ve made my life interesting and have taught me a lot about myself and life in general... I’m just so grateful for all of this and so much more…

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy: They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. ~Marcel Proust

I don't know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future. --Ralph Abernathy

When the student is ready. . . the lesson appears. Gene

The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future. Stephen Ambrose

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. Rodin

Whatever is meant to be will work out perfectly ~Avril Laveign

2007-04-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

Day 4 without facebook… and withdrawal is not as bad as I expected it to be… I’ve gotten a few texts asking me was I still on FB… and there have been a few moments where I was weak with boredom at work and wanted to see what was going on in other people’s lives… but so far so good…

So I was listening to the Steve Harvey morning show as I usually do on my looooong commute to work every morning… Steve Harvey is hilarious.. anyways, they have this segment called the Strawberry letter of the day, where people (usually females) write in asking Steve and Shirley for advice on this problem… and here’s the letter for today:

Date: 04/24/2007
Subject: My man thinks he knows everything

Steve, I recently entered a relationship that seems to be very toxic for me mentally and physically. When we first started dating i was going out with my girls and taking care of my man all at the same time. Obliviously, i was not taking care of him enough because he started complaining about me spending too much time with my girls and not enough time with him (i went out with my girls only once a week, Friday only). He begin to say that i was not honoring our relationship by going out so much and talking on the phone with my girls he did not like so much as well. I totally reconfigured my life and gave him all my time, keeping all my friends at a distance, but that still was not good enough. Also, he does not like the fact that i work around all males in my field of study which is engineering. He is totally jealous and insecure about a lot of things in life. Every time i try to talk some rationale sense into my man he always seems to talk over me and never gives me time to get a word in!!!! Thus, he goes on further to tell me what i am thinking and how i am feeling. I tell him he is wrong each time he tries to draw a wrong conclusion. This man thinks he knows everything but is totally wrong on a lot of things. When i tell him something is wrong he does not listen but when his "homeboys" tell him something he thinks it is the gospel. I have tried several approaches to communicate with my man. Each situation renders different results. But, none of the results create change. I am a very educated sister with Christian values and strong beliefs. My man is so stubborn and stuck in his way which is the old school way of thinking. I don't want to make it seem as if i am talking down towards him. How can i ratify this matter? How can you handle talking to a man without belittling their manhood or making them seem foolish? I would appreciate your insight on this subject? Thank you.

Steve Harvey gave such a straight forward answer and it made complete sense… in a nut shell he said that you can’t belittle something that’s all ready little… that the man she is dealing with has some issues with himself and it projecting it on her making her to feel like she is the real issue… that he wants to make the illusion that he is bigger than he actually is, and the only way for him to do so is to make it seem as though he knows everything and that she is the issue…

Anyways, I thought it was rather interesting… I mean, honestly if a man has issues with himself, what can you, as his woman, truly do without belittling him as the female mentions in her letter… sometimes when people have issues with themselves or issues that they are working thru, all you can really do is try to help them, but don’t get caught up and allow it to bring you down as a result…

Goodbye to FB, at least for now....

2007-04-20T07:22:00.000-07:00

I did it… I deactivated my page on Facebook (FB) this morning… Why??? I’m not quite sure really, well actually I have various reasons…. First reason being FB gives me tooooo much information… too much information about the guy(s) I am interested in, enough information that it sometimes takes the mystery out of getting to know them… I mean, I get all this information that is overloading… some things I’d rather not know… plain and simple… ( I could simply not go to people’s pages, but it so hard to resist visiting their page and reading thru the information and seeing what’s changed or been added on their page and see who’s said what on their wall…)

Also, it lets other people check up on what’s going on in my life…. Granted I don’t have to put up pictures or any information if I don’t want to… but I do want to, and I’d like to do it without people judging me… so this morning… I did it, I deactivated the my page… and in the deactivation steps, they ask you for a reason as to y you want to deactivate it… some of the reasons being:

Facebook is causing drama in my social life
This is only temporary, I’ll be back
I get too many emails from Facebook
I don’t feel safe on this site
etc…

And a few other options… while I agreed with a few of them… the reason I choose was; This is only temporary, I’ll be back… and well, that’s truly cause I do feel like I’ll be back on facebook… maybe not today, or this weekend… but eventually I’ll get back into it… but for now I need a break from it…. When my girl, AB deactivated her page a few weeks ago, I went into a small shock and panic… so many question… why, when, why and so on… but this morning for some reason or the other I understood where she was coming from… as I confirmed my deactivation… the FB staff’s last statement to me was: “Your Facebook account has been deactivated. To reactivate your account, simply log in as you normally would, and we'll send you a reactivation email. Come back soon, The Facebook Team”

They know I’ll be back, just like I do… but today, for whatever reason, it felt like an over load of information on so many levels… and i simply needed to get away from it all....

2007-04-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

What a weekend… okay… I’ve made a pledge to get back to blogging on a regular basis…. This post is gonna be a bit long… I’m gonna update you all on different things that have been going on in my life and in my mind…

The accountant… I like him, no doubt… but (and there’s always a but)… the more I get to know him the more I realize that he’s not ready for a relationship for various reasons… he was engaged a few years ago to a girl that he dated for 4 and a half years (but she ended up cheating on him and just ended up taking him for granted and treating him really badly in general)… I understand that he doesn’t want to repeat the same mistakes as he did with his ex in his past, but he’s changed his views on so many things and just seems so jaded about relationships and marriage in general… he’s done a complete 180 on his personality and attitude because he so determined to not repeated his past mistakes and be put in a uncomfortable position again (He gave this girl everything that a girl would want and he put her first and was in general a good guy to her)… And I was telling him that I understand y he’s changed so much, but did he ever consider that it was the girl that was the issue and not him and that there was nothing he did wrong per se, but that maybe he was just with the wrong girl… and I also said that I feel like any girl that he dates in the future will continuously be paying for the mistakes of his ex… granted they broke up about 3years ago, but they were together for a long period of time and he already planned his life with her and I can only imagine (well I don’t have to imagine, I have my own experiences to take from) how he felt when things ended… I honestly don’t think he’s ready to be in a relationship because there are a lot of things that he’s still dealing with, in reference to his past and his ex… I’m trying to be as understand as I can be and just try to listen to him and advise where I can… and this past weekend while we were hanging out, we talked about a lot things like we usually do, but the overall impression I got from him was that he doesn’t want to be in a relationship or that he’s not necessarily to put someone else first… that he’s not ready to let anyone in (within the walls he’s built around his heart)… After hanging out for a while, a good amount of time, I got ready to go and he’s like no, don’t leave yet… so I obliged and stayed cause I do enjoy spending time with him… in the same breath of telling me about he’s not ready to let anyone in, he turns around and tells me that he feels so comfortable with me and so on… We talked about a lot of things in general about life and I realize that there are some things that would be hard to deal with, not to say I won’t be willing to deal with it, but it would hard.... for example, if he has an issue in his personal life, he’s just avoid it, instead of dealing with it… that would drive me crazy… I mean if I do something to upset you and u don’t like it, please speak up so that we can compromise or fix whatever the issue is… but his philosophy is that everything is avoidable… WHAT??? So if he had an issue with me, he wouldn’t tell me, he’s just pretend that things were ok, or just avoid the situation (and me being the straight forward individual that I try to be, I told him that doesn’t work well with me cause I can’t read your mind and I like to resolve issues as quickly as possible and move on… and I asked him wouldn’t u rather just resolve the issue so that you can move on instead of avoiding it… he said no, avoiding works for him)…
so anyways, on Saturday afternoon, I drove up to Philly to hang out with some friends and I called him on my way and left him a message and then I didn’t speak to him again til late Sunday night when I got back to Bmore and he was like he was calling to check up on me cause he hadn’t heard from me and so on…. And I don’t mind talking to him, actually I look forward to talking to him… we talk daily… and this is where I get confused with him… you don’t want to be in a relationship (not to say I’m rushing it, cause I’m trying to take my time with him) but then he wants to act like we’re in one when its convenient… I told him that he’s hard to read and he didn’t understand what I meant… cause I don’t know what he wants… he speaks in the 3rd person when we talk about relationships, meaning that he talking hypothetically, instead of addressing the ‘relationship’ between me and him… and I have this weird feeling that that me and him are gonna get stuck in the friend zone… but I guess only time will tell…

Ok, on to the next subject… in the last couple of weeks, both of my parents sat me down individually to talk to me about the future… especially with the prospect of me moving to the UK in a few months… they both sat me down and talked about what my plans were… now they both had very different approached to talk to me about the same issue… First, my mother told me that they prayed about me (as they do for all their children) and that it were revealed that I am very picky or choose and that I don’t always take the time to really get to know people (guys in particular)… that I’m being to choose about what I want… and I told my mother yes, I am a little choose, but I just don’t want to be unhappy… I don’t want to be left in a situation where I’m unhappy for the rest of my life or where I’m looking outside of myself and my marriage for happiness… I don’t want to be unhappy because I settle for someone who doesn’t make me happy, and besides if I’m unhappy, the entire family will be unhappy (not to sound spoiled, but if I’m unhappy it will tickle down to affect my family… that’s because my family is quite close and it just would happen that way)…but I did promise my mother I would make an effort to be more patient with people… on to my father, my father said the same things except he said that no one will ever meet every single requirement that I may have, but when I find someone that comes close to it, that I should explore it and see where it goes…

Both of my parents are right, and I’d already come to that conclusion before they spoke to me…. And it something I’m working on…

While I’m on the topic of my parents (cause I hardly every talk about them on this blog)… they both traveled home to Nigeria last week, and I know it’s a time of turmoil with the elections so please pray for their safely... but I have faith that they’ll return safe and sound back to the states… I kinda wish that they were here at the moment though, cause I’ll have to make my decision about the UK in the next couple of weeks while they’re traveling, and it’d be since just to be able to talk to them about it again before making my final decision… although I’ve talked to them extensively about the various options, and they will support me in any and every decision I make, I still want them to be here to be able to just walk into their room and talk to them…

Ok… last topic for this post, cause its starting to become a novel instead of a post… I went to Philly this weekend to hang out with my sister and her boyfriend, there was a big party there on Saturday night… the party was cool… the crazy thing was there so many people from MD… just when I thought I’d get to go to a party and see different faces, little did I know that half the faces would be from MD… but it was cool.. it was a good mix of new and old faces…

To prevent such long posts in the future… I’ll be updating my blog more often, i promise :-)....

Away I go...

2007-04-10T05:50:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been praying, sort of… or at least talking to God about what decision I should make… and well, when I woke up yesterday morning, although I wasn’t in the best mood, the idea of going to London/UK put a huge smile of my face and I decided that was the sign that I had been waiting for… for a few seconds on that early gloomy Monday morning, as I dreaded going to work (again!!!)… a few thoughts flashed thru my head as to why I had originally pursued the idea of going abroad anyways, and all the joys that I will have… and in that split second, my heart was content with the decision to go… to just go… and to stop worrying about everything… that God will make a way for me… and so in another 4 months or so… I’ll be going…

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility. ~Oprah Winfrey

All you can do is follow your heart, no one can predict the future...~Anon

unsettled...

2007-04-06T06:28:00.000-07:00

So, somewhere along the line… I lost my motivation… my motivation to do a lot of things… like keeping my blog up to date… working out on a consistent basis… keeping a healthy life style… and well the list goes on and on… and my happy disposition on life had been replaced with a cynical view on most things in this world…

Now, my question is where do I find the motivation to start doing all the things that I want to do, but have become so lazy towards… and how do I get all this cynicism out of my system… granted, I’ve always be a realistic person, but now I’m just have such a negative attitude towards a lot of things… (did I mention I hate my job… ok, hate is a strong word, but I’m very unsatisfied with my job)… and well, I don’t want to sit here and complain, but I don’t know how else to get it out of my system… I could just deal with it, but how do I do that exactly…

Ok, so my mind is going a million miles an hour… so when ever I start getting cynical, I try to think of the positives… this year has been such a great year already, I’ve accomplished two of my life goals and I’m general good with where I am in life… I completed my first marathon, I got to drive across the country (which was amazing), I’ve met a very nice guy that I’m interested in, I’ve gotten accepted into one of my grad schools in London… so all in all, I’m beyond grateful for all of these things and much more… but there’s something that is unsettled in me, I can’t pinpoint it yet… but there’s something deep in my mind/heart that keeps me feeling a little uneasy and keeps me up a little later than usual at night… it keep my mind from feeling completely relaxed and I don’t know what it is… ok, maybe I do… but I’m not for sure yet… I started this blog last summer because I was going thru what is known as a ‘Quarter Life Crisis’… I was (and still am) at a cross in my life where I need to make some major decisions that will affect my future and the rest of my life… and while I thought I had it all planned out for a while, I now am realizing that I haven’t considered every factor or aspect of the decisions I’m going to make or the plan that I thought I had… and with the addition of new factors, its making me rethink everything…. Maybe that’s why I’m unsettled… I know I have to make some MAJOR life decisions in the next couple of months and I can only put it off for so long… I mean, there’s always the option of not making a decision, but that would do me absolutely no good… so a decision has to be made whether I have all the facts or NOT… so I contemplate about the future, the possibilities, the repercussions, and the consequences… and I’m lost… cause I know what I thought I wanted, and I know what I think will be good for me… but then I doubt… and well, I don’t like doubt…

I don't know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future. ~Ralph Abernathy

Well, the fact is that one cannot retrace one's steps, and the steps one has taken greatly influence the future. ~Vincent van Gogh

You have to know what you want to get. ~Gertrude Stein

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility. ~Oprah Winfrey

Back from my Road Trip and back in action...

2007-04-02T11:54:00.000-07:00

So, I’ve been a little MIA… to say at the least…
So much has been going on that I’m not quite sure where to begin… so here goes…

So, I just got back from my road trip on Friday… and here’s a quick run down of the road trip…
Day 1: Maryland to Virginia to Powell, Tennessee… we got there late and left early the next morning
Day 2: Powell Tennessee to Memphis, Tennessee… we stayed in Memphis for the night… went to the Civil Rights Museum (which was a great experience) and then went out to get some real BBQ for dinner (hmmmm, good… what diet??), stopped at a liquor store, guess we were on the wrong side of town but needless to say I’ve never been so scared in my life, then went out to Beale Street later in the evening with one of our college buddies that lives in Memphis… interesting does not capture the description of the range of people we saw on Beale St…

Day 3: Memphis, TN to Oklahoma City… Didn’t do much in Oklahoma, just chilled

Day 4: Oklahoma to Texas to Albuquerque, NM… Really nice place, saw a lot of Native American artwork and jewelry… pick up some really unique and cute stuff… the food was just ok

Day 5: Albuquerque, NM to Arkansas to Las Vegas, NV… Vegas was great of course… lots of drinking and party… danced on the bar at Coyote Ugly… meet some random guys from NC that we hung out with for a little bit…

Day 6: Las Vegas, NV to Cali… LA is great and all, but its not all its cracked up to be… it just wasn’t what I was expecting… Went to the Hollywood Blvd to go see the stars on the sidewalk, which was ok… when to the Beverly center and got some shopping done (that was great), went to little Tokyo and had some great Japanese food for dinner.

Day 7: Flew from Cali back to MD…

Other random notes about the trip… we saw the Hoover Dam, it massive, the sight of it is really cool… saw some beautiful landscape… this country is much more beautiful than I give it credit for… we stopped in a small town called McClean in Texas, this town totally missed the 20th century, it only had 600 people in the entire town, no really stop lights and only one grade of gas (regular)… sure we made them nervous when they saw 3 black females walking into the gas station… the town was quite a site…

All in all... the trip was great; I had a lot of fun and I really enjoyed myself…

BTW… things are going great with the accountant… I’ll have an update on the next post…

Road Trip...

2007-03-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

ROAD TRIP…. So one of my good friends NB got transferred from MD to Cali… so Me, NB and my girl AB are all taking a road trip… her company is moving everything but her car, so she has to drive… and well we’re gonna make an event of it… So we gonna make it a 6 day drive from MD to Cali, driving about 6 to 7 hours a day… and chillin the rest of the time.. NB’s company is paying for everything, including the cost of gas and hotel… so all me and AB are paying for is food along the way… So, the drive is roughly a little over 3000 miles… yeah I know, that’s a crazy amount of miles to drive… so here’s a where we plan on stopping at first night in W.VA or KY for the night then we’re off to Memphis to go see civil rights museum and/or Beale Street… then off to Oklahoma City, OK to see bombing memorial and then do some country line dancing (yeah right?!?!)… then off to Santa Fe, NM to see some Pueblos and buy some silver/Indian tapestries…. Then of course we have to stop in VEGAS baby, we’re gonna stay in Vegas the longest, for about a day and half to have ample time to gamble, drink and BS… u know what they say… "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!" … then on the 6th day we’ll take that 4 hour drive to LA… hang out in Hollywood, eat dinner and Walk down the "Hollywood Walk of Fame" then move my friend NB into her apartment… on the 7th days, me and AB head on a plane back to MD… I’m so excited about this trip, its gonna be so much fun… I can only image the craziness that will occur over this 7 days trip… we leave next Friday… so one week til we leave for our Road Trip…

And well, its happened again…. I’m falling for him… the only exception this time is that I actually see a future with him... him would be the Accountant… my Accountant… have been spending some quality time with him and just getting to know him…. And the more I know about him, the more I like him… only time can tell what the future has to hold for me and him… but I certainly hope that the future is bright… I’m gonna miss him while I’m on the road trip… that’s a whole week without seeing him… and the most we’ve gone without seeing each other is about 2 or 3 days… but absences makes the heart fonder right???

Misperception...

2007-03-14T06:38:00.000-07:00

Do u ever wonder how other people see you or perceive you… I mean, do you ever wonder what others, who don’t know you, think… what concept of you have they built in their minds… everything in this world is about perception… How some one acts, how you perceive it and how you react… I’ve heard all kinds of things about me… Some people think I’m stuck up (what, little ol’ me… talk to me and you’ll know I’m as silly as it gets )… some people think I am conceded (Damn, I do look good, but I’m by no means vain or anything… wait, did that sound conceded to you)… someone told me I was spoiled (hello… I am the last born, but I do work hard as hell to get what I want and to get to where I am)

Anyways, I guess it’s all about how you carry yourself and what other people assume about you… I know a lot of people in this Nigerian community around here and a lot of people know my family, and its just odd the perception that people have… I guess we all do it though, cause often I get an opinion of someone in my head, and I start to view and make an assessment of them without really getting to know them…

Through one of our many convos, the Accountant proceeded to tell me that I’m am completely different than what he thought or expected of me… he thought I was stuck on myself, spoiled, conservative and all this other stuff… and granted when I used to see him around, I just always thought that he was a very conservative, serious, straight laced guy… well, he’s not…. And each time we hang out, he surprises me again, its always a pleasant surprise…

I remember I was at my good friend, JB’s, cookout and I was making drinks for everyone and JB introduced the girl he was talking to me, and since JB is one of my very good friends (he’s my best male friend), a friend of his is a friend of mine, and I’ll especially be nice to the girl he’s talking to… so anyways, JB was playing host was quite busy, so I made it a point to check up on the girl thru out the cookout… I mixed her a drink and everything and was just being me in general… she kept saying thank you… the next day JB told me that the girl talked about me non-stop after the cookout was over, that she liked me and that I was so nice to her and that she didn’t know that Nigerian girls could be so nice… I didn’t think I did anything out of the ordinary for me, I was just being me… and I guess Nigerian girls don’t have the best reputation of being the nicest girls… so I guess its goes past perception but also to stereotypes… how can u assume that I’m not gonna be nice to you just cause I’m Nigerian and I'm female… but then again, I know my fair share of Naija girls, and I understand where the girl got that idea from…

Ultimately, I’m not really concerned about what other think of me, but every once in a while it does cross my mind… and sometimes it’s nice to fix those misconceptions, such as in the case with the accountant…

BBall Tournament...

2007-03-09T06:11:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness the weekend is finally here… and somehow this week, I’ve managed to find my desire to blog again… seeing as though I actually put up three posts this week…
Anyways, I dunno if any of you all following college Basketball… but I do and I’m excited that the tournaments have started…. Went to hang out with the Accountant last night, and we were watching the tournaments… the ACC tournament is my personal favorite, seeing that I went to an ACC school and there are some strong rivalries there… well… Duke, MD, and Georgia Tech all got knocked out of the first round… Talk about exciting… yesterday was history in the ACC tournament, all lower seeds won yesterday, ensuring that its gonna be a very interesting ACC tournament… the best game yesterday was definitely the Wake Forest vs Georgia Tech game… Wake Forest really deserved that win… I mean they gave a lot of heart, even in double overtime, but to be honest they could have really won the game in regulation time… anyhow, the Tar Heels (UNC) are up first today (my personal favorite team)… and they playing Florida, should be a good game… them Tar Heels better win… If u're into basketball... who r u routing for to win???

In my rambling about the basketball tournament, did I mention I was watching it with the Accountant… and it was a lot of fun, although we were routing for opposite teams, which actually made it more fun… but it was a good time… and did I mention had he managed to make his move on my after us screaming and hollering at the Wake Forest vs. Georgia Tech game…

Anyways… this weekend is my little nephew’s (FB) birthday party… he’s turning two years old in a few days… Man its amazing how much things have changed in the last two year, I can believe how much he grown and how smart he is… So I will be spending my Saturday afternoon at Chucky Cheese’s at his birthday party… and to be truthful, I’m quite excited… now I know Chucky Cheese’s is for kids but I’ll fit right in (I’m truly a kid at heart), its gonna be fun running around playing games… and well the whole family will be there, so I can only imagine how much fun its gonna be… busy weekend, so I probably won’t see the Accountant this weekend, but we’ll see…

I love you....

2007-03-07T05:49:00.000-08:00

How soon is too soon to say those three little magic words that every girl wants to hear… I guess it depends on the person and the situations… but sometimes it’s just to early, at least in my opinion, to say those magical words… (side note: I can count the amount of guys I’ve said those words to on one finger, because I think its takes time to really love someone… and it takes a little longer when you’re young or inexperience with relationships) anyways… my friend AG (I’ve known AG for about 7 years now… we met that first month of freshman year back in late summer of 2000… anyways, she’s one of my very good friends and one of the few people I talk to frequently although we live quite far apart)… anyways, AG met this guy in the beginning of January, they went on their first date the second week of January and they became boyfriend and girlfriend about a month ago… and the other nite, her boyfriend told her he loved her… and she said thanks…. She said thanks not because she being mean or rude, but she wasn’t ready… she’s had a lot of experiences with relationships and I think she’s learning not to jump so head deep into them and to take her time to get to really know the other person… now she sent me the text about what he said moments after he said it, cause he stepped out the room to go to the bathroom… however we didn’t get a chance to talk about it til the next morning… Now, I know she likes her bf and all and I’m sure he adores her… but its hard to really believe that someone can fall in love with some they’ve known for less than two months… I simply think its lust and infatuation… and no I’m not a skeptic on love and relationships, cause at the point when I met and was dating one my exs, L, after the first month I thought I was head of heels, but I forced myself to step back and realized that its just all apart of the excitement of a new relationship and finding some I clicked with so well, so I understand where he’s (AG’s bf) coming from, but I think it was a bit premature for him to pronounce his love already… but to each his own I guess… its just been on my mind since AG told me about the whole thing…

I mean, no one can really tell you when you’re in love, I feel like you just know… but I don’t think it possible to love someone you don’t really know yet… and I doubt he knows AG as well as he thinks he does… I’ve known her for 7 years and I’m still discovering things about her… granted me and her have a different relationship then they do, but I know it takes more than two months to really know a person… but I do think he cares about her and believes that there’s a future for them, which is cool…

Like I said, I guess it’s different for each person… but how do you know you love someone or are in love with someone… and would you, if you were a female, every say it first to the guy…

this weekend...

2007-03-06T13:26:00.000-08:00

This weekend was interesting… After a few weeks, I finally got a chance to say a final goodbye to my friend that passed away. We had the body viewing/service on Friday evening and then a his wake on Saturday evening… man, it was so difficult to see him lying in that coffin, he looked so different… it was so sad… Saturday afternoon before his wake, I was just remembering all the good memories that I had about him… I remember for the time we met, he was hitting on me… and it was hilarious, we met at a party one weekend, when I came home to visit from school… well, he didn’t realize who I was, you see he use to talk to my older sister briefly (but me and him never actually met cause I was away at school, but I had heard about him and seen a picture so I knew who he was)… so for half the night I had him guessing who I was and when he finally realized it, it was just hilarious… and ever since then he adopted me like a little sister… I’ll never forget the day I met him… may he rest in piece…

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So, you know how you know people, but you don’t really talk to them… people that you say hi and bye to in passing but never really have a conversation with… well, there’s this guy that I see around occasionally, I’ll call him the Accountant, that’s what he does for a living… and we always say hi and bye and just left it to that… but then he sent me a message on Hi5 last week, saying he wanted to say hello and he hadn’t seen me around in a bit… anyways, we started emailing back and forth, then started talking on msn messenger… then of course we eventually exchanged phone numbers… then the texting started… then the phone conversations began… and then we made plans to get some drinks (but they got cancelled cause one of my friends needed me)… and so we made plans to together sometime soon… and yeah I was a little excited… excited about the possibility… cause he was always someone that I thought was cute, but since we never said more than the polite hi and bye, I never thought he was interested… still not sure if he really is, but I’m leaning towards that he is interested… well sometime soon became Monday evening… so I went to his place and we just hung out… I was there for a couple of hours… we watched TV, but mostly talked and he showed me some pictures… I found out a lot about him… he’s a really cool guy… told me bout his previous relationships and the drama… I told him some stuff about me, but not much, I was more interested in learning about him… besides I’m shy (why does NO ONE believe me when I say I’m shy???) anyways, I had such a good time with him… it was just really relaxed and he was really easy to talk to… and then he was telling me about his original perception of me… that he thought I was this stuck up chick (for various reasons) and that he never realized that I would be fun to hang out with and so on and so on… now, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard that, but people take my being shy and being stuck up or whatever…

Ok, let me explain… I’m one of the biggest extroverts that I know, but I can be very introverted as well. On a one to one basis with someone that I don’t know I will tend to be a little shy (I know I have a big personality (and can be extra at times) and I don’t like to overwhelm people)… but in a group of people, even a group of strangers, I’m in my natural setting of being completely ok with being the center of attention… once I feel comfortable around you, whether on a one to one basis or in a group setting, you’ll find that I am generally an extrovert, I’m very outgoing and sometimes loud… but that’s me…

But I digress, anyways… chilling with the Accountant was a lot of fun… and he’s a really sweet guy… a few minutes to midnight, I decided it was time for me to go home since I had to be up early… we left things open and said that we should hang out again soon… and I hope its sooner than later…

The eyes of innocence…

2007-02-27T07:19:00.000-08:00

As I sat in room upset as the events that had unfolded earlier that day… just angry with the world because things didn’t turn out the way I expected or the way that I wanted… as I stewed in my own bad mood… my bedroom door came swinging up, some unlucky individual was about to get the brunt of my anger… but when I looked up, all I saw was my almost 2 year old nephew with the most contagious smile and laugh in the world… and in that 5 seconds the anger and the events of the day slipped away, and joy was brought back into my life with this little being that just walked into my room, as if he owned this house… my little nephew, which I will call FB for reasons I will explain later…. My little nephew FB is the cutest baby… he takes after me with having one deep left dimple and a shallow right dimple… he has the cutest laugh and smile… and manages to say my name ‘Discombobulated Diva’ in this weird Nigerian accent… an accent that we can’t quite figure out where he got cause he was born here in the states and has only been back to Naija one… anyways… my nephew FB runs into my room, screaming my name and smiling and laughing… and comes to give me a hug… and at that moment, I couldn’t have pictured anything else that would have eased my anger as quickly… my nephew FB had this incredible affect on my family when he was born two years ago… he is the first grandchild of the family, booting me from having the baby position in the family to holding everyone’s heart in his hands… this little boy has softened all of… whenever I see my nephew, he reminds me of the miracle of life… this same nephew that I don’t hesitate to spank, but will still run up to me 5 minutes later and give me a hug and a kiss… and to see him develop is such a miracle… the first time I heard him call my name, he brought the biggest smile across my face… you see, my name is the only one he remembers constantly other than ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’…. Through the eyes of my nephew I see innocents and happiness… its takes such little to please him at times… and he, for me, represents the miracle of life… many times my nephew stays at my house, cause his parents only live about 6 minutes away from us, so he’s over all the time… and he’s the only person that can wake me up on an early Saturday morning who I won’t be grumpy with…. And what’s the cutest thing about my little nephew FB… when he’s with his younger brother, who’s about 5 months year old, he knows to give his younger brother the pacifier and then he gives his baby brother a hug and a kiss… innocence at its very essences… nothing else melts my heart like my little nephews…

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Did I ever mention, I live with my family… and my mom announced that they (my parents) are going to Nigeria for 5 weeks in April… first thing out of my mouth… HOUSE PARTY… both my parents turned to me… and then I said it a little quieter, but still with a lot of excited… House Party… then assured them that we would not destroy their beautiful home… and everything would be in order by the time they get from Naija…

My family’s weird… but then I guess all families are weird in their own way…. My family is quite close, or closer than I thought… my immediate older sister and I still live at home with our parents, my older sister lives about 10 minutes away and my brothers live 5 to 6 minutes away from my parent’s house and they live across the stress from each other… we have family dinners and happy hours… and its always a little weird when one of us isn’t around… Me and my eldest sibling, my brother are nine years apart, but we are quite close… he respects me in a manner that no one else in the world does and I appreciate and respect for that… anyways, he’s always supportive of me and my decisions… and when I told him about going away to school in London, his first inclination was that that’s great, but I’m afraid you won’t come back to Baltimore… I assured him that I’d come back, I don’t have a choice now do I… once my visa is up, I’d have to come back to the states… but I do understand his concern… which leads me to a quick update… 5 applications completed…. One more to go and I’ll be done with applying to schools in London… excited!!!

Floetry Fridays.... (and no not the group...)

2007-02-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

I found this poem a few years ago and its always stuck with me... its so simple but yet still so elegant....

I BELIEVE…

I believe-that we don't have to change friends if we understand that friends change.
I believe-that no matter how good a friend is,they're going to hurt you everyonce in a while and you must forgivethem for that.
I believe-that true friendship continues to grow,even over the longest distance.Same goes for true love.
I believe-that you can do something in an instant that will give you heartache for life.
I believe-that it's taking me a long timeto become the person I want to be.
I believe-that you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them.
I believe-that you can keep going long after you can't.
I believe-that we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel.
I believe-that either you control your attitude or it controls you.
I believe-that regardless of how hot and steamy a relationship is at first,the passion fades and there had better be something else to takeits place.
I believe-that heroes are the people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences.
I believe-that money is a lousy way of keeping score.
I believe-that my best friend and I can do anything or nothing and have the best time.
I believe-that sometimes the people you expect to kick you when you're down, will be the ones to help you get back up.
I believe-that sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be angry, but that doesn't give methe right to be cruel.
I believe-that just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.
I believe-that maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you've had and what you've learned from them and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.
I believe-that it isn't always enough to beforgiven by others. Sometimes youhave to learn to forgive yourself.
I believe-That no matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn't stop for your grief.
I believe-that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.
I believe-that just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don't love each other And just because they don't argue, it doesn't mean they do.
I believe-That you shouldn't be so eager to find out a secret. It could change your life forever.
I believe-that two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.
I believe-That your life can be changed in a matter of hours by people who don't even know you.
I believe-That even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help.
I believe-that credentials on the wall do not make you a decent human being.
I believe-that the people you care about most in life are taken from you too soon.

Author unknown

My trip to ATL...

2007-02-21T08:53:00.000-08:00

So… My first trip to ATL… was cool… had a good time, didn’t really get the full effect of ATL, cause I was only there on for Monday & Tuesday, but I still had a good time… went shopping… which is one of my favorite sports, hung out with my line sister and the one of the friends took me a few spots on Tuesday night… so it was cool… definitely will be stopping thru there again, preferably on a weekend next time… but I can’t complain cause the trip to ATL was completely free on my company…

So, the purpose of the trip was to go recruit at some of the colleges in the ATL… I was really shocked at some of this students in these famous HBCU schools that I was recruiting at… we had an information session on Monday night and then conducted interviews all day Tuesday… first of all, some of these individuals showed up the info session looking a hot mess, not I don’t like talking about people (yeah right), but how do you plan on making a good impression on the company you’re trying to get a job or internship from when you look a hot mess… I mean hair everywhere, outfits inappropriate not just for the info session, but just straight up inappropriate… like her friend should have told her to never put on that outfit, unless it was Halloween inappropriate…. Then on to Tuesday, these students were showing up late to their interviews, some didn’t show up at all and some just walked in without previously setting an interview time… I just don’t understand the mentality of these students; I mean if I was still in college and a big time company came around offering all types of great jobs and benefits, I know I would have been all of it and trying to impress the company… and I can’t believe some of these students had the nerve to skip the interview all together… talk about a waste of my time… and they wonder why black people aren’t progressing…

On to another issue that occurred in ATL… so I went to Bloomingdales… now I love that store, almost as much as I love Nordstrom’s… (like I said Shopping is a sport)… so I went to Bloomingdales and brought a pair of jeans… and the check out clerk, mind you a black lady, had the never to hand me my purchase across the counter… granted this is normal procedure at any other store, but at stores such as Nordstrom’s, Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus, they are suppose to walk around the counter and bring you your purchases to you… and once again it wouldn’t be a big deal, but she did follow the protocol of walking around the counter and handing the shopping bag to the white lady ahead of me, but when it came to me, she handed me my shopping bag across the counter… now, she must have assumed that I didn’t shop at high retail stores and wouldn’t have known the difference but I was very much offended, and I was tempted to say something to her, but then she would have bought out the little ghetto side of me and I would have simply proven the stereotype that people already have of black people, so I didn’t say anything… but I mean, if our own people can still treat us differently than white people in a negative way, how do we expect white people to truly treat us as equals… now I know you’re thinking, I may be making a big deal of this situation, but it’s the small things that matter… its already ingrained in the black sales assistant head that other black people wouldn’t necessarily know that she was suppose to bring the shopping bag around to me instead of handing it to me over the counter… who knows how else she may subconsciously mistreat black people in other ways…

I did think about New Yorker this weekend… the small things definitely still remind me of him… I haven’t really spoken to him on the phones since we broke up, we’ve texted a little here and there… but haven’t spoken to one another yet…

I’m back at work and I don’t feel like being here… and to top it off, I have a bad head cold… sore throat, headache, stuffy rose… u get the picture… its not pretty… probably gonna leave early if i don't start feeling better...

Getting my Mind off it...

2007-02-16T05:57:00.000-08:00

So last night I needed to distract myself from all the stress and drama in my life… so I hooked up with one of my good friends, ST… ST has been my girl since I was like 8 yrs old… so many memories… so we met up to get pictures taken of her daughter and then we went out to grab some food and drinks… of course she had me rolling and laughing all night... definitely took my mind off of New Yorker for a while, but then she wanted to know why I broke up with New Yorker… I explained, or at least tried to explain and she saw my views, I had some valid points… but then she said but he made you happy… yeah he did, but I have to look at the big picture… I do look forward to talking to New Yorker again, but I would understand if he wasn’t so thrilled to talk to me anytime soon… but knowing him, he’s gonna want to talk to me as much as I want to talk to him… I just want to make sure he’s ok…

So today, I’m headed to court… my dumb butt got a speeding ticket for tailing a cop… yeah I know STUPID… but I was in a rush and I wasn’t that close to him… but its my first ticket ever in my nine and a half years of driving so I’m hoping the judge will take it easy on me o…

The weekend is here… thank goodness…. I need a break from work and life… I’m just gonna be chilling tonight, may go see Tyler Perry’s new movie, Daddy’s Little Girl , looks like it’ll be funny… I was suppose to go to ATL this weekend and stay til Wednesday cause I have to do some stuff for work on Monday and Tuesday, but my friend’s memorial service is Sunday at church, so I pushed my flight back to a red-eye on Monday morning… I need to pay my last respects to my friend… I can spend a weekend in ATL any other time….
I am excited about the trip though, it’ll be my first time in Atlanta… and I’ll get to see my line sister, my frat brother and hang out with a bunch of friends that moved down to ATL after college… and it’ll help me get my mind off of things for a little while…

So I’m off to court… wish me luck, better yet pray for me…
Have a great weekend and be safe….

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Back from court... GUESS WHAT??? the officer never showed up, he called and said he was stuck in traffic and would be there in 15 mins, so the judge waited 15 mins (which annoyed me)... but when he didn't show up, the judge went ahead and he dismissed almost everyone's case... as soon as he called me up, i almost ran to the front of the court room pleading 'Not Guilty' so the judge dismissed the charges and I ran out immediately, didn't want the officer to try and show up in the middle of mine case... any i didn't have to pay court fee!!!
Great start to a great weekend... and the girls are getting together for dinner this evening, me, AB & NM... Should be lots of fun... things are starting to look up after all :-).....

The breakup...

2007-02-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

Yea!!! Yesterday was a snow day… the weather was quite bad out here, so I was lucky enough and didn’t have to go to work…. And coincidentally yesterday was Valentine’s Day as well… and mine didn’t go as well as I would have hoped… so here goes…
So, things are over between New Yorker and myself… I know it may seem little abrupt or sudden, but it was a long time coming…. First let me assure you that I’m not crazy… okay, maybe a little crazy… but that’s me…
As we spoke on the phone yesterday, I asked him what would he say if I wanted to be just friends… and well once the ball got rolling, I couldn’t really stop it… its been on my mind for a week or two now…. For various reasons…. He was kinda surprised, but kinda wasn’t… said he had a dream about it, so he kinda saw it coming, but he didn’t expect it on V-day…. Before u crucify me for breaking up with him on Valentines’ days, I should mention that we didn’t have anything, NOTHING planned for V-day, so in my book it was just another day in the year… so y prolong the inevitable it any longer than I had to, right… He said are you sure… then he said u have a lot going on in your mind cause of everything else in your life, lets pretend we never had this convo and go to sleep and we’ll talk in the morning… then he was like you don’t even want to down grade to an open relationship, you just want to get rid of me all together… (and at this point, I was confused, when did we stop having an open relationship… he said I was his girlfriend and that was that… so on V-days he went from having a girlfriend to nothing at all… damn, talk about feeling guilty… I already felt bad enough, but this didn’t help)… we talked for hours trying to figure everything out… of course I got pissed at him cause he started saying stupid stuff, which at first made me think I made the right decision, but then he turned to his usual sweet self and made me feel like maybe I hadn’t thought this thru all the ways… but things ended on a semi-friendly note… I’m sure we’ll speak again, just cause he feels like I’m still upset with him and knowing him, he’ll want to make sure things are good between us, which I appreciate…
Anyways, at the end of the day, when it’s all said and done… we’re no longer boyfriend and girlfriend… but I already miss him…
And as I spoke to my sorority sister last night, JD… she wasn’t a big fan of him, but she said I should sleep on it and see how I felt in the morning… and I asked her, but y, you were never a big fan of his (she got to hear about all the little tings he did that annoyed me)… and her response was, yeah he’s not my favorite person in the world but he made you happier than I’ve seen you in years, so as long as you were happy, I was happy for you…
Damn, did I make a mistake…. Cause she’s right he did make me over the moon happy, he had a special ways of making everything great but there were just a lot of things I couldn’t deal with…
So I decided to sleep on it… and boy did I sleep… I didn’t lose a wink of sleep (granted I was emotionally drained and physically exhausted from shoving snow)… but this morning it hit me and it hit me hard exactly what I did yesterday…. Yeah I suck; I really could have waited til after V-day… probably should have thought it thru just a little bit more and yeah I’m sad about the whole situation cause i really miss him already but there’s nothing I can do now… I do still think it was the best decision... so that’s that!

“The hardest thing about growing up is that you have to do what's best for you even if it means breaking someone's heart. Including your own.” ~Anon

a truly sad day...

2007-02-11T18:27:00.000-08:00

Today I found out that one of my friends past away on saturday... or at least that's when they found his body... I don't really know how to react, what to do or say... this is truly the first person that i've known personally that has died... I can help but questioning everything in life... how such a good guy can get taken away so early in life... he was just in his late twenties, just getting started with his life...

I don't understand, it just doesn't make any sense to me... I got the call this afternoon while out of town and as i took the two hour drive back home... I thought of everything in the world, wondering y or how or when... no one can really answer any of those questions... at least not yet... i just can't make any sense of anything... y just a guy that i was hanging out with a few weeks ago...

once we find out what happened and how he died, it'll help to bring some closure, but death is something that i don't understand... As i try to distract myself and keep busy, i log on to facebook and i'm going thru a friend's page, and i see a picture of my friend that passed away and all i can think is that all we have are memories now... i understand whats happened, but i can't really grasp it yet... today is a truly sad day... my prayer goes out to his family and all of his friends that love him so much...

Friend Chronicles - Part 1...

2007-02-09T07:35:00.000-08:00

Friend Chronicles:

So I’ve decided to start a series called Friend Chronicles…They say that your friends are a good inclination of the type of person you are... I’m not sure if I truly believe that statement, but I plan at looking at a number of my close friends and seeing if it applies to me… so I’ve decided to chronicilize (not a real word, but u know what I’m saying) my friends.. they are interesting characters… so here goes…

Entry 1… AB…I dunno if I still have best friends, but if I had to name one… it’d be my girl AB… AB and I are very much alike, except that she’s more easy going in general than I am and she’s an angry drunk (not really an angry drunk, but gets a little mean when she drinks – never mean to me though)… anyways, AB and I have known each other roughly about 3 years… we lived together my last year of college… then after college, she moved into the DC area and we’ve hung out every since… now, AB is an ideal friend, sometimes too goofy, but I won’t take that away from her cause its part of her charm, it part of the reason we get along so well… me, I can be bossy sometimes, but in general with AB, I’m hardly that way cause we usually think a like so no need to be bossy with someone that’s all thinking the same thing you’re think, or maybe AB just usually lets me have my way cause it doesn’t matter one way or the other to her… either way, things work great between me and her… at the end of the day, its about having fun and enjoying our early twenties…

Entry 2… NM…Then there NM… NM joined our hang out crew of two (me and AB) early last year… she quickly got integrated into our plans cause she was cool to hang out with and we all got along great… I’ve actually known NM since my freshmen year in college, but we were join acquaintances, not really friends…. Anyways, me and NM butt head a lot cause NM lives in her own world, but AB is usually there to help find a compromise and smooth things over… so for now the situation works… don’t get me wrong, I love hanging out with NM, but sometimes she drives me up a wall… She’s great to talk to and give great advice, but sometime I just can’t understand her line of thinking… everything is always extra with her… nothing is ever simple with her… I know I can be irritable some times and I really try not to let it show, but when she starts going off the deep end and making things more complicated than necessary it drives me crazy… but at the end of the day, she’s still my girl and she’s lots of fun to hang out with…

Entry 3… JB…There is JB… JB and I have such an interesting yet weird relationship… sometimes we’re the best of friends and sometimes we can go weeks without talking… I’ve known JB for about 4 or 5 years now… JB is Nigerian, once of the nicest guys I know… and well he knows a lot about me… I’m comfortable talking to him about most things… and usually I feel like he’s looking out for my best interests… there have been some situations where I feel the JB was looking out for his own interest and not necessarily what was best for me (we had this period in our relationship where it felt like we were together, so talking about our relationships with other people was always a skewed topic…) but I think we’re over that and back to our normal best friend ways (if I had to pick a male best friend, it would be JB)… JB can be incredibly considerate and treat you with all the respect in the world, depending on who you and how he views you… now, he’s never done me wrong, but I know he has the potential to be not so kind to others, so that’s a factor that one must always consider… cause what if him and I weren’t as close as we were, would he end up treating some how… anyways, sometimes it hard telling JB about who I’m dating or what guy I’m into, cause there’s always that slight concern as to whether he’s looking out for my best interest or for his interest in the situation… but it usually works out that he’s looking out for me, regardless of how he may feel about the situation… that’s my JB… I used to spent a lot of time with him, I mean daily, but lately we’ve has a shift or two in our friendship, so we’re just getting back to the way things use to be… JB is trying to move to London as well later this year, which would be absolutely great, cause well I love JB (not in love, but just love him) and it’d make my transition so much better with him around…

So what do these three friends say about me (or at least I think they say about)… My relationship with AB reflects that I’m a free spirit and I just want to have fun… My relationship with NM may show that sometimes I live in my own world and that I’m stubborn and my relationship with JB reflects my Nigerian side….

more friends to come...

"Many of life's circumstances are created by three basic choices: the disciplines you choose to keep, the people you choose to be with; and, the laws you choose to obey." --Charles Millhuff

"When people are like each other they tend to like each other." ~Anthony Robbins

"Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution." ~ Deepak Chopra

Hope you have a great weekend!!!

up & then down...

2007-02-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

Glad to say that things between New Yorker and I are kinda back on track… after all that relationship talk we had Monday afternoon, decided I was gonna tell him about how my family wants me to marry a Nigerian and take it from there… I’m sure he’ll ask what I want, and I’ll have to tell him… so we’ll just have to see where the conversation goes from there… So Monday night I told New Yorker that I liked him more after our little discussion/disagreement that we had earlier in the day… and he was like what??? Then he replied “Why, cause I let u do whatever u want to” and I replied You don’t let me do whatever I want to, but no that’s not y, I like you more because of the way you handled the entire situation, it made me appreciate you more… so thanks… and all he could say was wow…
Yeah crazy right… but I totally loved the way he handled the entire situation, he apologized and wanted to talk about it right away, clear the air, make sure we were both comfortable with things and move on from it… I can’t ask for more than that…

Ok… so I started writing this post on Tuesday… and granted its only Wednesday… but my tone is already beginning to change… I’m a confused young lady, I do admit that… I not quite sure what I want, but definitely able to pick out what I DON”T want… and well New Yorker has been in a funky mood the last couple of days, and of course as the significant other in his life at the moment, I’m getting the brunt of this funky mood that he’s in (Guy does PMS… trust me…) so anyways, I’m dealing with it….

Anyways, my homeboy JB is back from Naija… missed him like crazy… we have this crazy friendship where sometimes we’ll talk 2 or 3 times a day and then can go weeks without nothing and when we see each other its like no time has lapsed at all… I can’t explain it, but whenever JB and I are spending time together, talking and hanging out and so on, it always great… anyways, I was chilling with him last nite… trying to catch up on what’s been going on… who we’re both seeing or not seeing and so on… it was great to catch up… we of course talked about New Yorker and JB of course game me his opinion… anyways, while Naija they had a camcorder and recorded part of their visit, it was like the MTV diary thing, it was hilarious… as I was watching it, made me miss Nigeria so much… I just kept thinking I can’t wait to move there or go visit later this year…

Working on a blog series called ‘Friend Chronicle’… they say your friends are a reflection of who you are…. Anyways, the series will start in the next couple of days…

Hope ya’ll r having a good week so far…

Miss Communication... what a weekend!!!

2007-02-05T13:32:00.000-08:00

And so I finished my first application for London… its for an internship program… I’ve done my part at least, just have to make sure my references do there part in the next couple of weeks… one down, five to go (it sounds better than it is, once the first one is complete then the rest should be easier)…

Anyways, interesting weekend… New Yorker and I had some serious miscommunication… we talked Friday night and nothing until late Sunday night… very unusually for the couple that manages to spend 8 hours on the phone a few weeks ago… let’s just say that we both got our wires mixed up and he didn’t call me and I didn’t call him… I thought he was avoiding me and he thought I was avoiding him… now how did we both come to this conclusion… well the truth is neither one of us had a sound basis for drawing the conclusion that the other was avoiding them… We spoke briefly on Friday evening and ended the convo with him saying he’d call me back… I went out Friday evening with some co-workers so I didn’t think nothing of it when he didn’t call since he knew I was going out, then nothing on Saturday but then again I didn’t feel like talking to him, so I didn’t call either and then Sunday, nothing… I thought about calling to make sure he was okay, but I didn’t… then he texted after the super bowl asking did I watch the game… he called me a little bit later and we talked for like 2 minutes and then he called me at like midnight when I was in bed and we talked for a few more minutes and he was like I’m bout to go, and I was like yeah me too, cause u’re not saying anything to me, and I didn’t give him a chance to say anything else before I said bye and hung up (harsh I know, but I was a tad bit irritated and I had been drinking, so I didn’t feel like I was in the right state of mind to discuss things with him, but I shouldn’t have hung up the phone on him like that)…

So I get to work today and I decide to be the bigger person and call him… so when we finally start talking, he’s like what’s up with u, what’s going… what was up with this weekend… and that he saw the end of the road coming and females are so predictable and so on and so on (I do have to admit though when he first said he saw the end of the road coming (between me and him), my eyes actually watered for a second and I was hurt)… first I told him that he was tripping and he needed to stop assuming stuff… then I told him that when we last spoke, early Friday evening, he said he would call me and he didn’t and I was waiting on him to call me… he said he called me back Friday nite at like 11pm (its not on my missed call list) but when I didn’t pick up so he assumed I was out partying and when I didn’t call him Saturday morning (like I normally would, if I missed a call from him) that he started to think something was up and that I was avoiding him… he figured since I saw the missed call that I would call him back… well I never got his call and here I was waiting for him to call… so I asked, how long were u gonna wait for me to call, forever? And he replied did I call u first last nite (which he did)… and then he said he felt bad like he had done something cause I gave him attitude last nite when we were on the phone and that he couldn’t even go to sleep and that’s y he called me back later… which at this point I was totally confused, cause I don’t remember him calling me back after I gave him attitude and kinda hung up on him… but I checked my phone again, and he had called me at like 1:20am and we had a convo for like 30 seconds… but I can not recall anything I said to him and he told me that I started talking about some guy that I met and then he hung up, said he didn’t want to hear the end of the story (I didn’t meet a guy, I ran into an old crush that I dated a few years ago… and to tell u the truth I was so out of it, I don’t even remember having this conversation and if it wasn’t for my cell phone call log, I wouldn’t have believed it)… but I did apologize for hanging up on him and for not remembering this brief 1am conversation that we had…

Anyways, he told me that he wasn’t mad about the whole situation (really, cause u could have fooled me the way u were acting and questioning me!!!), cause technically I didn’t cheat on him cause we’re not in an exclusive relationship… but then he admitted that he was a little mad about the entire situation and so on… and I had to reassure him over and over that I hadn’t done anything with anyone else… and explain that rambling that I did when he called me back at 1 something in the morning… and he tried to rub it in my face that he clearly could have taken his sister’s friend home from the club on Saturday night (but he said he thought about me and didn’t, even though he felt like I was avoiding him and out doing stuff with other guys) and I said just as easily as I could have gone home with the guy I used to talk to that I ran into on Friday night at the club (Not the most mature response from either of us, but its reality)… he just assumed that I was off doing something with some other guy cause we didn’t talk all weekend and I told him that that really hurt my feelings that he thought I was capable of doing that… and that he should trust me and have more faith in me… and I told him I didn’t call cause I felt like he had brushed me off Friday evening and that he would call when he was ready to talk to me… and in the mist of all this serious discussion, New Yorker goes ‘baby, you’re so cute…” and I couldn’t help but smile… how can the way I argue with u be cute crazy?!?!?

What I don’t get about New Yorker is why he’s trying to act all hard and say that he doesn’t worry about stuff like that (if a girl is messing with another guy, if he’s involved in an open relationship with her) but that clearly a lie, cause otherwise he wouldn’t have been so overly concerned about this weekend that it was the first thing out of his mouth after ‘what’s up’… I mean if he wasn’t so concerned he wouldn’t have been so worried about what I was doing and who I was doing it with… and he’s like he knows how women act, especially if their man lives in a different town and I told him, I’m not like any one else, I’m gonna be straight forward with u… and even if I was dating/seeing someone else, I wouldn’t make him less of a priority…

Anyways, he told me he thought I was scared of being hurt, scare of falling in love with him and being with him… and that our entire relationship scares me… (And he’s right, this relationship scares the hell out me for so many reasons…)
and at the end, he said u know I like u, I’m not trying to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt you… and all I could do was think about how much I cared about him and didn’t want to hurt him… and of course I reminded him how much he drives me crazy (and he says sorry in the cutest way and puts a smile on my face)… but its ok, cause I luv his craziness…

Aside from all that drama with New York, … my weekend was actually great …
Friday night, I did go out with my co-workers and I ran into the guy, DF… DF was my high school crush… he was a senior and I was a lowly freshman in high school… he was/is such a gorgeous specimen of what a man should be like and look like… anyways, after DF finished school, he moved back to Baltimore, as I did when i finished school, so DF and I dated briefly about two and a half years ago… and we didn’t end on bad terms so whenever we see each other, there’s always that element of flirtation there… and it was still there when I saw him Friday night… and I have to admit he was still as gorgeous as ever… he has this smile that lights up an entire room, with his dark smooth chocolate skins (ok, I’m drooling now…) … but we exchanged numbers and said we’ll kept in touch and that was it…

This was the first weekend where I got to sleep in on a Saturday in 6 months… I didn’t have to wake up early to go running… and me and my friends has a sleep over Saturday night which was a lot of fun and then spent all of Sunday together… went to brunch and then to a Super Bowl party… talk about a relaxing weekend…

Marathon Weekend... the good, the bad & the ugly...

2007-02-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

So I’m finally back in action… I ran the marathon this past Sunday in Miami… and well I felt like hell, but I finished it and that’s all that counts!!! It was my first (and probably last) marathon and my goal was to finish it, which I did… and I did it in a decent time as well… I event got this cool metal as I ran across the finish line (as did everyone else that finished the marathon)… anyways, it was a GREAT experience and accomplishment and I’m so proud that I did it… now my friends think I’m crazy cause I want to sign up for a half marathon next month, despite all the pain I am in now… but I figure I might as take advantage of it now since I’m already trained, mentally and physically… it’ll be hard to have to re-train in the future… might as well just keep running since I’m already trained… beside spring is right around the corner and it’ll help me drop off those last couple of pounds and reach one of my 2007 goals.

Lots of other things went on in the last couple of days… Friday night New Yorker starts texting about if we have to do the Yoruba traditions… and here I am in Miami out at a late dinner with my girls (who also ran the marathon)… and I’m like what are you talking about… then he texts “the Marriage Traditions, we don’t have to do them to we?” … at this point I’m totally confused… Y are we talking about this on a Friday night when I’m in Miami and he’s in New York and should be out with his boys… I asked how he knew about the traditions and he replied, he did his homework… I just said we’d talk about it later… then Saturday rolled around and we didn’t talk much during the day cause he was working and I was enjoying sunny Miami… we finally talked later that evening before I went to bed, and we talked about the tradition for a Yoruba wedding, and what I wanted at the wedding and so on… then I told him we needed to chill about this topic (its waaaaaaaay too early to be talking about marriage)… we talked about a bunch of different things… some heavy topics, but for the most part I tried to keep it light just cause I wanted to keep my mind clear so I could get a good nite’s rest since my marathon was in the morning…

I got roughly about 4 to 5 hours of sleep Saturday nite, guess I was anxious… got up at 4 am to get ready for the marathon that started at 6am… well, we got outside and it was raining like crazy, so we started the marathon soaking wet, then it got humid and then the sun came up… not the best running conditions, but hey I finished…

Anyways, so I flew out of Miami Sunday afternoon (even though I was in excruciating pain and could barely walk) cause I had to be in NJ for a training for my job on Monday morning…. And New Yorker was gonna catch the train down so we could spend Monday evening together and we’d both leave on Tuesday… so after my training on Monday I picked up New Yorker from the train station… we had planned it out earlier in the week for New Yorker to come spend some time with me while I was in NJ for my training, but but I was nervous that he wouldn’t come or he would miss his train, but he didn’t miss the train… he got there right on time… we went to dinner and just hung out… and we went to the lunch and then to the Mall before we left on Tuesday... it was really good spending some one on one time with him… realized I like him a lot more than I thought and vice versa… he’s such a cutie… everything he did was so adorable to me and even when he got on my nerves, he was still adorable, apologizing and just being himself… I was just really comfortable with him around… I dunno, it was definitely a good experience and I’m glad he came down… I honestly can’t wait to see him again… but he did drive me crazy at times, which I told him about… but all in all, I had a great time with him… he’s very big on PDA, which doesn’t matter to me much one way or the other, I was just surprised at how open he was… and he kept making comments about being together in the future and about me being his wife and so on… the best thing about the time we spent together was how he remember some of the small comments I’ve made in the past about what I like and don’t like and how he was so considerate about…

I miss him already and now I don’t know what to do about him…. I actually thought about calling him and telling him I think he should date other people, so he doesn’t get too invested, cause from the way he was acting, he definitely is getting invested in us (and so am I to tell u the truth)… and spending all that time with him, without wanting to bite his head off made me realize that I really like him… but i’m just taking it one day at a time… and still have to remember we do have an open relationship…

The real OC...

2007-01-24T14:01:00.000-08:00

The real OC…

Aiight, when I left work last Friday evening, I was so excited… I was looking forward to an evening of doing absolutely nothing but watching some movies as I laid in bed… maybe talk to New Yorker for a little bit… but all in all, it was suppose to be a ME night, all about me and relaxing… I managed to get all my errands ran and be in my bed by 5:30pm, talk about lazy!!! Watched my first movie, Little Miss Sunshine… hilarious movie… then decided to take a quick break before popping in the next movie… then my friend, OC, called me… now here’s the story with me and OC… OC and I met late in 2005, maybe around September/October or so… we chilled for a little bit, went out on a few dates… he was a cool guy… then I met another guy name GW in November… GW and I really hit it off, we just really clicked… so I was chilling with both guys getting to know them and so on… then one night I was driving and I called OC on the phone, it was about 11pm or so, and apparently I woke OC up from his sleep, instead of him to just tell me that he was sleeping, he proceeded to talk on the phone and he ended up being really mean and rude and it was a real turn off, so I decided I was done with OC, especially since me and GW clicked more anyways… I stopped called OC and eventually he got the message…

So fast forward about 9 months to August 2006… I was having this huge Birthday party with one of my friends… so I invited everyone in my email address book including OC, without thinking about it… the evite had my number on it…. So OC started calling me again every once in a while, it didn’t bother me cause he’s a cool guy, but I knew that I couldn’t date him… anyways, lately OC has been calling me more talking about how he wants me to be his girl friend and how we’re so good together and so on and so on… I was surprised considering how we ended things and the face that he hadn’t seen me in over year (since the end of 05)… each time he called it was the same thing, the convo would start off cool, but then he’d manage to start talking me and him being together and so on… Anyways, he called me on like Tuesday night and was confession all these things about how he felt foe me and I wasn’t prepared… so I got off the phone and called him back on Thursday, but he didn’t pick up… then he calls me back on Friday… this past Friday… and I was trying to be nice about the situation and not come out and say that I won’t date him again, so I told him I was dating someone that I cared about… but that didn’t phase him… so I gave him the ultimate excuse, there’s no point in dating him cause he’s not Nigerian and I want to marry a Nigerian… I think that hit home for him… but even then he just kept going on and on about he doesn’t understand what the big deal is and blah blah blah and trying to make me feel guilty talking bout I broke his heart and he’s in so much pain and so on…
In my mind, I was thinking… REALLY, cuz u haven’t seen me in over a year and we don’t talk that often, where was all this really coming from… so anyways, after 2 hours, I managed to get off the phone with him… and well I though everything was resolved… then late Saturday night (or early Sunday morning) he started texting me all these crazy comments that we can try and make it work… I tried to ignore it but he was blowing up my phone so I replied and he was like he doesn’t understand… and by this time it was 4am and I was quite tipsy and exhausted from dancing all night… so the last text I sent said something to the affect that I’m dating someone I really care about and I’m not leaving him for anyone… we’ll talk about this later and good night… he’s response was quite angry with capital letters and all these exclamation marks… I was too tired to deal with it, so I went to sleep… I finally talked to him about it on Sunday nite and why the hell was he texting me all the stuff and that his last text was angry… we talked it out and well the resolution, he’s gonna have to work it out cause I’m not dating him again… if only New Yorker knew half the drama other guys put me through!!!

4 days to my marathon… and then after my marathon I get to spend some quality time with my New Yorker … cause I gotta go to Jersey for work and well he’s gonna come down and spend a day or two with me :-) (called New Yorker today from work… and the first thing outta his mouth was ‘can’t wait to see you on Monday baby’… )… can’t wait to see him next week!

update....

2007-01-22T08:09:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I’ve been MIA for a little bit… life’s just been a tad bit busy for me, that’s all…

Let’s see… I’ve went to the gym twice last week, and both types IN was like what’s up, what’s going on and just trying real hard to talk to me… and usually we talk after my workout, but both times he had clients and I wasn’t about to wait… he did call me one of the evenings, but I pretended to be asleep when I picked up the phone… So anyways, IN was blowing up my phone this weekend… he literally called me 7 times on Saturday evening between 8pm and 10:30pm (yes I went into my phone and counted how many times he called)… and he was spitting a whole bunch of non-sense… talking about how I’m playing him and how we should go out tonight and I’m like r u joking, i’ve got plans and its too last minute… I’m like I have plans, I’m going to DC… and of course he says, I’m going to DC too… where r u going in DC, maybe I’ll come hang out with you… NEGATIVE buddy… told him it was a small get together… which it kinda was… which leads me to my evening Saturday night… went to my friend’s house party in DC… it was mostly white people, but me and my girls had a blast… hadn’t had that much fun at a house party in years…

On to New Yorker… so the representative is officially gone and well I don’t like things as they are now… I mean, I’m not miserable, just not over the top happy like I usually am about New Yorker… I dunno what it is, but some time last weekend (not this one that just pasted, but MLK weekend) since then New Yorker has been a little MIA… like we haven’t been talking as much and he just seemed distracted… now I know that things are difficult for him at the moment with work, but that been the case since we started talking, so that can’t be the reason for him acting like this… sometime last week I decided that I was gonna be patient with him and the situation… cause technically he’s not my boyfriend and we are in an open relationship, but honestly if this thing is gonna work, he’s gonna have to give me all the attention and time that I need and that I give him… so New Yorker and I talked yesterday (Sunday) afternoon… he was blowing up my phone as well, calling on both my cell phones til I picked up the phone… and well he didn’t sound so happy when I finally picked up my phone, he was grilling me with questions talking about where r u, what did u do last night, what guy were you with and well u get the gist of it… I told him he needed to calm down and stop assuming I was doing anything wrong and I reassured him that I didn’t do anything with anyone, so after he calmed down he apologized… at first I was confused where all these crazy questions were coming from, but then again I did text him some random things the previous night while I was at my friend’s house party after drinking more than I probably should have (drunk texting is never a good idea)…

Anyways, we got over that hump and we were talking as usual… and I was gonna bring up the issue that I was having with him not being around as much and what was going on and so on… but before I could we got of the phone at like 4 or so (granted we were on the phone for over an hour, but I got so caught up in talking about other things with him that I never got a chance to mention what was on my mind)… and well, that was the last time I talked to him yesterday, I called him later in the evening and texted him, but nothing… no response… and I was thinking … see that’s the shit I’m talking about… so I went to bed a little annoyed… didn’t sleep well and I had this dream about me and him fussing… so I got up early and got ready for work and on my 40 minute drive to work, my phone rings very unexpectedly… and its New Yorker… said he was calling cause ‘he wanted to let me know that he was ok, that his phone died and that he had left it up the block at this boy’s place and that he woke up early cause he couldn’t sleep cause he didn’t get to talk to me and cause he didn’t me to be worrying that something happened to him and to wish me a good day and so on’…. Said he got up early and went up the block to get his phone just so he could talk to me… sweet, right… and I wanted to believe him just cause he NEVER gets up that early for anything, and that put a smile on my face.. And I told him that he was an interesting guy and that I’ll take that statement as face value and we’ll deal with what’s on my mind later…

But of course New Yorker was persistent and wanted to know what was the matter… said he didn’t want me to be angry or upset with him and I told him that’s he’s been MIA for the last week or so and that all those questions about me always being with some other guy makes me think that he’s only asking me that cause he’s doing stuff with other women… and of course, New Yorker is a sweet talker and said that he’s sorry about not being around as much as I want him to be and he’ll fix it and that he only asks me those question cause he feels like he has the best girl in town and he doesn’t want any other guy touching me… that’s he not doing anything with any other girl… and so on and so on… needless to say he got back on my good side again… and well it did feel good to talk to him and get things cleared up… and I appreciate the way he was persistent about clearing the air between us and making sure that everything was cool before I got to work and he went back to sleep… I miss him already and we just got off the phone 3 hours ago… can’t wait til he gets up so we can talk again :-)…

My weekend was packed… I’ll blog about my Friday nite later… fully of drama :-/ from this guy I used to date, we’ll call him OC…. I’ll explain all about that in my next post…

Quotes....
"I am more and more convinced that our happiness depends more on how we meet the events in our lives, than on those events themselves." ~Alexander Humboldt

"The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway." Henry Boye

"If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, I can neither give nor receive. " ~Dorothee Solle

M I A ...

2007-01-19T14:43:00.000-08:00

sorry i've been MIA.... been a busy week at work... had a lot on the mind lately... but will update very soon....

have a great weekend...

Re-Focusing …

2007-01-11T12:26:00.000-08:00

Re-Focusing …

And so I was reading Naijadude’s post the other day, Be Yourself…. And it made me realize that I’ve been distracted lately… before the holiday season, before I met IN and before I started kicking it with New Yorker, I was so focused on applying to school in the UK for grad school and figuring what I wanted from life, trying to figure out the next step for myself… But I’ve been so slack about it lately… my plan was to have all my applications out by the end of December… well, let’s just say December 31st came and went by with out me making a visit to the post office :-/… but no worries, my applications aren’t due until March, but I’ve resolved to continue to work on them and hopefully send most of them out by the beginning of February… worked on one of my personal statement for one of the schools, think I’m just about done with it, sent it to my sister to proof read... once I have the first personal statement done for grad school, the rest will be easy… I’ll just have to make minor adjustment to the first personal statement for grad school and I just finished the personal statement for the intership.. … I got 5 applications to finish… 4 are for school and 1 is an internship program… so I’m back on the grind with that…

And I realized that I never finished making my list of personal goals for 2007:

Lose these last 10/15 pounds that I’ve been playing with for a few months
Travel to 2 places I’ve never been (one being Atlanta - cause I’ve never been…)
Participate in another running event (Aside from my Marathon at the end of January)
Go back to school
...
...
...

Haven't quite finished the goal list yet, but still working on it...

And on the New Yorker situation... he makes me happy at the moment and i can't remember the last time i've been this happy... so i'm gonna go with the flow... I'm sure i'll eventually talk things thru with New Yorker and we'll take it from there; but for now, we're still early in our relationship, so no need to jump the gun on things... so i'm just going with the flow :-)...

Some quotes:

Life is all about risks and it requires you to jump. Don't be a person who has to look back and wonder what they would have, or could have had. No one waits forever...

There is a time for risky love. There is a time for extravagant gestures. There is a time to pour out your affections on one you love. And when the time comes --seize it, don't miss it. ~Max Lucado

Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will work. –Dr. Robert Anderson

I don't cross my bridges until I get to them... I've spent a lot of time defeating myself crossing bridges that I never get to, so now I just deal with whatever reality is in front of me and not necessarily what ifs... ~Anon

logic over emotion???

2007-01-09T13:27:00.000-08:00

And so… after the entire weekend New Yorker and I talked briefly on Sunday cause I was riding in the car with 3 other people and didn’t want to be rude and it was late when I got home… so we didn’t get to really talk til yesterday… we talked last night… talked about the weekend and how we had such a good time together and so on… said he was really feeling me and so on… we talked again about commitment issues…told him I couldn’t afford to get too attached to him, especially not this early… but he says and does all the right things... he's concerned about all the small things, especially all the small things that matter to me... what's crazy is that whenever i even get a small doubt in my mind, its like he knows and calls or texts me and everything seems to be right with the world again... corny, i know... but that's just how I feel about my shortie...

Talked to one of my good friend, AG, last nite… AG and I went to college together, she was one of the first people I met in Undergrad and still keep in touch with even though she lives far away… anyways, AG and I are very similar in many ways, except that sometimes she more neurotic than I am, but at least emotionally we are both alike… and she advised me saying that DD don’t date someone that you can’t marry... and that the open dating situation sounds good in logic, but that if she knows me as well as she does its not gonna work out as simple as I am making it out to sound… and truth be told, it wouldn’t be that simple… I already know that… AG believes that either way someone is going to get hurt in this relationship and that I should imagine how hard it will be to give him up later if I decide I can’t marry him, when I already have a hard time going a couple of hours with talking to him… she’s right, it will be difficult, either now or later… but probably harder later… I don’t want to string him along, I kinda want to lay the whole thing out there so that he understands where I’m coming from, but then again when I try to explain it just sounds (as in AG’s words) that I’m just with him for the attention and affection, and when the right Nigerian guy comes along that I will dump New Yorker all together… and that’s not the case, I promise… I’m tempted to just keep going with the flow of things and let things progress naturally… yeah I know we mention getting married, having kids and the future, but its not like we’re seriously planning or any of that stuff (or at least I’m not)… but then again I don’t want him to get so emotionally invested in me and then I turn around and give him some BS story about how I can’t be with him cause he’s not Nigerian…

Today we (New Yokrer and I) were talking and he’s at his friend’s house when he calls me… and I guess she asked who he was on the phone with and his reply was wifey…. all of a sudden, i'm wifey now… when did I become wifey… not to say that I mind… actually it put a little smile across my face cause he’s all about telling them who I am… and my status with him…

In case u can’t tell, I am terribly confused… I really like this dude, but don’t wanna hurt him… there is soooo much potential for me and him… and yet there are some road blocks already… well not some, just one major road block that I don’t know if I can ever come to over look… my head says that I’m still young and I should just enjoy the experience cause he’s a great guy with his head on straight… but my heart says you can’t put me in a vulnerable position to fall for a guy that you know u can’t be with forever… logic says that an open relationship is very manageable and would work well in this situation… emotions say I’m already attached to New Yorker and I don’t want him seeing any other females… my head over my heart… logic over emotions… whats a girl to do???

"The mind is no match with the heart in persuasion; constitutionality is no match with compassion. " ~ Senator Everett Dirksen

New York for the nite... with my New Yorker...

2007-01-08T10:54:00.000-08:00

OMG… 23 miles is a long ways… but I am glad to say that I completed the 23 miles run this weekend successfully… I was in a lot of pain afterwards, but I am glad I did it and it made me feel so much more confident about my marathon in 3 weeks… excited!!!

So my friend, AB and I, finished running… we went to her place to get ready for NY… called our friend, NB, to head over cause we’d be ready to leave soon… anyways, after a whole bunch of random events, we finally made it onto the bus… we only caught the bus cause it was cheap, convenient and we had a ride back with our friend who had left for NY the day before…
Anyways, I tired to take a nap on the bus, but it wasn’t happening… everyone kept calling me to make sure we we’re still coming (turns out a lot of my friends were in NY that weekend and were planning on going to the same party)… so my phone was ringing off the hook, and not to mention New Yorker was calling to make sure I was still coming and to see how far away we were and so on… finally made it to New York… the bus was suppose to drop us off at Penn Station, but it stopped in Chinatown and they told everyone to get off… hmmm, guess that what you get for the cheap ride, but the ride was surprisingly comfortable… anyways, we make our way to Harlem, luckily NB knew the train system and we navigated our self to our friend, C’s place… we finally made it to C’s place at like 10pm, where she had a nice home cooked meal and drinks waiting for us! What a great host!!!

Anyways, New Yorker and his boy showed up around midnight to pick us up… my first impression (cause I haven’t seen him in over 3 weeks, which was the first time we met)… was he’s as cute as I remember… was surprised at how natural it felt when we hugged… and in the back of my mind, I knew that it was gonna be a great evening… we’re all in the car talking, laughing and tripping… it was six of us in the car (we were riding in a Hummer, so it was comfortable)… but I really wished that it was just New Yorker and me, as we sat in the car and texted each other as we drove to the club… we finally made it to the party, the guys dropped us off and went to go park and when we walked into the party, first people we see are some friends that are in town… and one of them is like my little brother from college, FC… (quick side note: I met FC his freshmen year in college and my junior year and we just really clicked, he was like a little brother to me… anyways, a couple of months ago when I went back to my school for homecoming, I saw FC at a party and he was beyond drunk… I was pretty tipsy myself… but I sobered up when I saw the FC needed someone to watch him and take care of him… anyways, that nite FC kissed me and it totally threw me off and I just blamed it on the alcohol.. we never talked about it and I just assumed that he was too drunk to remember what happened…) So anyways, as I walked into this club, I say hi to the girls and then to FC… except that FC pulls me a little too close, not just like a friend close to give a hug, but a little too close for my comfort… and he started coming on a little strong which I didn’t expect and I tried to play it off and one again chuck it up to the fact that he had been drinking. Normally I wouldn’t have paid it any attention, except that he had called me earlier in the evening on my ride up, talking about I’ve been thinking about you and I can’t wait to see u and so on…

Anyways, New Yorker and his boy came into the club a few minutes a later and well I pretty much stayed with him the entire time at the party… it was a little too much PDA between New Yorker and myself, for my own taste… the holding hands and dancing and stuff was cute… but the kissing and so on that occurred was totally not necessary… but in my defense, I let him take the lead (PDA doesn’t bother me in general and I’m not opposed to it, so I usually let the guy lead incase he feels a particular way about it)… well, let’s just say that New Yorker had no shame in his game, he had no problems showing everyone that he was feeling me and vice versa…. It was cool though, me and New Yorker were that couple u look at and say ‘get a room’… hmmm… anyways, after the club we went to get some dinner or rather breakfast in the city before heading back home for the evening…
It was definitely hard saying bye to New Yorker on Sunday afternoon when we were getting ready to leave… it was so nice to be with him, see him and spend time with him… we had a really good time together… all the worries went out the window and everything just clicked between us… which I’m glad it did… but he started talking about long-term stuff again… hmmm, which worried me….
After New Yorker left, my friends and I went to brunch before hitting the road… Got home around midnight and it was a struggle to get up this morning at 6am… so I didn’t… stayed my butt in bed til like 9:30 when New Yorker called me to see how I was doing…
The verdict is that I do like New Yorker a lot, but I’m just not sure about the future… not sure how much potential our relationship has… but for now, I’m just going with the flow… New Yorker may be coming up here this weekend, but its not definite yet…

After I finished talking to New Yorker this morning, I called my ex, L, this morning… I had a dream about him last night that really scared me, so I had to call him to make sure he was okay and to check up on him … he’s doing well he says, and I briefly told him about the dream and begged him to be careful… the dream really scared me… I usually don’t remember my dreams, but this dream was so clear and vivid… as I was telling L to be careful and take care of himself, I felt tears coming down my face cause the dream scared me… L has a way of easing my fears, he was able to calm me down and make me feel better (that's one of the great things about him)... As usual we talked about a whole bunch of things... especially the future, he tried to ask if or who I'm dating and I manage to beat around the bush with my answer, but i'm always straight forward with him, i simply ask 'so, who's the new girl in your life'... he says he doesn't have one, and i believe him... we talk about moving to Nigeria, cause he just got back from Naija on Saturday evening... suprising that he wants to move to Nigeria now, cause when we were dating I told him that I planned on moving to Nigeria and he wasn't trilled with the idea, but considered it then cause we were making plans for the future... but now i'm glad to hear that he's planning on moving back... I wouldn't or couldn't tell L about New Yorker... one, its too early in relationship with New Yorker and secondly, I already know what he's going to say... anyways, it was great talking to L, its always great talking to him... hadn't talked to him since he left for Nigeria a few weeks ago... but i'm just glad that he's doing well...

I finally made it to work around noon today… I’ve still not recovered from my run or the events on Saturday evening with my friends & New Yorker… but it was worth it… cause I had a great time…

Running into IN... NY for the weekend...

2007-01-05T06:28:00.000-08:00

So I went to the gym Wednesday evening… first time I’d been to the gym since the week before Christmas (just been running instead… cause my gym is close to my job and not where I live) anyways… I was hoping I wouldn’t see IN, but I knew that the chances of that happening were slim… so I just finished working out on the machines upstairs and was heading down stairs to do some circuit training and work on my abs… when I see IN walking up the stairs with a client… all I could think was “Yes, he’s busy, so at least he won’t be able to corner me…”… I tried to walk by nonchalantly and just hey and keep it moving, but as soon as he saw me, he smiled and said ‘ that’s messed up… we need to talk…’ and I said ok and kept walking…. Talk… talk about what… so anyways, I was stretching and finishing my up my workout, when IN came by and starting talking about how I totally forgot about him and blah blah blah… and I simply said to him, jokingly… I told you have a short attention span and that I deserve a lot of attention (note: I’m not a diva (although my friends may beg to differ), but if a guy is interested, he needs to act like he is… I don’t have time for games…) and he replied, but I called u last week… and I simply said yeah u called me once after not seeing me in the gym for 2 weeks… and the convo went on in that manner… then he’s like if you’re done with your workout, let’s go grab some dinner… but I couldn’t, I had somewhere else I have to be at within the hour, so I declined… he’s like, but we should talk… and I simply replied you know my number and walked away… now if IN was really serious, he should have call me later Wednesday night or even yesterday… but nope, nothing… but then again I wasn’t expecting him to call nor did I really want him to call… so anyways, case & point… IN is just gonna be a friend…

Anyways, on to pressing issues… I’m going to NY tomorrow and I'm gonna get to see New Yorker… can’t wait to see him… this trip was already planned b4 I mean New Yorker, cause one of my friends that lives in DC, that's a promotor, is having this huge party in NY so me and my girls are going for the party… Anyways, I’m just happy that it worked out this way cause now I get to see my baby as well… now, I really want to spend time with New Yorker, but I definitely don’t want to miss the party that I was planning on going to, so I’m thinking that neither I hang out with New Yorker b4 I go out with my friends or invite him and his boys to come along to the party…. I kinda mentioned that to him as well about him coming to the party… and he’s like whatever I want to do is cool as long we’re together… so I dunno… I’m not big on bringing a guy I’m talking to a party in general (just cause things aren't really defined yet and so on), but then I don’t want to abandon my friends for New Yorker or vice versa… but inviting him to the party sounds like the best option and it may all work out especially since I do want to see him so much…

Tomorrow is the big day for me… I’ll be running 23 miles in the morning… it’ll be the furthest I’ve ever run and the most I will run before my marathon… The Marathon is in exactly 3 weeks from this Sunday… Once I finish this 23 mile run, I will feel much more confident about my marathon and being able to complete it… training has been so hard for this marathon, but it’s been worth it…

Yes, I know I have a packed day tomorrow… first the run in the morning, then riding up to NY, then the party... it's all good though, I can handle it... besides I’ve been resting up and everything all week, so I should be good… have a great weekend…

3.09am

2007-01-03T10:25:00.000-08:00

3:09am… I was awoken from my sleep with a text… ‘I’m on my way home’… it was my baby (New Yorker… yeah I know it early to be giving each other cute little nicknames, but that started as soon as we started talking)… he went bowling/drinking with his boys last night and well I wanted to call to say good night earlier in the evening, but I didn’t want to call him while he was with his boys cause I don’t want to crowd him… after I replied to text, we went back and forth for 10 minutes… he wanted to make sure it was ok for him to call me since I was already sleeping, he didn’t want to disturb me even more… but of course I told him it was cool… its always nice to hear his voice… he called me a few minutes later when he got home… said he wanted to call me earlier when they were bowling cause he knew I was going to bed early, but his boys been teasing him like crazy about us always being on the phone, so I understood… cause well, we are always on the phone, sometimes he calls them (his boys) on 3-way with me, just so me and him don’t have to get off the phone… and when I call him, he answers the phone ‘Hey baby’ even around his boys… so I understood…

We talked for a little bit before we both decided it was time for bed… I dunno what it is about this guy, but he is the sweetest thing… always knows exactly what to say, to make my heart do that little skip & jump, and put a smile on my face…
Anyways, New Yorker has a game plan for his job and life and things in 07 in general… said he was gonna start putting it into action… but I knew it was gonna be rough for to get up this morning after a nite out with his boys… had to call him this morning to make sure he was up and getting ready to go into the office… now all of this isn’t strange at all, but when I started thinking about it, I realize that when he talks about the plan for work and the future, its always ‘us’ and ‘we’ and so on… and the fact that when I called his this morning, I was like ‘baby, you gotta get up and start working on the plan…. Blah blah blah”… made me start thinking… when did I get so concerned about his plan, the plan or our plan… i'm just suppose to be going with the flow?

Running, Not Walking…

2007-01-02T07:29:00.000-08:00

That’s what me and New Yorker are doing… we’re running… and we’re running at a pace too fast for me… Lemme explain… in my last post just a few days ago I was talking about how New Yorker wanted an open relationship and that I was cool with it for now since we were just getting to know each other and there was no need to rush into anything… well, New Yorker and I have spent a lot of time talking the last couple of days/weeks… I mean we have these marathon phone sessions where we’re on the phone for like 4, 6, 8 hours… yeah I know its crazy, what the heck do we have to talk about for that long, each day… I dunno honestly, it just happens… what I expect to be a quick call to say what’s up turns into a couple of hours… now I dunno know how or exactly when we got to the place where we’re at, but he’s seriously considering being in a committed relationship with me and only me… and that scares the living day lights out of me… he started making small comments about the future and me and him (which he calls an ‘us’ now…) and I caught all the small comments and thought they were cute (still do)… but I guess I didn’t realize that he was really taking things seriously… these commitment comments coming from a man that has had open relationships that have last for more than 2 years (really, an open relationship for 2 years where he saw other people…) so imagine my surprise when yesterday he started seriously talking about me and him committing to one another… now, I’ll be the first to say it (incase you haven’t already figure it out)… I have commitment issues… things that I am currently dealing with… we’ll get back to my commitment issues in a minute… I guess I kinda saw things leading towards this direction, but I didn’t expect this to happen so quickly, cause I knew (or at least I thought I did) that he would be content having an open relationship for now and that maybe in the future if things are going good, we could take it from there…

Ok, New Yorker and I haven’t seen each other since we met a few weeks ago, but we’ve been inseparable on the phone… we’ve gotten to talk about so many things and get to know each other… but the fact remains, what if we don’t click when we’re together… maybe its just good now cause we’re only talk on the phone, what if its different when we are together…. That a major concern that we both have, which we discussed last night… said he couldn’t imagine us not clicking when we see each other and start hanging out, since we clicked the first time we met… and I agree with him, but its still a very valid issue… and well, if we don’t click, what’s his resolution… he says ‘we’ll just be that couple that argues all the time (the couple that cares a lot for each other but clashes)’… hmmm, we’ll have to wait to see how that turns out… I’m suppose to head out to New York on Saturday afternoon after my 23 mile run, cause my friends are having a party and me and my girls wanna go…. He’s really excited about me coming up to NY and so am I… I can’t wait to him… anyways, yesterday was just crazy we started talking around 4 o’clock and didn’t get of the phone til half past midnight… And I was dreading coming to work, especially since I knew I wouldn’t be able to talk to him as much… and he did the sweetest thing this morning… he woke up at like 6 something this morning to text me to make sure I was up…

I don’t understand y he wants to be in a committed relationship already… I told him that all of this was making me nervous, which is the truth… that we needed to take a couple of steps back and slow it down… we should see how things go this weekend before making wedding plans… and wedding plans… yeah I know he was joking when he was talking about ‘our’ wedding plans… but there a bit of truth to every joke and I just can’t plan that far in advance yet… my walls are still up, pretty high and we have a looooooong ways to go before making any types of plans like that… I know it seems like I’m rambling, but I’m just so perplexed about everything… My commitment issues stem from my past experiences… and there are some things that I haven’t quite let go of yet that I’m still working on… we talked about my commitment issues and his commitment issues (cause he definitely has some as well)… I told him that I don’t have a problem once I’ve made a commitment to someone, my problems is getting to the point of making the commitment… getting to the point of making the commitment means I have to trust you, and that’s hard… really hard for me to do…

There are many other issues to come to my mind with my current situation… but right now, all I can only focus on is seeing him on Saturday and seeing where things go from there… but with everything that's going on in my head and me over analyzing everything like i do, the one thing that scares me the most is that everything with him feels so right... it just does...

With all this going on in my head, almost forgot to wish everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I got NY on the mind...

2006-12-30T14:14:00.000-08:00

Hmmmm…. So me and New Yorker have been chillin hard…. Well, I waited for his call the other day and it never came… I called him later, but he never picked up and then I texted him and nothing… hmmm, boy was I curious as to why he wasn’t talking to me… he couldn’t have given up on us so quickly, I mean it was only a small argument… but then I was woken up on Thursday morning by a call from him… he didn’t sound so good… he was like he has a migraine and spent the entire day in bed sleeping ( he doesn’t like taking pills) trying to get rid of his migraine and then he say how could I think he was giving up on us and me… anyways, we talked for a few more minutes, but he didn’t sound good, so I told him to go back to bed and we’d talk later… later was an hour later when he called me back…. We stayed on the phone for about 5 and a half hours… literally… talking about a whole bunch of random things…. We only got off the phone cause I had to go running… then we spend most of the evening on the phone…. The more I talk to him, the more I like him… and did I mention he sends the sweetest texts to me (when we’re not on the phone) just to let me know he’s thinking about me… its cutest when he does it while he’s out with his boys and suppose to be having fun…

We’ve been talking a lot lately… mainly cause I took the week off work and he often works from home, so we spend most of the day and evening on the phone… which will change next week when I go back to work… anyways, been talking to him about relationships and so on… and well his philosophies are a bit unorthodox, but actually things I can work with… so here’s the deal… New Yorker wants us to have an open relationship… which I can work with for the fact that, well… No, I’m not settling, but right now this situation would work for me cause…. we don’t live in the same state, I’m not necessarily ready to be in a serious serious relationship, and lastly I can still continue to meet new people without hurting him… but then I know I am the jealous type, or I can be at times… and I can tell that with him I’m gonna be jealous… I’m already not feeling his relationship with some of his female friends, but it’s not my place to really say anything about that… Sometimes he give me a little too much information about his past relationships, but I guess I’d rather know, then not know…

So last night I went out for a little bit with my sister and sister-in-law…. Went to this lounge place downtown and it was a lot of fun… ran into my friend/ex, SO… me and SO were talking, we usually have these deep conversations at the most random times, but he’s definitely one of my good friends… anyways, he was asking where my man was (he was trying to find out what was going on with me relationship wise)… and I replied, I don’t have a boyfriend, but I’m dating… as he continued to probe, I briefly mentioned New Yorker (briefly because one we were in a loud public place and two I don’t like giving too much details about my relationships to me exs, even if we are friends). And SO’s first question was like, is he Nigerian… and I replied no and tried to move on to another topic, then SO said is he at least African… another no… and then he was like are you serious and that I needed to get serious… I didn’t know what to say… he just said that we would talk later and he could find out what type of guy I was looking for and that he has some prospects for me and that he’ll introduce me to them (yes I know how awkward it may seem that my ex is trying to hook me up with a guy, but we are good friends)… but in my mind, I thought he was right, but what am I suppose to do, I already like New Yorker and I’m not willing or ready to let him go… but then again me and him are just dating and are trying to have an open relationship….

My New Yorker....

2006-12-27T15:22:00.000-08:00

Alrighty…. Christmas was great… went to Church Christmas morning where they served us breakfast :-)… then went to my sister-in-law’s place for a family lunch… the lunch was great, most of the family was there… then went to see the new Will Smith Movie, Pursuit of Happyness… it was a really good movie… Will Smith and his son both did a great job…

Alright…. Lets see what’s been going… most of my attention has been diverted to New Yorker :-)… (I met New Yorker about 2 weeks ago when I went to NY)… anyways, we’ve really been hitting it off… I mean, we’re really clicking…. He’s become the first person I talk to when I wake up, the last person I talk to each night and the person that calls and texts me ALL day (and yet it DOESN”T annoy me AT ALL…) … he’s got a lot of game, but he definitely a sweet guy… we’ve been talking about the rules of dating (in general), and well of course his rules are more relaxed (but ain’t that typical for a guy)…. Anyways, we’ve talked about sooo much… we usually talk for a couple of hours each morning before we start our day… then during the day and then at night before we go out and when we come back… anyway, needless to say I’m enjoying my time with New Yorker… except we got into our first little argument last night…. New Yorker was suppose to catch the train up here to Baltimore last night (it was a last minute decision and I shouldn’t have gotten overly excited, but I did)… we decide earlier yesterday that he would catch the train to Baltimore and we would hang out for a few days… well a whole bunch of random things happened (some out of his control)… anyways, he never came… and when he called me to tell me, boy was I pissed…. I was really short with him for the rest of the night, cause he got my hopes up and then disappointed me… I know he was sorry… he apologized over and over again, but I wasn’t in the mood to hear it or to really talk to him… See, here’s the thing… I can have a bad temper at time, so I learned to just shut my mouth whenever I get mad, upset or disappointed, cause I have a mouth on me and I can be very mean when I’m hurting…. So I’ve learned just to shut my mouth and not say nothing till I’m calm and can talk thing thru… I always make it a point to talk thing thru later though cause I feel the need to clear the air so we can move past the situation… I know, I know, it may not be the best way to hand things, but its saved many relationships because it gives me a chance to calm down and look at the situation from all angles before reacting, especially reacting negatively…. Anyways, that was last night…. Me and New Yorker have texted a little today, but we haven’t talked on the phone, which is sooooo weird for me and him…. And even thru texting earlier, he managed to apologize again and tell me that he thought about me all night yesterday…. And to be truthful, I thought about him all night as well…. I miss him, I miss his voice and I just wanna talk to him… I know he’s taking a nap right now and he said he’ll call me when he gets ups… and I can’t wait… I can’t wait to talk to him…

Yes, I know I haven’t known him for a long time, but things are just so comfortable with him… and I definitely glad that I decided to call him when he gave me my number…. And we are only talking and getting to know each other… we’re both open to seeing other people, especially since we live 3 ½- 4 hours away from each other…

anyways... IN called me today, we talked for a few minutes before i got off the phone with him... my mind was not focused on him....

New Years... only 5 days away....

Random thoughts... goals for 2007...

2006-12-21T05:56:00.000-08:00

Aiight… So I’ve come to the conclusion (all on my own) that me and IN are probably just gonna be friends and nothing more… I did tell him that I had a short attention span… I went to the gym Monday evening, and I saw IN for a second, but he was busy, he had back to back clients… and besides I needed to focus on my workout… did a water aerobics class and it was a lot of fun… anyways, one would think that since we didn’t get a chance to really talk while I was at the gym that he would have called me, especially since he’s done with classes for the semester… but nope… so anyways, to round it up, the flame for him was put out before it ever really got started…

But on the good note… New Yorker (the guy I met last weekend while I was in NY) definitely has some game… he seems like a really nice guy, he’s cute, funny, has his head on straight for the most part… no major flaws yet (I say yet, simply because we all have flaws, even major flaws… they just take some to surface)… now he told me that he wasn’t showing me ‘the representative’ and that he was just being himself, but only time will tell… needless to say, New Yorker has definitely got my attention at the moment and he’s doing a good job of keeping himself on my mind… but in the back of my mind I remember he’s not Nigerian and I want to marry a Nigerian… so there’ll always be that bit of hesitation… but that doesn’t change the fact that he does peak my interest :-)…

It would be ideal to marry a Nigerian guy, not only Nigeria but a Yoruba man, for so many reasons… but sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t restrict myself to only dating Nigerian men… there’s a lot to experience out there and I shouldn’t sit around waiting for a Nigerian guy to come find me…

Aiight… 4 days til Christmas… and even though we don’t have a Christmas tree up and we’re not evening exchanging gifts til New Year’s day this year, I’m still excited… the little kid inside of me is still overjoyed that it’s the holidays and that its Christmas time… and that I get a time to relax a little, spend some time with the family and just to reflect over the last year of my life… so much has changed and yet so much has remained the same… I start to think of New Years Resolutions… and while I’m not big on making new year’s resolutions, I do like to set some goals for myself… this time last year, I made 6 goals for myself, cause it was about to be 2006… anyways, my goal for 2006 was to travel to 3 new places that I’ve never been (which I did… Paris, Texas (Houston and Dallas), and California), I also set out a goal to go to my first real concert (which I did as well), to finish my masters degree, get my new car… and to my satisfaction, I was able to get all of those things accomplished because not only were they realistic goals, they were things that I wanted with my entire heart so it was easy to work towards them… now that 2007 is around the corner… I’m putting together my goals for the new years… milestones that I would like to reach in 2007… so far, I’ve got… (1) Lose these last 10./15 pounds that I’ve been playing with for a few months, (2) Visit Atlanta (cause I’ve never been…) and that’s all I have as of yet… but I’ll have a nice list before the new years rings in… what resolutions or goals are you making for yourself in the new year???

NYC was great...

2006-12-18T11:40:00.000-08:00

NY was great… so I got up Saturday morning and went running, ran 20 miles in DC, then jumped on the Amtrak for my nite in NY… first of all, every muscle from my hips and downward was hurting me, muscles I didn’t know exists were hurting after running the 20 miles… but it was all good, cause I did it!!! Anyways, was knocked on the train, got to NY around 5:30pm… met up with my sisters and friends (they drove down earlier)… we went to see the Color Purple. Let me say, that play was great… very entertaining. The actors & actresses were great and the storyline was good ( a little different from the movie towards the end) but still good… overall I truly enjoyed myself… even though I could barely walk cause my feet were killing me… but even thru all the pain, I managed to get dressed to go out afterwards and even had the nerve to put on some heels… talk about some serious pain, but after a drink or two, I was feeling better… checked out a few lounges, ended up on some spot on 15th & 9th street uptown… met up with my cousin there, who lives in NY… the place was cool…meet a cute guy there, he’s not a true New Yorker, but we’ll call him New Yorker … actually the guy reminded me of a guy that I went to college with… it was a nice ego boost, cause I have to admit i was checking dude out, cause he definitely had a cute smile and all... anyways, New Yorker pulled me to the side before I left and gave me his phone number… I haven’t called him yet but I probably will this evening… (I forgot my charger, so by Sunday morning, my phone was completely dead)… I didn’t get to go shopping cause traffic was crazy on Sunday, so we just decided to head back to Bmore… but all in all, it was a great trip…

I definitely need to go to NY again soon… had so many people I have to visit there, aside from New Yorker, I have a bunch of friends and family that stay in NY and I’ve just never made the time to go visit them… but after such a good weekend, I definitely plan on making that trip again soon…

Ok, so I’m going to learn how to swim this evening, one of the personal trainers at Bally’s is suppose to teach me… I need to learn to swim cause I want to sign up for a triathlon… no I’m not crazy, but I’m already in shape, might as well keep it up and cross off some of the things off my list of “To-Do” things in life…

btw... i see IN (my gym guy) tonight... today is his last final for the semester, so hopefully he'll be more attentive now... but i guess we'll have to wait and see... unfortunately, I'm not sure I'm still as attracted to him as I was before... but maybe he can change my mind about that...

TGIF... NY for the weekend

2006-12-15T07:11:00.000-08:00

Its finally Friday… well, JB leave today… saw JB on Wednesday evening… actually I went to his house to go see his little brother, cause his little brother left for Naija last night (side note… I’m close to all the entire the family, all the siblings and their parents as well, so a lot of time I’m just there chilling with anyone of them, usually JB, but often times his brothers….) Anyways, JB got to the house about an hour or so after I had been there, we talked for a bit, but I was heading out cause I had stuff to do… and on my way out he says, so I’ll see you tomorrow… and I’m like y, he goes cause I’m leaving Friday … now we hadn’t talked about me seeing him b4 he left for Nigeria but I guess he assumed that I was planning on seeing him before he left on Friday, I told him to call me and we’d figure it out… needless to say, I didn’t see him yesterday, cause by the time I called him he was getting ready to leave his house and so he was like well I see you tomorrow before I leave… and I told him I had to go to work and most likely not, he was like well I’ll call you and we can figure something out, see you tomorrow…
I do want to see him, but then I don’t at the same time cause when I see him and I’m with him, it makes me want to be with him… so I figure that if I don’t see him then maybe I can get my feeling straightened out… but I guess seeing him before his trip wouldn’t be a big deal since he’ll be gone for a month and I’ll have time to work things thru in my head… all this confusion is part of the reason why I haven’t really approached JB bout out situation, cause I’m not sure what it is I want from him exactly…

Going to NY on Saturday after I finish running, going to go see the Color Purple on Broadway on Saturday evening with my sisters and some friends… then we’re gonna do some shopping on Sunday and head home Sunday afternoon… haven’t been to NY in a while, so I’m excited…

Tomorrow running 20 miles… I’m excited and scared at the same time… its gonna be a challenge but I welcome it with open arms…

10 days to Christmas!!!!
Although I’m bitter about not going to Nigeria for Christmas, I have to admit that my Christmas and New years events in the states are always a lot of fun… so I’m excited about the holiday season… all of my siblings are older so they don’t get as excited about Christmas, but my little nephew is old enough to really enjoy Christmas, so I look forward to spoiling him this Christmas… seeing him open gifts and get all excited… bringing back all the good memories of Christmas that I had as a child… and of course taking some days off of work will be nice…

Have a great weekend all…