Simply Ridiculous

My baby's birthday was last week. All week her father had been asking me what I was going to do because his family was coming into town and he wanted to invite them to the party. I already feel like I see him way too much for my own taste, so sharing a day with him was not in my plans. Not to mention, when my daughter had her second birthday, I threw her a pool party and he invited about 30 of the 40 people who were there to her party and only contributed popscicles and two salmon steaks that only he and his mother ate. Needless to say, I was not interested.

I went and consulted the visitation agreement. I am only obligated to give him 4 hours on her birthday.

So, I let him know that I would be taking cupcakes to her school and I would be having something small at the house so she can celebrate her b'day with her brother and sister and friends that don't attend that school. I also let him know that I would bring her to him Saturday evening so that he and his family could celebrate with her together.

He did not show up at her school to celebrate with her class.

He did pick her up from school the day of her birthday and brought her to me because he had "something to do before seven". As he was dropping her off he asked her if her mommie was going to take her out to eat. Uhm, am I not the one giving her not, one, but two parties already? AND they charge for the toys on the cakes now! But that's another story.

On Saturday, I threw her movie party at home since the weather was not conducive to a swim party at the park. She was fine with that and so were my pockets. When it was time for me to take her to her dad's house, she was not ready to go and her friends were not ready to leave, so I let them have another hour together. When I got to his house I was shocked to find only one car in the driveway, his. When he answered the door, I could smell the gangha. I knew we would not be there long.

His family was not in town, the local family was not coming, there was no party. The only thing he had to say was, "Well, did you call before you came?" He seemed to be entertaining company. Why would I call if I already told you when I would be bringing her and I was an hour late any way?!

Then he had the nerve to say to my daughter, "Well, you missed Amy's* party." Who the hell cares about some other child's party, no offense to that child, but what about the party you promised your daughter? The one that she went to school telling her teacher about? The one that you have been pumping her up for all week?

There was never any party plans. He had planned to invite his family to the party I was hosting and jump on the bandwagon like it was something WE were planning the same as he had done when she turned two. Not happening Bruh, not happening!

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Adventures of a Single Mom II

So school has begun and I am now juggling this new schedule of riding the shuttle to work, getting my daughters to school and getting my son to practice in the afternoon. My middle child’s persistent requests for riding the bus to school may be answered. I just hate putting her on the bus at 6:25am when school doesn’t start until 8am, but with her riding the bus, I can get my other daughter to school between 7:00am-7:30am and get the 8:20am shuttle so that I can be at work by 9:00am. So in essence I will be up for 4 hours before my work day even starts. Then in the afternoon I will get the 5:20pm shuttle so that I can get my daughter by 6:30pm and pick up my son and take him to football practice. I was able to convince BD2 to pick his child up in the afternoon since he claims it wouldn’t work for me to drop her off with him in the morning so I can take an earlier shuttle in the morning and afternoon so I can pick everyone up on time and deliver my son to practice on time. Yes, I finally gave in to my son’s request to play football. Unfortunately, the coaching staff wants the parents to stay at practice the entire time so we do not get home until late then we eat late and go to bed late just to wake up early and do it all over again. I guess that’s just the life of a super mom.

Frank Ski Does It Again

Ok, I know this is a different direction from what I usually blog about, but my brother actually gave me this idea when he was here this weekend. I was complaining about the mis-information that Frank Ski and Wanda Smith are usually passing out on V-103 in Atlanta and how hard it is for me to get in on the call line to speak with them to give a 'balanced' view of whatever the particular topic is (I'm convinced they have a block on callers with sense). My brother suggested that I keep a blog about it and then they won't be able to ignore me, assuming I have good readership. Let's see if he's right.

This morning I spent 50minutes of my 600/month cell phone minutes on hold waiting to ask Frank about his latest contradictory statements. I sat and listened as he and Wanda gave a single mom advice on dating, as they chatted back and forth amongst themselves about the topic, played music, commercials and lamented over Monica's show last night. Never once did anyone come back to the phone or check in with me so here I am blogging about what I wanted to say on air had I been given the opportunity.

A few weeks ago Frank and Wanda did their own show on CNN's Black In America special. Of course, the conversation eroded down to the lowest common denominator, sex and dating in Atlanta because of course that's all we care about as Black people. In that conversation among all of the other crazy statements that came out of his mouth, Frank said, and I am paraphrasing, that women in Atlanta kill him with their 'I have my own career, money, car, house, etc.' and thinking they are successful. To him, women are not successful if they do not have a husband and some kids.

Fast forward to this morning when they were talking about celebrities, mainly Puffy, and they threw in some local artists for good measure, who are successful, but not married. In this conversation, I actually found myself agreeing with Wanda when she said a successful man is helped by a strong woman supporting him, like in the case of Senator Obama and his wife. Frank countered this by stating we don't know that their relationship is real and these men are successful without women and furthermore they aren't even thinking about that because they are so focused on their "empires". He gave examples of Russell Simmons and Bill Gates who have given up control of their widely successful companies and so now they can focus more on family. If I'm not mistaken, Bill Gates was married while he was running Microsoft and Russell was married when he had Def Jam. So that just kind of proved Wanda's point.

Frank’s wife seems like a very smart and strong woman herself. I wonder if she just wants to smack him upside the head for some of the things he says on air, or does she just not even bother to listen to his foolishness?

What are your thoughts about 1) How success is defined; and 2) Do you really have to have a significant other to complete the picture?