Friends & Family Fridays: A Long-Time Friends Is Becoming A Close Friend

***So this is Friends & Family Friday!! This is my day to talk more about my friends and family (aside from sharing waaay too much about their love lives on my other blog). My friends and family are lovely people, that much I know for sure. Have fun getting to know them through my eyes.***

This post is about a friend of mine I grew up with. My family moved into our house in 1990. She and her older sister lived next door to me. We grew up together with pretty strict parents, so we pretty much had just the three of us to play with. We learned to ride bikes, jump rope, and got into mischief together.

As we grew up, we were always cool, but never really close. Part of it is the age gap. We are almost exactly three years apart. Not a big deal when you're small children, or when you're adults, but in the in-between teenage years, it feels like a lot.

Since I've been out of medical school, we've been hanging out more. I've reconnected with my whole group of girls from church I hung out with during my teenage years, but this girl more in particular. We'll call her Michelle in my blogs. But she is my girl now! And she's one of the only people I hang out with on a regular basis that I could truly bring around any of my friends and know she would be cool. That's a huge bonus in my book.

She is the only person I can see myself living with. About the time I should have the money to move out of my parents' house will be right when she graduates from college. I know I'm going to need a roommate, but Michelle is about the only one I think I could tolerate for a year or more. We're the same in a lot of ways and we always have fun together. I've been looking for real adult friends who live near me who I can just chill with. Looks like Michelle is a viable option. It's good to have friends for a long time, but it's also a good idea to take a second look to see if there can be more to a casual friendship.

Friends & Family Fridays: My Father Breaks Things... A Lot

***So this is Friends & Family Friday!! This is my day to talk more about my friends and family (aside from sharing waaay too much about their love lives on my other blog, lol). My friends and family are lovely people, that much I know for sure. Have fun getting to know them through my eyes.***

This week's post is about my daddy. If you know and watched The Cosby Show, you have a pretty basic idea of how my family is. Fewer children, but the same basic family vibe. I think I'm a cross between all their girls, except Denise, and my brother is definitely Theo. My dad has some Cliff Huxtable-like qualities.

Thankfully, he doesn't wear those God-awful sweaters. But he does have a DIY spirit that can sometimes go awry. The latest example would be our backyard project. We're working on re-doing the whole backyard... by ourselves. It's very hard work, and the whole thing feels two steps forward one step back sometimes. But at least he's staying away from the doorbell, lol. My dad is also generally fantastic with technology. Every VCR is programmed, every laptop updated with the latest software. His favorite toy store is Best Buy.

Lately, he's had a string of bad luck with his DIY and tech loves. The wheelbarrow that we so desperately need for the yard work has a flat tire. I didn't even know wheelbarrows could get flat tires! His cell phone is broken. When we were in South Carolina, he and I were hanging out by the beach. He had my mother's digital camera and managed to take lots of pictures of my cousin and I playing in the water. He was at the water's edge and the waves came above his waist at times. But he managed not to do any damage to my mother's camera. After we went to lay down on our beach towels, he realized his cell phone was in his pocket. The screen had a pretty rainbow under the glass. It hasn't turned on since.

He also broke his glasses. And the particular pair he purchased were from a boutique glasses store; it was the only place near his job authorized by his insurance. The piece that broke is apparently super defective because it's on back order until August, two days after the BP spill will be fully capped without leaking. I'm wondering if he broke a mirror recently or something.

But, my daddy is a trooper. He put his name on the eyeglass waiting list. He's picking out a new phone today. He has a blackberry, I don't know how he managed to do the one thing that will break them besides throwing them out a third floor window. I don't know if he'll get another one or not, but I hope so. With his luck, anything less than that brick that is a blackberry will certainly get broken.

So, that's my dad. Cliff Huxtable, with better jokes.

Friends & Family Fridays: Hanging Out With My Mom & Blogging For Top

***So this is Friends & Family Friday!! This is my day to talk more about my friends and family (aside from sharing waaay too much about their love lives on my other blog, lol). My friends and family are lovely people, that much I know for sure. Have fun getting to know them through my eyes.***

So, I've been hanging out with my mom a lot this week. First was the baseball game on Sunday with my family & PT. Next was the Maxwell & Jill Scott concert on Tuesday. And Thursday night, we went to see Sex and the City 2 with two of my friends. I know some people who don't like kicking it with their parents, but I just don't get it. Mine are awesome and so much fun. My mom gets along great with my friends and we had a blast.

Anyone who reads my blog knows I mention my friends Top and Bad quite often. Top told me yesterday via instant messenger that I have been slipping on my blogging. I told her I had been super busy this week and she should stop being dramatic, lol. Then she told me she felt like she had just started watching a television show and two weeks in, they began to show replays! I laughed so hard at that and immediately felt obliged to have a post up for today.

I thought I'd write about the Sex and the City 2 movie since I went to see it with both family and friends and the movie is about Carrrie's family and friends. I don't want to ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, so don't worry, there won't be a single spoiler in this blog post.

I loved the Sex and the City television show because it was about single, fabulous women in the big city, working hard to achieve their goals in love, career, and life. The show started with Carrie as a sex columnist. We were so excited that she got ad space on the side of a bus, remember? She was also working on finding a passionate, all-consuming love that would make her want to give up being single. Miranda was working hard to earn the notice of the partners at her law firm. She was working on finding a man who just wouldn't be intimdated by her too much. Charlotte was used to having money, but was doing big things in the art world. Turns out she was looking for a man with the standing in life to allow her to be a housewife. She wouldn't wait to quit her job to become Dr. Mrs. Trey MacDougal (or however you spell it). Samantha was making a name for herself in PR and getting better at it every year. When she fell in love, it was on accident, and she was just looking for instant gratification, even if it came in a long-term package (get it? package? lol).

By the time the show ended, Carrie had become an acclaimed author and was with Mr. John Preston. Miranda had become partner and was married to a man she had a lovely child with. Charlotte was married to her second husband (a much better fit) and they had just been approved for adoption. Samantha had found a long-term instant gratification package and a way to spread her PR influence all the way the West Coast all in the form of one Smith Jerrod. Things were going well.

The first movie was all about these women seeing that working hard to get everything you wanted came with a price. Miranda was losing focus on what mattered and her husband cheated on her. Carrie let the wedding get "bigger than Big". Samantha let being Jerry's PR person take over who she was. And Charlotte let becoming a mother consume her as well. But they got through it.

So this new movie, what was left? Well, the women got everything they had all dreamed of, so what next? They had to learn that having everything they dreamed of wasn't what they dreamed it would be. And apparently, it's more interesting to find that out in Abu Dhabi. As over-the-top as the storylines, clothing, and dialogue might be, these stories are relatable because the things that happen to these four women happen to real women everyday, though maybe not on so grand a scale. I've even compared the major men in Carrie's life to major men in my own life. My story will end differently than hers though.

And I'm Top's Carrie, I just don't dress like her, lol. She's my... cross between Samantha and Miranda. She has Samantha's fearlessness mixed with Miranda's cynicism. She also has a bit of Carrie in her with her individualism. The one thing she's not is a Charlotte. I don't have any friends who would be a Charlotte. Charlotte kind of irritates me. But I'll stop there cause some people are die-hard Charlotte fans.

Friends & Family Fridays: Turning Teenage Girls Into Good Friends

***So this is Friends & Family Friday!! This is my day to talk more about my friends and family (aside from sharing waaay too much about their love lives on my other blog, lol). My friends and family are lovely people, that much I know for sure. Have fun getting to know them through my eyes.***

Well, that's normally what today is. Today is actually going to be about friends in general. I've been posting about my hobbies/passion lately, and one of them in mentoring. I do a lot of this at my church. I'm glad to be of help where I am needed because my church is in need of young women my age to stand up and be a good example. Also, I'm happy they still think I'm a good example even though I left school. Moving on...

I was invited, along with other women of various ages of post-high-school-ness (I was the oldest), to a meeting at my church tonight. All the girls at the meeting are between the ages of 11-17. And they are mostly all friends with each other. We were basically invited for an intervention. I really don't remember going through anything like what they were going through at that age. Don't get me wrong, I had my own issues including horrible taste in men, questionable taste in new friends I made in high school, and a snobbish know-it-all chip on my shoulder.

But these girls are something entirely different. They are a different breed of teenage girl than I was. Most of them come from household with lots of family members helping raise them (it takes a village and all that). Most of them are on track to go to college if they choose. But that still doesn't stop them from making bad decisions and mistakes. I'm not going to go into details, but almost every single girl had a specific and unique issue we talked about as a group to help avoid repeat mistakes. Stuff about boys, disrespecting elders, fighting at school, getting along with other females, and getting along with parents were all covered.

I feel like the discussions went well. I just wanted them to understand that it's better to pause first when you get mad rather than do something you'll definitely regret later. I wanted them to understand that no boy is worth risking your health, your parent's trust, or your future on. And I really wanted them to understand that if you're going to do the teenager "make-your-own-mistakes" thing to stop getting caught! I also may have given a slightly too frank discussion about sex education. I just want them to be prepared and safe and make wise decisions. And I can't have it on my conscience that I had an opportunity to inform them and didn't take it. I also hope that the explicit discussions of how things can go wrong will make them be more active thinkers about the choices they make.

 The only thing we didn't cover was getting along with other females. I figure that's a discussion for a larger group. I believe that will go better if they see women of many different generations who have proof that you can be real friends with a woman. This is probably one of those things that will be better learned by example. If at the end of the day these girls grow into women who make good friends and make good choices, I will feel like I've won a million bucks.

Friends & Family Fridays: My Parents Are Having An Anti-Mid-Life Crisis

So this is Friends & Family Friday!! This is my day to talk more about my friends and family (aside from sharing waaay too much about their love lives on my other blog, lol). My friends and family are lovely people, that much I know for sure. Have fun getting to know them through my eyes.

They call it the mid-life crisis. Men act out with earrings, motorcycles, and leather pants from the 70s. Women act out with shopping sprees, liposuction, How Stella Got Her Groove Back-style vacations. My parents are not having a mid-life crisis. They're having an anti-mid-life crisis.

What is this mystical anti-mid-life crisis you say? Well, it's when one fully embraces being of a certain age age, and manages to enjoy life while acting one's age. One is not jealous of younger people and their wonderful lives that they must be living. No, one is feeling above them for having higher callings and responsibilities.

I am so proud of my parents. They are at the tops of their respective work ladders. There is always room to go higher, but for what their job titles are, they are both the highest paid African-American with their jobs. I don't know how familiar you all may be with Chicago's race relations when it comes to jobs, but let me just say what they've accomplished is huge (and they did it without taking the job away from a person of another race) and leave it there.

And now that my brother (who I call Louie in my blogs) is getting married, they're embracing their age even more. Making not-so-subtle inquiries of him and his fiancee (who I call Keisha) about when the grandchildren can be expected. They see a shortcut in me since PT already has a daughter who is the perfect age for playing dress-up and making cookies and going shopping for tutus and princess crowns.

But I truly love how they're embracing life. They go to concerts together to see their favorite bands/singers. My mom and I are going to see Maxwell and Jill Scott in concert two days after the baseball game and two days before the SATC2 premiere. Should be a great week!

All I'm saying is I'm glad that my parents have neither regressed to their 20-30s nor fast-forwarded to their 80s. I expect that they'll continue with their hobbies (golf, gardening, bowling, movie/theater/concert/musical going, travelling) and activities and enjoy their family expanding. I breathe a sigh of relief because I have friends who have parents who are having a real mid-life crisis, and that shit sucks.

Friends & Family Fridays

So this is Friends & Family Friday!! This is my day to talk more about my friends and family (aside from sharing waaay too much about their love lives on my other blog, lol). My friends and family are lovely people, that much I know for sure. Have fun getting to know them through my eyes.

This post is about my girl who I refer to as Top in my blogs. I talk about her a lot in my blog. She's my only best female friend (I have three in total, the other two are male) and she's super special. She just moved to NYC back in October and is really doing the independent woman thing. Seriously, she's not even dating right now. But she is making moves and really building a life for herself.

When she decided to upend her life and move from Chicago to New York, her parents weren't very pleased. They didn't like the idea of their daughter being so far away. I really didn't get that since she and I both were down in Florida for college, but whatever.

She was so brave when she moved because she didn't have a job or a prospect of one. But she gathered her things and went anyway. She was able to do this because she had been working all through undergrad and grad school and had quite a bit of money saved up. She gave herself six months to make it happen. Literally about a week before it was time to seriously consider packing up and going back to Chicago, she got three job offers. The first was pretty good, but not really in the area she saw herself working in. The second was better, more opportunities for growth, bigger challenges, more money, etc. The third job asked her what the second job offered and promised to top it! She ended up with the second job. Through a logical/emotional consideration of a number of factors, it really seemed to be the best option. I was on the phone with her for about two and a half hours one night talking out the decision with her.

And she is doing the AIDS walk when it comes to New York this month. She's started yoga classes and salsa classes. With the exception of the slutty behavior, she is well on her way to becoming one of those fabulous women who would be a character on Sex and the City (I apologize for the constant SATC mentions. I'll be better after the movies comes out, I promise). She's also making time to work on her hobbies which are photography and guitar.

This post is not leading to a point, if you were expecting one, except that Top is awesome and she is totally the best type of woman one could hope to be in their mid-20s.

Friends & Family Fridays

This is my first Friends & Family Fridays. Hopefully it will go well. I'm liking my themed days so far, but I do feel bad when I miss a day of blogging on a themed day. For instance, I missed TMI Thursday yesterday. But, that happens, so I guess I shouldn't mind too much.

So this is Friends & Family Friday!! This is my day to talk more about my friends and family (aside from sharing waaay too much about their love lives on my other blog, lol). My friends and family are lovely people, that much I know for sure. Have fun getting to know them through my eyes.

So, this friends and family isn't about their lives so much as what each person means to me. I have recently made a huge change in my life (I'll talk more about that in a future blog), and it was interesting talking about it with the important people in my life and going through this with them.

Usually when something big happens with me, there isn't a lot of involvement with my people. I may seek opinions about things, but by the time I do that, I've got my mind made up. This time wasn't really very different. I was just so nervous to hear people's reactions, especially my parents. I knew I would hear shock, I didn't know if I would hear disappointment or what else, so it was quite serious.

I was talking to my mother yesterday morning, trying to figure out how I was going to tell her. I couldn't bring myself to do it, so then I had to call Lion and do a test run. But it wasn't a test run to tell her, the test run was telling him and deal with his reaction. I knew that out of everyone, he would have the largest level of honest upfront disappointment. And he was disappointed. One thing that I've cherished about my friendship with Lion moreso than anyone else in my life is our ability to be brutally honest with each other all the time, no apology. Part of that is self-indulgence that we can engage in finally not censoring ourselves. This isn't something I'd even want from my other friends because it's nice to have people who have a sense of self-censoring. For me and Lion, that just works. I made my case with him, and he gave me an honest response that I was glad to hear. After our talk, I felt more confident about the reasons I had to support what was going on in my head and my heart. I was ready to move on to my mother.

I called her back and told her what I had just talk to Lion about. Her initial response was "okay." I was taken aback and sort of just rushed through the rest of my explanation. But that's my mom. I so rarely have possibly disappointing news to share with her that I forgot what I expected her reaction to be. But my mom's great like that. She is very accepting of decisions I make. She knows I don't make decisions lightly and by the time I'm telling her, it's pretty much what it is. She is my mom, so that meant her response was framed through the lens of her religion. She talked a lot about God and the Bible and making sure my decision was really about what God wanted for me. She encouraged me to pray and read my Bible and make sure I was following God's will with this change I want to make. That wasn't a surprise for me. She wasn't too concerned about the details, just that I was doing something that would make me and God happy. She told me to call my dad. He was next on the list anyway, so I called him.

I called him and didn't get a chance to tell him what I wanted to talk to him about, just that I wanted to talk to him about something serious. He had to switch from his cell phone to his office phone. He calls me back and immediately is like, "please tell me you don't have a secret husband." I'm like, whoa! I mean, his sister did do that, but that's not really my style. "Dad, believe me, if I had a secret husband, you'd know because I'd have asked you to do our taxes." That made him laugh and then calmed him down. He freaked out again when I told him what it really was. But unlike my mother, he was all about understanding my thought process. He wanted to know when, why, where, how, and why again. He agreed with Lion that I should take more time with my decision. But he also knew that I tend to make pretty solid decisions and he was kind enough to remind me that no matter what choices I make in life, he's got my back. But then he had to go. My daddy has a very demanding job and his phone was ringing off the hook the entire time we were talking. So I moved on to the next conversation.

I sent Top a message on Yahoo! to tell her that I needed to talk to her, but she could just call me when she got off work.

Then I called Bad. He was at work, but I got a chance to tell him a little bit. He said my voice sounded scary and had him worried so he wanted to see what the basic problem was and then he'd call me back. "I just had to make sure you weren't dying." It was then that it occured to me the serious dread I was feeling in telling these people my situation. But I only had time to tell him the basics, allow him to express his shock and move on to the next person.

I am currently avoiding telling Noni my situation because the change means I can't hop on a plane and go to her baby shower next month.

I texted PT to see if he was available. My text said, "hey, i really need to talk to you about something. we didn't get to talk about it yesterday. can you call me when you leave work please?" Apparently, not the best way to get someone's attention. I know he's usually free Thursday right after work. We usually talk while he's on his way to a meeting at his school's other campues. He calls me and I launch into my story. He interrupts me. "CeCe, you're not pregnant are you?" I was like, again, whoa!!! No, not pregnant I tell him. I take this moment to message Top again to tell her whatever horrible thing she's thinkin I have to say, I'm not pregnant, married, or dying. So back to PT. I figured he'd be a good person to talk to because I trust his judgement and think he has a pretty good grip on who I am. But he hasn't known me for even six months yet, so he doesn't have the emotional investment that the rest of the important people in my life have. We talked and he did a good job of getting my explanation and offering support for my decision. He didn't even seemed fazed about the way the change would affect us. I was actually very glad about that. He focused on my and what this change meant for me. I'm sure the talk about us will come up eventually, but for now it's all good. He just let me know that as long as I was following my heart, I'd be okay because I was a smart driven woman and I'd be okay.

Bad called me back and I explained it to him. He was surprised and expressed his shock but also support. He wanted a full emotional and logical explanation. Before I knew it we had moved from me explaining myself to discussing what comes next. That's why I'm so glad I have Bad for my friend. He's my logistics guy. He's the one who's like "meet me at the drawing board" and we sort out the details/big picture. He's great for that since we see most everything in the same way. Talking things out with him is like talking things out with myself. He's proven that over and over again. This time in particular he impressed me with his ability to do that even when blindsided by my news. He told me that he was proud of me for being brave and he supported me.

I spoke to Top when she got off work and she was also taken aback by my news. She was surprised and expressed her concern that I might be acting rashly seeing as how my news surprised everyone. But after I explained the way I make these kinds of decisions, she got it. That's why I love Top, she gets my reasoning better than most. She understands certain aspects of what I feel and why I feel. We're very different people, but because we're so close, we're able to step into each other's shoes and understand the rationale even when we would've reached a different conclusion. She said as long as I was happy, she was happy.

I feel so lucky that I have these people in my life. Lord knows, having seven people to talk things over with certainly helps cement a decision in a girl's head. And I'm so glad they all went out of their way to express their support. That certainly makes huge life changes easier when I have the support of the people who matter most to me.