When is Maturity a 'Good' Thing?

Okay, I am so over "My Precious" not working. Oh, hell I'm lying. I want it back like it was. Playlists in tack and everything. I want the warm fuzzy feeling I used to get when I looked at it. I have tried my best to duplicate as much as possible what contents were on the Ipod, but it just isn't the same. When I go to watch a certain movie I have to remember it is not there. The same with the songs and videos. If I were a baby I would throw the thing against the wall or trade it for a laptop. I have to remember things change, I can endure and life goes on. Most of the time change is not what we want, but it mostly is always for the best.

Which makes me think of some of the entertainers who have changed their lives and are basically begging the world to give them another chance.  After reading this article "When Singers Can't Sing Their Songs"and the following comments this morning I was particularly upset about the callous way a persons feelings are dismissed. The most dangerous weapon in the world is the word. A person can die by the knife or gun or whatever way another wants to hurt a person, but a word will live in a persons soul and spirit for eternity. Especially if another heard or read it and repeats it. The word travels on and on.

I am all for the second chance and I especially am very happy for Whitney Houston. I have always loved her singing and care nothing about her so say not singing the way she 'used' to sing. Time and life changes. I should hope she would sing in her more mature attitude and change of life than as the young naive being she used to be. My daughters and I have discussed the singing of Mary J. Blige and though I like her voice and was (in my youth) enamored with the way she would sing I can no longer relate to her. In my opinion a person of her age needs to stop singing about the chasing of men and the tug-of-war between her man and his other women. Grow up for goodness sakes and sing about mature adult relationships.

The same attitude for non-tolerance for change seen in the public eyes goes all the way to the public temper tantrums those in the media's eyes are showing. I am a little stunned, but people do get angry. The thing that is being forgotten is that such outbursts have their own arena, it is in your own home. I feel as embarrassed for them as I do for the mother standing over a screaming, foaming mouth kid in the stores. What can you do? When you are say in Congress, the White House, on television shut it up and turn off your mic, don't steal another person's  mic, hold on to your golf club and hold in the profanity and mom, either pick up the kid and walk out nonchalantly or handle your business.  Geeze, can we all just grow up?

Do You Pay God For Creature Comfort?

Oh, my God! I am so miserable. Mind you not as miserable as I was last night, but still devastated.

My Ipod, aptly named "My Precious" has been wiped clean. I don't know if you can imagine this, but all of the over 2000 songs, the 400 movies, television shows, the many music videos, and 243 podcasts are all gone. My heart is broken. My Ipod was 134gb of 160b g full. Everything was erased in a flash. I don't understand it. I had nothing saved in Itunes because this crappy computer didn't have enough space. I don't even want the thing any more because every time I look at it I think of all of my things gone.

It took a couple of years to gather everything and now they are gone. Some of the movies were home made and some, the majority I lucked upon. I feel like someone has died.

I don't know when something truly good is going to happen in life, but I am getting really tired of being beat up. Sometimes I go to look for something and remember it was left in Beaumont or destroyed in Ike. Either way....gone. I try my best not to keep looking back and crying about all that was lost and then something as meaningless like this happens.

I know it is just music and such, but life really sucks when you can't have any earthly comfort or something to help keep your mind off of reality. My cell phone (the Blackberry paperweight) is not on because of finances, my PSP joy stick has broken so I can't play any games. I don't have my laptop, oh and then I was told yesterday it will cost between 2 & $5000 to fix my Yota. Why would I pay that much for a 1991 Toyota? It didn't even qualify to be a clunker. What the Hell.

Someone told me the other day that I should remember to pay my tithes so God would bless me. Seems kind of odd to have to pay the giver of life to give me a decent life. Is that really how it works? Because if it is....I wish God would give me some money so I can pay him. I would gladly pay Him if that is all it took.

Education

Okay, my babe has moved to Beaumont. It is only an approximate six month thing right now, but she has gone to finish school. Yeah! How miserable she would be in life if she had not finished the last two semesters of college. What an accomplishment. Me, I hate school.

What a funny thing to say, uh. I don't hate education I just hate the brick and mortar. If I could I would take some classes from home, but I don't want to do this for ten, eighteen, twenty-four months. Why can't I get a degree in something within two to six months? A few weeks would be even greater.

Does the length you go to school make you smarter? I suppose that depends on the field you are studying.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to take a complete self pace form of study. I bet I would have a degree within a month. I would just fly on through them. suck up the knowledge like a sponge and flow on to the next field.

Whine and Cry. Somebody Turn on the Lights

Thank God for a place to be a crybaby. I am so damned irritated at the way things are going on in life. None of the choices I have made to better things are working out. Within the past two weeks I quite the job from hell, have gone on two interviews, did a 'try out' day and nothing has happened. I am now down to keeping a single child in my home and basically making $150 a week. Even though that is a far cry from nothing I still want to say...What the hell!

I thought moving to Houston would be a step up from living in Beaumont, but this is the same as when I moved to Baytown. Not a damned thing is working. To make things sooooo much worse the lights keep going off. For hours on end we sit with no electricity. The most frustrating thing about this is that there is nothing visible that can be causing this problem and the neighbors across the street and behind us have their lights while we remain in the dark. So that just goes to show even the choice of this town home was a terrible one to make. What do I do now? My thought is to pack everything in a big truck and move back to Beaumont. The other thought is, where? I think what I am going to do is get my car fixed, go and stay with my mom for a while and search for a job out there. While there secure me somewhere to live and then pack my stuff and move on back. Then I just wonder if I am a big crybaby and one that runs whenever trouble hits. What the hell?

I kind of like it out here in Houston...way in the under developed part of Harris county. Every time I get in the car to go somewhere its like a trip. The basic stores are so close and everything else is about twenty to an hour away. What a trip. And then the fact Gillean lives out here is a big draw. I just don't know what to do. I keep seeing good things happening on the horizon and as I get closer the horizon scoots back a few miles. What the hell?

Karra will be leaving on tomorrow to go and live with my mom so she can finish her last two semesters at Lamar and I still haven't gotten my car fixed. This will be a challenge for me. I'm really not in the mood for a challenge.

I wish someone could handle my life for a little while and fix it. I wish someone could make it better or give a hand, even if it is just an encouraging hand and not one that keeps saying, 'well others have it worse'. I'm sure they do and if I could fix theirs I would. I wish someone would just turn on the damned lights.

Pushing Myself

I can't even tell you how long it took me to get this movie together. For one thing I could only work when it was 'my time' to be on the desktop. I no longer have my own laptop so I am at the mercy of getting up before the sun or trying to type in my sleep. I went to istock.com a few months ago (before the great lap top loss) and chose and bought the people I thought were perfect for the book. Unfortunately I couldn't just pick anyone for the villain, it didn't seem right. Just this morning I found a song (for free) and when I dropped it in Movie Maker it fit perfectly.

I love the book The Perfect Solution because it is about something I truly know. I have seen so many stupid and careless things while working in the childcare profession that sometimes I just want to run with my hands in the air and scream. Tomorrow I work from 11:30-6 in a new center. All I can say is...God help me to be able to make writing a full time profession.

What's in a Job?

I have finally quite the job from hell. Dabola, whom I secretly called diablo lost her mind on Friday. She honestly thought she would keep qualified staff for the mere payment of $7.00 an hour. The woman didn't even have the common sense to raise the wage to minimum. What really got me was how she knew she needed workers, but only wanted to get applications from Mexicans. None ever came to her place. Even when I told her some really good people had applied she said yeah, but they were only Black and White. Idiot.

This woman hates the United States so much that she even refuses to put her business into the banking system because she thinks it is wrong to have to pay taxes when she doesn't have a filled center. I truly think it is unfair to be able to come into our country as an immigrant, reap the benefits and then not follow the rules. The hardest thing to put up with is the knowledge these people all know the system and how to bypass the red tape.

Diablo was written up big time when Child Care Licensing came to inspect the building and she was livid. Not because the things were ligit, but because she felt the licensing rep was an idiot and needed mental help. Her words. She also believes she knows the rules better than anyone and she would have pulled out the book and made the rep change her findings. If baby beds are touching it is against the rules plan and simple. Dabola wanted the infant cribs together and I could tell her no different....I can't tell you how glad I am this job is over.

My Rant on Working

Okay, I thank God daily that I do have a job because so many are without, but in the same breath I also question the new face of employers. It is a no wonder to the great stamina of man to continue working in this day and age. I have noticed the owners of businesses no longer value their employees. You can not count on your job to be there tomorrow because there is no loyalty. There is always someone new and i guess pliable because I am too old for this. It seems the worker is no more important than the multitude of cows in the field. You have a purpose, to be used, and that is it. I was watching an episode of King of the Hill where Hank was being showed the cows in a field by a naturalist. The guy was talking about how beautiful the cows were and basically praising them as we would our pets and in the next breath stated how good they were going to look being led to slaughter. They were just a commodity. It made me think of my job.
I work with children. The employer, An African, and I make this distinction because she has a habit of separating herself from my 'American' Africanism by saying 'your people' when talking about Black people (prejudice really has no color)in general. Kind of irritates me because she seems to see me as 'lower'.

Anyway the employer tends to work by the number of children in the center. She doesn't care about the quality of care given to the children just the numbers. This means children are switched from room to room to keep ratio low so she can send the employees home. The woman is cheap and conniving. In any given day you can work from 1-6 hrs. Not a good thing if you are trying to LIVE! The other day I clocked out a little late because I was cleaning (no janitorial service) and had to give a couple of tours and the next morning the woman complained. I was like 'what the hell'. It's not that I was over the time the center closed, but because I had one infant left in my room and should have handed her off and left. It was 4:30.

This particular center I am working in is basically new, it has 10 children. I have been there 3 wks. I work alone from 8-12, sometimes at 10 she calls someone in. It depends on the number of children. When I say alone I mean alone. No one else in the building. I have worked alone before (in my home) but not with 5 babies and six walkers ages 2-5. This means if potential customers come in I have to leave the children, give out information and try to give a tour and be positive about the matter while there is a little demon seed enrolled in the center who does everything imaginable to get attention. Think of having a two year old that must have sugar for his blood. Things are so bad with him, two parents of infants threatened to disenroll their infants during their first week. Last week the employer let the only other worker go without notice because of the complaint as if it were the worker's fault she worked the evenings alone and the little seed is there until 6:30 p.m. I now have a two hour lunch break so I can basically fool the parents by being there in the mornings and evenings. The lies this woman tells. She hired another person and told the parents she has worked with the girl before. Yeah, three days. Yesterday, this young lady said she is ready to quite. Yesterday my 2 hr. lunch break was spent working (I called myself saving gas by staying in the building)because the child would let anyone in the center sleep. Babies were crying, walkers were running and people were coming for tours. I really wanted to sit back and do nothing, but there was only one other person in the building.

The owner charges $100 for curriculum fee and in reality we don't even have a workbook to make copies from. The center looks beautiful because everything is bought for show, but in essence there is nothing for the children to do. She says she feeds breakfast, but if the child is brought in a minute after 8 she says not to feed them because breakfast is over at 8. Everything is a flipping sham.

This morning I think I will tell her this is my last week.