My Very Bad Habit

Alright, so for the past three years or so, I've had this habit that I haven't been able to break. There was a point in time when I sucked my thumb (I finally stopped before getting into high school, but only because the dentist put a special thing at the top of my mouth that would cut my thumb every time I put it in my mouth). This habit started when I was just a baby. Then, there was a time when I had a nail-biting habit. I managed to break that one by myself, only to pick up this new habit that I have--biting my cheek. Maybe some of you who have been around me in the past three years may have noticed that I do this. I usually take my knuckle and push it against my cheek so that I can bite the skin. Then, I rip the skin away from the flesh. Sometimes my cheeks bleed from all the pulling (and yet even through the bleeding, I keep biting)...and I've got a bunch of dead skin in my mouth now. I also have an ulcer. I've had mouth ulcers before from this habit and they usually keep me from biting my cheeks for a while because they're so painful. In the past three weeks, though, I've had three ulcers--THREE! I decided to get a dentist's opinion and he was thinking that I might need to wear a mouth guard during the day. The thing is...it costs $160 and we don't even have dental insurance. *sigh* So I decided to google my habit and I found out that there a bunch of people out there that do it. Cheek biters unite! Whoo! I've got to figure out something, though, because apparently my habit can lead to oral cancer. Grr...I don't want cancer...from what I hear, it's not the best thing, and I've got enough health stuff to deal with.

What less dangerous habit can I pick up to replace the one that I have now? Usually I bite my cheeks when I'm bored, hungry, anxious, or upset. And it's kinda embarrassing when I do it in public. People stare at me, especially in class. The embarrassment keeps me from doing it for a little while, but I always go back to biting my cheek. The urge is a lot stronger than embarrassment. Besides, I'm not one to really care what people think about me or things that I'm doing. I'm my own person and if I'm going to bite my cheek, then I'm going to do it with pride! At least I'm not eating my own boogers.

Yogurt-rice Salad

Alright y'all, so when I went to the doctor on Thursday, August 12th, she told me that I have to get back on the BRATTY diet. In case you don't know what that is, it's basically bananas, rice, apples, toast, tea, and yogurt. I'm not the biggest fan of this diet because it doesn't help me to feel any better and there is NO meat involved. I am like 95% carnivore and 5% herbivore. I love my meat. Anywho...so last night, I was joking with Andrew that I could have a salad with yogurt salad dressing. I started to look for a salad dressing recipe and found one, but I also found a recipe for yogurt-rice salad. The recipe called for a bunch of stuff. This is the ingredient list below. 

• 1  cup  basmati or long-grain white rice
• 1  English cucumber (about 14 oz.)
• 1  zucchini (about 5 oz.)
• 1  Granny Smith apple (about 8 oz.)
• 1  cup  chopped white or red onion, rinsed and drained
• 2  cups  plain nonfat yogurt
• 1  teaspoon  grated fresh ginger
• About 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1  teaspoon  vegetable oil
• 1/4  teaspoon  hot chili flakes
• 1/8  teaspoon  cracked or coarse-ground pepper
• 3/4  cup  shredded carrots

And this is what the food was kinda supposed to look like: 

(The picture makes it look really good)

    Of course, I had to exclude most of the stuff on the list. So, I decided to make the salad using just the rice, apple, plain nonfat yogurt (I'm not a fan of nonfat (I need all the fat I can get!) so I got low fat instead), and a little bit of nutmeg. Boy, you should have seen my face when I tasted that mess. It was so darn plain and ugh. (The recipe had gotten some pretty good reviews, but mainly because the people got to use all of the yummy ingredients!) I let Andrew try it and he agreed with me that it was plain, but he actually kinda liked it. Anywho...I wanted to do something to make the food bearable. I sliced up two bananas and added about a cup of sugar to it. It was still kinda nasty after I added those things, so I added another 1/2 cup of sugar and some cinnamon. Talk about good. It was my dessert lunch and dinner.

Here is what my dessert looks like:

Okay okay, so mine doesn't look as good as the one in the other picture, but looks can be deceiving. I'm pretty proud of myself because I'm not good with recipes, but apparently when you add about 2 cups of sugar and cinnamon, you can make anything good. Well...dessert-wise. I'm not sure you can do the same thing with meat and I don't plan on trying it anytime soon. But, I am proof that you can make the best out of something that seems bad...like that darn BRATTY diet.

For the full recipe for the yogurt-rice salad and the good looking picture, go to: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=653561

You Know You Have a Black Mother If...

1) she's cleaning the house and it's already clean.

Boy, I remember those days. She would wake up early in the morning (there I was trying to sleep in...as my mom would say, "What you tired for? You ain't go no full time job) and cut her radio on. She wouldn't have the music on low, though. She would BLAST it and start cleaning up. I remember waking up to the sounds of the vacuum and the radio.

2) you've ever been hit in the head or knuckles with a hairbrush or comb.

I learned not to move when I was getting my hair done. I had to figure things out...it's like, "What hurts the most...letting her do my hair or getting my hair done?" or "Do I want to take the pain and get my hair did or walk around school looking like a mess?" I also got hit on the knuckles with a hairbrush. If you think that feels good, then you've got a problem. I would try to lay my hand out as flat as possible, but have my knuckles up just a little bit. If your hand was in a fist, that brush was no joke! Laying your hand out more kinda took away some of the pain because you can't really get to the knuckles.

3) you've ever been called from downstairs, upstairs, the back of the house, or from the front of the house to fix her a glass of ice water, get her the remote control, or change the channel on the tv.

My momma would call out my name and I would say, "ma'am?" and she wouldn't even respond. I would have to get up and go see what she wanted. Sometimes I kept saying "ma'am?" hoping that she would respond and I wouldn't have to get up. Nope, didn't even work.

4) you've been told to "Shut Up or I'll give you something to cry about" while she beats you with a belt-pronouncing every syllable ---"Didn't (hit) I (hit) tell (hit) you (hit) not (hit) to (hit) do (hit) that (hit) no (hit) more?"

I loved the "shut up or I'll give you something to cry about" phrase. There I was after just getting whooped and she tells me not to cry? lol. That's like the hardest thing, too. Your butt's all sore and you're trying to hold the crying noises in. Then, to make matters worse, she's holding onto my under my arm so that I couldn't run. Well, I could still run...in circles around her. And I would try and use my hands to block the hits. By then, my hands were in pain so I just left my butt to fend for its self.

5) you've ever had to pick your own switch or belt, and she sent you back if the switch or belt you got was to small.

I definitely remember this from being at my Bigma's house. She had this tree in her front yard and whenever you acted up, you had to go "get a switch off the tree." Of course, being a kid, I wanted the smallest switch possible. But then again, if the switch was too small, she would go outside and get an even bigger switch. So I was so darn confused. I tried to always get the bigger switch, though, so that she wouldn't be even more upset when it was time for my whoopin!

6) you ever got a whoopin in the car while your mom was driving....Reachin her hand back with a comb.

Now I never got to experience this one (*thank goodness*) but my momma and her sister did. My Grandma Nan was driving the car and I guess my mom and her sister were in the back seat fussing and fighting or something. My Grandma reached into the back seat (remember, she's driving the car) and smacked the heck out of my auntie.

7) she finds out that other kids are picking on you and she wants to bash them.

My momma would always tell me, "If somebody hit you, you betta hit them back."

8) by age 6 you believed that because she bought you into this world she could take you out.

I remember this happening to several of my friends. It's the momma motto (especially for black women)! You were always afraid, too, it's like, "oh crap, I'm going to get my butt beat today! Will I still be in this world tomorrow?" LOL

9) If you ever asked "why", she will tell you "because I said so !"

I came to believe that this what a good answer for everything. Boy, if a "why" question came up on a essay test, I would probably put "Because I said so!" and let that be the end of it.

10) instead of giving you a time to be home she says "and you betta be in this house before the street lights come on."

I remember being told this when I got in high school. I was never sure when exactly the lights would come on, so I would try and be home and soon as I could.

11) she just gives you "the look" and you start crying.

That's how it happened with me. After a while she didn't even need the belt anymore. She just looked at me and I was shaking in my shoes.
12) her cooking is beaten only by Grandma's.**I absolutely LOVE having a Black mother. She has helped me to become the woman that I am today.**

Don't You Eat?

*Note: The bloggee just wanted to ramblee (aka ramble...I wanted to rhyme).

Okay, so I've noticed that some people think that skinny girls don't eat. Just because I only weigh 115 and I don't have your average black girl booty (it's all because of the scooter...see previous post) doesn't mean that I don't eat. You should see my daddy. He could probably eat a cow and not gain a pound. He got it from his daddy. I don't know WHY I got that gene, but I did. If you think I don't eat a lot, get me some hot dogs and I will whoop your butt in a hot dog eating contest. Bring it. If you give me some vegetables, you'll probably end up beating me, though.

I like to eat, therefore, of course I'm going to bring food to all of my classes. I have to wake up between 5:30-6:00am every morning. I'm too nauseous when I get up to want to eat then, so I wait until my 7:45 class. You can't teach a 7:45am or afternoon class without expecting people to bring food. Okay, so maybe I'm one of the only ones that brings food to class. Alright, so lately I've been bringing enough snacks for my whole table to eat because I was feeling a little guilty about eating in front of them (and then, of course I gotta feed their morning breath. WHOO! Anything to cover that up. Okay, so I'm totally kidding). Then, I started feeling guilty because I was only feeding my table and the other table was looking hungry, so I passed some food to them. Then, some more people were looking hungry, so I brought a bag of twizzlers. I tell ya, by the time by P.E. class was over, all of the twizzlers were gone (it's a good thing I didn't really like them. Those rainbow twizzlers companies really need to invest in a bag of sugar). Today, because we were having a final exam, I decided to wake up at 5:00am to make cupcakes. (Yes, I love my class that much...or rather, I just like to eat.) I made about 35 cupcakes, enough for everybody to just have one cupcake. There was some more leftover, but me and Andrew are going to use those to go around the apartment complex and say "hey" to people that we don't know. Anywho...the strawberry cupcakes had cream cheese icing and the yellow cupcakes had chocolate icing (I ended up not icing all of the cupcakes because I thought that maybe everyone didn't like icing. Psh...nobody touched the non-icing ones. Alright, so there were still some more cupcakes left and these boys in the hall were eye-balling them (hey single ladies! I just came up with an idea. Feed the fellas treats. Desserts are like pheromones to some guys. So there you go!) I ended up giving them each a cupcake. Of course, they went for the icing ones.

Man, if you put a plate of my Bigma's (for those of you who don't know...my Bigma is my great-grandmother) cooking in front of me, you wouldn't even know where the food went and how I got it there. I can put my Bigma's cooking away (meaning, I can seriously devour it).

*The point of this blog post? I don't know.

How to Get a Flat Butt

So...it's been a long time since I last blogged. Life gets busy and there are always other things that I want to do. Like play poker! haha. Don't worry, don't worry, it's not real money. Whenever I get home from school, I most definitely am not usually interested in writing more! But, it does feel nice to take a breather and write out some things.

This semester has definitely been a great one. I had all A's for midterms and I'm sure that my final grades are going to be B's and above. Woot woot. Get it, Shae. haha. I'll tell ya, I've definitely been a class clown this semester. But, only in one of my classes--P.E. Methods. It's basically a P.E. class where the students teach. It's so quiet in that class, though, that of course my personality is going to shine through. So we were playing this game called scooter soccer the other day. And the scooter isn't the kind of scooter you have in mind. It's square with no handlebars or pole thingy out in front. Basically, you sit your butt on the square, which has four wheels beneath it, and you scoot yourself around using your legs and arms. You think that's fun? Psh, you try taking 3 laps around the gym sitting on a scooter. (And I don't know why, but it's only when people teach that they want to be a Drill Sergeant. Do they not know that this isn't boot camp?) Anywho, so two teams were on the field and I was a member of one of the teams (uh oh for them). The anticipation was running through my veins. I wanted to kick that ball and I wanted to kick it hard. Alright, so we are playing the game and nobody's winning. I'm down at the other team's goal trying to kick the ball into the "net" (basically two cones spread apart). I'm really anxious because I just want to be able to kick the ball. I try and take it from some people. I try to roll myself down the court with the ball between my knees so that no one can kick it. Do you know that they will beat the mess out of you to get to that ball?) Anywho, so I am down at the goal and my teammate kicks the ball to me. I do the logical thing. I get all excited that I'm going to make a goal, turn sideways, and do the soccer player sideways kick. Yeah, that only works if you're a professional NOT ON A SCOOTER. Boy, I thought I was going to make the shot. The ball didn't go ANYWHERE and I ended up falling flat on my butt. At another point, I am on my teams side of the line while the other team kicks the ball off. The other players rears back to kick the ball, so I put my legs up (BOTH of my legs) to block the ball. And I end up falling backwards off the scooter onto my butt. You can probably imagine how flat my tushi is now. You see that computer screen in front of you? Yep, my butt was pretty much that flat after class. I can tell you this, though, it was so nice to see the smiles on everyone's faces (sure, sure, they were saying that they were laughing with me, not at me. Trust me, if you saw me fall as much as I did, you would be laughing at me. I wouldn't be laughing. Okay, okay, maybe a little on the inside. But, my butt was crying on the outside. Ah, the joys of college life. Next up, swimming class next semester! They had better watch out because if I'm going under, I'm taking them with me.