Homegirl Quel (kel) in Austin

Humans Win

I love humans. We win. We're totally the only ones who can do this. Well, except birds are pretty cool too. And butterflies. But for the most part, humans win.

5 More Randoms...

It's been a while since I've posted. Even longer since I've written a 'Randoms' post. I was just checking my social networking sites and thinking during my quiet time this morning--after dropping the boy at school and before going to the gym. Picture me sipping on a cup of tea, standing (I rarely sit down during the day--even eat standing up) at my kitchen counter on my netbook. These were my thoughts...

1. I want them to bring back Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy on SNL.I thought about that when I had my own Handyesque deep thought--> We say summertime and wintertime and springtime, but not falltime. What's up with that?

2. I got a Kindle for my birthday. I bought a hard cover book the same day. I'm warming up to it. 

3. There was a delay on my iPhone4 order and we ended up not buying it when it arrived at the store. I saw a commercial for the Blackberry Torch and am torn now because there's an option for me to keep my beloved Blackberry buttons AND get a touchscreen for browsing. Both phones will cost the same thing with my plan upgrade. Heading over to the store to play with the Torch today. Decisions, decisions...
 
4. I looked at my self in the mirror for the first...er...second time in Zumba last night. I use to not look because I didn't want to KNOW how crazy I looked trying to dance the samba. I felt better picturing myself getting down like the Brazilian Carnival girls in my head. But last night, after several months of taking Zumba and totally by accident, I looked...and I LIKED! :) 

5. Today was my first snack day for my son's class. I bought a watermelon and cubed it for the kid's morning snack. I felt like a mom. :) It's so much fun being a toddler's mom. I think I'll stay here for a while.

 

Sooo, yeah. I'm playing 18 holes of golf on Sunday.

Mhm. And I have never played golf before in my life. So. This should be interesting.

On Sunday, May 2, I will be playing in the Austin Mocha Moms' inaugural annual charity golf tournament, "Teeing Off Against Childhood Illiteracy" as part of a foursome. Why am I putting myself out there like this? I'm not sure. Actually, it's for the kids. And for their sake and mine, I really, REALLY hope golf is as easy to pick up as I think it is. I have a pretty good record of doing well in sports situations that are new to me. In college, I played basketball on a team of guys once and handled myself pretty well. I can't remember if I made any shots, but I do recall some good blocks, and they kept me on the team the whole game and didn't cuss me out...and our team won, so I think I did ok. And then there was the time I went bowling for the first time since I was like, 12, and bowled a 219, which is an insanely good score period, no matter how much bowling experience you have. I don't suck at tennis and I usually win when I play pool with anybody. So I should pick up golf pretty easily, right?

Who knows, how my golf game will be. One thing is for sure: This will be tons of fun and there will be no shortage of laughter (hopefully more with me than at me). The good thing is I have a week before the tournament to practice on my swing and 18 holes during the tournament to try to get it right. 

All Austinites or people who may be in town this weekend, of all levels of golfing experience and ability are welcome to come out to support our cause.

See the News 8 interview with our Austin Chapter President about the tournament and our work in combating childhood illiteracy here:
 
For more information on the tournament including location, time and how to sign up to play, please visit the tournament website at: http://www.golfdigestplanner.com/15147-MM2010CharityGolf/.

HomeGirl is going on hiatus.

I have been writing here since 2005. This won't be the first break I have taken, but it will be the longest. No worries--everything's cool. I have just been really busy with my new life as a stay at home mom, and it has become a little challenging to write as consistently and as candidly as I have in the past. I have enjoyed introducing you guys to companies, products, authors and artists that I love, and will continue to do that. I have SO much going on in HomeGirlville, and I still take pictures everyday and I want to share more of that here the way I use to, but finding the time and energy is tricky. I love this blog and I want to make sure I am giving it all the love and attention it deserves. I love reading your comments and emails and am grateful for all my readers, especially those of you who have been with me from the beginning.

I'll be back here officially in April. In the meantime, here's where else in the Netiverse you can keep up with me:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/HomeGirlBlog
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/HomeGirl/136278074758
DailyFitGirl: http://dailyfitgirl.blogspot.com/
Clinique: http://www.cliniqueinsidersclub.com/profile.html?user=1&insider_year=2010

Thanks again for sticking with me. See y'all back here in April!

Hey, y'all! It's twentyten up in this piece!

Honestly I'm not that excited about the new year, but am grateful for an opportunity to start fresh. A whole year's worth of days...365 days...52 Mondays, is plenty of time to start over and stop and start over again. 365 days to try to get it right...again.

Since 2010 is a pretty good number, 10 being symbolic of completion and rebirth and all that, I decided to take a look at my first posts of the year over the past 5 years to see how much I/things have changed, or how much my outlook has changed over time. Just as I suspected, I'm the same person. That's a little frustrating, since I'm always (apparently) on a mission to change something about myself. According to my previous first-of-the-year posts (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009). I'm usually either over resolution lists or making ones that I end up not satisfying, still trying to lose weight (less weight now, but still), and still hoping to achieve the same things. I'm a little more mature I guess. Definitely more optimistic. And way, WAY more social. So there is definitely growth. Which I guess is most important. You know what they say about life being about the journey not the destination? I'm in a place right now where I'm really trying to enjoy the journey--not focus too far off into the future. To live, really live and enjoy today.

I cannot end this post without highlighting how much my 2009 recap post isn't much different from the previous one. So here is my first-of-the-year post for 2010, which is my 2009 post with some minor updates. Note the changes:

Until 2010, HomePeeps!

Fun as they are and as much as I would love to make one, there will be no list of resolutions for the new year this time around for HomeGirl. It would just make me feel like a failure by the year's end. 2009 has been a good year, as are most. As usual, I have enjoyed the awesome times and endured the not-so-awesome times. I have learned a lot about myself as time and life reveal more of who I am to me. Some of these revelations are awesome and a couple are disturbing and surprising, but it's all me. I will not even try to make a list or suppose I have any inkling of what the next year will bring, because some of the things 2009 brought my way? I would not have imagined...ever. One thing I can say I will do in 2010 is try to do better in general. I can definitely try.

See you guys back here in the new year!

I'm happier now that I'm a mom, but it's not all about the baby.

So I think I've figured out why people say becoming a parent is all sappy and happy and the best thing that will ever happen to you blah blah blah. With all that was involved in growing a whole person inside me, then being the only person on the whole planet responsible for the basic daily care and nurturing of another helpless human including the awesome figure reconstruction, the sleep deprivation and the poop, the overwhelming joy that I hear about seemed overstated. But today, as I was driving home with my son in the backseat, I noted how happy I was when I saw the rain this morning, and how excited I got at the sight of a school bus passing us on the road. I also thought about how much I look forward to the garbage pick-up guys to come by every Monday. Before becoming a parent, I didn't care about those things. And rain on a weekday morning usually evoked emotions very opposite of excitement in me. But I'm giddy at the sight of them now, because I get to show my son the rain, and the school bus, and the garbage truck, and seeing him light up the way he does just makes my insides all mushy. It's a bit selfish (which is a word that has been used to describe me, but I think everybody should be a little selfish), but the happiness my child has brought into my life isn't just about him. He makes me live inside of every moment when we're out in the world together. I'm just happier in general, I think, because I have a hundred little reasons to genuinely scream and laugh and speak in a high-pitched voice out of utter joy that, "YES! There's a CUP!"  I know the day will come when rain and big trucks won't matter to anybody in this house. Hopefully by then I will have learned to live inside of every moment and enjoy as many happy moments as I do now.

Too long for a Facebook Update, a bit random for a blog entry, but here goes anyway

I had fun at the park with Zack this morning. Went without my camera. Sucks. He's squeaky clean and in bed napping now and for the next 3 hours. So I'm going to have brunch (missed breakfast again this morning) and get some cleaning done. I'm reading Black Girl in Paris by Shay Youngblood right now and it's SO good! I wish I could just sit and read it until I'm done, but all my time comes in bits. Like now. For the past 17 minutes I've been standing at the counter in my kitchen returning emails and catching up on my social networking spots. Afraid to sit down, because then an hour would go by and I'd still be hungry and my house would still need to be cleaned. Anyway, the book is wonderful. I'm always thinking about it when I'm not reading it. That hasn't happened in a long time.

And this is so random, but I'm a fan of Sanaa Lathan on Facebook and it's really her...she uploads mobile pics and everything. Anyway, I want to tell her so bad that she's my BFF in my head, that we would totally be real-life friends if we ever met...same with Gabrielle Union on twitter. But that would be silly.

Old Fashioned Rx

Billy brought this bag home from the neighborhood pharmacy the other day. These are old fashioned ads for medicines all over the black and white sack. This is one of many changes our neighborhood grocery store has implemented. I walked in there about a month ago having been away for a while (I usually shop at our local discount grocery store outside my hood), and there is like a living room section with a fireplace and upholstered armchairs, a Starbucks, another little cafe area...they're almost about to make me start shopping in my own neighborhood. The sitting areas are so convenient. I've had to stop there a few times just to feed my son and didn't feel bad for not buying anything. Sometimes, he not eat when I offer it to him then say he's hungry as soon as we get into the car. The store prices have gone down a bit too and I just found out they double coupons. Hmmm. So these charming little pharmacy bags are working on me. I'm one of those people that marketers love--easily charmed by these little touches.

Please spare the orchids.

Hello. My name is Raquel. I'm an orchid killer. To the wonderful friends and family members who have given me orchids over the years, thank you. I love getting flowers. They make me feel special and girly and delicate and all those wonderful, feminine things. Keep 'em coming. However, please spare the orchids. They don't like me. Perhaps word has gotten out among the orchid community that their days are numbered once in my possession. Try as I might, they die...or go dormant then die...after a few short months with me. So while they come to me looking like this or like this, they always end up looking like the one pictured here. I water them, I put them in places that, according to what I've read online, would make orchids happy. But they always die. I'm always so hopeful at first, but the story never changes...always the same ending. I'm over this story.

So if you want to make me feel special and pretty and delicate and all those lovely things, please give me flowers. But please spare the orchids. 

Mommy Blogger or Blogger/Mommy?

Is there really a difference anyway? If there is, I think blogging for almost five years and then becoming a mom makes me the latter. I blog about my life. And yes, much of my content has been about my current life as a stay at home mom since becoming a mom about 15 months ago, but I still don't consider myself a Mommy Blogger. Maybe I'm a Mommy Blogger in transition? I mean, I don't have plans to ever really return to work until Zack and his future siblings are all at least in preschool part-time. And even then, I hoping to work @ home on my own time. So my life will increasingly become all about my kids, I guess. I use to write more about films and books I've experienced, but my kid has replaced those "experiences" since he showed up. Mom. Blogger. If I'm both, I'm both. I guess the order of titles doesn't really make a difference.

Slowly, I'm carving out more time for myself now that he's a little more independent and playing and "reading" by himself (like he's doing right now, which is why I'm able to write a bit this morning).  However, I'm using most of that time to like, bathe, and drink...you know, the stuff I can't do while with my baby in tow. It seems like finding time shouldn't be so hard, you know? Since I'm at home with Zack, I work really hard to keep him busy and out in nature and the community experiencing life. If I stayed inside with him all the time, his life wouldn't be much more different from than if he were in daycare, I think. So my days are all about him. I've been told that I do a lot, and maybe too much with him sometimes, but what's the point of being a SAHM if I'm not giving him as much of myself --as many experiences as I can? Over the past few months, I've been able to toy with reading again, and am considering catching late shows at the movies every once in a while Billy's on baby duty or after Zack is asleep (Star Trek is out and it's killing me that I haven't seen it yet). I'm accepting all invitations to attend events sans baby as well. I'm rambling. And, at the moment, my son seems to find scratching my legs to see the white marks he leaves behind amusing. So I'm logging off to see if I can interest him in another activity.

Overheard in a nail salon:crickets for prosperity apparently

So I'm in a nail salon in Memphis when this woman comes in to chat a bit with her regular nail technician. She begins to explain to the tech why she needs to move her weekly appointment up--she's going out of town to someplacecountry MS before her regular appointment. I gathered that from a twenty-minute conversation she had with the tech, the woman the tech was working on at the time, the tech who was doing my manicure and a couple of other customers who were waiting. During this conversation, I learned that...she's forty, recently lost her job, met a nice sixty-year-old guy who is opening an Exxon gas station, went out with him the day they met and after a week of phone chats will be joining him for a weekend in his home in someplacecountry MS, and needs her nails done and her roots stripped and dyed blond to match the rest of her hair (which is styled like any member of White Snake) before her trip.

The nail technicians, all black ladies, freely voiced their disapproval of her getting into his car the first time she met him--in someplacecountry MS at a dinner party of mutual friends--which of course could have ended in rape or murder. They backtracked almost completely, when she got to the part about him opening an Exxon gas station. At that point, "guuuurl" and "sugar daddy" and "good for you" and "sounds like a nice guy" and "no wonder you got in" and "I woulda got in too"s came from no particular person, and all at once from every corner of the room. The funniest part was how she lost everybody and totally killed the conversation.

Random Observation

Crocodiles and alligators look exactly the same in all the children books, art, cartoons, etc.

I feel like I'm confusing my son by calling them alligators sometimes and crocodiles at other times. Add to that Spanish versions of the words (I'm teaching him Spanish vocabulary too), "cocodrilo" for crocodile and "caiman" for alligator (what happened to "alligatoro" ?!) and it just becomes too much. I've made it to 31 without knowing the difference between the two, but somewhere along the way I learned that, generally,  it is acceptable to call the green reptile with the big teeth and long tail a crocodile or an alligator depending on which word comes to you first.

Among the other things toddlers have to learn, the difference between crocodiles and alligators is SO unimportant. However, I did some research. Google searches count as research. I have educated myself and am sharing my new found knowledge with you guys and ultimately my son one day when he's much, much older.

OK. So there are are 3 major physical differences between crocodiles and alligators...

Funny Thing

I'm so use to watching TV via DVR that I try to fast forward through commercials even when I'm watching live TV. I got so frustrated, just now, that the remote to the DVR wouldn't work when Sex and The City went to commercials that I was about to get up to forward it manually on the box when it occurred to me that I wasn't watching a previously recorded program.

The Dreams

Last night I dreamed I was skinny again. I was talking to my sister in-law about why my bed was so comfortable (random) and she commented on how skinny I was and how much I looked like I did when she first met me (back when I was 20). I don't have plans to see her at the moment, but I'm hoping this dream turns out to be prophetic. I'm working to be skinny like I was back then and we could use a better mattress.

A couple of nights ago, I dreamed that me and some friends of mine were hanging out together in what looked like a train station. We were wearing our wedding gowns (random) and mine didn't fit. It fit at first, but then the back split open when I sat down. I refused to take it off and asked one of my friends if she had a white camisole I could borrow to wear underneath it instead. Random.

It's more fun being totally OK with my Self.

So, as many of you know,  I experienced the loss of my brother-in-law and spent this past week with the family. What struck more than anything during my visit was that everybody who spoke of him--friends, coworkers, family--all spoke of the same (wonderful) Peter. He lived a full life and was always free to be himself. Being one's true authentic self 100% of the time seems like a given, but for me, it took about 27 years.

I entered a contest. Please vote for me.

It's a FotoWeekDC contest, The FotObamaWeek Photo contest. I entered a photo in the amateur Inauguration week category. You'll have to register your email address to vote, but it's worth it to see all the cool entries. Votes accepted through March 15th.

Click >>HERE<< to view my entry and to vote. Thanks!

Happy New Year! It's 2009!

It doesn't seem like nine years have passed since Y2K, but obviously it has. This year has definitely flown by. I'm so over making resolutions with every new year, but I will take a moment...just a moment to reflect over my 2008.

This has been the best, hardest, happiest, most tiring, most emotionally taxing, sweetest, most productive, most sleepless year of my life. Since February 19th, everything in my life has come second to taking care of my newborn son. He had a minor medical issue when he was born--you'd never know it if you met him, but we have the medical bills to prove it. I quit my job to stay at home with him, which was the best decision I've ever made in my life. I'm so glad I get to spend so much time with him. I'd be miserable if I had to leave him to go to work, I'm sure of it. It's been difficult and exciting getting to know myself as a mom, and getting to know my husband as a father. It's been good--the fighting, the making up, the frustrations, the overwhelming feelings of love for our son and our family, the growing up. I look forward to another year of this family business and perhaps adding another member soon.

Aside from getting to review beauty products for Clinique (OMG y'all I'm so excited about this!), not much else bloggable happened with me this year. I know y'all are probably babied out here this year, but it's my life right now, you know? Whatayagonnado?

Yadda Yadda Yadda

It's eleven o'lock and my son has been asleep for about an hour. I should be putting another load of laundry into the washer and doing a quick pedicure since I wasn't able to squeeze those things in today. That's what my mind is telling me, but my heart wants to blog on the sofa lounging next to my husband, so here I am. I don't really have anything in mind to say, but something will turn up I'm sure. Hmmmm. Well...

• I finally posted to my Honey Magazine blog after a good bit of time away. I totally need to find a direction for that blog. I'm freed up a bit to discover more blog-worthy restaurants, attractions, etc. to mention. My fall-back interest, which usually rears it's head when I have free time, is accessories and make-up shopping, so maybe that's a direction for me. However disapproving my bank account might be, there is always money for accessories.
• I hope my E-Prayer, in the right margin there, doesn't offend anybody. It's not meant to mock prayer at all and is very sincere.
• We went to a housewarming party this weekend. The house was decorated beautifully and got me in the mood to pick up some painting projects I had put aside when I got preggers. I've had this peanut butter toned paint chip pinned to the wall in our den/bonus area/whateveryouwanttocallit for almost a year now. It's definitely time for that room to come together. And my laundry room is SO on it's way to becoming a bright shade of avocado green.
• I'm about to embark on air travel with a breastfeeding infant. I checked the terminals I'm set to travel through and so far have found no place for families to take care of family business. I usually find a dressing room to nurse in when I'm caught out with the boy, so I may have to breastfeed in one of the busiest airports in the country. Hmm. The last trip we have planned at the end of the summer is to Billy's home in the West Indies where Zack will meet his other side. By then, I'm sure I'll be comfortable enough to whip one out on the beach.
• Speaking of embarking and breastfeeding, I've decided to explore the local farmer's markets around town over my next few grocery trips. The first one I picked is in a small town in the middle of Austin called Sunset Valley. It's supposed to be the best of the many farmer's markets around and I'm really looking forward to the experience. I'm planning to go the whole nine and buy organic meats from the vendors and everything. The price of produce is going up in the grocery stores anyway, so if I'm gonna pay more for a pepper it might as well be organic and support local growers. The first time, I hope I have enough time to check out the cafe and entertainment while taking care of business. The Sunset Valley market is right next to a Babies R Us, which has nursing rooms, which will definitely be planned into the trip. I usually stop by one before and after trips out that will likely catch me at a feeding time. It's a lot to go through, I know, but I'm new at this, so give me a minute to get comfortable. The second market I'm planning to explore is the Austin one downtown, which is nowhere near a Babies R Us.

Ok. I'm sleepy now. The Spurs just lost. It's almost 11:30. Time to hit the sack. I think I'll make a cup of tea then check out some other sights for another few before the post-game interviews are done. Goodnight.

Bill, Bill, Bill

In his defense, he has been hitting the campaign trail pretty hard for the wife...

Clinton Caught Nodding Off During MLK Service

Still, Bill, you know you on television! Drink a Red Bull or something, man!