2 be Bliss, as I dance along the road to Nirvana...

what was your sunday like? was it fun and exciting ? chill and laid back? boring and sleep-inducing? mine was... ordinary. i wanted to go to church today but baby bliss and i overslept . not surprising since we were up late. she watched mission impossible 3 until the sandman dragged her away 3/4 of the way into the movie. mr. bliss had gone to church, come home, and gone out again before i could crack my eyelids. he called to say he was out with my family and asked if i needed anything while he was out. soon after he got back, baby bliss and i got dressed and we all went to the dollar store then sam's club. on the way home, the mermaid decided she needed a swim . she begged mr. bliss to cook dinner on the grill at the pool but he refused, saying dinner would be ready when we returned. so baby bliss and i headed out to the pool. the sky was overcast but the temperature was still warm and a bit muggy. thankfully the pool was nearly empty. my auntie joined us later, for a...

hey y'all. not much to say... just wanted to post some photos of a bracelet i made in the wee hours of friday morn. i think it's delicate and girly without being overly frou-frou. what do y'all think?? the main beads are glass seed beads in sky blue, cobalt blue, and apple green. the small gold-plated beads are the teasers. there are also a few 3 mm glass beads in apple green, sky blue, and royal blue sprinkled around. some of the bigger metal beads are small brass bells. the others are (approx.) 6 mm brass rounds that i recycled from an old bracelet i broke. the 3 big blue glass beads that were recycled from the same bracelet. i call this the Fertility Bracelet cuz there's a small fertility symbol swinging from one of the coils. here she is: i think i'm gonna start selling my jewelry online as soon as i get a few more done. i've ordered more supplies (wire for the rings) from my source and i'm waiting excitedly. i didn't order an...

hubby brings home the bacon and i take it to the big skillet (the bank) every friday. this friday was business as usual. baby bliss and i went to grandma's for a late breakfast and a nap after our bank run. grandma is funny. it was about 90 degrees out. grandma and baby bliss got into a discussion about the fastest way to cool off. grandma said baby bliss would cool off if she sat still and waited for the fan to turn in her direction. (that might be true for some folks, but not baby bliss. she seems to have a furnace somewhere inside. i've seen her sweat in the freezing cold.) b.b. thought it would be better if the fan didn't oscillate and she would sit right in front of it. i'm not sure why  grandma thought that was a bad idea. *shrug* i didn't want to hear it so i pulled out The Hindi Bindi Club and plopped in a chair for a good read. before i knew it, i was looking at the inside of my eyelids. i wanted to sleep in the chair but it was soooooo uncomf...

this week's Crazy Hip Blog Mama Collaboration (formerly the Crazy Hip Blog Mama Carnival) is ice cream. they said we could be creative and do something other than write about it. that would be cool 'cept i don' t have any pics of ice cream, people eating ice cream, the ice cream man, or any other ice cream stuff. i don't have any funny ice cream stories either. or none that i can think of right off the top of my head any way. so i'll just say i loooooooooooooooooove ice cream. but not all ice cream and not any ice cream. and i'm a fan of banana splits. or just ice cream with bananas. i also like ice cream with nuts. or ice cream with nuts and cherries, hold the whipped cream, hold the sauces. hey, i know! i'll just do an ice cream list. here are my faves, in order from "most fave" to "i dig it". cherry vanilla (but not the kind with the real cherries) cookies and cream banana split ice cream orange and white something or other (a hold-ove...

could y'all tell from the previous post that i was seething with threatening-to-erupt rage?  i was afraid i'd want to spit in one of non-custodial's eyes and pull the other out with a fork. but lunch wasn't so bad. we made small talk while we ate. a casual observer wouldn't have known i'd been contemplating evisceration just minutes before. baby bliss was happy with the short visit and that's all that really matters, right? *** last night's soda run was a bust. i think the doors only open until a certain hour, after which access is cut off. i no longer crave that sugary dr. pepper taste, thank goodness. now i've got a hankering for watermelon and pineapple tidbits, both of which we have in the kitchen already. (we're at the library right now so i won't be able to partake for another 1 1/2 hours, at least.)  i'm supposed to be working (read: writing some part of my Work in Progress) but i'm sitting here doing this. LOL w...

i left my ex before baby bliss was 2 years old (8+ years ago) to return to my hometown (over 2,000 miles from the ex). i left because finding the middle ground for living a peaceful life seemed to be impossible for the two of us. we divorced several years later, amicably. fast forward to the ex's re-marriage (a few years ago) and problems began to creep in. they were subtle: baby bliss returned from a visit with tales of parental squabbles (normal). baby bliss gets into it with the step-momma about step-momma's heavy hand when doing baby's hair (which i specifically told step-momma not to do) that turns into a hair-pulling session (not good) bestowed upon baby bliss by the step-mommy. (time for momma bliss to put her foot down. or up somebody's @ss if necessary). then comes the step-momma's pregnancy. baby bliss returned home from a visit upset because the other parents were showing pictures of their recently acquired abode to all who would look. the descriptio...

to get a soda from the machine up by the gym. heehee hawhaw i don't drink sodas (pop) often but every now and then i get a taste for one. tonight i want a dr. pepper and i hope they have one. i've never used that machine so i'm not sure what's in it. shoot, i hope i can get in the darned building. i have a key fob but i'm not sure if it grants 24-hour access. i'll know in about 2 minutes cuz i'm driving up there. the first month i lived down here, i thought this was a super safe place to live. baby bliss and i would go out in the wee hours to make a mc dee's run or get stuff outta the trunk. then i realized that i was in the south, not on the moon. there's crime here just like up north. maybe not as much but still, crime. so i'll be extra careful when i make my soda run. brb.

it's been a book-lovers summer in my neck of the woods y'all. i love to read as much as i love to write but it had been a long time since i've had time to read like i used to back in tha day. it's really been my own fault tho, not taking time out to curl up in the sun with a good book. so i remedied that as soon as we were officially done with our schooling. i've been taking every opportunity to read, mostly at the pool while baby bliss keeps her tail wet. in the past 2 weeks alone, i finished three books by an author i totally dig. Armistead Maupin has a series called Tales of the City . it's one of my favorite serials. some of the novels have become PBS and ShowTime mini-series. i actually saw the mini-series before i read the books so i didn't bother to start from scratch. when i heard there was a new book out, i decided to start with the previous two books in preparation for the last one, so i wouldn't miss anything. it was needless frettin' th...

i think i've told y'all already that i have a thing for paper . it's like i'll see it and i can't help but want it. i begin to daydream, imagining the come-hither blankness filled with my not-so-lovely handwriting: to-do lists, random notes, websites i wanna/gotta/need to check out, phone numbers of people and/or places i need to call -- the list stretches to infinity. if i didn't buy another single sheet of paper in my lifetime, i bet i already have enough paper in here to last another 20 years , if i use one sheet a day. i'm not kidding. i have spiral notebooks, the kindergarten ledgers, those small journal-type books with the cute covers that are all the rage in the dollar stores now, reams of plain printer paper, packs and packs of 3-ring binder fillers, note cards in many varieties and color schemes, bunches of designer printer paper that can double as personal stationary, and more. so why did i buy more paper today? well, yeah... "cuz ...

men don't read women's blogs, right y'all? i hope not cuz somebody out there might know who i'm talking about then i'll be busted. any way... *sucking my teeth* there's this guy i've been seeing at the pool fairly often in the past few weeks. he's teaching some folk round here to swim. i've been going to the pool with baby bliss but not getting in. she plays and swims while i "work" on the shaded porch. (might that be called a "portico"? i'll have to look it up.) we go to the pool at different times every time and we don't go every day so i'm not stalking the guy. we just happen to be there at the same times lately. he has an interesting face and a beautiful body. he's tall and mostly slender, a very dark shade of burnished mahogany, and he's fit. not in an ugly over-muscled way. but in a comfortable, spoon-me-on-the-sofa kinda way. mmmmm... yummy. we've exchanged smiles and greetings, spoken a few words ab...

like, yeah, i know i shouldn't be eating this time o' morning but i'm hungry. so i trotted over to the fridge at full speed, pulled out some leftovers and put them in the steamer. that was ohhhh, about 30 minutes ago. i got back to my laptop and got lost in the web for a while. then i thought my vittles might be ready so i shimmied on back to the kitchen to check the pot. guess what y'all? i forgot to turn the burner on. i am not joking when i say i could cry right now. but maybe it's a sign from God/Goddess/Universe cuz i had a massive 10-hour headache that only subsided an hour or two ago. my head now feels light and airy and i'm grateful. i'm also hungry damn it!

it might be not the kind y'all think... baby bliss and i were in the car the other day, headed to the store. i happened to glimpse m'self in the rearview and realized my ears were bare. horror of horrors y'all cuz i don't like naked ears (on me). we were going to the dollar store so i decided i'd buy a cheap pair to wear just for the few hours we'd be out. they sho did have a lotta cute earbobs at that there dollar sto. as luck would have it, the pair i liked came on a card with another pair. so i got me 2 pair of earrings for $1.00. i put on the cutest pair and wondered what i'd do with t'other cuz i hate throwing out stuff. then EUREKA! it dawned on me. i would keep the 2nd pair in the car as an emergency pair. yesterday grandma was riding with us and asked me for a rubber band for her hair. wouldn't y'all know we didn't have one rubber band in the whole car?! then SHAZZAM! it dawned on me again. i needed an emergency kit fo...

i'm not sure if this works since we got rid of our ants using other methods. i heard that a mixture of cinnamon and red pepper spread around the boundaries would keep ants away from (and out of) the house. i bought some of each for my grandma and i'm gonna mix it and sprinkle a test mixture around the patio door. them critters seems to have a gazillion points of entry tho so we'll have to see what happens. if any of y'all have already tried it, lemme know if it helped? thanx y'all. :-)

harris teeter has a store-brand lemon something cookie that is to die for y'all. i'm thinking about it right now, wishing i had a bag or two. i wouldn't eat 'em all right now. i just like to have a stash of goodies; some for now, some for later. last time they were on sale i got two bags. it took me a while to eat them. yes y'all, i know cookies aren't on the menu of healthy foods but i only indulge occasionally. and eating cookies makes me drink more water cuz it's the only thing i like to wash sweets down with. :-)

i think it's time for another round of bliss arts photos y'all. i b'lieve i've got some photos on the laptop of a ring i made. lemme go check. brb... ahhhhh, here it is: and here's another: the first one is my favorite. it's about 1 1/2 inches high and somehow, when i'm wearing it, it feels like it's a very expensive piece of jewelry. don't know why but it does. the red and gold one is about an inch high. it's cute too but not my favorite even though i love the color combination. maybe it's missing a lil something? i enjoyed making those rings and plan to make more like the first one, with lots of variation in color, bead texture, and style. :-) baby bliss and i used to make earrings back in tha day. that was fun too but not as fulfilling as making the rings was. there was a technique to making earrings that i couldn't quite get the hang of. and even though i thought some of my earrings were cuter th...

(sue me if the punctuation and grammar are off y'all. it's almost 3 a.m. and i should be a-sleeping!) i do believe in 'scopes, i do believe in 'scopes, i do-i do-i do-i do-i do believe in 'scopes! i believe in astrology cuz i do. i'm not always a believer in horoscopes tho. least not the ones that are in the daily paper or in my inbox every day. except when they're dead-on. seems like that's been happening a lot lately. not every day of course. but 2 or 3 in a week is kinda skare-reee. or weird. or wonderful. 'pends on the day, the issue, and my mood. church has been the same way. for the past few sundays, i've been sittin' there listening to one of our ministers and then out she comes with a mention of the very thing/thought/experience i had m'self, that day or the day before. i get all goose-bumpy and feeling flushed cuz i know it's a Cosmic Reminder . of something... then i realized it was a good thing. cuz to me...

yeah? then check out this blog The Consumerist: Shoppers Bite Back to find a ton of useful info. it's chock full of rebate/discount/coupon info, juicy tidbits (like how to dump your cell carrier), useful stuff (a link to a blog that shows how to morph your IKEA furniture into other useful items), and much much more. i'm reading it right now...

hey y'all, this guy over at Hustler $$$ Blog has a whole lotta ways to make and save money. just what we need folks. and it's all perfectly legal. i think... .

yes y'all, the most-welcome tax-free shopping days are a-coming so mark your calendars. i saw this on someone else's website but i guess it's public information so i'm just gonna do a copy-and-paste. Alabama, August 3rd-5th Clothing - $100 Computers - $750 School supplies - $50 Books - $30 Connecticut, August 19th-25th Clothing - $300 District of Columbia, August 4th-12th Clothing - $100 School supplies - $100 Georgia, August 2nd-5th Clothing - $100 School supplies - $20 Computers - $1,500 Florida, August 4th-13th Clothing - $50 School supplies - $10 Iowa, August 3rd-4th Clothing - $100 Missouri, August 3rd-5th Clothing - $100 Computers - $3500 School supplies - $50 New Mexico, August 3rd-5th Clothing - $100 Computers - $1,000 School supplies - $15 North Carolina, August 3rd-5th Clothing - $100 School supplies - $100 Computers - $3,500 Other computer items - $250 Sports equipment - $50 Oklahoma, August 3rd-5th Clothing - $100 South Carolina, August 3rd-5th Clo...

Crazy Hip Blog Mamas has some new regs. said they're gonna do away with the webring... uhhhh, okay. dunno why. (maybe i missed that part. i was too busy checking for what i gotta do next.) they said i gotta add the members list to my own page, either as a text link or a blogroll. i like the blogroll but i don't want it to take up too much space. so lemme go back and see how to compress it. :') brb...

i haven't been over to Crazy Hip Blog Mamas in a while. lemme skedaddle on over to see what's shaking... right back y'all. :-)

has anyone else been going to the free movies at AMC theaters this summer? we've been going but not every week. some wednesdays we haven't wanted to get up; some we didn't wanna see what was showing. this week, we went. the girls got up early enough and the early movie (10 a.m.) was one i've always wanted to see on the big screen: The Wizard of Oz. i've been a Wizard of Oz fan since elementary school. and not just a fan of the movie. i had a bunch of the Oz books. (some people don't know it, but there's a whole series of Oz books. i had some of them and now baby bliss has her own set. i was lucky enough to find her's in the thrift store, along with a set of the Narnia books.) baby bliss was a big fan of the Wizard of Oz (the movie) when she was very young. it was one of the first movies we bought for her, around the time she started walking. or maybe we really bought the movie for me but she loved it too, from the first time she saw it. she didn't ev...

what did y'all do this weekend?? the girls and i have been hanging out and enjoying ourselves real good down in our neck of the woods. #2 Auntie had a good idea last week. she thought we girls (8 of us of varying ages) should have an girls-only outing. we were all very enthusiastic about the idea. we've done similar because most of our family has been girls until i was in my 20s. but i don't believe we've done an all girls family outing since i've been an adult. #1 Auntie said we could do it at her house (the McMansion) and most of us agreed. i did notice that #2 Auntie didn't seem keen on that one. she likes to fish y'all and thought the lake would be a good place to make a picnic. and #1 Grannie was absent but we thought she'd go along with the majority vote cuz she usually does. 'specially when it's #1 Auntie's idea. when we parted it was with the notion that the party would be at #1 Auntie's McM. we were only waiting to hear back on t...

i felt fine when i woke up. my morning routine was uneventful. it started when i decided to get my groove on. i powered up the laptop and turned on my media player. for reasons unknown to me, when the media player opened there was an album sitting in the queue already. i checked it and saw that it was one of my own creations, "rolling with bliss". i shrugged inwardly. okay, cool. i'll start with this one then . the first song was "mizike", one of my favorites by a group of women who call themselves zap mama. i hadn't heard it in a while because the actual CD is no longer in the car (where i usually listen to it) and of course i already told y'all why i can't listen to enough music in the house. mizike's opening percussion surged it's way into the air and i came slightly undone. it's not a new occurrence y'all. this particular song--a blend of soulful voices singing in multi-layers of french and (what sounds like) an ...

we are people who haven chosen to school at home . when we share this information, it sometimes provokes strange reactions in the hearer. usually, the first response is a question . the question: what about socialization ? well, what about socialization? i was very social in school and it got me into a lot of situations i could have done without. like being threatened with butt-whoopings after school by the bully chicks and report card write-ups from concerned teachers (______ is a very good student but she talks too much). baby bliss has had no problems following those stellar examples. but she's been able to get away with a lot more than i did. it's cuz she has a pretty face that you either love (cuz it's so pretty) or you hate (cuz you just don't like pretty people). back to the question of socialization... there was a whole lotta socialization going on in baby bliss's classes. so much socialization that the learning began to lag . it alternated between second...

i've mentioned this in other posts but it's so good i'll repeat it here: i love music.  music is the key that unlocks my spirit. i'm more aware of this every time i indulge in certain kinds of music. now if i could only know which certain kind of music to play each time, i could take over the world.  cuz i only get it dead-on right sometimes. that might be because i don't listen to as much music as i should. i listen when i'm driving (99% of the time, it's my faves burned on CDs) and sometimes i listen in the house. i would say i get less than half of the daily recommended allowance for listening.  it's cuz the people who live here would rather watch telly and DVDs. and i think they need hearing appliances cuz they can't hear the telly unless the volume is turned up to Maximum Decibel. which means i can hear the bloody thing even whilst wearing headphones.  totally annoying. but tonight, i'm in heaven. the other blisses have been in their resp...

y'all know that song by the beatles, right?  i'm listening to the elton john version right now and i'm laughing. cuz i remember when i was little, i thought the song said "lucy in the sky with eyes". lmao

today's horoscope: DAILY HOROSCOPE FOR WEDNESDAY, JULY 11, 2007 By Christopher Renstrom You've had a few setbacks, but instead of undermining your confidence, they've actually bolstered it. You tried playing by somebody else's rules; now it's time for that person to play by yours. yeah... i applied for an "outside" job yesterday. it's time to do me. gotta build up my capital round here. .

yesterday's carnival post over at Crazy Hip Blog Mamas was a request for camping stories . oooooooooooooooh no! i hate camping. "-( i'm talking about the rustic tent- or sleeping-bag-on-the-ground kinda camping that's done in the woods or a backyard. i can't do it. it all goes back to when i was a young gal and didn't know any better... i let my momma send me to sleep away camp . several times. don't get me wrong. i loved sleep away camp. i went a few summers and even one winter with a school group. we slept in nice cabins, ate good food, made new friends, communed with nature... but there was a part of sleep away camp that frightened me. it was the Overnight in the Woods that happened once every camping adventure. i'm a city girl by birth and i grew up in tha hood. sleeping outside was something we just did not do . where we grew up, the only people who slept outside were homeless or drunk; sometimes dead. out of the 3 or 4 ...

i love popcorn. i love eating popcorn at the movies. i love eating lots of popcorn at the movies. but i hate popcorn hulls. (don't you?) there are few things that irritate me like getting popcorn hulls stuck in my teeth and gums. so of course that's what happened to me at some point while i watched Transformers. somehow i didn't know until the next morning. (and yes i brushed my teeth 'fo i went to bed. the hull must have hid and shifted while i was sleeping.) as usual, the culprit behind this mess is the hubby. '-) mr. bliss got me a small bag of the offensive puff balls -- after i told him i didn't want anything to eat cuz we'd just eaten dinner before we left for the movie. he knows i'm a sucker for popcorn and i think he was trying to be nice cuz he knew he'd been getting on my nerves lately. grrrrrrr! now there is a piece of hull (maybe two) lodged somewhere in the rear upper quadrant of my gum. it feels like something's impacted back ...

Dear Kayama, Here is your horoscope for Monday, July 9: Just because you're civil to this person doesn't mean that you're friends -- or that you want to be. Keep reminding yourself of that, especially if the other party doesn't seem to understand your boundaries.

this morning i dreamed about the in-laws and my son. for those of you who don't know, i inherited my son thru marriage. i hardly talk about him here because i don't see or talk to him much in real life. i met him when he was 10 or 11. he already had a momma so i didn't try to step in to play that role. he and i have our own special relationship. sometimes he calls me ma; sometimes not. it's cool. my in-laws are personae non gratae . i don't fool with them and they don't fool with me. due to the meddling and undue influence of the most senior female family member , those people got off on the wrong foot with me. over the years, some of us had managed to "put up with" the other(s). a few of us had even managed to develop genuine ties to the other(s). then the most senior female family member -- who cannot be truly happy in her misery unless she has others sharing in it too -- put her big mouth and even bigger foot in to destroy the tenuous stran...

one of my auntie's who lives back in ye olde hometowne came down yesterday and left us a nice gift: a cousin to stay with my daughter for 2 weeks. o happy day! the mermaid now has someone to swim with, someone to eat with, someone to play dolls with--someone to trash the joint with--24 hours a day for the next 2 weeks. it's only been 24 hours and we've already been to the pool, had a mini-cookout, watched a movie (Transformers), visited other relatives, watched a movie at home, did a bit of grocery shopping, and hit the library. last night those chickadees tried to stay up until dawn but i made them pack it in around 2. i had fallen asleep on the couch and was awakened when they came sneaking out of baby bliss's suite to see if my eyes were open. bless their hearts, those lil muffins tried to scare me. but in the spirit of my grandma, i convinced them that i was only resting my eyes , and not sleeping like they thought and therefore not at all surprised or s...

the remainder of today was interesting. ya gotta love my granny. she tried to trick me into doing doggie duty at my auntie's tonight. earlier in the day she said she wanted to go home to press her hair and get ready for church in the morning. she said she didn't want to go to church from her daughter's house because that might make mr. bliss late. (he's picking her up for church.) ummm, hello? i didn't sign up to house- or pup sit. i have guests coming in tomorrow and i needed to get home (after staying with her at auntie's from early yesterday afternoon) to make sure my quarters are presentable for their arrival. in addition, puppy sitting would require me to be responsible for auntie's house (keys, alarm, personal effects, the car her co-vacationers left in her driveway) and the dog (making sure he was fed, watered, and walked). i've done it before and i didn't mind then. this time tho, granny put her honor on the line and i think she sho...

mr. bliss, mr. bliss... what, oh what, oh what shall i do about mr. bliss? he came over and tsk-tsked me, saying it was a "damned shame" that i was on the computer. i told him i was blogging about him. he thought it funny. all humor vaporized when i broached the virtue of honesty (as in "at least i'm honest about what i'm doing cuz i'm doing it right here in the open where anyone can see"). mr. bliss got defensive, he did. naturally, about the things he's not honest about. specifically the thing that leads to most of the disagreements in our house: m-o-n-e-y. more specifically, his relationship with money. i won't get into the ug-galities of it all here cuz it would take more time than i have to give to the topic. but obviously our relationships with money differ. in this case, enormously so. there are some very specific reasons my husband and i got back together. one of them was to reduce the amount of rent each of us was paying...

ahhhh, the "lucky" day has finally arrived. some of us can now breath a collective sigh and release all the tensions we've been holding while we waited for this magical day to arrive. i have a mission today. it's my hubby's birthday (lucky devil) and we're gonna celebrate at some point. my daughter and i slept at my auntie's last night with my grandma the house sitter. so hubby (who worked late) spent last night alone. about an hour ago, we called mr. bliss to bestow birthday greetings upon him. i guess my daughter's greeting was received with good cheer, even as she tacked on a request: take us to see Transformers. MY birthday greeting was met with orders. mr. bliss: why didn't you call me last night when i got home from work? me: huh? i talked to you as you were driving home. i don't know how long a drive it was. why didn't you call me when you got in the house? mr. bliss (sounding wounded): you could have been the ...

i'm a few chapters into The Bean Trees , Barbara Kingsolver's first novel. i was hoping i could get into Barbara's writing style and the main character's voice and i have. i'm enjoying taylor greer's life so far. she escaped a life of drudgery in her unappealing hometown by hitting the road in a jalopy of an old VW bug. it gets her from point a to point b and the few meaningful pit stops along the way. i wish i'd done something similar in my youth. but i was too busy chasing men back then. it's probably for the best tho. having a strange woman hand me a toddler then tell me to keep the baby would have freaked me out . i was not ready. God knew what s/he was doing by keeping my eggs out of harm's way for so many years. .

(if this wasn't so funny to me i'd be checking into rehab right now y'all.) eerie that i blogged earlier about my blog dreams... (music from the Twilight Zone playing in the background) i just jetted over to Mama Zen's to check out her "one thing that you never thought that you'd be 'into' but really enjoy" post and what do i see? i spy with my two little eyes a post about Mama Zen's addiction to blogging. she even did one of those fun but meaningless questionnaires like the ones that help you figure out your cat's p*rn star name then generates the html code to copy and paste on your blog, so all your blogging friends can see it then hop over and take the questionnaire too. i laughed. who on earth could be addicted to blogging? "ooh pooh", i said. "she's only been blogging for 6 months or so. she's not really addicted. she's just excited about finding something new and fun and that's all." so...