Married at First Sight, Lil Kim and Other Musings….

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So I am ALL in on this show called Married at First Sight.  It’s a social experiment where “scientists” have matched up couples (based on personality, values, morals, etc.) and they meet for the first time at the altar.  You know they got the obligatory Black couple on the show (there are three couples).  I thought 2 out of 3 of the guys were nice looking.  Let’s just say the other guy had a really good personality, but could have used a dermatologist.  Sad part is his bride looked like she thought the same damn thang.  It was written all over her face, but you could tell he had never even been in a room with a woman that pretty because his dense arse totally missed it.  He was trying to really kiss her after the “I do’s”, was pushin’ all up on her on the pictures and just being overly familiar with his new wife.  But hey…she was/is his wife, so I guess that’s how grooms “do”. 

The other couple is too cute for words…they make a very sweet couple and seem to both be happy with each other.  Their nuptials weren’t too awkward..you know for a couple of strangers. 

Now the Black couple made a formidable attractive team…I thought the guy was all kindsa hot.  If I weren’t married, here is where I’d be mouthin’ “call me *doin’ the phone thingy to my ear*” if he is reading this.  Ol’ girl wasn’t bad either, just kinda thick in the thighs.  But I’m thick in the thighs too so that’s not a bad thing but the guy looks like he works out.  You know like he might give her all kindsa side eyes if she eats 3 pieces of chicken instead of two.  Like he might say somethin’ if she tried to eat a cookie or 7.

You think marrying a stranger is weird?  Try the wedding night.  Of course, the producers teased us that somebody was gon’ consummate the marriage.  I was over here saying ‘please Lawd don’t let it be the Black couple’.  Yes, you guessed it.  It was the black couple.  They both acknowledged it was awkward but that ain’t stop them from dry grindin’ in they good weddin’ clothes  and getting to know each other nekkid (oh yeah, this is grown fokes blog – we gon’ discuss ERRYTHANG).  So anyway, they have now moved in together and have a couple of more weeks til they decide if they gon’ stay married or divorce.  I’m gon’ say the Black couple ain’t gon’ make it, cuz he done told her that she is annoying.  She IS kinda bubbly.  I guess she must be less annoyin’ nekkid.

I think I was s’posed to talk about Lil Kim but I done got tired.  I just saw her on WE – David Tutera was doin’ her baby shower for his show.  I used to love Lil Kim Circa 1997.  Now I’m wonderin’ what the hayle happened to her face and why did her friends let that sheeit happen?  I mean really.  She looks like she is auditionin’ to be the understudy of Latoya Jackson.  Face lightskinded but her body brown.  Just a walkin’ contradiction.  She got a baby by Mr. Papers, which probably means he ain’t got no paper.  But he gave her a wonderful surprise at the end of the shower.  You prolly thankin’ marriage proposal, a rang, his name on the baby’s birth certificate.  Nah, he gave her a party bus.  And then they kissed and groped (I threw up in my mouth a little bit..okay a lot) and she declared herself a soccer mom.  As the mother of a soccer player, I was offended.  Her baby ain’t scored nary goal or wore nary shin guard. But anyway, I’mma let her overly botoxed diminutive arse make it since I done got tired.  Lil Kim if you reading this, no more surgeries, okay?  Ain’t nothin’ cute bout lookin’ plastic when you are a real person.  And get you some MAC NW45.  That light makeup works for Lil Richard cuz he 90…on you..well it just looks stupid.   

Oh and guess what my 4 year old daughter asked me today?  “Mommy how did I get in your stomach?”.  Yeah, I am definitely too old for this parentin’ sheeit.  This is reason number 237 why old people don’t need to have kids…..

Follow me on Twitter @staylorclark

My Damn Breasts Tried to Kill Me! TWICE!

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Yes, they did.  All this time I thought they were my friends.  Shoot…I used to kick it with them and take off my shirt sometimes just to watch them in awe.  They were the source of so much…er..um….”joy”.  Let’s just say I knew why they were called “fun bags”.  Having breast cancer though is no fun.  Having it twice is downright sad.  Yes, I was diagnosed with breast cancer at 34 the first time.  I had just lost my young, beautiful and vibrant mother-in-law, Miss Linda, to the same disease the year prior.  She was 46.  I never thought that my kid wouldn’t get to know her Nana but because of the disease, that’s exactly what happened.  I had a recurrence last year and fought a long hard battle that I will have to tell you about later. 

I friggin’ hate cancer.  Clearly, all types, but breast cancer even moreso because of what it took from me – my boobs (yep, both gone and my reconstruction failed so at the moment I don’t even have fake ones); my hair (it was thick too….I remember cutting it off and putting it in a bag in preparation for chemo – now that I think about it, why did I even put it in a bag?  It wasn’t like I was gon’ glue it back on…); my nails (they turned black and at some point, I lost my big toenails – ouch AND ugh); my energy (there were days when I didn’t have enough energy to walk to the mailbox or play with my kid); my money (cancer treatment is EXPENSIVE – even with insurance, those co-pays and deductibles and out of pockets are just as killer as the disease!); my appetite (I dropped about 30 lbs, which wasn’t all that bad actually but I do miss my old butt – boy you could sit a drank on that thang…but I digress); and my social life (I went from brunchin’ and happy hourin’ with my friends to being a recluse). 

But cancer couldn’t rob me of everything.  It didn’t rob me of my joy, my peace, my faith, my will to live, the love and support I received from family and friends, or my spirit.  It damn sure didn’t rob me of my sense of humor.  Laughing when I wanted to cry surely helped my disposition.  There were some funny moments – losing one expander and being left temporarily with a Uniboob (just like its distant cousin, the Unibrow, nobody wants one); whippin’ out my fake boob at the dentist (hey, I got confused); asking for jello at the hospital and being given some generic brand that had expired 2 months earlier;  and the wind taking my wig off in front of the oncology center.  You had to be there….

Anyway, I felt like sharing today.  If you know anybody battling cancer, please love and support them.  Do something nice for them.  Hug them if they aren’t worried about blood counts and a compromised immune system.  Offer to take their kid(s) off their hands for a while..to clean their house…cook them some dinner.  I had all of that and more from my circle of friends, sorors, and family.  I will never forget their kindness….though I struggle to live each day in this “new normal” as I try to forgive my breasts for turnin’ on me….. 

 

 

Sheila Taylor Clark is a two-time breast cancer survivor and an Honorary Survivor and Everyday Hero for the 2014 Komen Dallas Race For The Cure

Sheila Taylor Clark is a two-time breast cancer survivor and an Honorary Survivor and Everyday Hero for the 2014 Komen Dallas Race For The Cure

 

Love and Hip Hop and the Atlanta Exes Done Set Black Foke in the ATL Back 100 Years…

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I know I could be doin’ somethin’ mo’ productive with my time than losin’ brain cells behind these reality shows.  It makes me wonder how “real” actresses and actors must feel to have these randoms on tv erry week.  They ain’t got no formal actin’ training…hayle 90% of ’em ain’t got no home training! 

But it’s my guilty pleasure, watchin’ foke that I should NOT care about actin’ a damn fool and setting Black foke back hundreds of years. 

Take Love and Hip Hop ATL (I kinda stopped watching NY mid-way through cuz I ain’t know half of them randoms and the story line that had Peter Gunz goin’ back and forth twixt them two women was WACK and PLAYED.  What was he….45 wearing the same jeans week after week and livin’ in an efficiency with his baby mama?  So not a pimp but I guess he thought he was…ol’ one hit wonder arse).  The main characters in LHHATL act a damn fool week in and week out:  Stebie J wants to be a pimp and music mogul, but ain’t had a hit since 112 was together.  Strung along his baby mama Mimi for a decade and now done fake married Joseline, the self-proclaimed non-langual (that means that thang don’t speak English, Spanish or anythang else recognizable) Puerto Rican Princess.  I cain’t really speak on other races, but I’m sure she done set Puerto Ricans back at least fifty years. 

Then there’s Mimi…the long sufferin’ baby mama of Stebie J who just put out a sex tape with a random SNOT (slaw ninja out there) who favors Chuck E. Cheese.  Just think about a rat doin’ it with a beaver and what their baby would look like and you got Nikko, ‘ceptin’ he REAL old in the face.  Like he ain’t neva used a drop of moisturizer.  Skin rough like sandpaper.  Mimi is constantly MAD but is always directin’ that anger toward the wrong person.  She is always doin’ the most with the least because secretly she wants Stebie back.  She is, however, too old to be so damn naive and makes me wonder if CPS needs to start doin’ home visits at her crib.

Then there’s Little Scrappy (that thang 30 and ain’t nothin’ lil bout him but his money) and his Mama, who looks like Scar, the evil uncle lion in Lion King.  She constantly talmbout she is the queen of some imaginary palace when truth be told, she livin’ in an efficiency with a let out couch like JJ nem had on Good Times.  And her son ain’t even qualified to be the Prince of Zamunda let alone the daddy to E-Money.  Yes, they pronounce it that way.  His baby mama Erica ain’t got enough goin’ on for me talk bout her, but her mama’s (Mignon, as in Filet Mignon) deserves an honorable mention based on that name alone.

Benzino is the founder of Source magazine and done started another mag, when foke are readin’ stuff on the internet nowadays anyway (recipe for business failure) and is challenged in the neck area.  And his appendages are short and he got a long arse torso.  He looks ‘dinosaurish’.  I would talk about the other players, but at the end of the day, they are just a bunch of randoms and y’all know I don’t do randoms.  Especially thirsty ones that struggle to have a storyline from week to week.

So you would think I would stop watchin’ these shows but I can’t.  They are like carwrecks.  You know you should turn away but you can’t stop the rubberneckin.  I was gon’ talmbout Atlanta Exes but I done got sleepy.  I probably need to give them their own post because I am still tryin’ to figure out how Usher Raymond hit dat (his ex Tameka is on the show) at least twice.  I’m really mad bout dat.  And that thang looked old, tired and weathered.  Like she been rode wet and hung up dry.  Her face look real dry.  I gotta get to know the other randoms…I mean bitter bees with an ax to grind against their wayyyyy more famous exes.  I will post about them later…you know if they show ain’t cancelled.  I’m also too  tired to type mo’.  It’s hard work keeping up with a blog.  I’m bout to go night night…I’ll holler at y’all later!  I’m out….

Follow me on Twitter @staylorclark

Beyonce Blu Ivy-Gate – Lawd I Done Fell DEAD to the Baby Bed!

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So ‘memba when I had posted in my very first blog bout talmbout Bey and Jay and Tina and Matthew nem?  Well I musta been clairvoyant like Miss Cleo who rose to fame as a psychic from Jamaica in the late 90s.  Come to find out that thang was just an ol’ regular hustler from Jamaica Queens.  Or course, she went the way of most things that were ill-thought out in the 90s (see Blue Blockers, the cassette tape, Jordaches, and the sangin’ group Jade).  But I digress. 

It is with a very heavy heart that I gotta talk about this story, cuz y’all know I am a pop culturologist.  I always KNEW I was gon’ have to talk about the first family of pop but I aint’ know it was gon’ be this soon.  Anyway, there is this crazy woman goin’ round sayin’ that she is Blu Ivy’s surrogate mother.  Now, I was ready to sorta believe ol’ girl because I remember a video of Beyonce gettin’ up from a seated position and her stomach sorta went flat like a pancake.  Now I been pregnant befo’..and my stomach was way too big and hard to flatten out, but she do be doin’ Pilates and Zumba and such so it could happen, right?

Anyway, in this case, I will not even NAME said random who is coming with this story.  You see, she done put the same larceny on the names of Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson and Kim Kardashian.  And we all KNOW Kim Kardashian blew up like somebody put a bicycle pump in that mouth when she was pregnant.  Feet all swole and whatnots.  So I have deemed this random “a lie” and must conclude that she must be dehydrated, cuz she is acting real THIRSTY.  I hate randoms but I despise, yes despise, a THIRSTY random.  I need to put on my white gloves and the shoes with the comfortable, silent soles and usher this broad to the nearest seat.  Oh, y’all ain’t know I was an usher huh?  Yep….I be welcoming foke to church and whatnot cuz I’m multi-faceted like that. 

I just don’t find this random credible based on her history of lyin’ bout maternity.  She couldna carried Blu Ivy for 9  months and allow that baby to go round with her hair all dry.  She woulda at least had a connection to call over there and ask Bey or Solange to grease that baby scalp or rub some shea butter in it.  I’m callin’ flag on the play for this foolishness….  What y’all think?  Comment below…

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Being a Mama of Um…Er….”A Certain Age” With an Almost Kindergartener

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Every day is a day where my kid asks the wildest questions or says the craziest things.  And yeah, I know, errybody thinks their kid is smart, special (as in the opposite of ridin’ the short bus, wearin’ a helmet and lickin’ windows), and a joy but mine really is what I will call ‘a mess’.  In a good way.  Not in the you need to clean up after her kinda way.  So today she got confused with the news reporting of what’s going on in St. Louis (Ferguson) – more on that later when I can gather my thoughts coherently – and announced that James Brown, had in fact, been shot and had died when I returned to the room.  That’s what I get for leaving on the news and not Liv and Maddie or Austin and Ally.  And yes, she knows who James Brown is because we saw that movie together (hey I ain’t have a baby sitter that day and she likes music and dancin’ and what-not).

 And yes, I know she is probably too young to be watching these teen-aged themed shows, but when you are a mama of a certain age with a young kid, they pretty much raise themselves while you smile, yawn, pay for stuff, and deepen your voice erry now and again when you speaking to her to keep what ol’ Black foke like to call ‘the fear of GOD’ in ’em.  But if anybody asks you about the parentin’ situation ova here, you either tell them we good OR you just smile, nod and keep it movin’.  I don’t need them foke (the loving term I use for CPS or similar) doin’ home visits all up and through.  What was I talmbout again?  See what happens when you get old?

Anyway, I left my keys in the house after I packed her in the car so had to leave the door open while I went to retrieve ’em (car was still in the garage, CPS, if you reading this).  I heard loud yells of Mama (made me wanna change my damn name!) til I got back (all of 10 seconds).  “Mama you left me in the car….I coulda turnt into an angel”.  Yeah, that’s what I told her happened when she was watching the news and a child had been left in a hot car.  “Mama, I almost died”.  She’s super dramatic, this kid.  So then we are off to school.

I cain’t listen to the radio or cuss out bad drivers like most foke..NOOOO….I gotta hold a conversation with a 4 year old.  She tells me she wants to be older….and she didn’t want to get too hot in Mama’s oven (yeah I told her the story about Mommies having ovens in their tummies where GOD puts the baby to bake and the bell dings and they knock on the door to come out.  Hey..don’t judge me.  I’m doing the best I can with this parentin’ thang with no handbook!) so she came out but she should have come out earlier so she could already be 5.

Then, we get to school and her lil friends surround me – two have lost teeth (my kid is the youngest in her class) – and they are talking to me all at the same time.  One asks me somethin’ bout a baby…which I start to make sense of when my kid’s teacher asks me if I am having baby cause that is what my kid is goin’ round tellin’ foke.  Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.  Listen….come closer to the screen so you don’t miss this.  No good can ever come from a situation where your husband says ‘Baby please…just one mo time…this time with the honey AND the scented oil’.  That is how I ended up a mama of a certain age with a kid.  Don’t do it Miss Celie.  You don’t wanna trade places with where I done been and where I am.  I’m out….gotta go for a run to mitigate these fat thighs rubbin’ together……

 

 

WordPress Done Got Me For My Coins – I Guess I’m an Official Blogger

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Well, I guess it had to happen some time.  I have such a good following on Facebook that I kept getting folks asking me to “blog”.  I was like ‘well hayle, don’t I sorta do that on FB anyway?’  My writing coach told me that wasn’t good enough, so I’m here.  And yes, I have a writing coach.  Just like if I was gon’ play ball, I’d have a coach.  So don’t try to make me feel some kinda way bout that. 

I’m sure you have learned just by reading this little bit that this won’t be a blog that is grammatically correct.  So if you are looking to read the King’s English, this ain’t the blog for you.  I’m from the “country”, so I write like I would talk to a friend.  And that’s what I want this blog to be.  A place where I can let my hair (wig or weave counts) down and you, the reader, can too.  Where we can take our shoes off and sit on a couch without plastic,  even if we have to keep our feet off the table. 

I’m going to provide little snippets into my world (you know who I am..and how I was born the daughter of a sharecropper, during the worst of times and the best of times, yadda yadda yadda..) and also talk a lot about pop culture.  I’m warning you now..if you a a member of the Beyhive, you gon’ hate me cuz I might talk about Beyonce, Jay Z, Solange, and even Matthew Knowles but some things ARE sacred.  I won’t be talmbout Blu Ivy or them lil side uncles her granddaddy went out and had in his twilight years.  Sometimes, I will talk about politics…sometimes, I will talk about current events.  Sometimes, I will talk about reality shows, and sometimes I will talk about why ol’ people don’t need to have kids.  And believe me, I know bout that, cuz I’m an old person with one. 

Nothing is off limits (except the people at my job cuz ain’t nobody tryna lose they livelihood behind bloggin’).  I just want to have a place to share my thoughts in this crazy world….and have y’all come through and read them.  I also wanna hear from YOU, but be advised that ain’t no freedom of speech over here.  If you say somethin’ outta pocket (that means “not nice”), I might have to delete it.  But it’s all love.  And I’m sorta forgetful so I won’t remember it the next day and will welcome you back with open arms.

I can’t promise I will blog everyday but I just might.  You know black foke…when stuff is too much like work, we ain’t tryna do too much of it.  But I will do my best to check in every other day or so. 

Smooches!  Or maybe Muah.  Okay, I don’t know why I typed either of those.  I was at the end and felt like I needed a sign-off.  I will work on that so that this blog doesn’t become “lame”.  Okay, I’m out…..

Follow me on Twitter @staylorclark