Le Spring Semester

So, I’ve made approximately three attempts on three different days to update this blog via my new psp that I got for Christmas from my brother.  All three times were failures.  On the last time I was so very close to doing it, when a girl from one of my classes came trotting along and ruined it with conversation.  Though, to be fair, I did enjoy her company and her fruit salad.

Anyway, I’m back in La La Land, and have been for an entire week (well it’ll be a week Sunday).  The flight was my most miserable yet.  The misery began on Saturday afternoon around two or three hours into my mother nagging me about how inconviently and selfishly I had booked a 6:40 am flight from JFK, and that she WOULD NOT accompany me to the airport.  I said fine.  Then she continued the noise, complaining about how she didn’t want her son driving me to the airport that early when it was supposed to be rainy and icy and there was sure to be death waiting anxiously around every curve.  I couldn’t stand it anymore so I huffed and proclaimed that I would go to the airport that evening, around 10 or 11 pm so that my brother could get back before the rain started.  Though she was supposed to object to me sitting in the airport all night, this solution satisfied her.  Shit.

Fast-forward to me arriving at JFK around 1:00 am.  It turns out you can’t go through security until 3 a.m. (why? I have no idea), so I had to wait in the seating area by the front doors until then to get inside.  Now, you may not know this about me, but whenever I sit idly in a public aread for any extended amount of time, I am immediately sniffed out by a creepy middle-aged man.  This particular man was very French and Haitian, pushing thirty, and toting around a boy toddler.  At this point, I’ve discovered that talking to these men is pretty harmless so I didn’t mind being engaged in conversation.  He informed me that this made me very charming, proceeded in flirting with me, and then later said he found my short hair “sexy, for lack of better word.” 

He then gave me his phone number and email.

Once I got through security with my lighter undetected and got on the airplane on time, I slept for the first three hours, and then spent then next three in some sort of wild animal state that one only experiences when they’ve been sleep deprived.  All in all, not the worst trip, but my most miserable yet.

School is offering all the trials and tribulations I have come to expect.  I have a series of small projects for an animation fundamentals class, a 30 second 3D animation, a 30 second 2D animation, the story boards for my senior thesis project, nine books for Native American Literature, and a poetry portfolio to complete by the end of this semester.  Not to mention this animation this girl wants me to do for her non-profit. 

Love life?  Things happening, but boring things that I shall save for another post.  Hopefully something juicy will happen to spice up my blog.

With Alotta Love,

zeezeecakes

Suze’s Advice for Saving Money in 2009

Like most of America, my financial situation has reached critical stages of, well, insufficiency.  It was only this past Tuesday that I managed to gather up enough funds to pay January’s rent (due January 1st – oops), leaving me with about $50 left to pay my cable bill when I return to L.A.  Oh, woe is me.

But there is hope! 

As I laid, pathetically in my mom’s lap, wallowing in my newly developed head cold (which for me translates into a migraine and an itchy throat), Suze Orman appeared on Oprah to provide struggling families with obvious advice on how they could save money in 2009. 

One particularly saavy woman lost half of her three childrens’ college savings (about $36,000) because she had invested it in the stock market.  Orman informed her that something as important as your child’s college fund should probably be saved, not invested, and if she was terribly concerned about her children having to take out private loans, she should apply for Stafford and Parents’ PLUS loans instead. 

That’s it. 

This was her amazing, top-dollar, money-saving advice.  This woman has published nine books, given seminars, done conferences, is getting over-paid, and laughing all the way to the bank.  I could have given that advice. 

At the end of the segment, she gave the audience three things to try in order to save money.

1. Don’t spend any money for an entire day.

Check.  I’ve done that many, many days.  Actually, if I could manage not to spend any money for an entire month I might get somewhere.

2. Don’t use your credit card for an entire week.

Check.  I have one credit card and I only use it to purchase airplane tickets.  Once I used it at a Starbucks when I forgot my debit card.

3. Don’t eat at a restaurant for an entire month.

Meh.  If only you could have heard the gasps of horror from the very idea of such an aberration that came from Oprah’s audience.  As if the suggestion itself was derived from pure insanity.  People are so absurd.  Personally, I’d have little problem doing this because I can barely afford to eat out much anyway.  But I don’t think this is a good suggestion when the economy is reaching the critical status of my wallet, and I don’t think anyone in the food industry would appreciate her giving such a command.  Actually, if I were one of the millions of struggling restaurant owners, I’d write a very angry letter.

If you really want to save money, try living on the bare essentials.  Sell you car and use public transportation and a bike.  Sell your three-bedroom house and live in a one-roomed box on a little plot of land.  Get rid of all your wants and only keep your needs.  Of course, if we did that the whole economy would crumble and all the horrible things they talk about on the news will become a reality. 

Frankly, I think the best financial advice Suze could have given was to become a financial advisor that appeals to Oprah and the people who promote her, and make lots of money telling people stuff they kind of already know.

With Alotta love,

zee zee cakes

Yummy Yogurts

So, not long ago I went to the store and Yoplait Light was on sale at 5 for $3.  Naturally, I bought ten – all different flavors.  Thus far I’ve like all of them including Banana Cream Pie, Blueberry Patch (REALLY good with granola), Boston Cream Pie (and I’m not a fan of boston cream), Orange Creme, Strawberries and Bananas (classic), Strawberry Shortcake (mmmm), Very Vanilla, and my favorite KEY LIME PIE.

However, I do not give my seal of approval to Very Cherry.

And I LOVE cherries.  But this tastes like the cherry flavored Robitussin I averted as a child. 

Next up: Pineapple Upside Down Cake. 

With Alotta Love

zee zee cakes

David Foster Wallace

While eating dinner and watching television with a friend of mine in late 2008, ABCNews recapped all the people more important than you or me who died that year.  One of those people was David Foster Wallace, whose work my friend was unfamiliar with.  Ironically enough, I had just read Brief Interview with Hideous Men only a week before his death.  Then, while reading this month’s edition of Harper’s Magazine, I came across these remarks given at his memorial service by Michael Pietsch, Zadie Smith, and George Saunders.  I’d also just read Sea Oak by George Saunders and really enjoyed it. 

Although much of what the said about him, his life, and his attitude about his work were all familiar to me, I do think it helps to hear from other writers who knew him and worked with him.  As a writer, it’s fascinating to see how an incredibly talented writer like Wallace worked.

So for those of you who may not be familiar with Wallace or for those of you who are, I have made the Memorial available so you can get a better glimpse at who he was.

With Alotta Love,

zee zee cakes

 

Love Is Blind – oh, Happy New Year

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new year, and I still can’t stand my future sister-in-law.  I do not like this woman.

Let me first describe my brother, Q, to you.  He is fun and goofy and will break out into dance at a moments notice.  He’s the kind of guy who lights up a party, the guy that a lot people know and a lot of other people want to know.    People like my brother.

My brother’s girlfriend, Ms. Bossy McFightsalot, is the very antithesis of Q.  I have never met anyone more inclined to argue themselves into a physical altercation in my life.  Then again, I’m not prone to associating with violent criminals.  From the moment I met her, I could tell Bossy was straight up out the hood, and it didn’t help that upon our second meeting, she was already making jokes and accusing me of being white-washed.  Of course, at the time, pre-teen zeezee was obnoxiously sensitive to such comments and feared her blackness had been compromised by her predominately white suburban town.  Nearly twenty-one year old zeezee can see that this hoodrat has little concept of what it means to be black, and absolute authority on what it means to be judgmental and impetuous.

But here we are at the birth of 2009, seven months and two days from the nuptials, and I’m in Atlanta laying on a sketchy comforter on one of her son’s beds (she has two boys from a previous marriage and a 3 1/2 year old daughter with Q).  When my other brother, Jamz, and I came into the room to sleep last night, his air mattress was not blown up and my bed had nothing but a bottom sheet and this balled-up comforter.  No other sheets were in sight.  Jamz asked for sheets, and instead of being a proper hostess and getting our beds set up for us, Bossy told him where he could find something to put on his bed.  He came back with a fitted sheet for his air mattress and a top sheet, which I traded him for the dirty comforter.  We had one pillow in the room.

When I got up today and went to take a shower, the bathroom was filthy.  It wasn’t just the hair left from whoever had last showered, but I could see the film of dirt covering the bathtub and the shower walls.  Had there been a pair of rubber gloves and bottle of Fantastik, you can best believe I would have torn that bathroom up.  But all I could do was close my eyes and hope my feet didn’t catch a fungus. 

It was in the car on our way to the bridal shop that she provided explanation for ignoring her reponsibilites as a hostess.  “They ain’t guests,” she responded to her sister, “they family now.”

I’m not sure she could have said anything more ghetto fabulous than that.  We are not sisters.  This woman barely knows a thing about me (though she thinks she knows that I’m a tomboy, for some reason).  From what I can tell, she will never, ever know anything about me. 

My brother was raised to treat anyone who does not live in his house like a guest.  Not like some riff raff from the streets who fell in the front door.  It really doesn’t matter how long you’ve known the person or what your relation is.  And you can bet, if I have anyone come over my apartment (and alexandd can attest to this), there will be a place for them to sleep with clean sheets and a pillow, my bathroom will have just been scrubbed, and they will not have to worry about when they will get their next meal.  I am not rich and I can’t afford the amenities of five star hotel, but I don’t throw anyone into a cage and tell them to fend for themselves.

This is how me and my brothers were raised.  So to come into his home and be treated like this is absolutely absurd.  I don’t care how she was taught because he should know better.

I get worried when I think about my neice being raised in this type of environment.  Tonight, I sat in the living room beside Jamz and watched Bossy, her two sons, her sister, her sister’s four daughters and Kiki (my neice) all interact.  It was scary to say the least.  Aside from the graphic and often abusive language being tossed back and forth, Bossy literally got into a physical fight with her fifteen year old son.  They were on the floor grappling beside my feet, breaking a boardgame box with her back in the process.  Why were they acting like this? 

He flicked her ear. 

I have never in my life even considered hitting my mother, and I’ll be damned if one my my brothers came any closer to the idea.  I suppose thats why Q just turns a blind eye and suddenly becomes intensely involved with whatever he’s doing whenever this kind of ridiculous behavior is going on between Bossy and her sons.  They’re not his kids anyway.

But my brother is thirty-six years old and can make his own decisions.  I’m in no place to try and change his mind.  I suppose he must love her if he’s been with her for this many years (I can’t even remember how long  has been, maybe seven or eight years?).  For now I just have to grit my teeth and hope I can stand to be here until Sunday.

With Alotta Love,

zeezeecakes