Drag Her to Hell.

i'm making a conscious decision.

i am aware that the media has been forcing the Bad Black Mother stories down our throats, per usual, and this is yet another example of a black woman behaving badly.

i am aware that horrible things happen to innocent children every day.

yet, i've decided to tell this story anyway. Why? because this bitch is crazy and somebody needs to lock her away in a tiny room by herself for a very loooooooong, looooooooooong time.

New York (CNN) -- Prosecutors in Brooklyn have charged a 38-year-old woman with tricking a pregnant woman into taking an abortion-inducing drug because the suspect thought her husband had fathered the child with the other woman.

And after the baby was born two months premature, but survived, someone tried unsuccessfully to slip a toxic substance through hospital security to the infant in the guise of milk for the baby, according to prosecutors.

The suspect, Kisha Jones, allegedly went to great lengths to end the pregnancy of 25-year-old Monique Hunter, according to a complaint filed by the Brooklyn district attorney's office in an ongoing investigation that began over a month ago.

Jones is in jail facing multiple charges, including attempted abortion and assault, according to authorities.

my anger with Sheniya Davis' mother is still sitting like a burning rock in my chest, now this heffa over here is trying to murder a baby because she thought her "man" was the father. luckily, despite her best efforts, the child has not been killed.

now, happily, she's going to end up going to prison where there are no damn men.

fitting.

some of us women need to get ourself under control and quit acting like dick-crazed lunatics whose end all be all is some worthless dude who is more interested in his ho-shit than being a good man.

....in my loudly expressed opinion.

between women selling their kids into sexual slavery, allowing their children to be molested and raped by known perpetrators, taking sides with men over their kids when accusations fly, acting like victims when it comes out that the married men (with children) they've been sleeping with have hoes in different area codes....i'm just over it all right now.

ladies, we have got to do better.

Public Service Announcement

i've had it. i have had it with poeple doing crazy shit trying to be edgy. so today, i'm taking it upon myself to institute a new rule! i hereby decree that as of today, beautiful people are not allowed to get their faces tattooed anymore. if you are Merkin, and it is not part of your majority- or sub-culture to tattoo your face, then back away from the ink!

some classic examples of beauty gone wrong?

Danger....C'mon, Danger! why in the hell did you get a tiger on your face?! You're lucky your VH1 nickname wasn't Olde English.

Devante, this is no okay! aside from the scribble on your temple, your face is a screaming testament to the ills of cheap drugs and fast women. nigro, how OLD are you now? how did you manage to age 7 years to every 1 year in everyone else's life!

you were hotness, Devante. and i was in love with you from 1992 until roughly 1996. i even overlooked Dalvin looking like a malnurished skeevy version of you.

Mike Tyson?
you are GOOD. get as many tattoos on your face as you want. no loss. believe me.

but you DEFINITELY went too far, Little Six Hair Baby. too far...

hey Mika? Dr. Laura wants her schtick back.

Mika Brzezinski, the long suffering eye rolling co-host of Morning Joe, wrote a blog today on Huffington Post. in it she revealed some of the tips she shares with "young women about life lessons and TV career choices." for the most part, it read like the script from Up Close and Personal, but things really got good when she got to her coup de grâce: don't "forget" to get married and have some kids, girlfriends! and start in your 20s if you have to!!!



oh, yes she did.

Mika explains that if you think finding a good job is hard, wait until you get a load of how hard it is to find a descent mate to marry and procreate with:

"Bad news, girls. The odds are definitely better on getting the right job than getting a good partner for life...Don't push away that chance if you're one of the lucky ones who find that partner. And remember, you can always change a job. I hear it's much harder to switch out a husband."

and


"But let's talk about the greatest gift a woman can receive: being a mommy. For professional women, there simply is NO good time to have a baby. Putting it off only makes the challenges greater. Having babies after 35 increases medical risk and is, lets face it, exhausting. It is also trying on a marriage and a career."


*headdesk headdesk headdesk headdesk!*


here it is, 2009, and some people refuse to grasp this very simple concept: not every woman is foaming at the mouth at the idea of being someone's mother. and the false belief that a woman who isn't worked up about the notion is lying to herself is insulting and boneheaded.

no really: some chicks couldn't possible care any less than they do about having children. so please.

and how antiquated is the advice of "if you find a good man, girls, you better latch on and never let go because there might be plenty of fish in the sea....but most of them are floating by dead"?

another newsflash! not everyone is 1) HETEROSEXUAL and 2) INTERESTED IN GETTING MARRIED!

and also? Mika? having a baby at any age is exhausting, i don't care if you're 15, 25, or 35. you still get your world jerked around when you have to function under extreme sleep deprivation. i didn't burst into tears at the social security office while trying to get a rush job on my kids' cards because i was 35...i did it because i was delirious with exhaustion. don't even go there!

she managed to be insulting, patronizing, ageist, out of touch, and hetero-privileged in one neat little maddening blog post. in a way, isn't that too a victory?

Mika and Huffington Post could have completely missed me with this. but there is one idea that has definitely crystalized for me. Between Joe's smarmy frat-boy smirk, Pat Buchanan playing the role of everyone's favorite insane racist uncle, and Mika's Donna Reed outlook on what REALLY matters to working "girls," i need to just keep watching the Today show Blue's Clues (keeping it real).

The Kid's Alright...right?

one of my favorite bloggers has a post about little Zahara and her near constant state of hair-craziness* on her site that reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a friend.

we both know of a white couple who has adopted two african american children. oh, they take very good care of them, keep them clean, well-fed, and active in their schools and community. however....the hair situation is alarming.

up until about a year ago, the little girl's hair always looked dry, tangled, and close to matting if it got hit with  the briefest breeze. and the boy....the boy's hair stands up in these uncombed, uneven little spikes of curls and kinks....kinda like

it is irritating.

speaking for myself, when i see black adopted children who have been adopted by non-black parents with badly kept hair, my first thought is to judge the parents as unwilling to educate themselves on black haircare. as if black hair is this massively mysterious entity that suck you in and ruin your hopes and dreams.

it's not Event Horizon, it's a child's hair.

and the really unfair thing about the situation is, when i see a child who is well cared for in every other way but her hair is neglected, i read that as a type of neglect.  yay, hooray, bully for you, she's got clean clothes, she ate 8 times today, and goes to a exclusive private pre-school and is currently fluent in French.

why does her hair look like this?...especially when you always take the time and care to present yourself in a well-kept (and stunning) manner when YOU leave the house?

so, i'd like to share just a few tips with caucasion parents of african or african american adopted children. together, we can get this right!

1) there are 70 kabillion hair salons specializing in black haircare. go to one. if you don't have any black friends, ask a black coworker with children what salon they'd recommend. the point is this: if your kid had crooked teeth would you let them walk around with picket fences in their head or take them to an orthodontist? exactly. there's no shame in admitting some knowledge is outside your paygrade: take.your.child.to.a.salon.or.barbershop!

2) have you heard of this newfangled invention called the internets! the internets hold an amazing amount of information concerning proper haircare, healthy haircare products, cute hairstyles, and just tips in general about black hair. POINT.CLICK.THE.MOUSE!

3) black hair might look really strong but it's very very fragile. don't try to comb it dry, don't comb it with a rattail comb, and for the love of all the good in Narnia, do NOT use vaseline on it. no one is interested seeing your kid walking around looking like a greasy cotton ball.

all that being said (and all joking really, truly, aside) i wonder why.......

why is all the scorn heaped upon angelina jolie for the "state" of Zahara's hair when Heidi's kids wear their hair in much the same way? is there some kinda Coochie Pass** in effect?

ah, well. there will always be critics of Zahara's hair not matter what. and i would imagine that for quite a few of her critics, there will be a sigh of "well it's about damn time" when or if she decided to straighten her hair when she's older.

i'm sure many white adoptive parents of children of color believe they are being unfairly scrutinized by people of color when it comes to how they care for their children's hair. and i can admit to a serious degree, it is unfair.

but we didn't start the fire.

* i happen to think Zahara's hair looks cute. or maybe it's the face. i'm a sucker for a pretty little girl with natural hair.

** what i mean to say is some type of hierarchy of parenting where a birth parent of a child with black hair is given a pass on the hair situation while an adoptive parent of a child with black hair isn't?

eighteen months later....

today is a pretty awesome day. it's the 18th month in which everything in my life changed: eighteen short months ago Trixie and Dixie made their grand entrance into this city and my world.

to say that it has been a harrowing adventure is putting it mildly. over the last year and a half i have experienced:

* tiny size 1 diapers with giant poops

* LOCHIA

* a daycare provider who was out of her complete and total mind

* the sorrow of immunization shots and ear piercings

* three hour crying jags. in stereo.

* the evolution of Caesar hair styles, to DC fades, to full blown little girl curls

* rolling, crawling, standing, walking, running

* baby teeth and morning breath

* diaper rashes from hell

* happy shouts of "hiiiiii!" in the morning and when picking up from daycare in the evening

* arm waving jam sessions in the backseat listening to Janet Jackson sing about Control

* the evolution of pretending to use the remote control like a phone to holding a thumb and index up to the ear to mimic a bluetooth

* the never ending joys (for her!) of reading Brown Bear over and over and over and over and over and over and over and....

* hugs and kisses out of the blue, complete with mmmmmWAH sound effects.

while experiencing all these great things, i have also experienced the lows of self-doubt, fear, anxiety, depression, frustration, and immobility. i have been fortunate to have a good core set of friends who i can call and can prop me up and talk me through the disaster, whether real or imagined.

when i look back at how much my life has changed, i gotta admit there are a few things i miss. like being able to get up and go when i feel like it, happy hour, waking up an hour before i have to be at work and still making it to work on time, buying myself a party shirt and going out over the weekend, not being exhausted all the time, not doing laundry CONSTANTLY, not having to cook dinner, going to the movies more than once every 13 months, okay did i say a FEW things i miss?

but taking the sum total of all those things, i wouldn't trade them for anything with the joy and amazement i feel when i'm spending time with my kids.

*but Boca! what about those moments when you are bitter and angry and exhausted from the pressure of 2 toddlers running all over your house like langoliers?*

yes, dammit, even then. underneath it all.

i'm glad i accepted this mission, raising these two little girls to be strong, intelligent, funny, fearless women. i hope this works out for us all, because it's way too late to try to take them back to the hospital for a refund.

and speaking of money spent, did you know that you can easily keep track of the cost of supporting a child over her lifetime by simply converting her baby book into a spending ledger?

i learned that from Married, with Children.