The Change Up

This week I realized a couple of things:
1) I am a very indecisive person and 2) my list felt a little falsified. After deciding to go natural I started to think about other things and before you know it things were popping up left and right. SO I decided to make some changes to my list and be truer to myself about what I REALLY want to do this year. Check out my updated list below!

1.       Sing in public…  

2.       Leap from a plane

3.       Ride a horse

4.       Go white water rafting

5.       FINALLY graduate from college

6.       Be a bridesmaid

7.       WORK a pair of stilettos – preferably  a really expensive pair  with an outfit I've been too scared to wear! 

8.       Take a hot air balloon ride

9.       Visit all of the Smithsonian Museums – the free ones

10.   Learn to tap dance and take a ballet class AND see the Rockettes! 

11.   Go on a nice date with a BOY!

12.   Learn to shoot a gun, so I no longer will be afraid of them.

13.   Experience a hockey game

14.   Master winter sports aka go snowboarding or tubing

15.   Read 5 of the classics I haven’t read {changed these too!}

16.   Have a conversation in Spanish Go to Zoo Lights!

17.   Road trip preferably across country but Marti Gras or Vegas would be nice!

18.   Spend the day hanging out with Damien,  my little brother

19.   Take a segway tour

20.   Run and FINISH a 5K race

21.   See an amazing view   Go natural {with my hair}

22.    Rock an outfit I've been too scared to wear! start and finish all of my little projects

23.   Make a 4 course gourmet meal!     Finally get a tattoo

24.   Start a Roth IRA

25.   Write a letter to someone I admire

26.   Make a mends with my dads

27.   Leave the country

 *learn to play the piano. This is something I have wanted to do my entire life buuuut requires me to have a piano. If anyone has any tips on how to get this done with out the aforementioned let me know! 

Long Hair Don't Care

Yea so that is a lie, long hair I DO CARE! I should have put it on my list from the beginning because it is something that I have been thinking about for a very long time. So I am putting in an addendum this is item 27b.  I always get to a point where I have stopped getting relaxers and my hair gets nappy and I swear this is it and then I get talked into taking another hit of the creamy crack! Well NO MORE! I have decided to finally do it! to chop of all my dry , treated hair and go natural. For those of you who don't know what that means, look it up in urbandictionary.com....I keed! It means that you cut out all of the processed hair and your naturally untreated hair remains.

There are many ways in which to do this, none of them include a magic serum that will strip your hair of the relaxer and leave beautiful kinks in its place along with your length. The fastest processes requires what us black girls like to call the "big chop" this is where you cut off all the relaxed hair and leave your natural nappy roots in its place. I finally decided that I was ready to let my length go and work on having thick beautiful natural hair again. However, my mom talked me out of the BIG CHOP  and for now I will be growing and cutting, growing and cutting until all of the relaxer is gone. I cut a couple of inches off this weekend in areas that needed it. I hope to head to the salon this week to get the rest of my head done.

I never realized how much of my self worth and beauty was wrapped up in my hair but as I thought about it the more I realized that I really did not take that good care of my hair and often had stylist, family members and strangers tell me "you know how lucky you are, people would KILL for your hair" I would often give them an awkward smile and mumble a quick "I know and thank you" and brush it off and continue reading my magiaze making sure my eyeroll was covered by the JET beauty of the week. I know that I have a lot more to offer than what is on my head and if some dude can't see past that then he probably has a small penis and I don't want to be associated with him juuuuuuuuuuust kidding! Large penis guys  can be stupid too. But seriously he isn't someone that I want to spend time with because his pea size brain couldn't keep up with my beautiful bald head. I look forward to a year of fun wigs and hair styles and never having to have a burnt scalp again!


ps- I will claim this as the first thing I have begun working on on my list! #teamwinning LEHGO!

                                     Check out some great hair moments! So long!

nice and fluffy

With Every Heart Beat

This past weekend was the 5k walk/run for the American Heart Association. We gathered both generations of X members plus some friends and raised money to help fight heart disease. The walk was great, a little cold but we all had such a great time. We walked in love and happiness and celebrated some awesome dads. Together we raised just about $3000 dollars for the American Heart Association which is absolutely amazing! Thank you to everyone who donated!

As you know I spent the last two years working for City Year and those two years were two of the most life changing years of my life. I got to work with amazing people and did so much in such a short time.  I have posted about my experience before and I probably will again because those people mean the world to me. I fully expect to experience all of my teammate’s weddings and have them experience mine. My teammates from my corps year and I often discuss how it came to be that we ended up with each other; the only answer I have is magic! We were absolutely magical because we all loved each other so fast, you would have thought we knew each other for years. Simply, we became a family.  We fought like a family, laughed, loved and cried as a family. It was even more special for me to bring X 2.0 into that family!

I will often say that it took tragedy to truly forge the special bond that we had. During my corps year two of my teammates lost their dads to sudden heart attacks; those are days you never forget. You remember where you were, what you were wearing what the air smelled like; it’s almost like you were taping and can play it back at any time.  So many things in this city are reminders and send me hurtling back in time to those days. For Shannon we were on Thanksgiving break and he experienced his loss away from us but it was still heart breaking for me, who was miles away. To know Shannon is to know an amazing person but most importantly an amazing MAN; he is smart, quiet, thoughtful and kind. I always feel a sense of calm in his presences and seek his ear for guidance. He has become a brother to me and it was hard to see this man struggle in his thoughts. He asked us to go about business as usual and he would let us know when he needed us, I can only imagine it must have been a comfort to him. His was always the hand I could expect to squeeze under the table or the one to pass me a note {preferably one with a robot} during a rough meeting just to make me smile and I remember just wanting to be that for him in his loss.

Dancing On My Own

Last night I died and went to hip hop heaven, also known as the Watch the Throne concert. There are no words to describe the melodic amazingness that was that concert… it was EPIC! Everyone asked me who I was going with and I happily said just me…it was AWESOME!  I think I am going to go to more concerts by myself; being alone allowed me to get lost in the music. I do not know if it was the flashing lights and thumping melodies playing in time with my internal beat or the marijuana vapors that I swear they were blasting through the vents at the Verizon Center, but as I stood there nodding my head, I was taken to a place I haven’t been in a while. For a solid two hours I was able to escape and I was ecstatic about it.

I have found recently that when I am struggling to express how I am feeling, along comes a song that lays my emotions out like a road map.  It is funny how a song is there for you when you least it expect it. There seems to be a song for every emotion I’ve gone through in the last few months. One song in particular is Runaway by Mr. West. I love Kanye; I think he is a musical genius. I love the risks that he takes with his music and I feel as though his music is really a window to his soul. Anyway, Runaway is song to a girl or girls that he has wronged {he’s kind of a douche}. It is song that I always thought described he who shall not be named and funny enough one day as we were heading somewhere together he who shall not be named said the same thing, that Runaway sounded a lot like him {NEWSFLASH, ladies if a dude you like EVER says that Runway sounds like him, you need to kick rocks FAST!}. Well Yeezy performed it last night and I felt that he was singing straight to me; matter of fact he told the ladies in the audience to leave that dude alone! I felt as though Kanye punched me square in the face with his leather glove, mic still in hand and was like “CHARISSE, WAKE THE F**K UP…let him go”. In that moment I realized that it is time, I need to let it go. This person cannot consume me; he is happy and not thinking about me. I have to find a way to make peace with him and I think that I have.

I don’t want this blog to become my love chronicles so with respect to myself and this space and my vow to let go, I am deciding that this post will be the last one about he who shall not be named for the time being. I have other extremely embarrassing and personal demons to tackle and then share with the blogosphere.

I love that music has the ability to help you go through things and this case is no different. Last night wasn’t just a night filled with flashing lights, high heels, and blazing beats; it was a next level experience. Kanye and Jay will roll into their next city and never know what they did for me but I am beyond thankful for them and the experience! No Encore, I’m out!

What Was Old is New Again!

I was going over some old blog posts from my old blog and I found this one called "Actions are regrettable...but are feelings?" Sometimes I am blown away by my level of deepness, and I had to repost it, see what I mean below!

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Actions Are Regrettable..But Are Feelings?

Game Changer - any action that changes the direction or outcome of a game or activity
 
Okay so I just pulled that one out of thin air but I felt that it sums up a shift in a friendship. Yes, this is the same friendship that I raged on about a few posts ago. Those feelings were raw and passionate and though all may not have come from sound mind they came from the purest heart. My friend and I talked and worked our shit out, but he said some things that cut a little deep. Not painfully but honest and though I don't want him to be right he was. It is funny how my feelings changed once looking at things from a different point of view..his. Communication really is the key, it can unlock so many dead bolted doors. 

Game Changer- I fell unknowingly hard and expressed it knowing that he couldn't be about that. Duuummb! I'm pretty good at expressing feeling and to do so with a person who isn't so good, leads to confusion. I don't regret the feelings but I regret expressing them because although we're good, we're different. It hasn't been established if it's good different or bad different but that air of carefree inappropriateness is gone and in its place is left a grey area of caution and censorship. His precaution for my feelings and fear of leading me on and my censorship of overtly sentimental comments that are too reminiscent of a loving intimate relationship. That's not what we are; point.blank. period. The funny thing is neither of us are particularly "loving" people, I don't like to be touched most of the time so to refer to us in any kind of romantic way is kind of laughable really. I don't think you can label a friendship like ours, its ever changing and analytical, complicated and raunchy and carefree and easy..well it used to be. I say we can go back to the way things used to be, he says we can't. You know how you have definitive moments in your life, like "I was this way before this happen and I am this way after". I wonder if our friendship hence forth will be like that "before heavy awkwardness annnnnd after"

So in that case I had to ask myself can one regret a feeling? The conclusion I came to is no. Your emotions are consistently changing, kind of like water colors. If you add more water it dilutes the paint and the pigment isn't as strong. If you add a new color it never quite looks like the original color but the change is made, no going back. When the paint dries you still have to appreciate the picture and I think I do. At that moment in time I felt those feelings and was overwhelmed and thought I should share them. In hind sight that was poor judgment on my part and this is where the regret steps in, but I learned a good lesson and at the end of the day, I can't be upset with a chance to grow. With this experience I've grown at least 3 inches, or maybe that's just the imaginary pair of Christian's on my feet.