Yikes!

I had forgotten how this miserable place was. As i tried to settle down to study last night, i noticed it was cold. I had on a night shirt, so i went and put on a large sweater (gulp), still cold. So i put on jammy bottoms, still cold. Then i put on socks, still cold. Put the hood of the sweater over my head, then the sweater started to itch. Took it off and put my wrapper over my head. It's September for christ sakes, what is it doing being cold?

This apartment i just moved to has "free heat". Ok! My last apartment had free heat and i was blasting 80 degrees all winter last yr. It made me not want to shoot myself cos it got cold!!!! Not canada cold, but COLD!!! Guess what?! This new place has free heat, but come to find out there are no thermostats in the apartments. Apparently, it's central heat?! I don die. I am never comfortable at the average temperature. To make things worse, i left my space heater in Atlanta, but thankfully i have to go home soon for a minute, so i can bring it back with me. My last apartment had covered parking, but it really wasn't a "nice" place. This place is so much nicer, and cheaper (i get a discount for being a med student) but no covered parking. So i will be shoveling snow with the rest of them this year. It starts to snow in October in this miserable state.

It's going to be a longgggggggggg winter.

Mrs. melu melu-leke leke

What in the world is the deal with married women who hypenate their husband's first and last name as their surname. I don't get it. It's very annoying. This is now a "trend" amongst the females who went to my high school. If it was their dad's last name and their husband's last name hypenated, i wouldn't have a problem with it. That's what i intend to do, if my future husband insists that i add his name (i wouldn't if it was up to me). But no oh! That's not tush/hip enough.

It really just annoys me in an unexplainable way. I guess it's because ALL of them are now doing it. I'm just like WHAT THE FUCK is this?!!!

Husby

I've been noticing how people refer to their husbands over the years, and i have come to the conclusion that they are some words i would never address or refer to my husband as

1. Hubby
2. Hobby (I have seen that spelling and i was like WTF, hobby?!)
3. Hussie (Now, that just plain ol' reminds me of a prostitute)
4. Husby (You sure know how to combine don't ya!)

Please, if nothing else just say husband.

To those of u guilty of the above offenses, pls tell us y and for those who have been able to escape it, tell us the more imaginative and creative names u have come up with.

This doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the what i just wrote, but it reminds me of one of my bestfriends who just go married in Dec. Before she got married she would call her boyfriend's name whenever she referred to him. She never even referred to him as "my boyfriend" she always said his name. As soon as they got married, all she would say whenever she talked about him, was "my husband". I was left to wonder what happened to his name. Is that a requirement after you get married? Someone help me out here, i don't know these things.

LOL

The one thing that i am absolutely guilty of but i HATE with a passion (even though i still do it while hating it) and it annoys me to no end when other people do it, is writing LOL after a sentence, in the middle of a sentence, on top of a sentence or under a sentence. LOL!!!! See what i'm saying?! Did i actually laugh out loud, NO! I have read a blog post where every other sentence contained LOL. At the end of reading that post, i thot the dude must be crazy or something.

I just read an email from my friend. After saying she'll return to playing tennis after her exams, she wrote LOL. Why?! What if u read or write something u think is funny but u only chuckle, what do u write? COL? Or what if something just makes u smile, is it then SOL........I understand the reason people write LOL, i'm assuming it means they think whatever is funny. However, i can be a very literal person, and usually when i read such i picture the person actually laughing out loud. Most times that picture doesn't fit what i just read. Crazzzzzzzeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

So pple, we need to come up with another system besides LOL, cos everyone LOL(ing) all over the place is making me think the whole world (including myself) is going crazy. Na only mad people dey carry dey laugh like that for no reason.

Let me gist u guys something funny (or not so funny) that happened during my exam. So we get to write 2 essays on whatever topics are assigned to u. You get 30 minutes for each essay, the computer automatically switches over after the 30 minutes for the first essay is up. So the instructions generally are, explain what u think this sentence (topic) means. Give a specific situation where the opposite of the topic would be allowed or true. What determines whether the first statement or the opposite prevails (i'm seriously paraphrasing, but hopefully u get the picture).

I'm not supposed to "disclose" any part of the exam, but since the writing topics are on the aamc website for all to see, i guess it's okay. My second topic was "The primary purpose of law is to maintain order, not justice". When i read the sentence, my brain actually processed it as "The primary purpose of the law (police) is to maintain order, not justice". My strategy was to spend 5 minutes writing an outline/thinking of opposite examples and whatnot since i can type fast and it's easier when u already know what to write but I could not for the life of me, think of a specific situation in which the job of the police would be to ensure justice not order.

Mind u, u have to write an essay on this thing. It's not like i can just write a sentence. So i decide to go ahead an explain what i think the sentence means, hoping that by the time i finish writing the first paragraph, something would have come to me. By the time i finished, i had 20 minutes left. I still had no idea what to write for the rest of the essay. That's when i re-read the sentence, and noticed that it said LAW, not THE LAW (police). First of all, ask me when "the law" starting meaning "the police" to me. Is it just me that thinks of it that way? I actually started laughing (not out loud oh, i never start to dey crase) cos i felt so stupid and relieved.

LOL!!! (Just kidding)

By the way, Charizard, i like how u have shortened ur name to Chari (sexy). Charizard used to make me think of lizard (not sexy)

Too freaking much!

I'm not happy at all oh! If i hear one more freaking person i know dies, i'm going to lose it. I'm so freaking pissed, annoyed and sad at the same time. When is this going to end. I heard last week that my Aunty (mom's half sister) died. Ok! Then today, i'm on my own in peace oh, trying to study and my sister calls me from naija telling me that our family friend's 35 yr old daughter has passed away. What kind of nonsense is that? I was on her bridal party in 2001 when she got married. She just had her second child a couple of years ago and now she's gone? Tell me what is right about that picture. I didn't feel like crying b4 but now i do cos i'm just having all these images and memories flooding back in my head.

I called my younger sister a few minutes ago (i'm supposed to be studying right now) only to find out that she and my mom had tried to call our friend that just passed and the younger sister last week cos my sister had had a bad dream about her. She dreamt that she saw the younger sister looking sad, and disheveled. Funny enough i dreamt that my father passed away last week and we were at his funeral which was being held in a stadium. First of all, i thot the stadium venue was weird but it was just a dream right? However, with this our friend that just passed away, it makes sense they would know enough people for them to hold a funeral in a stadium or whatever large venue cos her parents are very well known ministers in the state, and they have more than enough members to fill a stadium. So maybe i was dreaming of her funeral. Who knows.

I'm just tired. I didn't mean to blog today and even if i wanted to blog this was the last thing i would have blogged about. I don't want to cry cos i fear that if i start, i won't know how to stop. Life is not making sense anymore. Stopppppppp! Please.

Oya Smile!

God knew that i needed something to make me smile. Thank God for God.

Before i go into my gist of the day, i want to say a heartfelt thanks for all the WONDERFULOUS people who left a comment on my previous post. It's really ironic how life works sometimes. I had just done a post about lighting a candle for people who have passed, only for me to hear of my cousin's passing the next day. She actually died on her birthday. She had ovarian cancer. Cancer is a bitch!!! Her passing has caused my family to take a step back and re-evaluate the way we are to each other. I lost another cousin last year to sickle cell anemia and i still haven't been able to delete her number from my phone. I think if i did that it would mean that she's actually gone and since i'm the queen of denial, i'll just keep pretending. Hey, don't mind me, i have her obituary on my wall so i know she's gone but i can't just delete her number. Too final.

So back to my gist. After 2 LONG, sometimes painful, sometimes annoying, sometimes misery evoking, sometimes stinky breath inducing years of being a brace face, i am now braces freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Yayyy!!!!!! I am excited. It was a freaking surprise too. I get there, after the usual removal of wire and brushing of teeth, the orthodonist sits down and takes a look at my teeth, then i heard the magic words......... well, to be honest i can't remember his exact words cos i didn't want to believe my ears. So i ask him if i was getting my braces taken off today and he said yes. HEY (Shout it with me)!!!!! All the spirits in my head threw owambe party (no, i no be winch no worry). I was so excited. Then they gave me a bag of candy and some balloons tied to a water bottle. After paying over $6000 na that one they fit give person, nonsense and ingredients! I didn't get why they would give me a bag of different types of candy (my teeth never rotten reach) until the lady said, it's all the stuff u haven't been able to eat in 2 years. Well, i looked in the bag and i have been eating Twix for the last 2 yrs oh, i no go lie. Nothing can keep me away from my Twix and i have eaten some Starbursts. Nobody said u had to chew it.

I'm happy sha!!! Besides i got $100 from my pops to get some MCAT practice tests online. I'm a perpetual broke ass, so any free money is highly welcome. So the smile has been restored to this face. Whether i like it or not, i have to show off this $6150 smile. Na by force oh! There's more gist but i have this angry headache that is demanding attention. There's the f...k buddy update (una go laugh, i no do anything oh!) and the Gambian dude i just met who decided that i was a commodity to be purchased (dem dey see like that (it happens)). Will be back. Peace people.

P.S. How in God's name will you people know if i happened to die tomorrow? Just a thot that just went through my head. Well, i'll never abandon my blog abruptly so if i stop blogging without saying anything for a LONNNNNNNNGGGGGGG time, know say i don kpeme (die)! Muah!

Light a Candle

"Dust to Dust"
"Ashes to Ashes"

If u guessed thats where i got my blog title from, u guessed right. I figured life is too short, we need to stop the madness and enjoy it as much as we can. Easy to say, hard to do, but try!

I have not made my peace with death. Until i'm comfortable with the knowledge that everyone dies and until i stop being scared of dying i have not made my peace with death. Death! It took me a long while to wrap my head around the concept of dying. I understood what it meant to die, but i couldn't understand why, how. It was too final for me to accept. Then i got to a point in my life when i really wanted to die. I would pray to sleep and not wake up. Maybe i was too chicken to kill myself, or maybe i didn't want to die bad enough but back then, i wasn't afraid of death. I wanted it. I was done with the struggles of this world. Things changed, my depression lifted and i wanted to be a part of the living and that's when i started to fear death and dying.

I think about when/how i'm going to die. Am i going to live to a ripe old age or am i going to die young. I guess only time will tell. I would rather not die in an accident or by a long illness that would rid me of my independence and pride b4 it kills me.

So i wake up to a missed call yesterday morning from someone who would never ever call me by that time. I sent him a text asking what's up, and he tells me he needs my help finding a ticket to my city cos his friend who leaves there is about to pass. Not wanting to believe what i was reading, i asked him if she was about to die and he said yes, she was in the ICU. I met his friend in January when she first moved to my state. She told me to get her number from my friend cos she didn't know anyone here, but he refused to give me her number saying that i didn't want her to be my friend cos she was always sick. I didn't push it, now i wish i did. She had sickle cell anemia. Around 3pm yesterday, he sent me another text telling me that she had passed away. She was 25.

Then today, i was shocked beyond belief to learn that one of my classmates in college had died less than a month ago from a car accident. I wasn't prepared for that news at all. Her tire had burst on her way back from work and she hit a pole. I can't still believe it. The last time i saw her was in july last year and she was studying for the MCAT. She asked me how i managed to do so well in verbal reasoning cos that was the only area she was having trouble with. She had already graduated by then and her exam was like a week away. I never saw her again. We weren't close friends or anything, but she was one of those pple i would always talk to whenever i see her a.k.a hi-hello friend. To say that i am unaffected by her death would be a lie. I'm shocked and i keep seeing her face in my mind. She was 21 yrs old. The news just messed up my whole day. She was Nigerian also.

Got me thinking of all the pple whom i know/knew that have passed away, like E. E. who was like a big brother to me and my siblings. He started teaching me how to drive when i was 15, he was the only one to ever call me princess and he was the first person to tell me to quit mean mugging cos i had a beautiful smile. I still can't believe he's gone or O. E., i still remember ur gentleness, and ur cream fluffy sweater that you didn't have to touch to know how soft it was. I was sad when i heard that u had sickle cell anemia, and was sadder to learn that you had passed away cos i had just sung ur praises 2 days b4 i found out, not knowing that was the day you were being buried.

I'm going to light a candle for all the people who touched my life in one way or the other and have passed on. May your souls rest in peace and may your memories live on in the hearts of those you loved and who loved you. To live in the hearts of those you love is not to die. Peace.

• O. E
• G. B.
• E. P. O.
• E. A.
• E. E.
• E. O.
• A. S
• R. A
• O. U
  

Envy doesn't live here

I read something today that made me remember my favorite poem. I hate poems by the way, but i discovered my love for this poem b4 i discovered my hatred for poems (long story). This poem serves as a reminder that "all that glitters is not gold". A cliche, i know but it's true. It's so easy to look at something or someone from the outside and envy it or them, but u can never know what the true story is. As one of my crazy friends used to say"na only the rat wey dey inside house, know whether food dey the house". He said it in reference to pple who live in mansions. I try not to envy anyone, or be jealous of any good thing that happens to someone else. You'll never hear me say, i wish i were her because if i envy the good things that happen to someone would i still envy them when bad things happen to them. Here's the story that good me thinking, and here's my favorite poem. Read it pple, it's good!

RICHARD CORY

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

By Edwin Arlington Robinson

You are dead to me!!!!!

I've got so many thing i want to talk about. To say I'm overwhelmed would be a serious understatement. Let me start with the positive. It's spring time again and I'm loving it. Oh lord, the colors; from pink, purple, different shades of green, yellow, to white (yes, i saw a white tree in full bloom). It's like a visual orgasm. I just love to go out these days just to feast my eyes on all the prettiness that's around me. That's about the only pleasure I'm getting out of life these days. I'm not depressed or anything like that but.....

How do you say "You are dead to me" and mean it? There are a couple of people that need to be dead to me right now, and i can't seem to do it. No, none of these people are ex-boyfriends. I'm not tripping over those anymore. They are dead to me (Ha ha!). Anyway, when it comes to stuff like that, I'm one of those people who are all talk and no action. Anyone who really knows me knows that my bark is much much worse than my bite and trust me when i say the bark is loud. If u don't know me you will be shaking in ur boots when i'm done talking. When I'm really mad at someone I'll always say they don't exist in my world anymore. Yeah right! Two days later, my anger is long forgotten and all that talk was for nothing. Two days is even too long. I remember when i was in SS2, one of my family friends came to fight me cos we had been quarreling (through our friends, the back and forth he said, she said stuff). So i was walking back home from when i saw a friend off, and he was behind me calling my name and i ignored him. I had actually taken a different route back home cos i saw him earlier when i just started seeing my friend off, not knowing he was going to follow me. Anyway, he kept on calling me, and the next thing i knew this guy don dash me back hand slap from behind. I saw my grandmother in heaven. Jesus! My eyes were instantly red. Adrenaline took over, sharp, sharp!

We started fighting on the street like a couple of hooligans. I don't know who was winning but he wasn't beating me that easily, finally i got a strong hold of him in his back with my teeth. I bit the hell out of this boy. I clamped my teeth on this boy's back eh and held on for dear life b4 people came and separated us. I was 2 mins from home, and as soon as i got home it started raining. After crying and cooling off, i saw the dude taking cover from the rain in someones veranda and i sent someone to give him an umbrella cos i felt sorry for him. That's how fast my anger dies down. I have issues don't i?

Back to the people who need to be dead to me. I really need to know how to cut people from my life without looking back. I've been trying to fix my friendship with Cynthia cos i felt the friendship was worth saving, but she has basically been blowing me off. I sent her a message today telling her my mind and she laughed. Yes, i got a text saying LOL........ So now I'm a joke? Why am i the one who's trying to fix the friendship when i didn't do anything? The only new information i got out of her was that my pattern of communication changed? I don't even know what she means by that. I asked her that question since last week Friday, and she hasn't bothered to reply. As much as it hurts me, i think i need to let this friendship go. I'm such a softie and i care about pple too much. It's not working for me anymore. I don't like anyone trying to make me feel foolish. What kind of friend does that. After everything that happened, i swallowed my pride and called her and left her a message to call me so we can talk. I got a text message almost 24hrs later barely addressing what i said. Finally, the next day i got another text that she was busy. She can't even give our friendship the courtesy of a call? I called her over a week ago and she still hasn't bothered to call me back. I expected much more. Them no use the friendship swear for me, i don leave am. But i want to be able to leave it once and for all without looking back. How in God's name do i do that?

I remember when i was talking to one dude who was being mean to me, one of my friends was like just stop talking to him. How hard can it be? She said if it were her, she would delete his number blah blah blah and all that good stuff. When the same thing happened to her, she first formed deleting his number. Within a week, she called me asking if i still had a text she had forwarded to me from him cos she wanted his number to call him. I didn't cos i had deleted the text. She got his number back somehow and called him. She even made me call him cos he wasn't taking her calls. Even after he called me back which confirmed he was ignoring her, she still called him again. This was after all the mouth she had made about how it was so easy for her to let go of guys from her life. That was just hypocrisy in action. I didn't rub it in her face though, but i talk am for my mind.

Besides that i feel like I'm caught in a cross fire. I've got a ton of family related issues that is like a festering boil about to burst. It's almost like in order to be on my mom's side, i have to hate my dad. I wonder how many kids out there are forced to chose sides btw their parents. I bet there are a lot. Anyway, that's a separate blog on its own. I'm stressed right now. I need to go clear my head.