Category: Uncategorized

Favorite Comedians

My favorite comedian hands down is John Leguizamo. I like him because he is not afraid to express how unconventional his life is. He Comes from a Latin family who similar to my family is gigantic, I have more cousins and uncle’s and aunt’s then most people do. He makes fun of how different his family is from the average American family which gives him plenty of material to use. Thing is American family yes come from all over the world yet they don’t share the same culture as some other families do. So he has to basically take the Listener on a verbal voyage through the Dynamics of his family in order to help them understand where he’s coming from. And where he has come from he talks about his parents his relationship with his brother his relationship with his uncle. How his father’s infidelity was handled in their family. How his family life was different than his friends.

I think I related to him because I realized as I was growing up I somehow realized how different my life was growing up then some of my friends. My mother was a single mother, however I did have a relationship with my father. It wasn’t a very healthy relationship a lot of times I had to realize that I was not the number one person in my father’s life. Where my mother sacrificed a lot of things for us growing up my father’s sacrificed nothing. But I do realize that the relationship I do have with my father is valid because my brothers don’t have that relationship with him. I was at least a part of his life even if it was just a picture in his wallet.

This brings me to the point I was trying to make. My father’s family have made it completely normal to make fun of themselves and make jokes out of situations that are actually not very funny but in retrospect what do you do. You got to laugh at it. They are storytellers from the beginning. Either ya laugh, or get upset either way you’re right with what you are feeling, and inevitably take you become part of their story.

To be okay or not okay that’s the question?

Have you ever walked up to someone and casually just asked how you doing? The conversation can go in so many different ways but the person in question for the most part will say “oh I’m okay”

What exactly does okay mean? Sometimes people use the word okay to actually mean that they are in fact okay. Sometimes people use the word okay because they don’t want to take the time to explain to you everything that is going on with them. Sometimes okay is a replacement word for everything in my life is falling apart, my home life is not happy, my work life is crazy, and then sometimes okay just means it’s none of your dang business. Pretend to ask people are you okay when we think they’re acting out of sorts or not being themselves or maybe everyday you see this woman smiling and looking like she has no cares in the world and when you look at her different day she looks like a her world is crashing down on her.

Truth is okay is just that okay. If for some reason you feel like you’re not okay it’s okay to say so. Somebody asks Hi how are you today? You can tell them I’ve had better days or this isn’t the worst day I’ve ever had. We are all entitled to having you not so good day. And just because we have a day where we’re not okay doesn’t mean that we are trying to bring everybody else down or being negative it’s just a day that you just don’t feel quite like you. We have our days when we want to wrap ourselves in our cocoon blanket and make the world go away and it is all right to do that. But on the off chance that you start to feel this way more often than not I am not a medical professional in any way I would suggest to find someone who is and can direct you in the right way to finding your bliss again.

Moral compass

I think the simplest definition of morality is doing the right thing not because people are watching, or because you’re part of a certain religion, but actually doing the right thing because it’s important to you. It is our nature to respond to what we are taught if our moral compass is to be honest and live by a set of rules or laws then morality should be easy to obtain. However that being said not everybody is raised to follow laws or rules or even shown what right or wrong is. This does not excuse people from not doing the right thing it just shows that in this world of entitlement people are now raising their children without stipulations and boundaries allowing them to go forward with the notion that no matter what action they make the world should forgive no matter the case.

Goodbye 2020 hello 2021

So quite literally I was supposed to start this blog subject on January 1st. Here we are April 1st and I am barely coming around to say goodbye to 2020.

This new year has began with pretty much what it ended with. Hope. Longing maybe some difference. Got a lot of people with different opinions, different outlooks on what exactly happened with this pandemic. Some people think it was a hoax even though I had a cousin in Arizona who almost died from it. My husband stepfather died from complications that affected his heart. My husband’s entire family tested positive for it and had to be quarantine. The majority of businesses are now open to the public where as before we were having things delivered and staying as far away from each other’s humanly possible. You can imagine that counseling and psychiatrist and mental health workers are in so much demand right now because we’re social creatures. Even if you want to say that we really don’t like each other and we don’t want to be around each other when they’re not allowed to be around each other takes it’s toll. Sitting alone with your own thoughts sometimes is not as comforting as people think it is. So far 2021 has brought me a raise per our CEO of our company. It has taught us to work faster because we’re short-handed and even if we do not have enough people to do our jobs our jobs still have to get done. I am currently writing this post well sitting at the health table my job. Basically from 4:00 a.m. till 7:00 a.m. I sit at a table ask every person that walks in if they have had the following symptoms in the last 10 days fever chills cough shortness of breath or difficulty breathing nausea or vomiting diarrhea muscle or by aches fatigue headache sore throat new loss of taste or smell or congestion or runny nose if they answer no then my next question is have you use medication to reduce a fever in the last 24 hours if they say no then my next question is in the last 14 days has anyone you lived with than lab tested positive for covid-19 or have had been in a close contact with someone who has been tested positive for covid-19 if they say no I make sure that they’re wearing a face mask take their temperature make sure it is not above 100° and allow them to walk through the door. Honestly it’s gotten to the point where they can actually do the self-assessment on their phones before they even walk in the door so they just flash me their phone saying that they’ve taken their self-assessment on their own and all I do is scan their foreheads for the temperature.

This is allowed me to catch up on reading my emails, try to plan things for the weekend for my family, figure out what I’m missing out on in the world since I work overnights and feel like I am sleeping my life away. I also listen to a lot of true crime podcast and scare myself to death listening to things that could possibly happen that haven’t happened but still keep me looking over my shoulder. Sometimes I watch a movie on Amazon prime cuz I have it on my phone and my job has Wi-Fi free so why not. My day-to-day consist of me trying to figure out how to make more time in the day to even just wash my laundry clean my room hang out with my daughter. I hate that it feels like a chore to have to make time. I wish that I could just hang out with my kid and just hang out with my kids.

I know that my husband is trying to hang in there. His DID seems to be getting more unpredictable. On one of his alters that hasn’t come out in a very long time named Patrick, who is a drag queen, surfaced and started telling me things that I wasn’t aware of, about some of the altars in his head. I am a little concerned about this because Patrick hardly ever surfaces. And since the day he told me about what he wanted to say I haven’t heard anything from him I am worried for him. On top of all of that my husband is pretty much in charge of everything. He takes care of kids, he puts up with my mother when she starts ranting. He deals with me when I start ranting. If he’s lucky he gets to go down to this pond by a church down the street and go fishing. I know his plate is quite full. I wish I could tell him how much I appreciate him. How much he does to make my life so much easier and better just being there. He makes my life worth getting up for. It’s been me and him for almost 20 years now and I wouldn’t change a day.

So even though I’m 4 months behind here’s to what 2021 has in store for us. He and I are the original comeback kids life will push us down and kick us while we’re there but we come back up swinging. Go Team Ray!!!

Working during this pandemic.

Having a job right now during this pandemic is a big deal when the country first began the first self quarantining procedures, we where given a piece of paper stating that our job was essential and if we were to be pulled over we had only to hand the paper over to authorities and they would allow us to get to work.

In the beginning just about every major retail and grocery store, We’re out of everyday items like toilet paper, baby wipes, hand sanitizer, any kind of disinfectant such as bleach,Lysol,peroxide rubbing alcohol. If it was used to kill any kind of germs or to wipe your behind you couldn’t find it anywhere. It became so bad that retailers had to put signs up limiting the amount of products that you could take. People were hoarding multi-packs of toilet paper and sanitizer and selling it on the street marked up of course. Finally Walmart who hasn’t closed their general superstores in over 20 years decided that they would start closing their stores at 8:30 at night, in order for the overnight crew, which is the shift that I work to be able to stock product. Any establishment that was open required all customers and employees to wear face coverings, that covered their mouth and nose. We were also required to keep a social distance of 6 ft from each other as well as having our temperature checked while coming in to the store. Any temperature of 100 degrees for over automatically had to go home.to be able to really discuss what it’s like to live through this endemic we have to actually know exactly what it is from what we can gather it originated in Asia primarily China and it is contracted through saliva and touch. Symptoms are tricky because they are very similar to having a cold or having the flu obviously you have a high temperature of over a hundred, you may also have a sinus blockage or runny nose, I dry cough that that produces primarily blood and not mucus or phlegm, shortness of breath and in some cases nausea. So as you can see we had a hard time pinpointing what exactly we were looking for in this illness. In the beginning people were taking precautions and self quarantining themselves. Restaurants were closed many people were out of work and stuck at home because they had no work to go to. Some people avoided each other some people thought that it was a hoax and that it wasn’t going to happen to them. Our kids went on spring break and March and spring break lasted until the following August. With our children’s education teetering on our ability to teach them. Please let me tell you if you see a teacher today go hug them and let them know that their job is so unappreciated and selfless. Wesley and I found out really fast that we are not teacher material. Honestly Wesley has way more patience than I do but he also has been with Neva since she was a baby so he’s is more accustomed to her learning style.

As I mentioned before my job was considered a essential job as was my mother’s who works for Kroger, my stepfather Derek he works in a warehouse that makes acrylic lenses he’s a graphic designer so he was essential as well. However my sister who is a cook was laid off. She has a family, her off and on again husband, and a thirteen (fourteen now) year old daughter and nine (ten) year old daughter she has a house payment of over 1,000 dollars with of course utilities on top of them. Who this didn’t stop her from going straight to Kroger where my mom works and getting a job. She since had gone back to the restaurant when it reopened it was just fired causing her to take a full-time position at Kroger which thank the Lord above that she was able to get.

However not very many people are that fortunate a lot of people that left Walmart during the self quarantine have not come back and we are actually working at less than a skeleton crew capacity. We’re now closing at 11:00 at night opening at 7:00 in the morning except on Tuesdays when we open at 6:00 for a senior citizen day. Where now going into our very first year anniversary of this global pandemic, all of our children are remote learning. we are all spending less and less time with our extended families I haven’t seen my grandmother in almost a year.

All our emotional baggage is for the most part bottled up and just waiting for the right moment to just explode. We have learned so much about our friends, our family a lot of it not so good. But hey at least for learning the truth. Who knows what tomorrow’s going to bring, we may just come out of this better people but many more toward a crazy, maybe even horrific ending to maybe just too much closeness. We’ll see!!!

Me and my best friend. My Go to tech guy.

I’m not really what you would call or text savvy my daughter factory reset my phone and I didn’t even know how to do that. When she was four years old she got into my password that I thought she would never guess but she paid attention. If I can’t figure something out I asked my husband to figure it out for me A lot of times he can he figures out what’s going on and how to do things but sometimes even he gets a little frustrated with technology. That’s when my best friend comes in. My best friend Rory we’ve been in each other’s lives since we were 13 years old. He was my steady boyfriend which meant we held hands and went over to each other’s houses and hung out. We weren’t fast kids he might have been but I was not. He respected my boundaries and never tried to push me into doing anything I didn’t want to do. I know that above all he was always respectful even when he was getting in trouble. He left me out of the drama. Even today he always has my back. Even when we don’t agree with pretty much anything, he still looks out for me and in time I look out for him. However he really doesn’t need it as much as I do. For the most part even if he wasn’t as tech savvy as he is I am grateful to after all these years still have him in my life. I don’t care what people say.