Grateful to Have So Many Candles

Whew, I will definitely be up in the gym tomorrow working off the huge slice of carrot cake I just ate. It was SO good though.

And I'll tell you about my fun afternoon tomorrow as well because guess what? Madame Insomniac is going to bed!

Don't Call Me at 5:26 AM on My Birthday!

Especially don't call and then hang up the phone when I get up and answer. Really, that's just asking to find out why my family used to sing a little song around me.

"She's so mean and evil, even rain don't fall on her!"

I was sleeping pretty deeply and could have probably slept a full eight hours. But NO, someone named Kimberly C_____ (thank you, Caller ID) had to call my house this morning at exactly 5:26 AM.

I woke up in a total panic when I heard the phone ringing. I mean, only phone calls that start with, "We regret to inform you...," happen at that time in the morning. So OF COURSE I jumped up, and ran to answer.

"Hello?" I was breathless. Freaked out.

Click. The caller hung up.

And that's when I looked at my Caller ID. I did not recognize the name. I remember saying out loud, "Wish I could beat that heffa's ass!" "How nice of her to call!"

I started to call Kimberly back. I mean, is it really so hard to apologize for dialing the wrong number and waking someone up at 5:26 AM? Especially when it's their birthday?

I began dialing. 323-255...

Then a thought of genius proportions came to me! I should call her up tonight at like 3 AM and see how she feels about it!

Yeah, but then I'll probably find out that Kimberly's man is in MS-13 or something.

I know, I have to just let it go. But I'm cranky! I only slept 2 hours between Tuesday morning and Thursday morning (darned insomnia) and managed to finally fall asleep again last night at a little after 1 AM.

Needless to say, I'm a little tired right now. And I just called the police because someone appears to be stealing a silver Mercedes across the street!

Oh yes, this is going to be a birthday to remember!

Five Things: Featuring Bette Davis, Michael Jackson and Nirvana

Five random things I'm thinking about:

1) I could have lived without seeing Saddam and the noose. Someone at every news channel felt like you and I wanted to see Saddam's execution. Over and over and over. And then one more time just in case we hadn't really seen the way they tightened the noose around his neck. Oh, and here's another shot of the body in a white shroud. Um, I didn't really want or need to see that. I'm fine reading about it or seeing a still head shot of Saddam behind the newscaster. You say I can turn CNN off? C'mon, be real. Who looks away from train wrecks these days? Plus, I was really trying to watch a funeral, James Brown's to be exact, so I didn't really want to turn. Speaking of funerals...

2) The Godfather of Soul /vs/ a former President of the USA. Two funerals happened today. James Brown's "homecoming" and Gerald Ford's State funeral. More people went to James Brown's funeral than to Gerald Ford's. Like 8,500 more people. At James Brown's funeral, we had Michael Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Dick Gregory and Bootsy Collins all on one stage. Gerald Ford got Dick Cheney. George Bush, our current President, didn't attend. He was out at his ranch on vacation. It just seems wrong for a sitting President to not go to a funeral of someone who once held the same office. Hasn't George Bush ever heard of karma?

3) One week of vacation is over, one week still to go. I'm glad I took two weeks off. It wasn't till this past Wednesday that I stopped waking up at 5:45 in the morning without an alarm clock. But it's going too quickly. I need time to slow waay down. I don't want to go back to work.

4) Alas, the decorations must come down. The best part of having a theme party is getting to decorate for it. Friday night's "Black Celebration" Depeche Mode birthday party was fantastic but before anyone even arrived,we all had fun decorating my place. Believe me, pictures of Depeche Mode are everywhere. In the bathroom, in the kitchen, on the doors, on the walls. Everywhere. I know I can't leave pictures of Depeche Mode up on the walls forever. But, how about they stay up for a couple more days, pretty please? At least till the tape starts to unstick and the pictures fall off.

5) Bette, Michael, Nirvana and my kids. My boys think Bette Davis is mean and said, after watching a commercial for one of her movies, "She shouldn't slap people. That's mean. She's a hard woman." I was hiding from my boys that the Michael Jackson they saw on tv at James Brown's funeral is the same artist they saw in the "Beat It" video. They asked who it was and I said, "Oh, I don't know!" I know if I'd told them they would've said, "That's not him. We know what Michael Jackson looks like. You're trying to trick us." Hmm. If only that were the case. The last thing I'll tell you is that my three year old knows the chorus to Nivana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and likes to sing it while he's naked. Ah, aren't I lucky to be a mom?

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Dear Thirty-Three,

How's it going? Hope you are having a great day. I'm pretty good, but there's something I've been meaning to speak to you about. Do you mind if we sit down and talk?

When I first met you last year, I thought, wow, you're the girl for me. You reminded me of my favorite Bulls player, Scottie Pippin, and you liked wearing black, red and white, just like me. We've had a great time together. Yes, we've had our ups and downs like any couple. It was hard at first, but I got past your dark circles and puffy undereyes in the morning. And gosh, I know I was a pain to live with during that annoying midlife crisis I had last March and April.

Come to think of it, you really were so supportive all year long. You helped me through my brother's suicide, you took that awesome writing class with me, encouraged my jogs around Silverlake and cheered me on as I lost 20 pounds over the summer. Plus, you made sure I really spoke what was in my heart. You really have been good to me, Thirty-Three.

All this makes it that much more difficult to tell you. I really want you to know, it's not you, it's me...but, you see, I met someone else. Her name is Thirty-Four. I like her. Alot. Everyone tells her she looks like she's 27 or 28. I don't really care about that, though. You see, she and I, well, we just clicked. She's really forward thinking and she just inspires me. Plus she's a Chicago girl. In fact, she loves my favorite Bears player, the late, great Walter Payton.

We're going on our first real date tomorrow. Granted, it's only to the DMV to renew my driver's license, but you know, a date is a date. And she's coming to my Depeche Mode party tomorrow night.

I'm going to tell everybody that me and Thirty-Four are together, so um, it'd be kinda awkward if you came too. Oh, don't cry Thirty-Three. I'll always cherish the memories we made together. No, it's better if you don't call or come by. Ever. We can't re-live the past. I really think it's best if we just make a clean break...Well, we can hang out for the next half hour, but that's it. I'm serious. After that, I have to go.

Thirty-Four is going to be at my house at midnight.

Black Celebration...Sort Of

You ever catch one of your "mixed" friends having a bad day? You know, your friend, the kid with one black parent and one white parent, slumped on the floor, sobbing into the edge of the bedspread, "All the black kids tease me because I'm mixed and all the white kids hate me because I'm black! I have no friends!"

Even if you don't realize your half white/half black friends have done that, they have. You just may not have been privy to that particular sob-fest. They were probably just doing what I call "one drop rule" math...

black mom + white dad = black child

white mom + black dad = black child

If you genuinely don't have any "mixed" friends to talk with about this math, go find some. We're everywhere these days. In the meantime, I'll share a bit of my experience with you.

Yes, growing up the white kids called me nigger and told me I was ugly. The black kids, well, black people in this country are trained to love them some light skin (seen any darker women in hip-hop videos lately? Ever?) so they wouldn't call me ugly. But, the meaner ones would call me "oreo". I'm assuming you know why the white kids would call me what they did, but I realize you may not be privy to the whole oreo lexicon.

Observe the photo. An oreo is black on the outside...and white on the inside. How could I be white on the inside, you ask?

Well, unfortunately, black kids in this country are trained to believe that doing well in school and being whip smart is "acting white". I was a big nerd. Nerdy enough to skip a grade in school. Nerdy enough to take the SAT in 7th grade and get a 1320. Plus, there were almost never any black students in any of my classes. Schools have this culture where academics=whiteness. You think back to your own honors and AP classes. How many black students were there in there? Not too many and I hope you don't think that's because of some inherent lack of ability. If you do, feel free to come to work with me to see what I see every single day. I get to see how black students aren't put on the college bound, AP track in school. Believe me, they are put on the step-n-fetchit track...and it's now my job to make sure they are taken off it.

To enhance the "mixed-girl" nerdiness, my parents were also super strict and never let me out of the house. I'm not kidding. Once school let out, no one saw me all summer. I spent my summers pulling weeds in our backyard and reading 700 page novels in one sitting. The summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I decided to read a book a day, just to see if I could. I read Dracula once a week for years. You've read Dracula before, sure. But 217 times? Yes, not only was I "mixed" but I was also pretty darn weird.

To foster my ascendancy from merely a "weird mixed girl" to an "ultra weird mixed girl", let's not forget the icing on the cake: house music and Depeche Mode. Every other black kid was drooling over Prince, New Edition, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson (before he tried to purposefully turn himself into the weird mixed kid) and Ready For The World. Not me. I was staying up all night listening to the Hot Mix 5 on WBMX and dreaming of marrying my favorite house DJ, Julian Jumpin' Perez.

I was busy scribbling Depeche Mode lyrics into my notebooks and was actually dumb enough to ask other black kids if they listened to them. "To who?" was the usual response. To give folks credit, 75% the white kids I knew only listened to hair metal bands like Def Leppard and didn't know who Depeche Mode was either. High school was tough. Like you, it wasn't till I left home for college, that I finally felt like I met people who were my friends despite all my weird quirks. Even though there were those who still called me an oreo every once in awhile, it was all good because I was having a whole lot of fun in life.

You'd think these issues of identity and feeling like the weird oreo mixed girl would evaporate now that I'm a grown woman, right? Yeah, I thought that too. But, last night, I had this dream where I decided to invite a black woman I like but who I don't know super well to my birthday party, happening next Friday. The conversation in the dream went something like this:

Liz: Yeah, I'm so excited about my party next Friday. I hope you can come.

Anonymous Black Woman: Oh. Where are you having it?

L: At my apartment. It's going to be a Depeche Mode themed party. I'm calling it "Black Celebration" after their fifth album.

ABW: Who?

L (oblivious to ABW's confusion and thinking she just can't hear me due to poor cell phone reception): Depeche Mode. So, everyone has to wear black but eyeliner on men is completely optional.

The response was silence.

Then, in the dream, all those feelings I thought I'd left behind came rushing to the forefront. I started to wonder if ABW was thinking, "Yep, Liz is a really still a weird mixed girl and I don't know if I want to be down with this." I started to explain that Depeche Mode's songwriter and sometime singer, Martin Gore, has a black father. "So, Depeche Mode, they're kinda black, you know." I start to elaborate on how I am working to close the education achievement gap. I remember saying, "Hey my husband is black and I have black kids." So please love me for being black, right?

None of it mattered. I still got called that name in the dream. ABW said it loudly, like it was on a world-wide intercom, "I knew it, you are an OREO!!! You aren't really black!"

Obviously, sticks and stones and all that. I know I'm not an oreo. I've always tried to avoid living my life ruled by our society's arbitrary meters of blackness or of whiteness. But I am left with a question. What does the dream mean and have I secretly been over-compensating in certain areas of my life for maybe not feeling quite black enough?