MarriedandWhatnot

Wifey (aka real wife recognized in a court of law…not ebonic term of endearment) and I were working our business while sharing information we acquired during the day. She had an interesting quote from a book she read, but I will paraphrase and add one point to it; making it officially mine.

There are 3 basic keys to success.

1) What you read

2) Who you know

3) How you spend your time

Of course this blog is predominately about relationships, so I thought about how this list could relate. I have consistently talked about ‘time’ before, so I won’t dive into that again. But I will say that it is a fundamental principle of relationships. You show someone how you truly feel about them by the way you spend your time. Whether that be your spouse, child, or God.

What we read is important in relationships too. In intimate male/female relationships, reading nourishing material will most likely help you sustain a healthy relationship, versus reading nonsense from these magazines with articles like -  “10 Ways to Satisfy Your Man.” You want to satisfy me? Challenge me mentally. It really irritates me seeing women rely on all these magazine articles written by single or divorced women telling you how to keep a man. Aside from their personal relationship status, it just urks me in general that a woman thinks (assumes) she knows what a man wants or how he thinks. These articles are absolute rubbish. Yes, a guy will go through the list and pick out a couple sex acts he likes, but no matter how you recreate reality in your head, none of that stuff will keep a man. It is purely temporary gratification. You really have to be cognizant of what you take in.

I will give you an example. No disrespect to Steve Harvey as a person. I respect his hustle and some of the things he does. But I am an honest, real person. He has a new book out on relationships and he prides himself in telling women that if they need to learn about men they need to come to him. He needs to stick to comedy because from the excerpts I have read, he is endless foolishness and the advice he gives is utter nonsense. How you going to listen to someone telling you about relationships and how to keep a man when he has been through 3 divorces himself? I mean seriously. Why would I go to a hardware store like Home Depot and start asking questions about rebuilding an alternator on a car? Wouldn’t it make more sense to spend time in Autozone…in an environment with specialists with the tools and expertise to get your vehicle operational? Or better yet, would you get your car fixed at a mechanic when you see a car driving out the parking lot and their muffler falls off right after he worked on it? Why would I seek this mechanics assistance when it is apparent he can’t keep stuff together?

I believe that too often people tend to gravitate to those who will give them the answers they want, versus the answers they need. Nobody really wants to be told they are doing wrong, going astray, or falling off the path. Everyone wants to live in the moment and do whatever feels good to them at the time. But the reality is we need to reassess where we get our info/advice, what we read, who we know and hang around, and how we spend our time. These things affect our intimate relationships with significant others, as well as relationships with our children, siblings, family and more importantly God.

Due to my workload it’s rare that I write a post on the weekends, but due to the fact this blog was created to share family stories and relationship thoughts, figured I’d write while I have a quick second. 

As far as the title, it is a personal joke I suppose. I am the candy hater in my house. If it weren’t for my wife, my kids probably would never have hard candy. Pet peeve I suppose, but I absolutely hate watching kids eat suckers. Dum dums, blowpops, it don’t matter – I hate seeing sticky hands.  That and I found the irony in the fact people frequently say I’m “dumb” from my attempts at e-mail humor. It has absolutely nothing to do with this post.

Yesterday I was shaving while listening to my 2yr old sing/dance to Hip Hop Harry when I thought to myself, “Why in hell did I buy these cheap razors?” I call myself budget shopping and bought disposable Gillette razors versus the regular Mach3. In all my years of shaving, I never used a disposable so didn’t realize how cheap they were. Not a good look for my scalp. Some things you can’t cheapskate on. Almost like the difference in eating cheap/generic Doritos. Just not the same. Distraught from my usually pleasant shaving experience, I came out of our bathroom to see these uncoordinated kid actors on Hip Hop Harry doing some dances I have never seen before. I am sorry, but children dancing badly is not cute. Poor things needed to be scolded, and all their dancing privileges revoked until further notice. I know I am not that old, but when did breakdancing become cool again? Heck I remember when I was my kids age we went to the movies to see Electric Boogaloo (now I am aging myself). Remember Turbo who looked like Tyson the model? Actually, my dude Pluv looks like Ozone (sorry bro – lol).  

Anyways, my wife had a meeting to go to, so it was me and the boys. We all watched a little NCAA (go Flyers), then watched Bolt. Looking over my tribe it made me thank God. I am not a millionaire or a guy with $300k sitting in the bank. My family has went through a lot, but I am thankful because I truly believe it brought us all closer. I never thought I would have this many children nor a wife to be honest. When I would see families this size I used to wonder how parents did it. Seemed like you would have a favorite or not love one as much. Or maybe that is what I figured my mother thought because of the other child she hatched. Now that I am in that position, it amazes me how God expanded my capacity to love. I can’t explain it, but right now I am looking over all of them (occupying every piece of furniture in the living room), and I love each one of them equally. I enjoy watching them interact, and love individual things about all of them.

I am in a spirit of thankfulness because I know there are people a lot worse off than I am. I am thankful for my health. I am thankful that in this economy I have a job. I am thankful we have food to eat, clothes on our back, and utilities paid. I am thankful that I am in a position to continue my education. I am thankful that I have been blessed with friends. I am blessed that I am allowed to lick and spank my best friend. Ok, maybe that didn’t come out the way I intended, but you get the point. My life is no where near peachy. I could literally pour my heart out in a post with the things we went through that would make someone tear up. But on the flip side of that coin, there are a plethora of people who would kill to be in my shoes. I won’t get all philosophical, but I am really trying to develop a thankful attitude towards life and enjoy every moment.  

I have determined that I will continue to spend my time learning and laughing. I have really been reassessing this blog thing. How I think at times it is beneficial, I don’t have the time to allocate to it like I want. In the coming weeks you will see me scaling back. I may possibly post once a week. I may post once every two weeks. I won’t give up completely, but there are more important things in life to me right now.

Well, it’s been real. Mrs is firing up the waffle iron as we speak. We found a recipe for Waffle House waffles, so we are attempting to recreate. Today I plan on eating like a fat gluttonous bastard, cranking up Pandora.com to cut these boys hair, then later on doing some work while watching my stellar NCAA picks comes to fruition. Heck, I may even let them eat suckers on the couch today. You never know. 

Have a blessed, safe, prosperous weekend!

JM

This post was birthed from a humorous conversation with my wife about current technology, and how I was going to go on a social network fast because I was frustrated with the time it eats. I merely log-in to check an e-mail or respond to a status update or stupid pointless application request, and before I know it I am submerged in photos/profiles wasting precious time that I could be using to do something productive.

I initially intended to pose the question, “Could you go 7 days without Facebook?” Could you literally close your Facebook right this second, and not be tempted to look at it until this time next week? If you have followed any of my previous posts you know my train of thought rarely stays in one place too long, so let’s not limit this to scenario to Facebook. Do you think you could you go 7 days without…

- cellular/home phone
- music (radio, cd, mp3 player)
- personal e-mail
- social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Ning)
- television
- video games
- visiting gossip / nonsense websites
- other technology (be honest with yourself)

Granted there are gray categories…like those who rely on the internet because they have online businesses or online students…but there are a lot of luxuries we pretend we cannot live without. We convince ourselves that it is a need, and eventually this untamed desire grows until it becomes an obsession. I once read in a book that need involves demand and implies there is something lacking in life. In essence we spend time in these areas because there is a void of some sorts…a void that only God can fulfill.

Looking through my normal rotation of fitness websites, I ran across an article by a nutritionist recommending the removal of sugar from your diet. It went on to discuss how your body becomes adjusted to sugar, so you don’t really understand the harm until you clean it out of your system. After a few weeks, once you reintroduce sugar to your body it will immediately make you sick.

Oftentimes I have to wonder as men/women trying to do right and grow spiritually, how many things in life serve as sugar? What things in our diet do we introduce daily and act like we can’t live without? I have a few friends and oftentimes we discuss fitness and our goals for getting back in shape. No matter how much talk goes on, ultimately it comes down to discipline and obedience. Most of us want to have the (fill in the blanks) physique but don’t want to fuel our bodies properly. We want to eat whatever we want to eat. The problem is our mannerisms carry over into our spiritual walk. We want all the benefits of being His child, but don’t want to be disciplined. Instead of feeding our spirit healthy Word, we’d rather ingest junk and clutter it with nonsense. We basically want to do whatever we want to do, and want God to bless our efforts because we feel we are good people in other areas of life. Our resumes say we are full time believers, but we put in part-time hours.

Sometimes I feel like the biggest spiritual loser. When you think about how we waste our time, most of us believers are not acting like the leaders we were called to be. Are we just conformists? Are we becoming the same hypocritical generation we accused the previous one of being? Just food for thought.

NOTE: I don’t want this post to come across fussy or foul. Everything I write is out of love and self-reflection. Look at this post as more of a self-evaluation/challenge to people on the fence.

You will either follow God’s standards by deliberate choice, or you will follow the world’s standards by default – Myles Monroe

I recently fell victim to this Facebook fad. Locating past high school comrades a sense of nostalgia returned as I navigated through pages of old blackmail photos from the past. Leery about how much personal info is shared, my friends list is limited to people I went to school with, old co-workers and old church members. Out of agape love towards my wife and reverence to our union, I am very careful not to add any ex’s, people who were interested, friends of ex’s, or friends of people who were interested in being an ex. You get the gist. Problem is many people in relationships don’t set social networking boundaries, therefore places like Facebook and MySpace tend to be hookup spots…almost like an online club. This social network era is hilarious as I have seen people (literally) announce their divorce to family and friends by changing their relationship status. And what in the hell is up with people going from single to it’s complicated?? What in the heck is complicated about it? Or how about all the people that claim to have a man/woman but constantly are on others pages flirting? I am not condemning, but Facebook tends to be a hot mess a lot of times; a hot mess that could lead to some trouble down the line. Looking at the plethora of updates and reading wall boards, I started thinking about this new age in meeting/dating online. Since I have been married a decade, some online etiquette is foreign to me. I may just be old school, but if I had a daughter I would fear her sharing her information online…especially in the midst of all these stalkers.

Aside from profiles listing their cellular number, home addresses and alternate work e-mails, I find it utterly shocking how much detail people put on their status updates. Some people (female in general) will literally put when the arrive at work, eat lunch, on breaks, picking up kids, working out and where, and going to sleep. I guess they feel comfortable with their friends list, but it tends to be a bit TMI when you get 7-10 updates in one day. I think about how old school men used to stalk women by hiding in the bushes at her apartment or sitting in the car watching her go to work while drinking a 2% chocolate milk out the carton. Now they don’t have to do any work because women give up so much personal information to their whereabouts online. Which leads me to the second thing about this social network that shocks me more…women stalkers!

I absolutely can not believe how many females throw themselves all over men on these pages. Granted some of these dudes lead ‘em to the water, but geesh have some self-respect. Almost like they are pissing on a tree to mark territory. Thing is it is pointless piss because several other cats walking around the same tree trying to mark it. Utter nonsense to fight for a man’s attention. I looked through some of the of my old friends pages who are now scattered across the country…FL, GA, OH…and heck even in Spain. No matter where they are, these females in these various locations (and girls from our hometown) get on their wallboard DAILY sweating them trying to flirt and let their presence be known to other females. Anytime there is a post, update, anything…bam right there. It would be different if it were innocent ONE TIME posting, but this is straight up daily attention getting, full-bred online philandering. That is crazy to me to throw yourself at a man like that. I constantly warn my friends to leave these silly broads alone, but I have this saying – a guy is going to do whatever you let him do. Granted that is a cop out and men need to step up and be the men they were called to be, but I am just saying that as long as women set no boundaries and let guys get away with it, they are going to push the limits in everything they do, ask for, and how they treat you. Period!

I apologize for this post, but I have issues about women pursuing men, and how it damages future relationships. I have a theory on that I will explore later this year in a book. I think it is time for a social network fast in my household. They really are psychotic and waste time. And how I am saying this now, I probably will check mine at least twice before I go to sleep. lol.

Ordinarily I’d post this on my other blog because it covers more techie stuff, but hey these are one of those mild bipolar days. I located this site called flock.com. Granted it is not necessarily an obsession, but a pretty cool site I wanted to share. I actually discovered this site reading a friend of mines Mac magazine (I know, boo) and there was a section about must have iPhone apps. Well this site has a downloadable browser and the concept is pretty unique. It basically is like a wallet of all your social networks and puts them all in one handy dandy window. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Xanga – or blogs like eblogger, WordPress – it is all in one window. Dubbed the social browser, it is worth checking out.

In this economy, everyone is trying to save a buck. I was in the bedroom a couple weekends ago playing around, and wondered what would happen if I hooked up a regular antenna to our flat screen. So I took all the DirecTV cables out, attached the antenna, and did a channel scan. I be darn. I had NO idea there were free over the air HD channels! Here I am paying for this crappy service that goes out every time it remotely rains, and I attach an old HD compatible antenna from the closet (I purchased 3 years ago at Radio Wack) and get crystal clear reception…and a decent amount of stations too. At that moment my life changed (ok it really isn’t that serious, but I had to type that for dramatic effect).

I began performing searches on the internet for better antennas and converter boxes (for our old CRT). I did some research on Amazon for some more expensive antennas, but when it boiled down to it I ended up using my government issued coupon at Best Buy to purchase the RCA – UHF/VHF/FM Indoor Antenna (Model: ANT121) for $13 and the Insignia Digital-to-Analog Converter (Model: NS-DXA1-APT) for $59 (before the coupon rebate).

I arrived home, hooked it all up and was impressed. The Insignia has an on-screen signal strength indicator, along with an on-screen TV guide and other options. Definitely pleased with my purchase. I immediately took all my DirecTV boxes and shipped them jokers back. I am getting a better picture without PAYING additional for HD, and saving $80+ a month (and that was with NO premium channels). The only thing I will miss about DirecTV was my DVR, but in the words of Lee Corso…not so fast my friend! I have a feeling my next electronic obsession will be the TiVo HD DVR. Hmmm.

Everybody has ripped tags off mattresses, driven at least once without auto insurance, and let one rip in the freezer section at the grocery store. But you know true bad boys (and girls) like me go over and beyond. Do things people wouldn’t dare!!

• Sometimes I will be standing right next to a recycle bin, and throw paper in the trash anyways.
• I will spill juice on the floor and blame it on my kids.
• I will post a blog with no pictures.
• Sometimes I go to work without putting lotion on in the mornings…then scratch my arm.
• I read Facebook on my laptop in the bathroom.
• When on the elevator alone, I depress and hold the ‘door close’ button.
• I send my wife dirty e-mails via my work Blackberry while in meetings knowing it is monitored by the network.
• When people slip, stumble or fall…I usually laugh aloud or internally…but I always laugh.
• I have been known to use the work shredder to chop up blank paper.
• I will dunk on my kids on their rim…and push them down afterwards while screaming.

Yea I know, ruthless.