Homegirl Quel (kel) in Austin

Book Review and Giveaway: Going Down South by Bonnie Glover

This book review has been a long time coming. I met the author online about 3 years ago on MySpace and soon after connected with her on Facebook. After about a year or so, I learned that she had been featured in Essence Magazine. So of course I googled her ('cause I'm nosy curious like that) and found out that she has received some impressive acclaim for her novels, Going Down South and Middle Sister. So I emailed her to congratulate her for all of her success, yada yada yada. I'm reviewing it today, a few months later than I had hoped to. Alas, here we are.

I've read Going Down South two and a half times already. After the first time, I hugged it. Remember the last time I hugged a book? I am a book hugger. But I reserve hugs only for the books that deeply resonate with me. Going Down South easily became one of my favorites. I am a sucker for novels set in the south--add to that a poignant coming of age story, family secrets, black people, forbidden love, racists and a trip back to a time before urban minority neighborhoods were plagued with poverty and violence and there was a healthy dose of shame attached to being pregnant in high school and I am a happy sucker.

Going Down South is a story about book-smart, 15-year old Olivia Jean, her beautiful, proud, sharp-tongued mother Daisy, and Daisy's no-nonsense mother, Birdie. Olivia Jean ends up pregnant (without even really understanding what sex is) and in order to keep Olivia's pregnancy a secret from friends and neighbors, Daisy decides to send her to live out her pregnancy and birth down south with Birdie. When they arrive, Birdie welcomes Olivia Jean, but will only allow her to stay there if Daisy stays too. Since the mother-daughter relationships between these women are far from warm and loving, their time together in the home where Daisy grew up is full of tension, growth and profound revelations.

Beer & Pretzel Caramels

 Liddabit Sweets. Yes. Please. And thank you.
 

Corinne Bailey Rae's Video For "Closer"

I just read that Corinne Bailey Rae and Essence.com released this video a few days ago. I love this song. Glad she chose to do a video for it. This girl has the cutest smile. Although she doesn't smile much in the vid. I am lovin' the 70's disco Diana she's giving us here. Yes and ma'am. Love this.

It happened. I cried after dropping my kid off at preschool.

I have been dropping him off at school for two weeks. Dropped him off for a two month period at a home daycare earlier this year. Didn't cry once. The difference between all those other times and today is that I didn't help him out of the car, hold his hand and walk him to his classroom. His new school is a strict Montessori school, which means that they stress detaching and independence blahblahblah. lol Parents are allowed to walk kids in for the first two weeks. After that we have to stall the car at the sidewalk as teachers and assistants do the honors. Of course my kid was fine. On the way there I had explained to him that mommy wouldn't go inside with him this time. Told him that Ms. Teacher Assistant was going to help him out of the car and that he would say bye-bye to mommy and go inside with the T.A. He said, "Ok."

When we pulled up, Ms. T.A. opened his door and they exchanged morning pleasantries. Another assistant opened the passenger side door and grabbed the nap mat, lunch box, diapers and clothes for the week. He sang a quick "bye-bye mama" from the sidewalk before both doors closed at about the same time. I moved my car up a bit and stopped at the end of the driveway to watch him enter the school with the two women. At first I used the rear view mirror, but then just like in the sappy first day of school commercials, I turned around in the car to watch him with my own eyes. His shoe had come off when Ms. T.A. took him out of the car. She helped him put it back on, held his hand and they all disappeared through the gates of the school. Tears.

I cried for about 5 minutes--about the length of my drive back home. When I told my husband what happened, all teary and emotional and feeling kinda silly, I asked him, "Why do women do that?" He said that's how God made women...moms...and that I shouldn't beat myself up about it. It is what it is. I'm not embarrassed or anything, just didn't expect to get emotional like that. I think him getting out and starting his day there without me just symbolized him not needing me as much anymore. I know he still needs me, I mean duh, but I really had a moment when he disappeared behind those gates without me.

I do get to go to his classroom to pick him up though. So I guess now I'll appreciate that moment more--when he's elated to see me and calls out to me and gestures to be picked up and hugged. As a stay at home mom, I don't get many of those moments. The boy saves up all that excitement for daddy when he gets home from work everyday. So now I get to be missed a bit too...get some of that extra loving in the afternoon. I make no apologies for my big mom-ego. :-D

Randomest Song Lyrics: "Down Under" by Men At Work

I listen to a lot of soft rock and music from the 70's on the radio in my car and I'm in my car a LOT. As you guys know, I love to sing along to music. I'm tickled when I run across lyrics that are random, or silly, or don't make sense, and there is no shortage of those in soft rock and music from the seventies. Down Under by Men At Work is a random song in general. I have been singing along to it for years upon years and this morning, I found myself going, "what?" This song is FULL of random lyrics, but this verse is my favorite:

"Buying bread from a man in Brussels/He was six foot four and full of muscles/I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"/He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich"

What? lol

The video is pretty random too. Still, it's a very hard song not to sing along to.