Just so y'all know I'm still working!

So here is to rectifying my tardiness in posting blogs.  I mean, I might as well seeing as my muse is on hiatus.  She knows we got deadlines! *chuckle* She must want me to chill a bit.  I can be such a nut sometimes when it comes to these stories.

There is a list of thirty blog topics floating endlessly around the internet.  I swear if I see it one more time I will probably scream.  Okay.  Maybe not scream.  Perhaps a low shrill screech.  I have dismissed it no less than five times yet it keeps showing up in my inbox, Facebook news feed, and Twitter feeds.  Maybe someone is trying to tell me something. *chuckle*

I've it dismissed because the title is 30 Day Challenge.  *blink blink* If I wrote thirty blogs in thirty days, I wouldn't have time to get back to Elyria or Callandaria.  I wouldn't have time to finalize my Halloween and Valentine’s Day offerings.  Nor would I be able to get my Christmas offering even started.  Yes, I’m rather busy.  Or insane.  We’ll see how I feel January 1^st.  Then I have a couple ideas floating around in my head one new and another old story idea. *smh rolling my eyes at myself*

I’ll see if I can do at least a topic a month.

So the first blog subject is my relationship status.

*ugly pregnant pause*

You know I’m single! *chuckle* I live in Baltimore city and without downing and clowning the brothers of Baltimore too much, it ain't easy out here for a professional black woman looking for love.  I’m not unhappy or bitter about it because quite frankly I've got plenty to keep me beyond busy between family, friends, work, and now writing out my stories.  I can make time for a man should the need ever arise.  So far the contenders have been uninspiring.

I remember one day a male friend and I were sitting outside having lunch at our spot.  I don’t know what I was looking at but it was in the opposite direction of him.  All of a sudden he exclaimed, “Well damn!  Do you feel the need to wipe?”  

I swung my head back to him just as this tall slim black guy walked passed me just a bit too close.  I moved back some more and looked at my friend.  “I’m sorry, what?”  He replied, “He looked at you so hard for so long I know he stripped you naked and screwed (not the word he used) TWICE!  He ignored me like I was not a factor at all!”

I chuckled.  “Welcome to what your daughter will have to put up with in a few years.  Some of these black men have no loyalty to the brotherhood at all.”  He was truly pissed off at the lack of respect the other man showed him.  He felt it was okay for him to have looked at me but he shouldn't have to stared so hard.  I shook my head and launched into some of the things I have been through.

For a while, I drove a hooptee.  Mass transit in Maryland is just as ugly as I say in my books.  So one day I went to an auction and bought a car outright.  However, I didn't trust it on road trips.  So whenever I went out of town, I’d rent something.

I’ll preface this about Baltimore city, one moment you can be in a great neighborhood but take that wrong turn and you will end up in the hood.  

I picked up my rental from a place in downtown Baltimore and made that wrong left turn. *chuckle* No biggie, right?  I know Baltimore so I know how to make it right.

Wrong.

As I’m sitting at the light waiting to make my turn to get back to where I belong I felt someone staring at me.  I look over to the passenger side and there is a young thuglum sitting in his car in the other lane.  Yes, I just made this word up and I’m keeping it.

He’s trying to holler and the light turns green.  There is a line of cars behind him and me.  “I’m like well let me go since the light has changed.”  I blame my mother for teaching me good manners.  His response, “F%$# them!”

Okay, cars are honking; I go ahead and make my turn anyway.  Do you know this thuglum turned too, cutting people off and pinned my car against the curb!  It was everything I could do to close my mouth.  When did it get to be this serious y’all?

He gets out of his car and comes back to my driver’s side to talk to me.  With your car pinned by another car to the curb you are pretty much a captive audience.  We exchanged numbers.  Yes, I gave him my number.  He has already cut folks off in traffic and pinned my car to the curb.  How am I NOT going to give him my number?  Besides, I pay Verizon $30 a month for a landline that I do not answer.  I need it for my security system.  It also is the number I give out to Dudes Who Are Not To Be Dated that I meet. *raises eyes Heavenward*

Now, my overnight bag was already in the trunk of the rental.  After he let me go, I got on the expressway and headed on out of town.  I met up with my friends and totally put him out of mind for the weekend.

When I get home Sunday night something said check your caller ID.  Do you know the thuglum called me over 50 times?

That’s just one story I can tell!

I don’t give out fake numbers because of the following story from when I still lived at home.  We had no caller ID or voicemail.  Yes, phone packages still come like that.  That’s the $30/month package. *chuckle*

I was off that week day and as such, sleeping late. *chuckle*  I love sleep so much sometimes I swear me and the Sandman knew each other in another life. *chuckle* Not that I oversleep.  Seven hours are good for me but I just love settling down in my queen-sized bed to sleep.

Anyhoodles, the phone rings right in my ear.  I pick it up and a guy asks for a girl.  I say, “Sorry, wrong number.” and hang up.  He calls right back and asks for her again.  I repeat wrong number and he repeats the number back to me.  “Yes, right number but no one lives here by that name.  Sorry.”  Hangs up phone.

Phone rings again.  I’m getting irritated now because me and the Sandman had at least a couple more minutes on my sleep cycle.  “Yes!”

Guy: “I don’t mean to bother you but you really have a pretty voice.”

Me: “Thanks. Bye.”  Hangs up phone.  These dang good manners my mother taught me cause problems sometimes but they come in handy in too many other lucrative situations for me to discard them.

Phone rings again.

Me: *sighs and picks up phone* “Yes!”

Guy: “I was wondering can I talk to you.”

Me: “I’m not looking for a man or any new friends.  But thanks.  Bye.” Hangs up phone again.

Now I’m wide awake!  So when the phone rings again, I pick it up, disconnect his call, put the phone under my other pillow (I've got 5 of them) and then I leave the phone off the hook.  Then I went back to the sleep bank. *smile*

So later that day my mother goes to make a call but I've forgotten about the phone off the hook and under my pillow at this point.  So when she asks, I tell her all about the guy who keeps calling.  She said she’d handle it.  Not long after the phone goes back on the hook someone calls.  She answers and the person hangs up!  The family did the answering of the phone for a couple weeks.  That is how long they kept getting the hang ups. *smh*

So I don’t give out fake numbers.  It ain't fair to the person who will have to answer that number.

There are lots of stories that have just been forgotten because there is always a more outlandish story to top the last one.  

There was one guy who I had a feeling that regardless of my feelings on giving out fake numbers I should have given him a fake.  After I give him my number he asks am I married or in a relationship.  Yes, that is secondary to some black men in Baltimore city.  To which I reply no and ask him the same question.  He got the landline anyway so you know I didn't really care.

Him: I’m separated.

Me: How long have you been separated?

Him: Three years?

Me: What is taking your divorce so long?

His response is imprinted on my memory.

“I keep trying to go back to my wife but she said I’m good where I’m at.”

So yeah.  I’m single. *sips water*