Trading in my heels for cleats: Part II - There's No Place Like Home

Music: Young MC "Bust a Move" and then Debbie Gibson "Electric Youth"
Mood: Happy, Excited and a wee bit Anxious

I can see you. Scratching your head, scrunching up your nose and squinting your eyes saying "Heels, cleats, no place like home? Is this post going to be some sort of marriage between sports and The Wizard of Oz?" Don't put that past me. I could write a quick lil diddy about munchkins and winged monkeys playing arena football, IF you would like.

In my last post I introduced you to the new me. The new college football (JPW) lovin' me. Several years ago as my passion for college football was ignited, my interest in some other sports grew too. Don't get it twisted. I don't sit around watching ESPN by choice, oh, actually sometimes I do. I don't pray for my favorite teams to win. Well, maybe once. And I definitely don't cry when my team loses. Actually I do. And THAT is what we'll be discussing today.

It was the fall of 2007, and I'm living in GA. The Cleveland Indians were playing The Boston Red Sox in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. With a win that night, the Cleveland Indians would be going to the World Series. Please join me in a pause for dramatic effect.... I'm not sure why I was watching the game in our bedroom instead of in the living room, but by my guesstimation I am sure it was because Ken was watching a football game. I'd even carried the ironing board into our small bedroom so I could iron my work clothes for the next day as I watched the baseball game. As I stopped ironing to watch some play in the game that could make it or break it for the Indians, I looked into my pink Hello Kitty tv, hoping for the best. So what happened?


Let's rewind. In January of 2007 my heart first broke when the annoying Florida Gators killed our Ohio State Buckeyes in the 06' Football National Championship game. (I blamed that Tebow character. He inflicted losses on his enemies. But he loves him some Jesus, so I was somewhat torn.)

Come on! I'm a Bama fan. What picture did you think I was gonna post?

              * In the spring of 2012, Tebow said in front of a crowd of Christ lovin Chrisitans, that he loved me. This is not a lie. This is very true. Ask Aimee. He didn't say I love you - as in the crowd or Jesus. But me. Only me. Not you. Just sayin'...*

Noah obviously has anger issues.

Then April rolled around. After all that March Madness hugabaloo, that I cared diddly squat about, The Buckeyes faced The Florida Frickin Gators, in the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship game. (Do you guys know how my heart is racing right now?) Come on Buckeyes. Please Buckeyes. My heart cried out to the young college boys and Buckeye gods. We didn't win. (I blame Joakim Noah. He made me mad. All that unruly hair just a rippin' and a railin' through the air, blinding my sweet Buckeyes.) I remember a sadness taking over me.

This brings us back to October 2007. Me, the Hello Kitty TV, and the ironing board, all with fingers crossed. I don't recall the play that caused the Indians to be shut down but I remember my emotions in the moment that I knew that the Indians had lost the game. Chunks gathered in my throat and tears in my eyes, and then, I just broke the hell down. My heart broke for my city. My heart broke for my state. Broken, my heart ached for my home.  And ya'll, I was really crying hard. So much so that my husband came upstairs to see what was wrong with his wife, slumped over the ironing board.

Why can't you be doin all that #Winning now?

Between sniffles and ugly face crying I blurted out "First it was the football game, then the basketball game, and now this. And I'm not going to even bring up the Browns. Damn Gators! Damn Red Sox. Damn Florida Marlins! (Yeah I pulled up the 1997 World Series loss too.) We never get a chance! We never get to win. Why don't we ever get to win?" I was truly aching and filled with sadness. Although I now lived in Georgia, Ohio, CLEVELAND (Heights), Ohio was home. And for all the crap the nation wanted to give us about some measly lake fire and Indians curse, it was still truly the best place on earth. And it was home. And there is no place like home.

Me as a young Brown's fan. (Before gravity and breastfeeding took affect.)

I do not feel as happy as I did when I first started typing this post. I am remembering that moment and how sad I was. But you know what? I am PROUD! I am proud to be from Ohio! I am proud to be from Cleveland Heights, Ohio! I am BLESSED to be from Cleveland Heights, Ohio!!!! And to the rest of the world, who can continue withholding awards from our trophy cases, or taking talents to sunny Miami frickin' Florida, bite me on my buckeye shaped booty! There is no place like home.

Here the whole state of Florida is represented by the wicked witch's green hands.

The Road to Embracing My Womanhood: Part II

Music: NSYNC "The Game is Over"
Mood: Hungry and Anxious


Mmmmm. Condensed Cambell's Tomato Soup. Who woulda thought I would be 32 years old chowing down on this stuff? Honestly I hadn't had a bowl since 1992, maaaaybe 1993, now I eat it like urry day (Yes I said urry, I live in the south now. When in Rome...Rome, GA that is).

Time out! Soup is not the subject. Let's get right to Part II.

Where did I leave off? "Wait wait Brooke" you are all screaming at once. "What the hell NSYNC song are you listening too, and why?" Let me explain a lil something to you. I require a certain brand of POP to listen to whilst sitting at my computer, to get through my day. I usually start off with Kimbra, move on to Britney (It's Britney BITCH!), Destiny's Child, Spice Girls (duh), Bruno Mars and then of course Jamiroquai. The reason you've never heard of this NSYNC song is probably because you gave up on them and didn't purchase their last album "Celebrity". Fret not dear readers. You can listen to it on Spottify. Go on. Right now. I'll wait.

 Before folks started "taking their talent" elsewhere

 Okay, let's see. Where was I. Ah yes, I'm in high school (GO TIGERS), pretty vain, extremely girly, and obsessed with clothes. I loathed basketball with exception to our own school's team. I felt like I was always trying to compete with some guys attention cause he was focused on some stupid basketball something. Boys were either playing ball, talking about it, watchin' games, playing basketball video games, watching game highlights on ESPN at 2, 4, 6 or 8:00, or walking round the town with basketball shorts on under their baggy jeans so that BOOM, at a moments notice, they could drop their pants and play basketball Immediat-damn-ly! Like "Thank God I have my basketball shorts on!!!" Hated it! And like the true girly snot I was at that young age, (and can still be today), I didn't like having to fight for anyone's full attention.

I had the cutest purses in high school. Sigh.

It's hard to tell from the pic how evil it was, sort of.

College proposed new challenges for this young wise woman of the world. Although stoked to go off to college I opted not to go too far from home cause truly, deep down inside, I would always be my parent's lil girl and was so totally attached to them. First problem, they (the evil Ohio State University Committee of Dorm Assigners - I just made that up), placed me in an all girl dorm!!! Bwhaaaaaat? There were 28 dorms on campus, a fact I'm proud to know, and only TWO of those dorms were all girl dorms!!! Mac and mother frickin Canfield Hall! I didn't choose Canfield. I guess I could say for a dramatic twist, Canfield chose me....A handful of my Heights High classmates suffered the same fate as I and were placed in Mac Hall. Why??? Whyyyyyy ? - I would cry out with arms wide open, looking to the rainy skies like Jennifer Love Hewitt in every scary movie ever made.

Living in an all girl dorm was doomed to suck for the following reasons:
1. Eeeeew
2. I'm at college! I need the full college experience of living down the hall from boys! (tee hee, boys!)
3. I hated girls, women, young ladies, whatever you wanted to call them. Please note that today that hatred does not exist within me as I am more comfortable in my own skin and embracing of the sisterhood of women.
4. The girl dorms had limited hours that boys could come over! Bwhaaaaaaat???? That's like what college was all about, right? Boys down the hall, hangin out on the quad, throwin the pig skin about..I'm just makin up shit now.

I could not wait to get out of that dorm. Seriously. I blame OSU for my low performance in my classes that freshman year. Although my extracurricular activities - non school related, AT ALL - might have effected me a tiny bit, it was really my dorms fault. Had they had not been so selfish, and just given me the desires of my heart, I would have probably done well that year, graduated Magnum Cum Something Or Other and be CEO of some kind of great whatever by some fancy name.

Let me break this down like an episode of an animal show on National Geographic: When the female lion leaves it's home town and goes off to lion college it needs to be in a coed dorm or the female lion gets really annoyed and eats lots of Cheetos, gaining the famous Freshman 15, and throws mean evil eyes at every other female lion in her Vagina face dorm.

Look at Auntie Brenna back in 1999! I had to blow this pic up so you could see my dorm room. It's littered with Spice Girl dolls and my fave Cabbage Patch, Ricky. Maybe I wasn't even mature enough for a coed dorm...Just sayin'

Dorm Life = Abstract Ricky Works of Art

Man on the hall! Nope, just me. I opted to look like a boy since we didn't have many around.

Women that I met and love to this day from Mac & Canfield Hall.

WEBBY

You want to hear a secret...shhhh. Many of the women that I met or got to know in those female dorms, turned out to be my bestest friends ever. BOTH of my children's God Mother's lived in those female dorms. What does that say? Maybe I didn't hate girls as much as I thought I did? Maybe I didn't require men to have a good time? Ya think? Nooooooo.... That year in the dorms was one of the silliest of my life. Watching endless episodes of Webster at 4:30 in the afternoon or the entire hall of girls getting ready to go out on the town! Good times! Thanks evil Ohio State University Committee of Dorm Assigners.

Bear with his God Mother Ce Ce.

Gia and her God Mother Auntie Colleen.

Talk to you later. See you at Part 3.

The Road to Embracing My Womanhood: Part One

Music: Destiny's Child "Jumpin, Jumpin"
Mood: Optimistic and weary

Hey hey now!!!!

Seriously, I didn't know that "Jumpin Jumpin" was gonna be the song playing when I started typing. How ironic. The lyrics say:

"Ladies leave your man at home, the club is full of ballas and their pockets full grown. 

And all you fellas leave ya girl with her friends cause it's 11:30 and the club is jumpin jumpin."

Let me go ahead and say, this blog post is NOT about getting to the club to meet some full grown pocketed ballas. Also, I do not do clubs. Not my scene. And 11:30 is so past my bedtime. And if I'm not asleep I'm under my blankets eating something with peanut butter on it and watching Adult Swim. BUT this post is about my reconnecting with everything about myself that screams "I am woman!"

Come. Buckle up. Ride with me on my journey of self-discovery. (Did that sound creepy at all? I was totally trying to put that vibe out there.)

Side ponytail. Can I hashtag that?

Back in the beginning of times, the 80's, I spent my young days as a girly girl. I enjoyed dressing up in my mom's heels, shoulder puffed dresses and magenta Fashion Fair lipsticks. I loathed all things physical. Sports, exercise (with the exception of Jazzericising, I could throw on some leg warmers in a second.), crossing monkey bars or climbing the rope in gym class. It wasn't that I just hated those things, but I was pretty scared of most of it. So let's see, likes to dress up, check, hated physical activity, check, boy crazy, oh yes, checkity check check!!! I was boy crazy as far back as I can remember. Elvis Presley and Davey Jones were some of my earliest crushes I can remember. In 2nd grade I heard a boy cuss in front of the classroom and I thought "Oh, well well. What are those words? I like him!"

Pink bedding, pink curtain, Fred Savage and NKOTB on my walls and my lady love Cabbage Patch Ricky Hetta in my arms. Oh and the rollers. Can't forget those.

By time I got to middle school, it was the 90's, leggings were prevalent in my closet (as they are today), and my cheeks were chubby as all get out. 

Side ponytails, scrunchies and cherry flavored chapstick helped me identify with my sprouting womanhood. Hahaha. Sorry. That's hilarious! 

My boy craziness went up a notch now that I had more 12 year old prospects to choose from. They made me giddy, childish, self-conscious and talk like a baby. I couldn't control it, the voice that is, still can't. 

In 1995 I entered high school. 

Cleveland Heights High School that is!!!! GO TIGERS! 

Y'all dont' know!

"Bone Bone Bone Bone Bone Bone Bone Bone Bone, 

tell me what cha gonna do, 

when there ain't no where to hide, 

when judgement comes for you 

cause it's gonna come...Hey now... "

Bone Thug. Look how Bizzy's hair blows in the winds of East Cleveland.

For the mother frickin record Bone Thugs-n-Harmony were not from Cleveland Heights and I was not from E. 99th but I dare you to try and tell anybody from Heights that they didn't really have a true connection with Bone!! You're liable to get caught up in a social room squabble.

Are we all thinking the same thing? Stacey Dash was too old to be playing a teenager!

Anywho, back on track. By this time my eyebrows were plucked and then drawn back in, my lips were lined with black pencil and filled in with deep plum Wet-n-Wild lip color (#508 to be exact), my closet was organized by color, Clueless was my Bible and I wrote down what I wore everyday as to not repeat an outfit for at least 45 days...I don't know if that was me being a young woman, or just being shallow....Yeahhhhh, I'm not gonna answer that.

     

My diaries were littered with boys names and "Oh my goodness, he talked to me!"- stories. My girlfriends and I found clothes not only to be an interest, or a passion, but a talent. Ah yes! It was a gift to be able to match my knee highs with the proper mini skirt and then the right feathery topped ink pen. Right? That's a gift, right. (Imagine me searching aimlessly for your approval.)

My only interest in sports were that games provided some social fun and our basketball team was pretty frickin' stellar so we got to visit Thee Ohio State University for state championship games. Our football team wassssss not so hot. I was a "trainer" for the team. What many may have perceived as me being a Water Girl was really a difficult job as a Sports Athletic Trainer. Oh my, sounds so dignified! Hahahahaha. Sorry, it's really funny to look back. One of the dificult "job" requirements was to ride on the school bus with the football team to and from games. Usually on the way to a game I'd be scoping the fellas, and on the way home scrunching my nose up from their sweaty fumes and covering my ears from hearing them talk smack about the team that just beat their lil Tiger tail feathers.....

.....I really feel like I have so much more to say. Therefore, so you may get back to your life and stop reading this blog because it is as engulfing as all three Fifty Shades books, I will stop for now. Stay tuned for more excitement of my adventures of wearing weaves, dressing like I was club kickin' it at all times, and eventually even becoming a wife and mother, and leaving the mascara behind.

Seriously, thanks for reading this cause I know you're at work and have other stuff you should be doing.

The eX Factor

Mood: Frustrated
Music: Gnarls Barkley, Crazy

"Maybe I'm crazy. Probably."

Pshh, no doubt about it.

So, as some of you may have noticed, my blog title refers to the fact that I have a past quite different from the life I live today. Is that what happens when you grow up? Not for me, I didn't let go of my old ways until I was well into what many would call "the growing up years." I live life differently today due to the fact that not only is GOD incredible, but I recognize him today. He is my true love.

As I think about what my life was, being an eX party girl I am flooded with gratitude that I didn't have to grow up, my awkward years or college years, with Facebook! I feel like things would have been so different up in Cleveland Heights  (Go Tigers!) if I not only had to stress about what I was wearing to school but also what haters were posting about me on their facebook pages. I'm literally gagging in my mouth right now. I guess old school children of the 90s, that we are, used to just roll our eyes at girls we didn't like and write the occasional mean threat in the bathroom, across the hall from the Social Room/Cafeteria. (I've never done that, swear!)

In modern day, I am "friends" with a lot more people from high school on fb then I was while I was actually in high school. Sure the current friendship is often the same as it was then, the occasional eye contact, wardrobe judgement or no communication whatsoever. But now, in 2012, if I think a girl looks pretty, I tell her! What a concept. Instead of me thinking mean things about her, because her shoes really are a-dor-able, I compliment her and move the hell on with my day.

I am even bummed to realize the number of fun ass people that I didn't hang out with back then, because they were smart, or not smart, trendy or not trendy. Some folks on fb seem kind when commenting on my photos, thoughtful when commenting on my status updates, or incredibly hilarious on their own pages. I totally missed out on possible great science class lab partners who could have had me cracking up, and possibly letting me copy an answer, or two.

What do kids do today? I've seen stuff about online bullying and sometimes I think "If someone is your fb friend, and talking shit about you, can. you. delete. them??? I'm not trying to sound rude, please forgive me if I do. I really just don't understand the cyber world for chirren today. Do they accept friend requests from all classmates or do the boundaries of the social sturcture still stand? I wouldn't last a minute, either way.

Fast forward from high school to college. When my drunk dialing, (head hangs in shame), was at an ultimate high. I would wake for the day, at 2:30 pm, wander to the closest Subway/Gas Station for another punch in my card and french vanilla cappuccino and my head would begin to clear and I would recollect my obscene, unneccesary and degrading actions of the previous night. I'd close my eyes tight and begin to regret it all, at least all that I remembered. Then I would go call Sally to find out what else happened cause I really just didn't remember. How I dreaded having to see the face of anyone I had drunk dialed the night before. To look at them, in there sober eyes, and think "yep, I did say that wierd ass shit to you last night. And truth is, once I get drunk today, I will probably call you again tonight and do it all over again." Gag!

I just started putting the phone and the bottle down as cell phones became more popular. Thank GOD! I can't imagine me, out there, with the convenience of being able to drunk text someone. Now I'm not so old, or so far removed, that I never did it. But it didn't get as awful as it could have.

And what about drunk facebooking? Is that a term? I've seen on fb how people, wives even, have hated on significant others, via their status updtes at 3 o'drunk o'clock in the morning. Ouch! Not only does the individual look like a fool to the person they call out but then everyone in the fb world, dating back to elementary school AND future employers get a peak at their level of  "Oh no they didn't!"

I would have been a hot mess, drooling over the romantic lyrics of Celine Dion, chardonnay bottle almost empty, and a crush's inbox within my reach. Gasp, I shutter to think about the possible consequences.

So for today, I thank God for the life I have, the sanity I hope to maintain, and the fewer ways I embarass myself. And to the tweens out there, posing and posting their entire Pussycat Dolls soundtrack-ed life (do people still listen to them?) out in cyber world, I say "Sorry for ya".