this page renders for shit in IE/Win. Why do people still use IE anyway, and WHY would you STILL use IE on a Mac? Don’t you have to like specifically look for the app in the dark pits of nested folders? That’s telling you something.

I’ve been trying to put my grandmother on to Firefox, especially since she basically had to have her computer rebuilt because it was so full of popups and spyware and dialers (thanks to my randy teenage cousin and his unsupervised internet exploits). However, my grandma is a woman of habit. I’m one step away from deleting the icon from her desktop, but I’m afraid she’d call Bellsouth irate because her internet isn’t on the computer anymore. le sigh.

Last week she offered to send me my grandad’s and uncle’s old Verizon phones since mine has been showing its tail lately, and I could just have my number transferred over. But first she asks me if Verizon will make me pay any delinquent bills on their accounts before I can use the phones. That was the first sign that this plan was not gonna work out for me. So the phones arrive in the mail an they look like crap. They were both new, so I’m not sure what the problem is. Come to find out, Gramma decided to disinfect the phones with rubbing alcohol and ended up stripping the metal/plastic off the face of the phones. Now, after seeing that you’ve mucked up one phone, WHY WOULD YOU DO IT TO THE OTHER ONE? Gramma, I love you, but this has got to stop. This is the same person who had me itching like a crack fiend for days because she washed all my underwear in straight colorsafe bleach (didn’t read the bottle). My Gramma is a smart woman, but she just straight doesn’t follow directions. I wish I’d known about this back in the day when I was getting beat for doing something off the wall.

The moral of the story is: Grandmas are helpful, they just need to be watched.

Yesterday I was thinking about where my mind was when I was a kid, and how my perceptions of the world were all based on my limited experiences growing up in podiddly Florence, SC. For example, all of the black people I’d ever seen lived in one story houses. All the two story houses I ever saw in Florence were in white neighboorhoods. Therefore, all black people lived in one-story houses, and all white people lived in two-story houses. The execptions to this were the Cosbys, my uncle Charles, and our family friends the Hams, but they were different because because they were in “big cities” (New York, Baltimore, and Charlotte, respectively.) I did know some black people who had stairs or at least steps inside their houses, so this is why I still have a fervent desire to live in a split level home or one with a recessed living room. When our neighboors on the street behind our house added a second story to their home, it only reaffirmed my belief that black people, at least in Florence, couldn’t live in a house that was originally a two-story. The best we could hope for was to be able to add on. And I was ashamed, because that was about as bad as having an above-ground pool.

So, black people for some reason could not be “rich,” or at least not as rich as white people. I thought that all white people—and I’m really serious—were fantastically rich like the people on soap operas, and they lived soap opera lives in their two-story houses. Black people could only be “kinda rich”. I figured the richest black people in Florence had to be the Curtis Mathis man, my neighboors the Jetts, and my assistant principal and her family because her daughter wore ribbons in her hair on regular school days. White girls wore ribbons, and black girls wore those big balls or the elastic pony-o’s. I tried in vain on several occassions to tie my hair in ribbons but I couldn’t; this was obviously because I was not rich and therefore had to leave ribbons alone. The Jetts had a gigantic satellite dish in their back yard, and you had to get a pass from the government to do that because a person with a satellite could talk to astronauts the way my grandfather could talk to truckers with the CB radio in his van. The Curtis Mathis man was pretty much like a president or something, because he owned a TV store that sold big screen TVs. When I saw his name refrenced in a Judy Blume or Beverly Cleary book I was floored: this man must be famous. Why is he in Florence? I was thirteen before I realized that the man who owned the store was not Curtis Mathis, and this was after I’d been in his daughter’s wedding and developed a deep distant crush on his grandson. I give myself a bye on that one.

I also remember the day it finally struck me that the Cracker Barrel was not so named because only white people ate there. I was in the fourth grade.

Looking back, it seems really stupid, but when you put it all together, how does a kid know anything different than what she grows up with? Just going by TV and my daily life, I had the wonkiest, most screwed up view of what my life was going to be like, and if I hadn’t been such a voracious reader, I don’t know how I would have turned out. Eventually through books and magazines and anything else I could get my hands on, I realized that I wasn’t really poor at all, that black people could live anywhere they wanted to, that no one really lived like the Forresters on As the World Turns, and that I wasn’t doomed to be troubled teen on Geraldo simply because I grew up without a dad. I learned that there was a great big world beyond Florence that wasn’t inaccessible to me, that Charlotte wasn’t the most far-off place in the world, and that maybe someday I’d be able to go to New York, because there weren’t really huge rats like Splinter roaming around.

I live in a two story house in Charlotte and I’ve never been close to going on Jenny Jones. I wear ribbons in my hair whenever I want to, and the Cracker Barrel has some really good food. Satellite TV has nothing on digital cable, although satellite radio is pretty sweet, and everyone knows I’ll hop a train, plane or taxicab to anywhere—even New York—whether someone’s coming with me or not. I even braved Harlem alone at night to go to Amateur Night at the Apollo. I’ve been to Disney World and held my grandfather’s hand while we walked through the Epcot Ball that his line made the joists for, and done all kinds of seemingly small things that I truly never thought I’d be able to do, because I was just a black girl in Florence. So for every kid in every city, town, farm, and ghetto… dream big. You just might make it all the way to Charlotte after all.

Spent the weekend in Florence with the family. I did succeed in getting a hold of some Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I think I ended up eating one chocolate and…6 glazed? Yes. Six glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts. All between lunch and dinner. I’m such a hog.

Wanda, Greg, Kristin and Gregory also came down, so the weekend was a lot of fun. Gregory starts school on Tuesday and Kristin became a woman on Thursday so we had a lot to talk about. I really wish I had my digital camera because I surely would have posted a video of the “dance contests” Gregory kept wrestling me into, but oh well. I just love my familypeople more than anything in the world, and I’m glad they keep me around.

These funky children are leaving my home today (spectacular yessss!) and I’m foregoing my morning jog since I’m getting my excercise bike later today. To all who ever slept on The Great Effort, today I sneer. Later, when I am svelte once again, I will laugh in your general direction.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what this Effort is for. It’s definitely to lose this belly weight that I’ve built up over the summer. It’s definitely to have slimmer thighs. I’m not buying any more clothes, so I really need to fit COMFORTABLY into a size 10 by the time I start school and have to wear something other than pajamas and sweats all day. If my clothes were all 12/13’s, I’d probably just stand my ground at 180 and keep it (not) moving.

But I can’t shake the feeling that there is a much more sinister—well maybe not sinister, but at least obsured—reason that I’m so fixated on losing weight. I mean, why do I have the urge to jog at 5 in the morning? (Really, I’m forcing myself not to go out… i’ll have my bike back in just a few more hours) Why do I own an exercise bike? Why am I eating yogurt?? I’ve never had this kind of willpower before and it’s kind of shocking to me.

I definitely want to be more attractive by the time school starts. I know it’s superficial, but I’m starting over with completely new people. I don’t want to be “that girl”... you know, the chubby one with the great sense of humor? At the very least I turn into that girl over time, but I try not to start off that way. Because people do judge you by your looks. I don’t want to come off as sloppy at first bat (as my mother says, “not well groomed”) because that’s not who I am; that’s who I become when I feel like shit and I want to push people away. But that’s not my life anymore, so I don’t have to be that fat girl.

So being superficial is just going to have to do for now. It’s making me get up and move my butt, and meet some of my neighboors. It’s helping me to build a healthy heart and body so I won’t have old, tight muscles and a skippidy heart and I won’t get winded walking up a flight of stairs. I’ve found a skin care regimine that works and I’m sticking to it really well; no more spottiness and having to hide behind tons of makeup and glitter to feel pretty. No more “I can’t go out because I don’t have anything to wear.” And I can finally stop making excuses for not getting this surgery that I desperately need. (Stick a pin in that. I’ll address it later) I just feel kinda close to splendid and I like the direction of progress I’m moving in.

And I don’t mean cool-funky. I mean stank-funky. Like, don’t warsh yo’ ass funky. WTH is the issue with children that they can’t stand to bathe? I remember being that age and being so worried that I might smell. I carried deoderant in my bookbag and gave myself a little wipedown after outdoor lunch. My cousins—let’s let them remain nameless—are 11, 13, and 14 and they have no problem smelling like a package of spoiled meat. How can they stand to be alone with themselves, much less all holed up with each other?

Now, I’ve been known to skip a shower or two over the weekend… when I’m in my house, by myself, not going anywhere. I surely will not cross the threshold of my home smelling like a wet dog. These kids really feel like it’s alright to take a 45-second shower and roll the f%@# out!! I’m not one to tell somebody else’s kid they stank… BUT you can be sure that if I were the one driving them hither and thither, they would sit their stinking selves in this house—actually, outside this house—until they could wash and meet some kind of standard of cleanliness.

Damn!