Multitasking?

I came upon this post on yahoo.com about this model who ‘shares a multitasking photo’.

Does this look like a multitasking mom to you?

Real multitasking as a mom:

I had a screaming baby, who wouldn’t let me put her down. I tried rocking her while attempting to prep a meal for her at the same time. I needed to warm some water to prep her meal but she wouldn’t let me put her down. So I had to strike a match to light the gas stove while still trying to soothe her. With one limb rocking the baby screaming diligently in my ears, the other limb was busy putting water in a pan and carefully putting it on the cooker. Those few moments were one of the scariest of my life, I was literally playing with fire. I mean that literally.While waiting for water to get warm, I got out her bottle, and with the one limb, removed the bottle cover, opened the can of milk, scooped some into the bottle, got the warm water from the stove, carefully poured into the bottle, returned the pan to the cooker, put the bottle cover back on, proceeded to shake up the mixture to the right consistency, ensured the temperature was just right for the relentlessly screaming child and then gave her the bottle. I didn’t sit down to give her the bottle because I had to keep rocking her gently as she fed. Had to ignore the burning pain in the limb that had been holding the baby until she was fed and calm. Once all was well in this baby’s world, she decided to be merciful to me and allowed me to put her down so I can attend to me.

So when I see a picture of a mom sitting down to have her hair done while she breastfeeds her child and I am told that’s what multitasking is, I feel the need to come out of my hiatus and stomp around a bit. This is the attitude some celebrities, no, privileged ones, put on to belittle genuinely struggling moms. And I honestly think they need to stop it right now!

Not like they will listen to me *scowling*

Fabulous o’clock

In recent times, everything has just been bleak, bleak, bleak. No joy.

And I thought it was just me.

A friend of mine (God-lover, married, has a job and a really good car) who was moving to her spanking new apartment, let slip the other day that she feels like her life has not started and that just depresses her.

Ooooookay!

In my head, I was like, for real? You are all put together, better than me. How can you feel the exact things I feel. Like she had no right to feel that way.

Fastforward to another conversation earlier today.
She has also been feeling out of sorts, really unmotivated and worried about the future. FYI, she is getting a condo with her fiance and she’s a bride-to-be. But she is worried about getting a good job after our Master’s program. She thought I wouldn’t have that problem, cos ‘I have options’. I don’t know where she got that idea from *scowling*.
She was gonna go on but I stopped her. I told her I am equally worried about my future, there are so many uncertainties, so many unknowns. And  clarified to her that she is not alone, a lot of us are walking around scared of the future. And we are right to feel that way, after all, we are not witches-we really don’t know what the future holds. What with tomatoes going for 4/N500, bag of rice going for N18k and Trump clinching all the delegates he needs for nomination. #thehorror
So, I have decided. Enough is enough. No more slinking around wondering if I’m gona be okay. So what if I’m not okay? That is nothing new. Whatever comes around to make me not okay, I will kick its ass like I kicked some ass in 2007 and in 2009 and in 2013.

But for now, I am going to just go to bed and sleep. God has told me to freaking hold my peace and that’s my current mission. After all, He is fighting for me.

So, here is me off to being fabulous.

Time

So, we had free reading week at school a couple of weeks ago. It was supposed to be a week of sleeping, no rushing out every morning and hitting the bed at night like a sack of potatoes, a week of general lounging and catching up on movies and shows I had missed. Asides fun stuff, I also planned on catching up on a couple of papers I am running behind schedule on. I had sufficient time to do all these cos, you see, I had no other responsibility so it shoulda been a breeze. But alas…it appears some things are easier said than done, some things are said and never done. And at the end of reading week as I headed back home, the realization dawned on me – I had simply refused to be productive. The first couple of days, I kept pushing the papers to the next day. And towards the end of the week, my body was just so lazy that I didn’t care anymore. At each moment when I was in the actual act of procrastination, I considered binding and losing the spirits of laziness, even that, I was too lazy to do. I think the clinical name will be ‘Sloth’ to be sincere.

 

In other news, there is this verse of the Bible that I hear aaaaa lot but never understood. “Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. Psalm 90:12. I have heard that verse for as long as I can remember especially at those birthday parties I am forced to attend. Even with the explanations provided at those parties, I remained obtuse. Until now.

I came across a different version in the Bible one of my rockstar sisters gave me.This Bible is  super amazing. In that Bible, the version of that verse reads “Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom” NLT. Gbam!

And it came to me. The mistake I made with my reading week. The thing is, in all fairness, as human beings, we do not understand the concept of time, hence the ‘teach us…’ part. We can’t hold on to time, make it pause for a bit or even slow it down. Time flies, our days go by swiftly and it is only those paying close attention that will realise how brief or short our lives are. Here today, gone tomorrow. February has come to an end, were you able to achieve all your plans for the month? Or did you procrastinate and pushed things into the next day like I did? My reading week taught me something important – our days are short. That is why we need to understand brevity of life so that we can be wiser in how we spend time. This requires a concious decision to value and respect time. Sleep less, focus more on your vision/ministry/projects/plans etc., pray more, start giving now (don’t wait until you are a billionnaire), start showing more love now, eat more veggies now, call your parents more now, impact your generation now, TY-Bello someone now…the list is endless.

The bottom line is we need to show more respect for time, ‘…so that we may apply our hearts to wisdom’.

What’s normal?

Aphrodite, (a Greek myth) is believed to be the goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation. She was the epitome of beauty, perfect neck, perfect hair, perfect belly, perfect everything; gods fought over her, not rich-bugatti driving-rolex wearing-accent speaking boys o; gods!

I read somewhere that the person that made the Aphrodite painting got various women to be his muses, got someone to be the arm, another to be the neck, another to be the legs etc. He took different parts of women and built them into one woman. One perfect woman. The ideal.

I read recently about the concept of understanding the normal body and the disabled body. Bear in mind, the disabled body is a continuum, from ugly face to no legs to discolored skin. The article I read gives an awesome description of what it means to have a perfect body, an ideal body. And there is also that pressure to aspire to this ideal, to be a part of or live within the ideal, to be an Aphrodite. Someone is always pointing out that blackhead that has chosen to rent a space on your cheekbone or casually mentioning how you have gained weight.

“If only I can just lose weight to be your size”, said an old classmate of mine who was about size 18. I looked at her in shock because incidentally, around that time I was struggling with my size 12 medium-orobo weight and desperate to be like my size-nothing sisters. Throughout that day, I walked on clouds. Shey somebori aspires to be like me, I have made it!

Reading that article reminded me of that incident. It got me thinking about how dissatisfied we humans constantly are. There is always a better to aspire for, a prettier face, a slimmer body. Cosmetics company, gyms, food companies etc. have built conglomerates off us. And now social media is getting wealthy off our desperation. So even if the body is completely fine, we will still find a flaw that must be fixed. We will find that stretch mark, that pimple, that wrinkle, that love-handle. It is like we live in a constant fear of not conforming. But conform to what? Or to who?

It is the same with disabled bodies, it will always be considered unsatisfactory, not because of health limitations, but simply because we consider it not pretty to look at.

Just as there is not Aphrodite, there is no perfect beauty and no perfect body. Love yourself and stop stressing over what doesn’t exist. Those women on posters and magazines don’t look like that. They are mere mortals like us. When God made us, He declared us ‘perfect!’ That is what counts, we are all different but differently perfect. And know that no matter how much you try, someone will always find a fault with you anyways. So love your size 18 and stop taking dangerous drugs. Stop exposing your skin to chemicals and free your mind of worries that do not exist. Add peace of mind and confidence to your morning routine and you will see the beauty radiate out of you.

 

Peace is a verb

I saw this and a light-bulb kinda went off in my head, like ding-ding-ding-guilty! Maayyyybbbe I don’t over-analyze with boys (don’t verify that fact) but oh, I do over-analyze everything in between. I have over-analyzed 2016 already and worried myself to death over it. Recently, I had to make a one-day to and fro trip so I had to catch an early morning flight. Over the days leading to the day of the trip, I constantly stressed out about making it to the airport in time, what if I wake up later than 3am (my mom says my sleeping method is a talent…I will Mayweather Jonah in a competition without breaking a sweat), what if I didn’t wake up late but the cab driver didn’t show up? What if the cab broke down on the way? What if something that looks like coke suddenly materializes in my carry-on (like what the shiznit???!), what if the plane refused to take off (oh, for real?!). I can go on…

For all my stressing out about stuff, what will be will be. And what usually ‘be‘ is that everything always go really well. And for the ones that do not, stressing out over them doesn’t make them better. My very smart big sister often warns me about this attitude, particularly about always depriving myself of fun and good stuff, saving up for ‘rainy days’, only for some other people to swap the money for their rainy days. I often privately have a good laugh at myself over that.

November is here, 2015 is on its way out. This year hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be. And thinking about that, I am reminded of this:

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” John 14:27 (NIV)

In the words of Lara George, how can we forget that He is Shalom??? Peace is an action word, over-analyzing the future or the past even, is not gonna change either situations, leave it and move on.

His huge, fat nose in my teeny-tiny biz

I got on the bus heading home and brought out my phone to check my messages like a bonafide cell phone junkie. It was a very short ride, the bus was packed full and I definitely could have waited till I got home but the withdrawal symptoms no gree me, I was almost physically scratching. *sighs* I checked my bbm and there was a message (my itch is getting scratched, yay!). It was a very short message (not so ‘yay!’ anymore) but from my boyfriend. He said ‘Have a great day babe’.

Now the dude beside me was peering into my phone (like he took me to the store, asked me to point to the phone I wanted and when I chose the phone, he bought it, bought the case, screen guard and loaded 100k credit on it).

  As if peering into my phone was not disgraceful enough, he decided to open his mouth.

Him: ‘Is that your boyfriend?’

Me: *silence*

I would think anyone would be very afraid to get caught looking into a stranger’s phone. To think this one was so blatant scared me a little. “Wonder where he got his confidence from”, I said to myself.

Now my boyfriend has his dad’s picture as his display picture, his birthday was 2 days ago but some people just don’t have the change-DP-regularly fever. I am fully persuaded that that picture will be there till the another birthday he can’t ignore comes up.

  **And I digress…back to the matter**

So I am guessing this gbeborun looked at my message, saw the picture of the sender and decided to put his nose where blended dried pepper abounds.

When he realized no answer was forthcoming, he decided to pester me some more.

Him: So you are dating an elderly man?

Egbami! See me see wahala. Like who died and made him boyfriend police? I don’t understand why people like to beg for correct wozzing.

Me: (Not lifting up my head from my phone) “How does that improve your credit score or is it pinching you in your brains?”

I have a feeling he wanted to whack me upside the head but thought better of it. Well, what do u know, we are at my stop. Got off the bus leaving him to ponder on the wisdom of poking one’s nose in other people’s businesses, especially complete strangers. That is if he is not busy pondering why I refused to say “Sorry  sir, forgive me for dating who I want to date, please can you recommend yourself?”

I realized later when I thought about it that people will always try to meddle in your life. Some will even go further by forcing their opinions of how to live your life down your throat.

You are driving too fast/You are driving too slow.

You should be submissive to your husband/ You should stand up for yourself and not take crap from any man.

You should shave you armpits/ You should grow out you armpit hair and dye is bright purple.

Your make up is too much/ “Eeessh, did someone die? What’s with the bare face?”

Our world is filled with people that seem to know more about our lives than we know it. During a football game you will see people analyze how they will do better than the players or the coach even though they can’t put a ball in a net to save their lives. So what if I decided to date my daddy’s mate? Maybe I have found that mature wine tastes better and I have decided to stick with that. It is my choice and it is none of anybody’s business even if it hurts their sense of whatever. Don’t be bullied into living someone else’s life or running another person’s race. Find you, own it and rock it. We all can’t be the same shape, size or color, otherwise there will be no variety and excitement to life.

And those whom He thus foreordained, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified (acquitted, made righteous, putting them into right standing with Himself). And those whom He justified, He also glorified (raising them to a heavenly dignity and condition or state of being). Rom 8:29 AMP.

The way God made us is the perfect way we can be. He is the only one who gets to complain about how we live. And He does that in complete love, no judgements. If anyone has complaints about you life, tell them to bugger off!