When Ken and I left for St. Louis last weekend we left the boys with my mother. I called to check in I asked what she was doing.

“Vaccuuming your stairs.”

“Oh. God love ya, Mom.”

On Sunday, my grandmother came over and mom decided to get in some digs about my current housekeeping du jour because for the last year and a half that I’ve been taking classes, I don’t even do it. Not anymore. No way. Nu-uh. NO. NO. NO. There are plenty capable people who live here who have been trained in the Kelly Way To Clean.
We sat in the living room and moved the piano bench out so they could play Scrabble on it while they sat in chairs (sidenote: Granny beat my mom - I love that.) and my mom saw a pair of socks that were near the piano pedals.

Mom: “I’m pretty sure that those same pair of socks have been there since I moved in here a few weeks ago.”

Granny: “Is that right?” She wasn’t addressing me, either. They were having a conversation about my housekeeping skills right in front of me. Instantly, I was 12 years old again. How do they do that?

Mom: “Yep. I’m thinking of cleaning Kelly’s house and retiring on the change I find.”

I’m not only a poor housekeeper, but I keep money all over the house.

Oh. And I’m lazy. To wit:

As I’m lying here on the couch I realize my battery is now red (RED! RED! FIX ME, KELLY! FIX ME!) so I decide to revel in my life as a professional sloth and ask Mason to bring me a power cord.

“Mason?“

No answer.

“Mason?” I try a little louder.

My mom doesn’t say anything, but she’s behind the couch where I am permanently working on my assprint on the middle cushion. I ask her if he’s upstairs and she says that she thinks he’s in the bathroom.

“Oh.” I say to her and turn my head to really bellow it out. “MASON! MASON!“

“I’m so proud of you. Don’t move. Just yell louder, Kelly!“

Of all the things she’s said around here lately, she redeemed herself with this final one:
“I think that every Friday’s menu from now on should include tequila. Lime, salt, and tequila. Mmkay?“

I’m not complaining that she’s living here. If she wants to feed the family on a diet of Mexican liquor made from agave, she can discuss the management of my household affairs all she wants.

I stayed up too late last night. Way too late. I needed a little something extra. Large sumatra with an espresso for the drive to work. It’s just about kicked in.

RW sent me something he had published a while back so this was awfully timely. Thanks RW! And so was his wife’s comment!

That’s all. Go get your groove on.

You’re welcome.

When the weather turns colder I am more likely to get a hot chai before work. One of the drive-throughs makes it better than any other and it smells like a warm gingerbread cookie in my entire car as I’m driving to school. It’s made by boiling tea leaves with milk, sugar (YES!), and cardamom. I had to look up “cardamom” to find that it is “the aromatic seeds of a plant in the ginger family” also known as Zingiberaceae. You don’t need to know all that. Just order a chai. Short. Four letters. Another four letter word is: good.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that I am still pissed about the whole rap music issue. Normally, I don’t hold a grudge, but damnit. This one gets me all fired up.

Never before when writing a post have I found almost as many e-mails in my inbox as comments on my blog writing expedition (sorry, Angela). Many of them were quite nice and came with disclaimers (”I’m sorry to comment here, but I didn’t want all your loyal readers everyone to jump my ass when I say what I’m going to say“) and only one was kind of mean (”What a hypocrite! You talk about cussing at your co-workers in one paragraph and then act disgusted when that one guy had an unprofessional ‘tantrum’ in your office!“) and one of them was a marriage proposal (For the last time. I’m not a lesbian. But, thanks! I’m still honored! And you had a lovely ring picked out and everything!) that I can’t possibly accept. Not at this time.

Even a friend from elementary school who reads me (Hi, Todd!) sent me an e-mail expressing his frustration that the same thing happens to him at work denigrating his musical choices. (I don’t really need to mention that he’s Black, do I? Oh. I do? Ok. He’s Black. Hi, Black Todd!)

Maybe I shouldn’t make one more reference to rap music without a) explaining that I do indeed like it or b) defending it as a musical form. The second, as a musical genre that appeals to many people, is the one that I hear more comments about that anything else. It’s usually in the form of critiquing it when trying to prove that it isn’t “music”. Music definitions aside, rap music is something I enjoy.

Even my good buddy Dave, a self-professed white guy (who knew?) has his favorites. And he has pretty good taste in music. But it was an e-mail from Liz that prompted me to really look back at my post to see if I came across as not liking rap. Her opening was great:

“Well…do you like rap?”

I wrote her back that day to explain that while I like it, it isn’t something anyone in my office ever heard me listen to while at work. Currently, if I am blaring anything from my car, it’s Mary J. Blige or Alicia Keys, so where they came up with the idea that my entire musical collection only includes rap was absurd at best.

Another thing she and I discussed in our e-mail exchange is how sure I was that this was a racist comment. While I alluded to the fact that it might be am positive that it was, it’s important that I clarify that it’s because of the culture from which that music stems. Blacks aren’t limited to liking only that genre, but the connotation that a) it isn’t music and b) it’s “bad” are what I initially heard when their comments were made.

So, I guess I’m sensitive to something else that I experience on a fairly regular basis. If someone is talking about a song or an artist that I’m not familiar with, I find that their incredulity at my ignorance of it is also completely unsophisticated. For example, I have been out with people from work and heard a song that they all loooooove and when I ask who the artist is I get a “What? You don’t KNOW who this is? Oh, my God! Are you living under a rock? Why don’t you KNOW who this is? What’s wrong with you.”

This assumption that I should know all their personal choices of music, seems, a little racist. That I don’t know who Toby Keith is (ummm….I do NOW since they’ve chastised me) or Kenny Chesney seems ludicrous to them. But if I were to ask them about Chingy or, well, Ludicris, they would look at me as if my brain shorted out right in front of them and they would have to call an ambulance because nerve cells and branching dendrites from the gray matter of my brain began oozing out of my ears.

Why do I have to know THEIR music but they don’t have to know MINE? Is their music so universal and “standard” that they can’t possibly imagine that I’m not familiar with it? Do they have a claim on what EVERYONE should know about music?

Really. Tell me. Was this inherently racist? Did I not hear them loud and clear in the undertones of their accusations? What am I supposed to think?