Much as I’d love to exercise my option of not writing a post-BlogHer wrap up, I can’t help but tell you how I became a raging lunatic within 15 minutes of landing in New York. Don’t worry. It subsided just as quickly.

But then I read this on Gawker and I had second thoughts. Then I recounted the story numerous times to friends who laughed and laughed and pointed fingers at me saying, “That’s the Kelly I know! You crazy, girl.” so I’ve decided that the best I can do is write about it. It’s been a whole week since I posted anything and life has clumsily gotten in my way of writing. Cleaning up smoke damage, talking to claims adjusters, and trying to make my house smell better (thanks for all the suggestions!) has taken priority.

On the plane ride to New York I was seated in the same row of an obnoxious woman. She was older and in a wheelchair when we were in the airport sitting area and she talked to everyone around her. This made me instantly stop making eye contact with her. She was saying things like, “Honey, you’re my angel! I’ve been waiting for my angels. People are just not nice anymore.” The valets who were assisting her backed away quickly because she was, well, awkward and obnoxious. She talked and yammered on endlessly to people sitting near her and then continued once she got on the plane (she walked onto the plane so that was weird) and then kept this poor couple hostage with her incessant talking. They were an attractive Spanish couple and the woman started speaking Spanish to them in her very best Peggy-Hill-como-estahhh-los-estudiantes (”es-tud-ee-ahn-tays”) voice and I just plugged my ears with my headphones because even eavesdropping on this was painful.

After we landed, I took a bus to Manhattan and wouldn’t you know it? Obnoxious Peggy Hill sat three seats behind me. We stopped twice to pick up more airport passengers heading downtown and there was some sort of scuffle going on with her and another woman. I ignored it and played with the contents of my purse, rearranging money and tickets and lip gloss. Another woman, a lovely meek Indian woman was arguing with her and then walked past me in the aisle to talk to the bus driver.

Bus driver: Ma’am, you need to take a seat.

Indian woman: I cannot! She won’t let me sit down!

At this point, the lovely meek Indian woman pointed at me with ferocity. Her emphasis of the word “she” got under my skin instantly.

Me: Excuse me? You didn’t ask me to sit down. I’d let you sit down if you asked me, but this is the first time you’ve said anything about the empty seat next to me.

Not only was I shocked that she blamed me at this point, I knew that Obnoxious Peggy Hill had something to do with this. The people sitting around me looked at me with stunned faces because they knew I was being pegged the pariah in this mess. I got up willingly and had her take the seat next to the window. Lovely Meek Indian woman became less lovely in my eyes but I knew she was flustered by whatever confrontation happened behind me and she tried to make up for it by asking me a question.

Lovely Meek Indian woman: So, where are you from?

And that’s when I heard Obnoxious Peggy Hill loudly proclaim the source of her wickedness and she made it impossible for me to answer Lovely Meek Indian woman’s question. The best part is that she was talking to no one in particular and just addressing the bus as her entire audience.

Obnoxious Peggy Hill: I’m from New York, we’re bitchy here and we don’t like doing what we don’t like to do. I’m having knee surgery and I had back surgery and oh, driver? Can we have some air in here it’s hot and I have diabetes so I’m not going to be hot. If you don’t like New Yorkers, you shouldn’t come here because this is just the way we are.

It is as this point when my mouth twitched and I know for certain it is about to get away from me. It is here where I turn into full on principal mode and go right after the source of irritation for everyone on this bus. It is, perhaps, my Chicago roots that solidly take hold and make me fearless. It is now when I stand up from my seat fully erect and launch into her.

Me: That is a PATHETIC excuse to be mean to this woman and not give up your seat. Being from New York doesn’t give you license to behave like that and pardon you from taking responsibility! You could have told her all that about being physically unable to move to let her sit down but you didn’t! Shut up about being from New York! I know plenty of New Yorkers and they’re just fine and nice so SHUT UP.

There was a smattering of applause from the people in the seats around us and I sat back down in my seat wondering if my days as a principal had finally permeated my gumption to take people to task. When I sat down I sighed heavily and shut my eyes wondering if Obnoxious Peggy Hill would respond. She didn’t.

Lovely Meek Indian woman: So. Hmm. Where are you from?

Me: (still speaking loudly at this point and emphasizing certain words) I am FROM where we CALL people on their BULLCRAP.

Lovely Meek Indian woman: Oh.

The remainder of the bus trip was uneventful save for the three people who mouthed thank you to me from their seats. After arriving at the hotel I met up with friends and began the whirlwind experience that is both New York and BlogHer conferences. I settled in for what I hoped to be a quiet evening with a few friends and we had pasta and champagne to celebrate seeing one another again. Here. I must post a picture to show that Obnoxious Peggy Hill didn’t ruin my trip.

Heather, Jenny, Karen and I posing in the mirror. Jenny’s Hair should probably get top billing in this photo.

After returning home I happened to read this on Chookooloonks (so. fun. to say!) about her 1,000 Faces Project. Watch all four minutes of this. The music is amazing and it makes me be-bop around in my seat.

It was simply an incredible amount of fun. You can’t fault a gal for wanting to have fun and not tell off strangers on a hot, sweaty crowded bus.

The most touching part for me to visit New York and attend the BlogHer Kirtsy party was seeing the items up for bid at the auction where artistic pieces were created from essays. Kati Sellers, an artist whose work, I believe is found at this website, chose my piece entitled “I’m Black Irish and I’m Proud” to watercolor paint. Here is one of them:

Not only did it take my breath away to see something created out of inspiration of my work, it made me break down and cry. A few folks grabbed me by the hands when I walked into the auction and exclaimed, “Have you seen your artwork? It’s amazing! Come on. Let me take your picture standing next to it!” but we didn’t really get that far because as soon as I saw it I wept and mumbled the words, “Please give me a moment. I can’t do this yet.” Where was that bold, brash woman now, huh? I cried again when I looked at the BlogHer site. Bidding is happening on eBay here and as soon as I put up a bid last night it was promptly outbid. I’m really hoping my sisters and I can combine our efforts to purchase this for my father. As yet, he doesn’t know about my blog or writing because he’s old fashioned enough to warn me about the danger of axe murderers on the Internet even though I’ve met hundreds of incredibly normal people from my online world. Only once was I leery of someone and that was a long time ago. I think I give off the vibe that tells creepers to stay away. It’s probably that stern principal vibe that comes on strong as well.

If we do win the bidding on these paintings (it’s a set of two) I know I will finally have to tell my father about my writing and pray that he’s not upset with my retelling of his story. Dad, I’ll say, I wrote a story about you and the response was overwhelming. See how much writing does to help us bridge the gaps of racism and start talking about important things in our country?

Maybe I’ll add, You’d be so proud of me for standing up to this obnoxious woman on the bus. Wait till I tell you that story, dad.

He’ll be proud. He raised me to do just that.

Not long ago, but in a land far far away, I got a wild hair to reach outside my comfort zone. Since I already like change and new challenges, I decided to apply for a freelance writing gig. Since I’m already starting work at a new school (a middle school! where the kids are middle schoolers! they are soooo my brand of crazy!) I figured I would go in with a new perspective and write daily about my experiences. That lead to feeling comfortable about my writing, warts and all. Disclaimer: I don’t have an editor for my blog which is why you’ll see typos, but hardly ever will you see something misspelled. You’ll, probably, also, see, too, many, commas. When I’m not sure about the issue with commas I think back to advice given to me when I did my student teaching. The principal of the high school called all the student-teachers together and said, “Remember this: commas are like sex education. When in doubt, keep it out.” Ever since he said that I’ve always wanted to use that line in teaching about grammar, but it never seemed appropriate.

It’s a long story how I even found out about it, but suffice to say that a writing job came open for Teaching Tolerance. I’ve gotten their periodicals for a while and have always been pleased with them. Teaching Tolerance is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center which was founded by two civil rights lawyers in 1971. After some back and forth with the editor, I got offered the job and will be writing for them on a regular basis. If you don’t see me posting here, I’ll likely be over at  Teaching Tolerance writing about inclusive classrooms, nurturing diversity, and, as always, I will be on the hunt for justice and equality. As usual, I will write from my own experiences, but if you have anything you’d like to see in print (IN PRINT, OMG) (I really hope my new editor isn’t upset about my use of OMG) feel free to pass it along to me for consideration.

Typical of me to make huge changes in my life like this, isn’t it? But it feels so very good to be doing something I love coupled with a topic that is such a core belief for me that it cannot be separated from my pedagogy. Wish me luck!

My personal style is changing. In fact, it is ever changing and I love that about myself. As I hurl towards my 40s (next year, people! Don’t get too excited to wish me a happy birthday just yet!) I am finding myself giddy about becoming a new person. A better person. Oh, hell. A phenomenal person. I am becoming the person I want people to talk about someday after I’m gone. Morphing into something different and some new style is actually fun. It happens every time I change my hair from naturally curly to straight or vice versa. I get to become a different person. Without a doubt, I am more fun with my curly hair. Straight seems to imply seriousness and I gotta say: the older I get the less serious I want to be about things. There is plenty of time in life to be saddled down with weighty and momentous trappings.

I’m ready to cut ties and let loose. Both in life and in my wardrobe. I think that maybe I am a cowgirl at heart.

Currently, I am obsessed with all things Junk Gypsy. I wrote about them not long ago when I got a care package from one of the owners, Jolie, who is a reader of this here blog. She is of the super cute and fun variety. We hit it on in rapid fire emails to one another and I’m pretty sure we are now cousins. The kind who show up at the family reunion and who sneak off to steal beers from Uncle Wally’s cooler, shake them up, and put them back in there to wait for it to explode all over him. Those kind of cousins.

Jolie is on the right and her mom and sister are next to her. If they get any more cute I’m going to have to hurt a baby horse.

Anyway. I love Jolie and her wares. I love them so much that I’m not going to do anything but show some of my favorite things from her little shop down in East Texas and hope that you take a visit. When I said I was doing this she actually agreed to give my readers a special offer so we’re partnering up to offer something special.

Check out a few of my favorite items:

The PoNchO ViLLA. This entire outift screams I AM MY OWN PERSON AND I AM FRINGY AND HAWT.

This is the EL CHeAPo ConCHo cuff which comes in turquoise, lapis, red coral and orange coral. I think you’ll need them all.

I simply adore the moonlight pendant. It has got to be one of the more versatile pieces from Junk Gypsy.

One of their many t-shirts outfitted with layered necklaces. A great, easy way to classy up a t-shirt.

Their TiE-DYE off the shoulder hippie ChiCK blouse. Innocently sexy. Purposefully sassy.

Lordy be, but I am all about the WANDERLUST these days.

Baby guitars. For when you’re feelin’ a little wild.

Here’s the special offer from Jolie and family over at Junk Gypsy. If you’re ordering something online you can add ‘MOCHA’ to your order and get free shipping. But wait just a second, little darlins. There’s more…

Coming soon I will be doing a giveaway of some Junk Gypsy goods that Jolie is sending to me. She has graciously agreed to outfit me for the BlogHer Conference in New York next weekend. If you happen to see me there, say “Howdy!” because I’m pretty sure I’m going to look like a seriously hipster cowgirl. While I love to get things, I also love to giveaway. So I’m taking some of those goodies she’s shipped to me and giving them away in a contest to be done the following week of BlogHer. I’m giving it away and not keeping it. GIVING IT AWAY will become my new mantra. To me, this was the best way to show off her stuff, garner new customers and lovers of Junk Gypsy, and do a good thing. In fact, I might just do Good Things Contests from now on without always seeking sponsorship. Because that’s how real cowgirls and gangstas and mommybloggers roll. Or so I hear.

The only thing I’m hanging onto, however, are a pair of Tony Lama boots because they are custom fit for my big ol’ country girl feet and you wouldn’t want them after I’ve broken them in anyway.

Yee haw.

I love reading other blog posts that describe what the do when they’re on vacation. Skiing, hiking, and ziplining or some such nonsense. Isn’t ziplining a word? I thought that’s what it was called, but since I’m terribly uncultured in the art of vacation it’s just a crapshoot. My version of a vacation is usually going up to see family and friends in the Chicagoland area and dining out and eating with family. See how this works? Life in my family revolves around food. Eating is far more sexy to me than taking a cruise and letting the kids watch IMAX movies and whatnot.

Right here and right now I am going to apologize for overusing the word ‘whatnot’. It’s not my fault. One of the summer reading books I’m enjoying is an audible book that I’m listening to on my iPod. It’s Kathryn Stockett’s “The Help” and listening to it is affecting my non-existent southern accent because for the rest of the day I will suddenly add extra syllables to words. Early on in my listening one of the characters used the word “whatnot” and now I am killing that word. And whatnot.

Let me share my very sexy life with y’all for a moment. Today, I spent time cleaning out my refrigerator and there were too many things that had to be thrown away without me documenting it for my shame to be shared throughout the land. I am pretending that I am a princess today and it really helps to clean out your own muck while wearing a tiara. TRUST ME. So, I’m cleaning it out and listening to “The Help” and then my phone dings at me to say I have an email and I read that I was nominated for an honor at the closing ceremony for BlogHer this year. You can find the post here with all the other entries. Someone nominated me and I don’t know who it was, but thank you nonetheless and whatnot.

The blog entry that was nominated was “I’m Black Irish and I’m Proud” and it might be weird to say, but it’s one of my favorite posts that I’ve written and also one that was painful to write. Also currently on BlogHer is a piece on cyberbullying by Gina Carroll that I got interviewed for a while back. It sums up my frustration with dealing with it as an administrator and yet doesn’t even come CLOSE to the mess that this little gal is in right now. I watched the videos this morning just shaking my head that an 11-year old had that much power over what she was putting out on the web and then her screaming father reminded me all too well of the kinds of things I might hear when they want us to clean up the mess. She is a complete brat and plays with her bangs so much I kind of want to make her cut them off, but that’s neither here nor there.

A friend of mine also emailed me today that she nominated me for the Black Weblog Awards and reminded me that since they are now taking nominations I should go ahead and pimp myself out so there you have it and whatnot. If you’re inclined, please nominate me for Best Personal Blog.

Do it because you love me. Do it because I have no food in my refrigerator. Do it because I said please.

And whatnot.

Some marvelous things happened this week. One of my favorite parts about having a blog and sharing things online with friends (yes, I said FRIENDS) is that people read my words carefully and generally care for me. That’s a really nice thing to have in life anyway and I am blessed with some pretty fantastic friends, online and not.

First, my mom is feeling better and getting around nicely and losing lots of the water weight she’s been carrying around. Small blessings for health, I say. It’s made me far more aware of my own health and I’m exercising a lot and eating more vegetables and trying in general to be positive. Would you believe that I even tried a little bit of ice cream and that it didn’t make me violently ill now that I’m lactose intolerant? Weird. I can’t explain that one.

Next, I had some friends over this week for a movie night that was supposed to be outside on the projector but Mother Nature graced us with blazing heat so we settled for modern A/C  in my living room to watch  “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” and shared wine and guacamole and black bean & corn salsa and Hypnotiq. The only thing I will say about that is that it pays to be friends with really young people who’ve just come off the college scene because they know how to make The Incredible Hulk drink from Hypnotiq (mix it with Hennessey) and do you know what happens then? THEN, you have a real party where you do dramatic readings of Twitter streams and it becomes a hilarious event. (I would upload some pictures from that night, but my cord is missing that goes from my camera to my laptop) (there should be a word for what that cord is, but I don’t know it). We have decided that next time we will view that blockbuster chick-flick, “Spice World” which is supposedly a great film. Yes. Film.

This is a video from my friend Alex who started taping Patrick doing these dramatic readings of DeShanee’s tweets. The background music is “Ashokan Farewell” because we were doing this a la Ken Burns.

You’ll also see friends Jeanette and Steve and Lynne as the camera (a la Ken Burns, remember?) pan slowly across the kitchen table. I spent most of my time finding new funny ones for Patrick to read and covering my mouth with my hands and laughing. Good times.

To cap off all the great things that are going on at Chez Mocha Momma I want to do a birthday shoutout to my friend Karen of Chookooloonks (you can tell she’s my friend because I mention her like all the time) who is happy to announce that she’s 43. I, however, am happy to announce that she wants nothing more for her birthday for you to go out in the next 24 hours and do something for yourself. Her words and an image from her book campaign below:

It could be having a great meal, taking a perfect bath, reading that book on your nightstand that you’ve been meaning to read, booking that holiday you’ve been tempted to book or just lying in the sunlight for 30 minutes.  Whatever it is that will make you happy today, please go do it.  In fact, I beg you to go do it.  I’d love to think that on my birthday, people all over the world are ensuring that they’re having a great day.

The comment I left for her was:

For your gift today I will do the following:

work on my book and devote a full 2 hours to writing

take a jacuzzi bath today now that I actually have a jacuzzi bathtub

give myself a pedicure

do one of those home facial kits that I’ve had in the bathroom cabinet for too long

read from one book on my nightstand (you caught me!)

and love the people in my presence with a fierceness (smothering with kisses, hugging, telling him pointedly that I love them).

So, Karen, my dear sweet, encouraging friend of a certain age, these are your gifts today. They are done in your honor. I love you. Happy birthday.

xoxo

Since I’ve moved, I now have a writing space where I am practicing daily to devote 2 hours to that craft. Devoting that much time to writing means that I can’t always put up a blog post and I’m willing to sacrifice that time. Many other things happen there like messing around with my colored pencils and organizing my bills and doing crafty workbook-y stuff in the book “How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything”. It’s a very Zen-y, Buddhist-y, self-discovery type thing that helps me work out some kinks and I highly recommend it since this is my second time through it. I like to think of it as my Artist’s Way with crayons and glue sticks.

My messy desk that somehow doesn’t contribute to my messy mind.

Besides that, I sit and look out the window where I have placed a photograph from Karen of a sunflower that she gave me years ago. It inspires me to see it and to read her words from time to time. (Maybe I’ve mentioned that? I’m not poking around in my archives to find out, though.)

The sunflower in my window.

Finally, a bit of good news that came for me from a friend I met in California years ago when I was there for work. Her name is Lara and she’s quite beautiful. Let me show you a picture of her she used for a post that makes me crack right up when I see it.

Anyway. Lara. Well. Remember how a few posts ago I was all woe is me? Well, this friend did something amazing. Lara sent me an email this week about a windfall of money that she received and she wants to buy me a plane ticket for BlogHer in August. It’s really hard for me to accept things like this especially since I resolved that I wouldn’t go and stretch my budget too far. After many conversations about her wanting to do this and how she didn’t know what she was supposed to do with it and how I just wasn’t sure about it, she convinced me. I usually hate publicly whining about things, but then I was talking to Karen again (REALLY. SERIOUSLY. I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF THAT WOMAN.) and she said that for her birthday I must accept and she keeps teaching me to accept things, good and bad, and that all of those things contribute to the forward motion of life we’re in so, for whatever reason, I AM GOING TO ACCEPT AND GO.

Happy stuff, y’all. Accept and go.

Have something happy or positive to share? Please do. I can use all the goodness you can spare.