Shoot, I haven't logged onto Xanga in so long that I'd totally forgotten both my username and password! It's a shame I know. But someone reminded me today that I do miss blogging, I miss writing period. I've been sort-of using Twitter as an outlet to fulfill the urge but of course it's not quite the same. It's just that, for me, when I've been gone so long, it's hard to pick up where I've left off. For some reason, I feel like I'm having an affair when I haven't written in long time. It's as if writing is my partner but from time to time I don't feel so much like being in a relationship anymore so I step out on her with cheap hussies and skanky hoes. I know it's crazy but I've felt that way since I was a child and would write in my very first journal -- a pale blue and white checkered 'little house on the prairie' one with a tiny lock and key. My favorite aunt gave it to me for my birthday when I was probably, what? 10? and it was the best gift I'd ever gotten. I'd write in that thing RELIGIOUSLY. I'd write in it so much that I used to walk around with it everywhere I went just in case I needed to write something while I was on the go!
But if there was ever a time when I hadn't written for a while, I'd feel so ashamed and guilty about it that I'd hide the journal from myself and try to forget I even had one - just so I wouldnt feel so bad about not writing. That's exactly what I've been doing with my Xanga - hiding it from myself and trying to forget it even exists. It rarely works though, just like when I was a kid. I'd still think about writing everyday.. about how much and missed it and wanted to be back on good terms with it again. Lately that feeling has been beating me over my head with a stick! The guilt, the feeling like I'm a bad person, the... 'I miss my boo' kinda feelings. She always takes me back though,whenever I'm ready. She stands there with open arms ready to forgive me even when I've neglected her for so long. I'm coming back to her soon.
Real Soon.

In the mean time you can catch me on Twitter - @ e_exodus

...and I realized more than ever this morning that I am truly my father's child. I've shared a little about his horrible eating habits as it pertains to his type 2 diabetes and my utter frustration with him. But, for the most part, I'm so discouraged and fearful of where those habits could lead him, that I prefer not to even think about it. There are so many times I just glaze my eyes over and pretend I don't see him drinking sugary drinks or eating cakes and pies. There are times when I wanna scream and yell at him but, because I'm HIS child and he has probably never raised his voice to me in my entire life , I just can't see myself doing that. I choose to walk away and let him be with no more than a raised eyebrow in his direction. I'm sure he likes my new silence on the subject when he's doing wrong but he hates it later on when he's complaining about an ache here and an ache there.. I have no sympathy. I say, 'I'm sorry to hear that' in the coolest tone I can muster and then walk away. I'm sure that makes me sound like a horrible daughter but I just can't help it anymore. Lately though, I must admit, I have noticed that he's been trying some. For the first time lately I've been hearing him say,
"Well, I really want this -- insert random junk food here -- but I know it's not good for me so I guess I'll leave it alone, grumble, grumble,grumble"

He's nowhere near where he should be but a little improvement is better than none I guess.

Which is more than I can say for myself. Last night I went to bed feeling fine. I was particularly tired after having a long day the day before which included me cooking all morning from around 7 until about 11. Then I cleaned, ran errands and later on took my sister out for some driving practice. I tried to take a nap after all that but since I abhor naps, I just couldn't do it. Long story short, I ended up staying up until 3am in the morning flittering around online. So last night I was beat! As much as I missed and wanted to talk to babe, I said goodnight to her after only about an hour which is rare for us. I brushed my teeth, started my music up and climbed under the covers..before long I was drifting off into a peaceful sleep.
It was peaceful that is, until around 4am. That's when I woke up feeling like I'd been running a marathon in my sleep. I wasn't sweating but my heart was racing out of control! I could feel the blood rushing through my veins and I swear I could even HEAR it as it 'thumped' in my ear. My chest felt like it was going to explode and I started to panic. I wanted to scream. I wanted to call babe who always calms me and acts as my doctor for any ailments I may have. I wanted to go into the kitchen, grab my pills and pop a few. I wanted to rifle through my drawers to find the Bayer aspirin since I heard they can prevent heart attacks which I was pretty positive I was having. I wanted to do all those things but I couldnt/wouldnt move. I was afraid any slight change in my position would make things worse so I just laid where I was and breathed deeply.Then remembered I read somewhere that short breaths work better in these situations so I did that. Mostly,I just prayed that God would calm my heart rate and allow me to see one more day.

I knew why it was happening and I wasn't surprised...just scared to death. I mean , nothing's more frightening thing to be WOKEN UP by your heart trying to break its way out of your chest cavity. It's happened to me before - a few times actually, ever since I confirmed about two months ago that I have severely high blood pressure for a 27year old. Ever since my 'diagnosis' I've been half-heartedly working to correct it. I say half-heartedly because my efforts really haven't been much to shake a stick at .
SOMETIMES I exercise..SOMETIMES I take my pills but then stop or skip a few for fear of dependency. SOMETIMES I eat right but then fall off the wagon when there are tempting(salty) things in the kitchen. Recently, I've been employing a natural cure: drinking a few capfuls of (nasty) apple-cider vinegar in water mixed with a little lime to cut the flavor. It actually seems to be helping but I skip that sometimes too when I feel like being in denial about the whole situation.

I'm a mess.

I can't rightfully say a damn thing to my dad because when I think about it, he's doing better than I am. At least he takes his meds when he should and he visits his doctor often.I think I owe him an apology for my snotty behavior when I'm in the same boat as he. I've been so blinded by my denial that I couldn't even see it until this morning. When I was laying in bed last night shaking like a leaf, checking my pulse every few seconds and praying, I was feeling real sorry for myself. I played the 'why me' card over and over in my head making a checklist of all the reasons why this shouldn't be happening to me. But then I walked into the kitchen this morning, saw my dad sitting there eating something I knew he shouldnt have, I realized...I'm the cause of my high blood pressure...I'm the reason I'm sick. I'm the reason I'm not getting much better. And if this shit kills me, I won't have anyone to blame but me.

but.. I just needed to update..it's been too long..

The Narcissist?

After babe left, I stayed in Nassau for a few days at my sister’s apartment. I call her place, “the desert”, because as a broke, college student living in a three-room apartment, she doesn’t have very much. Her car has been in the shop now for a couple months so she walks, hitches rides with friends and catches the bus. Her cupboards are usually bare until my mom visits and fills it up with groceries. I mean, I don’t know what she spends her monthly allowance on but apparently it’s not food – or maybe it’s fast food but obviously not groceries
When I got there, I looked into her cupboards and saw a box of pasta, a couple instant soups, a bottle of coconut rum she said someone gave her and some condiments. In the fridge, there was: a pitcher of kool-aid, some eggs, more condiments, a few slices of bologna and some leftovers from a meal my mom had cooked the last time she visited which had been a good three or four days before I got there so I wasn’t touching it! After seeing all that, I immediately called my grandfather and had him come pick me up and take me to the store just to make sure we had at least a week’s worth of food while I was there.

She has basic cable but her landlord’s currently out of work and is therefore surviving SOLELY on the rent from his only tenant -my sister. That means, sometimes when he can’t afford to pay the cable bill, they shut it off completely and there’s no telling when he’s able to get it turned back on. As a result, her apartment becomes even more primitive. Such was the case when I was there this last time - no cable for half the week.
Thanks to me, food was taken care of but there was nothing to do and no vehicle to go anywhere. Needless to say, I was losing my mind so when she asked me if I wanted to go to school with her on my last day there I jumped at the chance.She called a friend of hers to come get us - they share some of the same classes and so homegirl is kind enough to pick her up every morning.
When we got to her campus we met up with a few of her other friends and got some breakfast then we hung out with them most of the day. At least at her school I was able to check my email and people-watch. Her friends were for the most part….hott. I was like, “where have you been keeping these girls?” And at least two of the 5 or 6 that I met were exceptionally pretty. There was one in particular who seemed to take to me and made a special effort to talk to and sit by me all day. She was cool and pretty but talked a little too much for my taste. Plus, she had that same quality most girls 4 or 5 years younger than me possess - which is why I generally don’t mess with them and why dating babe was such a huge exception for me – she talked WAY too much about stuff that didn’t matter like: name-brand jeans, trying to decide what club she was going to on the weekend and discussing movies I could never see myself actually PAYING to go see. By lunch, I was so sick of her that I desperately wanted to bolt. Eventually, I got so bored that I ditched them all and spent the rest of the afternoon in the Starbucks across the street listening to my ipod.
From there, I went in search of Nadia…aka, the “first love”, the girl that turned high school and junior college into my own personal Dawson’s Creek filled with drama and all that teenage angst. We’d been through as much as any young couple could go through and much more. None of us really knew what we wanted to do after highschool so our parents (completely coincidentally) ended up sending us to the jr. college on another island. Even though we weren’t even speaking to each other at the time, we decided to move in together after the first semester. BIG MISTAKE! It was good for a while but then it turned into something ridiculously ugly and unhealthy. We kinda went buckwild with each other and then with….everyone else. Eventually we broke up (again) and after that, I turned into a huge hoe-burger and she started dating an abusive guy. I actually witnessed her getting beaten on a couple of occasions! That was the last straw for me.
After a year, I realized that I wanted more for myself than some toxic, destructive, on and off, relationship/friendship. So after my last final that semester, I jumped into a cab headed for the airport and never looked back. After that we only caught passing glimpses of each other over the years and talked on the phone once or twice. My sisters and my mom still talk to her when they see her and she asks about me but I hadn’t seen her personally in ages. I wasn’t sure I WANTED to see her necessarily I mean, I’m long done with that part of my life. But, at the same time, I’ve heard so many rumors about her from my family over the years that I guess I wanted to see for myself how many of them were true.
My mom told me just the other day that she saw her, they talked and she asked for me..but that she heard, “she was living a lesbian (and mom put a special emphasis on LESBIAN) lifestyle.” I was like, “really mom? I hadn’t heard” while quietly chuckling to myself. My sister told me she strolled in all loud and drunk one night at a restaurant she was at and my sister said she was kinda embarrassed to know her. Plus, I heard she got married. In fact, the invitation’s still in this house somewhere and I’ve seen it myself but I know there’s something more to the story. I heard she married someone for immigration purposes - either for her benefit or his.

Anyway, like I said, I was curious and I knew babe wouldn’t care so I went looking for her umm …establishment. She owns an adult store not two minutes from my sister’s campus. It’s hilarious to me because that’s so her… that’s exactly the kind of business she would own. For her it’s not at all a stretch to go from being Ms. Bahamas to selling vibrators and “Sisters with Booty Vol. 5” Lol.
I knew where the store was, I’d passed it a bunch of times but never had the chance to go in before. When I walked in Nadia wasn’t there. There was only one employee working that day and she told me that I could wait, look around and that her boss should be in within the hour. Within the hour? I asked If she could call her and let her know I was there and somehow she didn’t have a cell number…for her BOSS! I was like, okkkkkkkkk, I’ll just wait a while. So I did..I waited and waited and waited. After I’d probably looked through every single adult magazine and DVD in the store, I struck up a conversation with the cashier girl. She was nice but seemed to “fix her shirt”, exposing her abundance of cleavage to me way too many times for it to be a coincidence. I noticed she seemed to kinda cover herself when other costumers walked in but with me she was cool just exposing all her ‘business’ for some strange reason. I dunno. I decided after about 30mins that I’d had enough waiting and I left. I left a note letting Nadia know I’d been there and my numbers and what-not just so we could catch up but I doubt she’ll call. It’s just not her style so I guess we’ll ‘link’ another time. Or maybe not, who knows.

I walked back to the Starbucks to wait for my sister to be ready to go. I had to catch my boat home in a matter of hours and I wanted to catch a quick nap before. We decided to catch the bus home. So we walked to the bus stop and waited. This bus stop was right in front of a traffic light so whenever the light turned red people would have to stop basically right in front of us. For a few uncomfortable seconds, we would be forced to look awkwardly into some stranger’s car, listen to their music and wait with them for the green light. One lady pulled up and starting calling out stuff to my sister I figured they knew each other so I looked away not paying attention until the light turned green and I noticed she was smiling and looking in my direction as she drove away. I asked my sister what the deal was, thinking it must’ve been a friend of the family I didn’t recognize or someone. She said the lady was convinced that I was her cousin for a second and that she had to really look at me to make sure. Even then, she wasn’t positive so she had to roll down the window and ask my sister who confirmed that no, I wasn’t who she thought I was. My sister said that the lady also added that her cousin and I could be twins. I found it hilarious but I was so curious and wished I could meet the cousin and see our supposed resemblance for myself.
I’ve never really seen anyone that I thought truly looked like me. One or two people have said I bear a resemblance to my dad but I don’t see it. Some have said my favorite aunt (on my mom’s side) and I USED to be close to identical when I was a ‘wee laddess’ but now that I’m grown, that resemblance seems to have faded. I guess I just look like myself which is cool but every now and then I think it would be kinda fun to actually see someone and say, “wow, we could be twins…”

People tell my girlfriend all the time that she looks like former American Idol, Jordin Sparks, and it’s true. Although I think babe’s much hotter, they are about the same complexion, height and size. They’re both bubbly, energetic and cute. They both have insanely deep dimples; a feature I’m absolutely crazy about cuz I think dimples are so incredibly sexy.
Babe doesn’t necessarily agree with the comparison but I can tell she doesn’t mind either. Jordin’s a beautiful woman after all.

I definitely don’t have a celebrity look alike. I barely have a non-famous look alike, according to what I’ve seen personally anyway.

A few years ago, I was visiting some friends on another island and we were all walking into a grocery store one night. As we were picking out a shopping cart, I got that weird feeling you get when someone’s watching you? I turned around to see this older lady staring right at me. I was just about to grab the cart and run the other way before she tried to sell me something when she said, “oh my God, you are the splitting image of my daughter!” I was shocked, I’d never heard those words before.. plus, she was REALLY animated and extra loud. I said, “really?” and she says, “Yes! and If I didn’t know any better I’d say you were twins.You look like her, dress like her and even walk like her. I almost called you her name and asked what she was doing here!”

She finished up with, you better hope she never gets in trouble with the law because the police just might pick YOU up instead” and she left. I didn’t know whether to say thank you or not because let’s face it, homegirl could’ve been ugly as hell ….. I’d never know I guess. I wish she’d had a picture with her so I could see for myself.

I used to kinda have a crush on this girl. We’d “met” through the various blogosphere/online community circles about 4 or 5 years ago. I really liked her too. She was cute, smart, funny, witty, interesting… everything I would be looking for in a girlfriend… IF I’d been looking for a girlfriend at the time. I wasn’t. It was the typical story…. I’d just gotten out of something serious and I wasn’t in relationship-mode at all. But I liked her so much that I hoped she’d be cool with us being friends for a while and then maybe down the road we could see what happens. We’d planned on hanging out together a lot since she came up to my area all the time to see her cousin. We never really got the chance though. Everything was great for a few months and then I started to sense she was getting a little …I don’t know…’’weird’.... towards me, especially when I talked to her about other girls. I started to get the feeling her feelings were getting a little too deep and that our plans to just keep it platonic were beginning to crash and burn. Sure enough, within a few weeks she was exclusively dating someone and basically told me that she’d had enough of friendships and was looking for “more than that”.. That was cool with me, I was a little saddened that I missed out but more than anything, I was happy for her. Then she let me know who she was dating…it was another girl I sort of knew from around the internet circles.. but when she showed me a picture I nearly fell out of my chair. She looked almost exactly like me. She was just about my complexion, same eye color, locs, same size, color and shaped lips.. We seemed to have the same sense of style …I even found out that, like me, she was a journalism major! Basically she was ...a slightly less cute version of …Me! I couldn’t believe the similarities. In fact, the only difference was, she wore glasses and at the time I didn’t. I do now though so if we were to meet up today it would be sooooooo weird.

I gotta admit, I was kinda flattered that she picked someone so much like me..but at the same time a little weirded out. Lol..

Because, I mean, look alike or not...trust me when I say there is NO substitute. .I mean, NONE. lol

But the nationwide search is on in the, "Look like E. Sweepstakes", send in your photos now....