Confessions of a Misplaced Southern Belle

Not so misplaced anymore!

Mama

Mama!

One word.

Mama!

As if the video wasn’t enough, the audio of George Floyd calling for his mama has he lay dying underneath the knee of that police officer will forever be seared into my brain. He cried for his mama, who died two years ago. I wonder, was she there with him? Was he seeing her?

As a child, who when hurt, calls for mama, George Floyd called for his, all while a police officer knelt on his neck.

What happened to him and Ahmaud Aubrey, Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, and to many more to mention, has got to stop. We have to do better. We have no choice.

For the sake of the of the black kids that I have taught, for all of the black kids that I teach and that I will teach, their lives matter. What we do now will impact them forever. Let’s let their children never have to know the fear that they feel every day.

Black lives matter.

For resources and education, please click on each name below. There are many many more that can be accessed through a quick Google search, but these are a place a start. Feel free to add any in the comments.

Black Lives Matter ,

NAACP

National Police Accountability Project

Southern Poverty Law Center

Quarantine Day 44

My favorite nail care essentials.

On March 13, I left school for Spring Break. While I fully expected to not return to school for a week afterwards, I never expected to finish the school year online. It’s been…..challenging, but that’s a post for another day. I go to the grocery store once a week, and Amanda and I will go out once a week to pick up a coffee or lunch at a local restaurant that offers contactless pickup. I lucked up and had my hair colored (purple is makes the gray really noticeable!) during Spring Break before we had a stay at home order and things started shutting down. Like many women, one of the things that has been put on hold are regular manicures. I’ve been getting gel manicures for years, but these days I’m on my own. My nails are very short and tend to peel, so I’m trying to strengthen them. Every night before bed, I use three of my favorite things. Two are from L’Occitane and one is from CND. I swipe on the CND Rescue Rxx with keratin to add strength and then add the L’Occitane Nail and Cuticle Oil and once that dries, slather on the L’Occitane Shea Hand Cream. I’m also learning to to give myself a proper manicure. YouTube is an invaluable source. My nails are still short, but I’ve managed to stop them from peeling as much.Maybe the next step is to figure out the whole gel thing as I can’t manage to make regular polish last more than a day or two, no matter what I do. I guess that’s one thing I’ve managed to accomplish during quarantine! Hope everyone is staying safe and social distancing!

Ooops

Well that wasn’t planned. This week turned into the week where I had something every day in the evening. Tuesday, both JV and Varsity Boys Basketball had their first games against our cross county rivals, Palmetto High School. I teach two boys on the JV team and they kept dropping hints that they wanted me to come, so finally I asked them if that is what they wanted and they both said YES. I ran home, changed clothes and drove back to school for the six o’clock game. Michel saw me and came running up to me and said “Thank you for coming!” So sweet! My former paraprofessional is now the coach and I got to see him too. He was so nervous but the team did great! They got out too hot and got up 20 points, but then struggled in the second half. With two seconds to go, we were up up by just a point, and Michel had to make two free throws! He made both of them to secure our win! Afterwards, I saw him and he told him how proud I was of him and he said “I was so scared!
I told him that no one could tell and that he must have nerves of steel and that seemed to make him feel better. Poor guy. Here’a few photo from that night. One is during the warm up and the other two are my boys.

Tonight is a game with our big rival, Bayshore and I’m going to go because my varsity player asked me if I was going, which is code for “I’d really like you to come.”

Wednesday night was an open house for perspective students so that meant that I had to be here with my TSA chapter, so that was another long day, and last night I had my haircolor refreshed. I’ll post a photo of that later. This weekend is pretty low-key. I have a photoshoot on Sunday, but tomorrow will be spent editing two sessions and maybe doing a little Christmas shopping. I also will remake the Heavenly Hash and maybe some pralines. Stay tuned.

Heavenly..Fail

Well, the best intentions of mice and men…. is that how the saying goes? The plan was to make my Aunt Eva’s Heavenly Hash Candy since the weather has finally decided to cooperate. And… well, see for yourself. I had a bare-bones recipe from my great-great aunt, but there wasn’t much direction about cooling time. I have made this before, and they turned out great, but this batch…not so much. It started out promising.

See, chocolate chips, condensed milk, marshmallows, and pecans…what could go wrong?

….but in the end, it was a puddle of mess. You should be able to see the marshmallows, not a puddle.

One thing that was left out of the instructions was to let the chocolate mixture cool before adding the marshmallows, which I did not do and they instantly melted. Almost immediately I knew what I had done wrong–added the marshmallows to hot, melted chocolate. They sure look awful, but they taste just fine. I’ll try again this weekend and see if they turn out.