 Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, you guys. It is early in the morning. I don't even know why I'm recording. It's early. My hair still looks okay. Let me tell you something. This Myers Clean Multi-Surface Everyday Cleaner with Lavender set. I got through it through Amazon with my packages that y'all saw. This is just proof that just because something this natural doesn't mean it's good for you. I sprayed down our kitchen. Just the islander here. The island. The island. Three days ago, I immediately had a reaction. Granted, my asthma and allergies are inflamed right now or flat. I don't know. I don't know the right terms, girl. I was itchy. I started to itch. I started to itch. I started to like, I had to like wipe it down with vinegar and start all over. So I went on Amazon and some of the one-star, two-star reviews complained about the scent and fragrance. So I contacted them and was like, I refund. Refund. I need to return this shit because I just had a reaction. So they're like, oh, you don't have to send it back. Here's your refund right now. So I'm gonna see one of my neighbors will take it because no, I can't do this. Now I use gold green, which is okay, but that set my allergies completely off. Isn't that funny? So anyway, it is Monday. And look, I've been getting up. Let me come over here and sit down. What can I say that, y'all? Because I really, I really want to sit down. I'll just stand up for a little bit. It is Monday and I have been in this space where I am stuck, meaning I am stuck where I want to do what I want to do in life and where I want to go. And I feel kind of, for lack of better words, I'm pissed off and upset with myself because I'm actually in the middle of this series about purpose driven trying to, you know, figure out what the hell I'm going to do with my life. And I'm in a place to know where I'm stuck. I've done all my research. I've done all my homework, but then it's quiet. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm like, what do I do from now? What do I do now? I have all the paperwork. I have all the meditation tapes and positive affirmations and shit. There's only so many, I'm sorry for cursing because I'm frustrated. There's only so many diagrams I could look at. And now I'm like, what do I go from here? One of the things I've been trying to do, which is really difficult for someone like me, who's always on the go and always busy. And one of the suggestions that I read or excuse me, I was looking at a video on the guy who did, what is his name? He passed away a couple of years ago. He was the one that started the movement of projecting your future, you know, manifesting your future. He was the one that started and again, he passed away a couple of years ago. He was in his 70s. But one of the things he mentioned in the video is it's important to sit in silence because silence cancels out silence. You don't have any noise going on. You don't have, you're just there in your thoughts. So that's what I've been doing for the past week, every other day. It is so hard when I tell you that's challenging for me, for someone who's a busy body, but to sit there with your own thoughts and even try to block some of that out and sit in silence, silence, excuse me. That's what I've been doing. That's the point where I am right now is, okay, I need to sit down, no to-do list, not even reading my bible. Let me sit in silence for at least five minutes. Then I can meditate, then I can read my bible, then I can stretch, you know what I mean? So I think that's what's really going to help me, you guys. We'll see. So anyway, y'all, not much going on this week. I do have a couple of videos to do. I think this will be up between this week and next week will be in that might last few videos for reviews, private reviews. And yeah, my friends warned us birthdays this week. Still coughing. Her birthday is on the 30th and so she is requested a cake. This is what she wants, girl. She wants a lemon pound cake with raspberry, some type of alcohol and lemons. She's like, you're the only person I know who could pull it off. What the hell is wrong with these dogs? That always been working on morning anyway. She's like, you're the only person I think that could pull it off. So I'm going to make her that cake. I think the 30th of Thursday. So I'll make her the cake on Thursday and I'll tape that for you guys. But I'm like, girl. But besides that, this week is going to be pretty calm. So I'm going to use this week to, like I said, after the meeting tomorrow at JV school to go ahead and put together the curriculum. I did get an email last night from one of the, I don't know who it is. Someone who clearly works at the school said that they need volunteers. They need assistance in the morning for the classes. But this is a thing. You just can't show up at that school. You have to go through a fingerprint clearance and then volunteer training. The fingerprint print clearance or fingerprint card is $70 with the state. So I have to go through all of that and then go through the volunteer training just to show up and bring, you know, to help kids with their worksheets at school. Fine, fine, fine. So I'm going to do that this week. At least submit my application for the fingerprint clearance cards. This kids get one complete full day off on Friday and a half a day every month. Like literally every month. And oh, and they have a fall break in October. It's like a whole week. Girl. The winter break, the fall break and a winter break, a winter break is two weeks. Then their spring break. And of course, I'm like, that's considered fall. All right, y'all, hold on. Got home and one work email blew up into like 40 emails going back and forth. Y'all like my shirt. I don't know why I did that to my breasts. Another update on my breasts. Thank you to the person who said that they have eczema on their titties too, because I think that's what it is. I think I told you guys that the lower half of my breasts are itchy. The skin is kind of flaky, but not really, which I read is normal. However, I think it's eczema. So I ordered some, put it in prescription for my eczema cream, stopped by the pharmacy and they're like, we don't have it. I said, well, girl, you need to go ahead and order it. I don't normally do crop pot meals. I don't know. I'm kind of indifferent when it comes to crop my crop pot because I like to cook. I like to sear my meat. I like to look at it. I like to taste it and eat it with a crop pot. You just dump everything in and go about your way. But because we have stuff going on throughout the day and I have somewhere to be this afternoon, I'm going to be making a orange chicken crop pot meal. Let me tell you what I'm going to do. Allergies, but I feel a lot better though. I have some chicken thighs in there with the skin on. Go to leave it on. I have some chicken breasts in there and that'll be enough for us for about two to three days for lunch, for my husband's lunch and for me lunch, dinner, whatever. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to make my own sauce. Now, I do already have some orange sauce already up and in the bottle, but girl, we like to pimp it up. I add a lot more things to it. So I think I'm going to do the rest of that celery, green onions, onions, garlic, ginger, that sauce, soy sauce, chili paste, all that chicken, I know, two potatoes and some carrots and some green beans. I know y'all just extra for no reason, but I'm going to show y'all it's going to be good. What kind of good? I'm going to put it in now on low. It's going to cook. Oh, yes, girl, it's going to cook. My husband said he needs to take back his pants. Let me tell you something. Hold on. I think he's still asleep. Let me kind of be quiet. He is not going to drive me crazy. Do you understand me? Let me tell you what he did. He ordered some pants, some dress pants, and again, this is all to get together our outfit, our ensembles for the banquet of the reunion, because he told me a couple of weeks ago, my clothes fit funny. And I was like, you getting fat on me? What do you mean your clothes fit funny? He just doesn't like the feel, the fit of him. He likes a classic look, which is not as tight because nowadays, these men are wearing skinny and then they have, oh no, they call it slim, slim and then super slim. And my husband's like, no, I got to read. So his dress pants came in three weeks ago and he accidentally ordered super slim. I was like, oh, you're going to be all tied up in the crotch area. You need to do something. So we went online through JCPenney. JCPenney has tons of sell because I don't think they're getting a lot of business and I know they have closed down some stores like at least 50 stores nationwide. So they always have stuff on sale. So he found some slacks and I told him, I said, you need to get a black dress shirt. He said, but my suit is black. I said, you know what, don't think about it. Just listen to me. I want you to do black. We're going to do black on black with my pink. I told y'all that black on black or my pink is going to be sharp. I couldn't convince him to do a black tie. I couldn't give it simple. He's going to do like a maroon tie. I think that'll still be good. It'll be good. I'm sorry, short girl, we got to go back to JCPenney. We ordered everything online, but now he has to go back to JCPenney and return those skinny ass slacks. Girl, so today, this morning I looked into, which y'all is so uncomfortable, but it's important. It's something that you have to do in my opinion. We make sure that we are listed as the beneficiary on our phone case and we both have life insurance through our jobs. However, I'm going to take it a step further because what if we lose our jobs? I'm going to actually purchase life insurance outside of my work plan. And sometimes your work plan, I think a lot of us just select things. You know how you is December and they sent out the mass emails to the company to let your damn benefits or you won't have any. So I just be selecting stuff and not really reading the fine print. And it's like $10 a month. Come out of my check. Well, I'm actually going to take the time. I started this morning and looking into life insurance for me, myself and for JCP. And it's really uncomfortable, but I told you guys that I'm in a wife group. And one of the reasons why I like this group is they do ask questions. And one young lady asked earlier this week, do you guys have life insurance on your family? Family life insurance? And a couple of people like, yeah, it's absolutely of course. And one girl shared that her friend last a couple of weeks ago lost her child, lost her two year old child. And thank God that she had life insurance because that's the last thing she wanted to think about was how are we going to pay for the funeral expenses and all of this stuff. So it's very uncomfortable, but it's a small thing to do. And I've already been looking into it. I got a quote, but I'm going to I'm going to shop around my goal is to have go ahead and have insurance and have it all done by October. That's my deadline by mid October. Haven't done because we're still doing that trip and all that, but by mid October. And like I said, we have stuff for our job and we're still employed. But I like to have this as a cushion. Yeah, y'all thinking about stuff like that. I do have advanced directive somewhere in my back, but it hasn't been notarized. But now those advanced directors are old. Those are at least God 10 years old. And now that I'm married and have and have had a child, I may want to change some things. You know, I may want to be on the ventilator. I may want to live a little bit longer now that I have a child. You see, these are things that are very uncomfortable. But once you get to a certain point in life, once you become an adult, you start to think about it and change it. Talking out. So yeah, y'all just thinking about that, you know, and I encourage you, if you don't have that habit, because Oh, this is what I want to talk about, because I read that Franklin didn't have a will. What the hell? And she knew she was sick. Like, how is it that? And it's something like I said, it's something that you don't think about. Hell, I'm 38. And I'm like, you know, tomorrow is not guaranteed. Have your stuff in order. By the time you 40 or 50, look, by the time you are 50, you better have something in order. You know what I mean? Like I said, we always had each other on a beneficiary for 401k and all that. And another thing to think about is that if you are a single parent, don't put your child down there because that child may not be able to get it until they're 18. Put your parent down there and then put your child a secondary, you know, at least that's what I understand. They can't get access to those funds until they're 18, you know, because I know I even had to explain to my husband and he was a little leery about this before we got married. I know he was. He had initially had his son down as the beneficiary, the primary beneficiary. And I was like, Oh, your son knows you don't know my husband has a child. He's 18 years old now, but at the time he was like 14, 15. I'm like, Oh, your child is young. You need to put me down as primary and put him down as secondary and I will take care of him. You know, I'll make sure he gets that money and he trusts me. Trust me. Then that's where he married my ass. So yeah, I was like, Yeah, you that's what you should do. Long story short girl. Yeah, everything Franklin didn't have a will and apparently Prince didn't have one either. That is crazy when you have millions and millions of dollars and don't have any plan for how that's all going to be distributed once you're gone. Large house. Anyway, that's a very uncomfortable situation to be in, but it's something that has to be done. So anyway, y'all, I'm going to go ahead and put all this stuff in the crop pot. What is it? Something that I was going to tell y'all. I told JB y'all show up at school. He's so sweet y'all at school and let me get my nails done. Yeah. So Friday we have off and Lori, Ms. Lori, the lady that has to end our daycare. She told me about it over the weekend. She reminded me of the weekend. She's like, you guys should come over. So I said, okay, she said she's going to have all the kids. So she wants me to come over there. So I said, okay. Meaning like she keeps like half the neighborhood kids girl. Yeah. So that's okay. At least I could play with the baby. She has a little one year old. He's so cute. Y'all, I get all my baby, my baby cravings out the way. So we'll go over there Friday. Let me back up. I'm going to make my girlfriend cake on Thursday. Girl. And it's the thing you guys, like she had, I told y'all, she had all these ideas with the cake. I'm like, help her. You are extra as hell. I'm going to do it and I'll show y'all what that looks like. So I'm going to make her cake on Thursday. Friday JB's off. So I'm going to go to Ms. Lori's and then we will probably go to the indoor playground. We went to over the weekend because that was so cute and he had a good time. He also didn't get a chance to do as much because he was following the other kids around. And then on the weekend we are going to chill. Going to go to church on Sunday because I haven't been in church in like two weeks. The birthday party was on last Sunday. So yeah, you guys, we're going to chill out and do that. I'm nervous about the curriculum meeting tonight, but it should be good. It should be good. I'm going to do a sailing rinse here. I've been using JB's. He hasn't even used it in frankly. You're not supposed to, everyone's supposed to have their own, but there's ways. I mean, you can microwave the damn thing and disinfect it. But that really helped me. If you're starting to feel sick, allergies, sinotitis, rhinotitis, nasal wash, nasal wash. You can make your own sailing rinse for your nose. Anyway, girl, let me put this stuff in the crock pot and get it going. Now, one of the things I'm going to do because I don't, I don't like the way, unless it's a soup or tacos, I don't see how people do it. I don't like the way meat tastes in the crock pot. So I like it crispy. So what I'll do is I'll take the meat out. I'll probably put it up under the boiler for like four or five minutes so it crisps up and I'll probably mix some couscous to go on the side. But I do have a video that's on private. I'll probably make it available next month of some freezing meals I made when I was before I had my surgery. Yeah, I did freezer soups and I still have some in there and I need to eat them because deadlines and two more months, girl. Freezer soups and freezer milk meats and they did pretty good. But no, I'm not cup of tea to be quite honest. All right, y'all. So this is the chicken. I know. So I'm going to wait. It's on low because we're going to go run some errands to go meet Boo Boo for lunch. This is my chicken. I'll put in here like I told y'all, nearly everything, girl. Onions, green bell pepper, garlic, ginger, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, soy sauce, some of that orange sauce and I'm I don't want this to get mushy. But no, it's on low. I'm reserving this. When I come back, I'm going to add the potatoes. I'm going to peel them, peel everything after potatoes and carrots. And then once it's almost about 75% there, I'm going to add the green beans and then take out all the chicken and put it on the broiler and serve it with some couscous. So I'll let y'all know how this turns out. This is my first time I'm making something like this. I think it may be a little bit too much liquid at first. So I'm just eyeballing it because the chicken is going to produce some liquid too. And I'll take some liquid off so that this stuff doesn't get mushy if that makes sense. I'm about to fix myself a drink in a mayonnaise jar. Hold on, let me add some ice, girl. Purchase this. First of all, we don't keep hard liquor in the at home. We only drink like margaritas at or out to eat. And right now we're going to have to eat now at this point. Once every other month, girls are like once every two months, I'll have hard liquor, not even that. And when I do, I have two drinks max. I purchased this Pinnacle Peek, which is a very low grade Pinnacle, excuse me, vodka, but I got it citrus. I think it's Poland. Is this Poland French vodka? Girl, it's a French flag. It's a citrus flavor because this is going to be for my friend's cake tomorrow, y'all. She's going to Vegas with a bunch of friends. So what I'm going to do is put this, y'all are going to see me make the cake, but I'm not going to put, try to think it now if I want to put, I don't want to put liquor in the cake batter. I think I'm going to be too much, but the icing is going to have liquor and then I'm going to make a raspberry puree type jam that they could actually put on the pound cake itself. And that's going to have vodka in it. And I'm going to give them this. I'm going to close it up, wrap it up, and tell them to put it in a trunk. Don't be having no open container in the front. And they can take this to Vegas with them, but I'm opening up and pulling me a drink. Um, I see how much I do y'all. Not a lot. And this is going to be it, girl. That's a shot. Make me nice icing him too. Then I have this. It's organic from Trader Joe's we got yesterday. Pour that on top. And then I have some lemon, fresh lemon that I'm going to wash. I remember in the 80s, 80s, people having like an area for, for their alcohol and entertainment. Girl, please. I have a bunch of borrower for, but it's for wine. I mean, I have something I could use for that, but we're going to put this in the mayonnaise store. I'm going to get it strong. Hold on. That is good, but I need something to cut that citrus. It's too sour. Add a splash of like a strawberry drink we had in there. That'll do. I'm gonna go ahead and make me some tacos now. We bought some roasted corn last night from Trader Joe's. And y'all know, I love me some tacos. Gonna make me some bean and corn tacos. But real quick, we had the curriculum meeting at JV school and it was very interesting to say the least. I don't understand why they didn't have this meeting in the beginning of the year. And it's very interesting to see that an overwhelming amount of parents had the same concerns I did where their children have already gone to pre-K and now they're entering kindergarten and all of this stuff they already know. So what do you do? It seems like they used the entire, this entire month to test their children and then divide them up based on their needs. I just wish they would have had, like I said, I don't know if I said I wish they would have had this meeting at the beginning of the year as opposed to four weeks later. So they're going to have something was called a flex schedule, which is where, and I mentioned this in my, this is gonna be repetitive if you saw my chit chat video. So 15 minutes a day for learning arts, excuse me, literature arts and then for math, based on how they, they tested at the beginning of the year, they will divide them into groups based on their skill level and work from there. One of the parents that I know, she was asking a lot of questions and they got to a point to her. One of the teachers in a very nonchalant PC way was like, you basically think your baby, don't do that. You basically think your child was smart, but she's not really a smart as you think she is. She didn't say that, but let me tell you what she said. The girl's parents was basically like, well, what do you do if they're already reading? Well, what if you do if they're already adding a subtraction? She's like, well, we all learn at the same level. And then at the flex groups, it's a time where we divide up. So they're basically, they're not really learning anything new. And so the teacher was basically like, well, you know, we have a lot of parents who think that their children can actually read when in fact they've just memorized books. And there's nothing wrong with being, you know, with being a little slow, especially at the, she didn't say slow is nothing wrong with learning at a slower level. She's like, you know, basically I was, was behind a grade and look at me now, you know, I'm a teacher, you know, and I think I'm pretty smart and I have an extra master's degree. I just got the notion of, and I think one of them even said it, we don't want them. This is the, this is the feeling I got and a couple of the parents agreed with me. We don't want them to be advanced at this level at this age. We want them to be even out. Now, if they do better than yes, we can offer some things to challenge them, but we want everyone basically to be on an even playing field. That is the, I was a little upset when I got out of the meeting. One of the moms texts me today and said that they're going to keep their child there, but they're already applying for another school. And once she gets past the waitlist there, they're going to pull her Phoenix is, has one of the worst school districts in the country. That is a huge, that's been a huge downsize for me as a parent of a small child. And JV goes to a charter school, by the way, there's no way I'm putting him in a public school. Most of the better schools are in the Tempe area. We live in North Phoenix on the outskirts of Phoenix, excuse me. So I spoke to my husband about it. I said, you know, I'm going to give these teachers a benefit of the doubt. Okay. I'm not one of those parents is I want, I can do better than this, you know, I can do it all myself. However, I am listening to my intuition, but I'm also respecting the, the perspective of a teacher. They've gone to school for this. A lot of them have gone to graduate school. So clearly, I'm going to trust them at this point. I'm not going to be rash, pull my child out like some of them are doing. I'm going to give them a chance. Okay. I'm going to have to ask some challenging things for JV. So today I stopped by the Dollar Tree and I picked up some coming core workbooks for first grade level because he already knows how to count to 20. That's one of the goals of kindergarten. He already knows his alphabet and JV said to me yesterday, which was a clear sign. He said, you know what, Mommy, I was reading at my other school and I'm not reading at this school. What is it, baby? Sorry y'all, let me, okay, Mommy will help you. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Like I said, I think that as a parent, you know, we all have our concerns with our children, but I also think that we need to be able to trust, you know, the administrators and the teachers because it's not an easy job to do, especially at this age. Five-year-old and six-year-old girl. Yeah. You clean my, that's my Felicia Leatherwood brush. He said I cleaned your brush. I'm trying to finish detangling my hair. So my friend is coming by tonight and she requested those of you who saw my previous vlog or I think I mentioned it earlier in this vlog. My friend wants me to make her a pound cake and she wants alcohol drizzled throughout it. And so I, this is an original recipe by me. I have two boxes of Lemons and Prina. These are different. That's Betty Crocker. This is Duncan Hines, but it's both lemon. Okay. It's okay. And then I'm going to add some pudding. I'm going to do half a stick of butter. I'm going to eyeball the oil. I don't know. I'm going to add in some good quality vanilla, some lemon astrag and four eggs. I think I'm going to do four eggs because it's going to be a pound cake. Y'all, this is the cake. I don't feel like taking it out. That's how lazy I am. Y'all know I'm not good at decorating cakes, but this is what it's going to be. There's five shots of vodka between the cake and the jam here. Oh my God, y'all. So that is it.