 Look at these, you guys. These are so cute. My voice is deep because it's early in the morning, girl. So, hold on. I made this for Dee. I've already talked about Dee before. She's my girlfriend who does a lot of events, event planning here in the Valley, including the Big Natural Hair Show every year. Which, by the way, I don't think I'm going to be participating in this year because I'm just, I'm a little bit burnt out on it. I mean, I've done about four hair shows. Anyway, so I made these bow ties for her little boy, but they're so cute. So, um, yes, this dryer is on the table because I'm returning this. I cleaned this. I cleaned it the best that I could, but they do accept returns for the blow dryer. First of all, I only blow out my hair maybe two or three times a year. The amount of time it took me to blow out my hair with this thing. And granted, I got some comments that said that, you know, I should probably, um, do you do smaller sections? Do you know how long it would have taken me then? I would guess if I would have blown out my hair in smaller sections well over an hour, which I might an hour and a half. Uh-uh. No, this is not worth the time it took for me to do my hair. Um, so yes, I'm getting my $30 back. I am returning it this morning. Have a lot going on this morning. Look, my bonnet is still on. Have a lot going on. I don't know. I have a couple of errands to run, but I ran out of creamer and I need some coffee. So I just, I mean, I don't really have a lot of errands to run today. I just have to go out twice. That's what annoys me. Um, because I need to go to the grocery store and then midday, I'm going to go get my nose done. Sorry. And then we're going to go out tonight, y'all. Going out for me is a huge event because I don't get dolled up all the time. Y'all heard me say like, this is what I look like on an everyday basis. My hair don't be done. I did my hair last night. So we are, we are going out to eat tonight. And then in the morning, of course, we're going to church. We're probably going to do the 11 o'clock service. My church has gone down to two services they used to do three. And honestly, I don't see how these preachers do it. One thing I have been doing though, is while I'm ordering my products through Amazon, I'm doing, I'm ordering something else, a product that'll help me to recover after my rush reduction. So like this last order with the allocate naturals, I included the Palmer's coconut oil or it's the Palmer's oil. And then the next order I'll do like some snap front bras, a pillow wedge, stretch mark cream, stuff like that. So every other month or every month at this point, because we're getting right around the corner, May is going to be here. So every month, I'm adding something to my order. That's one of the reasons why I'm ordering all my hair products through Amazon. Plus, go get free shipment. Yeah, free shipment. So why am I popping my tongue? Yeah, I'm sorry. So anyway, what else, what else, what else? I am leading towards a career in business analysts. You guys, I really am. So what I started doing earlier this week, because I think this is one of the things we have to get out of the way, out of the way, when you are planning, you know, goal planning or whatever you want to call it. What makes you uncomfortable? Look at that. If you're avoiding certain situations, or I don't know, like public speaking, like I mentioned, you're not necessarily growing. So I literally listed out my fears. What am I afraid of? And I told y'all, one of them is reporting, but not just career wise, like what am I afraid of in my life? Another one personally for me is getting sick. I'm a damn happy country act. I'm afraid of JB getting sick. Identifying my fears is on my to-do list this week. And reading up on my scriptures, because really what it boils down to is that I'm not trusting in God. So then that fear is coming up because that fear is coming from another source and is not liked. Does that make sense y'all? So identifying my fears, aligning a scripture to each fear, and what can I do to overcome this? Where is this coming from? Well y'all, I am out running around. I ran out another errands. I said I was going to run. Staples doesn't even open to attend. I need to get a printer because I was printing out my return letter. They don't open up to 10 and I was going to run in and when they open and go ahead and print it out, but I'd already sent you to their printer. So I'm not going to pay double. So I'm just going to wait till they tell me my printout is ready. It'll probably be Monday. I don't care. So then I stopped by Ross. Looked around. There was a bad purse there that I wanted, but it was $40 and it's not in my budget. I didn't go get my nose done because girl, I got the bubble guts. I've been eating way too much dairy. I don't know what makes me think that I can mix regular milk with almond milk. I'm like, I'll just do a little bit of regular milk with my almond milk. Girl, you can't do that. You lack those intolerance. I gave you the black person in America. You can't do that. So I've been doing it all week long, sometimes twice a day. Girl, so needless to say, I'm, no, I can't sit down and get my nails done because I have to get a full set. That's going to take minimum 30 minutes. I can't sit there with Tina and be like, I need to run to the bathroom. But I figured if I walk around, the bubble guts ain't got time to settle in, not, not trying to go there, no, no TMI, but it ain't got time to settle in. You know, like right now I need, I need to get on the road because I can feel it bubble. Yeah, I took some medication. I don't know why. I don't know why I thought that I can mix that dairy, that regular milk. I normally don't drink any milk at all. All week long, like I said, I've been mixing regular milk with almond milk. So yeah, I can't do that. So let me go ahead. I'm going to stop by Mountain Side Fitness. It's early. It's not even 11 o'clock. I'm going to stop by Mountain Side Fitness. And like I said, switch up my membership to only include myself. And I'll just return that blow dryer next week. Look, plush fur was at your absolutely correct girl. She just mentioned on my video with the Revlon Styler that she's like, it doesn't even look like your hair. What did you say, sis? Basically, there wasn't a big difference between this blowout and the blowout I did two years ago using the tension method. You're absolutely correct because my hair didn't stretch out all the way with this blowout because I couldn't get to the root. So I'm returning this damn thing and I will probably blow out my hair before I go to Texas again in September like I did last year. I can get a banging blowout using the tension method, you guys. I'll link the video below. So yeah. And then I don't even mention this in the video. Depending on how you use it, the tool, you can actually make your hair frizzy. Anyway, y'all, let me go ahead and go to, what did you say? Anita Washington just wrote something. Let me go ahead and go to Mountain Side Fitness and go home and lay down and rub my belly. Y'all. Got back from the store and not from the store, just running errands and my husband comes back. He has Shady with him and he's like, I'm like, he's just going to wash his car outside. I'm like whatever, wash your car. I'm busy on my computer because I'm actually at home doing training for my job. I decided to go ahead and sign up for some classes through my job and just take them on the weekend. Cool. A couple of minutes passed, like 15 minutes passed, and I hear a loud, loud, almost like a, not like a loud banking, but a muffled bank. Like, are you freaking serious right now? He's backing up. As he's backing up, he hits my car a second damn time. Y'all. I don't cry often, but I almost started crying when I saw this shit. He finally was able to straighten out his car and he drives in, pulls in. I'm sorry. He pulls into the garage. He takes a few seconds in his car because he knows I'm pissed because I'm looking at my car like, you have got to be out of your damn mind right now. I'm just looking at my car. I'm scaling it. I'm looking at the damage. I'm like, you both of my doors, the passenger door and the driver's door have huge dents in them. Huge. You have to excuse the lighting. So he gets out and he's like, they're too close. They're too close. I'm like, we've been doing this for years, parking in the same garage with bigger cars. We both had SUVs and we were able to do it. At one point, he's like, it's too close. It's too close. I'm like, Negro, is there something wrong with your cataracts? I didn't know what to say. I didn't even say anything. This is what I was thinking and internalizing. So he's looking at his car. He's like, oh, I got some damage too. He has a long scratch, but compared to my damn car, you. So I call the insurance company $1,000 $500 deductible for me $500 deductible. I said, you know, let me call you back. I said, you know what? I told him, let me just call you back because $1,000. Oh my gosh. And it would be totally different if these were old and busted cars. Both of our cars are less than three years old. Actually, we both got our cars in the same year. Two and a half years old. Oh my God. You know what? I'm going to have some hard liquor tonight. I said I wasn't going to both, but it's a hard liquor day. Let me go ahead and drink plenty of water so I don't be dehydrated. Yeah, because yeah. And I'm going to have a burger too. Hey, you guys, here is my date night hair. It's cute. A little flower bun on the side. Unraveled once. Oh, y'all, the extent of the damage of my car. So can you see how it, you can really see it from this side. It's really hard to see it dead on, but you see the dent here and a dent in the back. Lord, I'm mercy. I mean, that's in the shape, so they can see you. Hey, so cute. This is one of the, this is one of the bow ties I made him. All right. We are back home from church. Excuse the background noise. My husband's talking. Excuse the oven. I'm cooking. I'm going to show you guys what I'm cooking real quick. Church was good. The message was exactly what I needed. Let me show you what I'm cooking. I need to get a thing. I'm always at faithful. They know me. I told y'all they know me so, so well to where I wasn't even paying for my praying jobs until recently because I was like, no, so anyway, y'all want to say this real quick before I run off to Alper since they went off to stop. Like I said before, I left home earlier that this Sunday's service was awesome and I really received it and he really preached on remaining focused, not being distracted, which I think that in today's society, it is real easy to get distracted. I mean, with all the stuff going around this, I feel like with social media, this era of social media and information being at our fingertips, the gossiping and all that is at a all high level, I think and everyone's into everyone's business because you can and people can share so much of their lives and real, like I said, real times information. I just feel like it's all oversaturated with junk, but then you become sometimes you can become engaged in that. Okay, but that's a distraction in my opinion. All of this stuff with Oh God, with tears, Madison and all of that stuff. And now they're bringing in YouTubers. I can't go there. So I try not to get distracted like that. I've been really focused in my mornings for my morning's routine. Like I said, I've been getting up. I immediately get up, drink water, take my vitamins every day. I've been trying to take my vitamins. I do some light stretching and I get right into what I need to be doing for the day. It needs to be productive. I'm tired of wasting time. I'm going to show y'all what I have going on up in this kitchen. Yeah, I know I'm always cooking. So today's going to be a busy not today this week. I need to get some stuff done. So I'm going to be cooking right now. I'm cooking my husband's lunch and fixing my stuff for the next three days. So let me show you what I have. I have our and JB. JB has been on a pancake kit. Try to go ahead and do it in advance. Anyway, let me show you what I have already done over here. I have salad for me for lunch today for a salad for my husband later on in the week. So he has three options for three days in a row. We have salad that I'll put some chicken on top. I'll show you what the chicken looks like. This is some spinach. This oil here is all olive oil. And this is wild rice. I have some condiments on over here because I'm going to hook some stuff up girl. So the corn you see here, which I just turned the eye off, the corn is going to be for the topping of our salads. And then I have extra wild rice here for me for either today or tomorrow. I have some mixed veggies over here that I need to stir up. So they're going to go with both the spinach and the spinach and the wild rice. And then I have one pack of the chicken. Literally, I'm going to put three slices of chicken on each meal. I'll have two slices today. So let's see there. He'll have two on one, three on the other. And I have some more chicken in there. So that's the frosting in the fridge right now. So if I wanted to, I can cook chicken by the third day. He doesn't have to have meat every day too. As long as he has a balance of food. Let me go ahead and drain this. I need to do my dishes. Oh, yeah, it was so funny. I was at Walmart a couple of days ago. And one of the checkout ladies that I speak to every now and then she's like, so are you, are you staying home mom? I said no. I work from home. That's the reason why I'm up here all the time is because I cook all the time. I cook almost every day. Oh, I do. I cook every day. And she was a little intrigued. She's like, so what's a typical day for you? I'm going to let this drain and cool off. She's like, so what's a typical day for you at home? And I let her know. I said, I get up, I cook, I clean, I make sure my child is okay. We do at home activities. As far as learning, we go to the park. I told her, she's like, well, that's what I want. I want that life. And I let her know. I said, girl, it is all, it is not, it is not easy. It is not all fairy dust and unicorns. You know, it becomes very redundant. But to me, it's stability. That's what it, you know, represents for me. And it's good to grow old with someone. So yeah, but I think that's not everyone is made to be married, in my opinion. So anyway, I'm going to pour some barbecue sauce on top of this. And you know what? My spoon broke. So let me get a plate to put this. You always want to have something that says, don't, don't be putting your utensils directly on the counter. Because now it's this. Okay, baby, if this was raw chicken, now I'm contaminating the counter. Have something to set your, your tools on that you're using to cook. Y'all, I'm looking at the first 48 hours and hold on, baby. People, y'all, y'all better wake up. Demon possession is real. Have y'all ever seen cases where it's been a brutal murder? And in this case, it happened in Birmingham, Alabama. And the kid killed, stabbed three of his family members and burnt, burnt, tried to cover it, cover it up by burning it down, burning the apartment up. While they're doing the interview, he breaks down and he says, it happens. This is classic. It happened so fast. It was almost like it wasn't me doing it. I don't, it wasn't me doing it. I feel like it wasn't me doing it. It was like, and then sometimes you hear it was almost like I wasn't there. It's, um, I'm, I'm quiet because it's early. It's Dr. Sue's day at school tomorrow for JB. So this is so adorable. Um, y'all, I keep crafty stuff on hand for situations like this. I'm not buying anything. So this cost me nothing. He had an extra white T in the bag. So this is the Sam. I am character and we have green eggs and ham. Hold on, y'all. Shout out to Houston, Texas, y'all. I know I'm not the only one who thought that pow wow was black. Then when I saw a couple of, um, because I used to listen to y'all, I love me some ratchet trap music. I used to listen to a lot of underground music and mixtapes. So then when I, you know, they kind of went mainstream like him and Mike Jones and some thug, all of them. And uh, what am I saying? The video came out. I'm like, oh, so he's just high yellow. He just like skin. Girl, stop. He is white. Paul wall is white. Anyway, I just dropped off, um, some brownies for the chiropractor office and I put aside a little bit of brownies for his family, the doctor, the chiropractor. He's young. Well, girl, he has a lot of kids. He has like five kids. This is camera dirty horn y'all. A little better. Yeah, the camera was kind of dirty. Um, yeah. So yeah, I dropped it off just now. And now I am looking at JB's boot camp for some of y'all. Summer camp is coming up around the corner and if you pay before March 2nd, they get, um, they'll give you 10% off and they waive the registration fee. So I'm going to stop by, sign him up and, um, I'm gonna ask them if they can make me a copy of this or if I could just have a copy. I want a copy of this. And, um, how can I pay for it? Check cash. I'm just, I'm going to go get some cash then. I'm going to go get some cash. Or can I use my credit card? I'll get some cash because I need to pay for, um, his, what do you call it, his school anyway. I got to get out like four. This is a damn shame between boot camp and school. We're looking at $800. Four. Yeah. Five, six, seven. No, 700. I'm so ready for him to start kindergarten now. I know there will still be expenses, but we're paying for, you know, tuition monthly and extra expenses if they want to do, you know, any extracurricular activities. He's signing up for karate. That's going to be $150 a month. You do the math girl. $150 a month for karate, but he needs to do something. Um, because JB has been, y'all, I feel so bad for my baby. When I dropped him off yesterday, he started crying. That was the first time he has cried when I dropped him off and almost half a year. It's been a while since he's, and I mean like not just, but full on, I could see the tears welling up and I knew he was, you know, he kept trying to hold my hand and they broke my heart. JB, even though JB is very animated and y'all see him on here, he has some self-esteem issues, meaning he doesn't think that he can do his school work. He second guesses himself. So when we were sitting down and I was helping him, when they, when they get to school, they sit down, they have to have a worksheet in front of them. So, um, I'm like, okay, you need to sit down to your worksheet and the other kids are flying like this through their worksheets. I mean, these kids are getting down in their worksheets in less than five minutes and he's sitting around staring, looking at people, he's getting distracted, looking at everyone who comes in, looking at their children next to them, next to him and I get it. Five years old, you know, you've knocked that focus, you know, it's really hard and they, honestly, they're wired to not be focused. They have millions of neurons going off in their head. They're really not supposed to be focused. This is why people think that everyone, all these kids have ADD. No, they don't. Their brains are not wired to focus, okay? It's to a certain degree. I mean, anyway, so I sat with him for a few minutes, right, and tried to get him to get through his worksheet. But when I dropped him off, today he was fine and his teacher told me, she's like, you know what? He's getting through his worksheets. I don't know what you've done at home, but he's, I'm like, I've talked to his ass. But she said that he's doing really good at work and I mean at school. So what I have been doing is just encouraging him and letting him know that he could get through his work and he just needs to sit down and focus on the job at hand. He needs to focus on his work so that he could get what they call a prize from the treasure box. But I've also been trying to work with him at home a little bit more so that he could build some confidence and so that he will feel like he can't do his work in front of other kids. At home, it's a different story. He's comfortable at home. He can get through his sight words, his letters, his phonics. He's cool because I'm there encouraging him high five. But when he's in the situation where he's at school where there's other peers and there's 15, 20, not 15, about 15 kids and they're looking at him and the teacher can't do one on one. That's when he starts to second guess himself. So let me go to the bank get some cash and she's so adorable. Look at her car. She's had this car since the 70s. Y'all, I love old people. I love old people and babies. Let me tell you something. When you ask God for direction, be prepared, baby. Be prepared. I've been praying for the last for all year really for uh really to show me a direction on what steps I should take in my purpose and I was in my back guest bedroom going through some boxes and I found not only one but two and I can't really show y'all most of this because this is uh company information. I found two binders of resources. This is my new hire orientation from 2011. Granted a lot of the stuff in this have have changed but the foundation is still the same. So I can go through here, brush up on my company because yeah girl I forget stuff to be quite honest and this is a lot of information again. I can't show y'all everything due to confidentiality but anyway I'm gonna go through this over the course of the next few weeks. Um and then I also found from my previous job, I mean I can show y'all this because whatever, um I told y'all I worked for Apollo Corporate University that owns University of Phoenix and look at this project management journey. I don't even remember taking this but I have a lot of information here on project management. I mean it's about 50 pages here of information, project management extensions. Back here let me show y'all um JV school supplies that I organized earlier this week. Uh this is just supplemental stuff okay. So in this little bin here that I got this from um the Dollar Tree. Y'all what am I trying to open this with one hand? Hold on there we go. I got this from the Dollar Tree and a lot of these flash cards were even given to me by a neighbor or I also got them at the Dollar Tree um or ordered them online. I have some little people differences cards, addition and subtraction cards actually I think these are just a addition uh some sight word cards in here. So this bin just has um things like my markers, extra index cards, paper clips, he has crayons in here, Sharpie, map colors um it's coming even more. Post-it notes, a bunch of crayons. I just throw some stuff in here you know pencils and everything. The second one has mostly books, workbooks, and um we'll have these cute little sight word books that I got from the Dollar Tree. Don't sleep on the Dollar Tree okay. Different folders that I just purchased these folders on Friday. Let me get these all out so I can show you all and they're divided up by subject and then this is my blue folder my blue binder excuse me they have some stuff in it what I've been working on. So he comes home with certain worksheets that either he's completed or he needs to work on and I'll show you all that in a minute but this is a curriculum that I created for last year for last year and going into this year but of course I'm now having to reschedule things out for this year starting for March um and I divide things up by reading writing African-centered math, science, and social so for like this month which is technically it's the 28th but hey by the time I look this up it will be um so for example for African-centered we're going to be covering West Africa perhaps we're going to color some maps of Nigeria perhaps we're going to talk about some famous leaders in West Africa we're going to listen to West African music talk about famous Black leaders as far as science we have space we have plants social we're going to talk about our feelings and go over family names so that's what I have I haven't had to do anything as far as edit I'm going to keep to this for myself um and again this is just in addition to what he's doing at school so we have something like we have spelling here let me just put these in my lap so y'all can really see them probably might have been better if I put this down huh and y'all excuse my handwriting maybe I should work on that we have spelling this blank one is for social studies uh geography phonics sight words uh science and etc so let me show you for the examples y'all saw there in the curriculum layout that for science I had um what did I have I had space so that's what we're going to focus on for this month space and plants actually maybe we're going to grow a plant perhaps we may go to um they have a museum out here called the challenger museum I heard it's not that great but hey it'll get him out the house so for space I have a worksheet here on all of the planets and then we have a worksheet of rockets that he can trace his numbers and then we have a worksheet of Neptune that he could trace that and color it so do you get the idea get the idea um and he doesn't have to go through all this but these are just you know ideas all right so that's science that's just for this month I really need to get a printer I mean it doesn't make any sense of the amount of print and I do and bless their heart staples hasn't been charging me up until I basically told him look I'm gonna pay you but yeah I need to get a printer so this one right here um has the pictures of what's the difference here all right so sight words he came home with these two worksheets okay so for um school they have flashcards so I figured why not I have some index cards costing a dollar so I have these index cards and I wrote all of the sight words onto the index cards and then I want to step further and I went online and found worksheets and here we go so now he has a worksheet for each of his sight words and again this is what they also do at school um and we go through it he's I give him about 15 to 30 minutes to sit down and go through his worksheets and all that and he loves it he likes to learn this is another different section so yeah you guys um then maybe we may read like a little point here and I may say okay I want you to find the or I want you to find nice and not nice or you want you to find um what's another good one and I want you to find and okay okay y'all so that is it this vlog is going to be pretty long it's going to be over 40 minutes so uh I know I have several teachers who watch me and even if you even if you're not a teacher excuse me if you have any advice on what areas you think that I should be focusing on at this age let me know I'm new at this um you know this is just stuff that I pant on Pinterest or looking at um YouTube videos from other people who homeschool um yeah I won't come anything if you think there's something else I should be doing in addition to this if you think I'm doing too much don't tell me I'm doing too much because I'm really not we probably do this like I said two to three days out of the week out of seven days that's not doing too much so I like to focus on the areas he's weak on if that makes sense so anyway y'all that is it the next time y'all see me we should be headed to the Jamaican jerk chicken festival yeah so that's why I want to end this because we I'm gonna be filming there quite a bit so all right y'all take care bye