See No Evil

So today I had an eye-opening experience...and almost burned my eye. One of my weaknesses is not being able to process or perform without caffeine, weakness/addiction, whatever. My other weakness is genetic - I have bad vision, think Coke bottle glasses, bad. These two weaknesses together.... no bueno
I have this intense eye regiment, I use a product that has a high-concentration solvent and breaks down the excess protein that my crazy eyes seem to over produce. This high-concentrated solvent has to be diluted a process that takes six hours to be effective. So you cannot put this solution right into your eye. Now, this morning I wake up and stumble to put on my contacts (my daily answer to this genetic weakness) and notice it's a little dry. So in my pre-coffee haze, I pour this high-concentrated solution onto my lens. Imagine hot sauce being poured into your eye, now multiply by 10, then add a couple minutes since contacts that are in distress stick to your eye, so my heinous situation turned into a full episode of screaming and praying that I don't go blind...at 6:30 this morning. After flushing my eye out, I reason, it's fine...wear my glasses today and I'll be fine...Until I called my eye doctor, whose receptionist tells me "OMG, you should come in like now." Of course I freak out, cry hysterically in the bathroom at work and stumble to the eye doctor.
At the end of this my eye doctor said I was fine, but I should wear my glasses for a week...Sweet. So why the dramatic post you ask? I've been on an upswing of positive energy (knock on wood) and someone recently said to me "you've been having all this good luck, just wait there's always the other shoe that's going to fall twice as hard..." After thinking, sweet Optimistic Olivia, I became really nervous and rationalized any small issue as "the other shoe." And then after this eye thing, I thought maybe almost blinding myself is the other shoe (!!!) - and then I thought "self, why is everything in life a compromise of good and evil?" It's a little disturbing that my first thought after the pain subsided was "phew, almost blindness is my ticket away from the bad shoe." So in my anxiety I spent most of this evening researching where this token phrase came from to put my mind at ease and so I thought I'd share my findings:

"A man comes in late at night to a lodging house. He sits on his bed, drags one shoe off and drops it on the floor. Guiltily remembering everyone around him trying to sleep, he takes the other one off much more carefully and quietly puts in on the floor. He then finishes undressing and gets into bed. Just as he is drifting off to sleep, a shout comes from the man in the room below: “Well, drop the other one then! I can’t sleep, waiting for you to drop the other shoe!" (World Wide Words)

So, there you go. A token phrase coined by someone probably as nervous as me, thinking, worrying and waiting for that other dang shoe.

How to Practice Safe Walking

It's a common belief that someone can be street smart, but not book smart or vice versa, but never both at the same time. I'm trying to disprove this common perception. First method is to impart my knowledge of safe walking, something I've learned. Unlike book smarts, street smarts never seem to be imparted on others, it's like a secret - something you can only learn through experience. Well I don't want you to have to learn the hard way about street smarts in the city, so here is my wisdom.
You have to remember I grew up in Ohio- Shaker, Ohio for that matter. Next to nothing happened without you bringing it on yourself; it's one of those towns that has rare sensational news (excluding the weather). So, growing up in Ohio the idea of "know your surroundings" could mean - be aware of deer crossing (if you see one, there are more, deer travel in packs). Or if you are taking the trash out late at night there could be skunks, coyotes, foxes?! In New York, being aware of your surroundings means something totally different: know which car the sketched out crack head is entering to avoid inevitable harassment on your commute, avoid the crack head lingering on the corner begging for change he might bump you and either transfer bed bugs or pick-pocket you, avoid the half way house because if that's not self explanatory there are probably crack heads there. Maybe the biggest challenge of being aware is knowing where the crack heads live and then out smarting them with avoidance or my new technique....

WAIT FOR IT

If you are walking alone and feeling a little unnerved begin talking to yourself that will send a message of "this one is crazy." This employs the strategy, if you can't beat 'em join 'em. The other day I began erratically talking to myself about a made-up friend Samson and laughing hysterically at my own jokes. Now, the crazy vibe you have to send has to be enough to permeate someone who's high, but not enough to look fake or vulnerable. You don't want "oh that one is special this will be easy" you want "holy smokes, I don't want to even know..." This will not work if you have head phones in, your conversation cannot sound systematic, it has to sound completely irrational, yet plausible. Make sense?
Wish I could patent* this technique, but instead I'll pass along as one of my helpful tips to surviving the city. I think this can work for anyone implemented correctly, coupled with these simple street smarts:

1. Don't walk down dark alleys
2. Carry mace
3. Don't look drunk if you are in fact walking home intoxicated (aka walk straight)
4. Run towards the police station - in NYC there's likely one within running distance
5. Most crack heads are off balance, last case scenario go for the shins
6. Don't forget your life is more important than valuables
7. Cross the street if you feel like you should - go with your gut
8. Don't walk in your house or apt if you think someone is following you
9. Make good choices

*Also cannot patent, because it was a helpful tip as down.

Mane-stream Hair

It's been brought to my attention in more forms than one,  Black hair care is getting some limelight. Imagine my surprise when on my relaxing Friday night - watching Grey's on abc.com -- there's a Black hair care lesson thrown into the show! For context, Derek (Dr. McDreamy) and Meredith (main character) adopt a Black baby girl, and Dr. Bailey (a Black female doctor on the show) has to teach Derek about his daughter's "kitchen". A kitchen, dear readers is the consistently "tangled" part at the nape of the neck. Why is it called a kitchen? Who knows ... Anyway I thought this was so interesting because there's all this revived interest in Black hair! If we could count the number of tweets for Viola Davis' hair -- "go ahead girl show your natural do..." or "I think it's so great she's showing her natural hair..." For mainstream media to talk like they understand Black hair is interesting considering I've been practicing and studying for a quarter of a century and research shows inconclusive findings.
I do have an update and a plug, in my quest for a hair dresser. I think I might have found a salon ... in the city. Reasonably priced (again for the city) Shag Hair Studio NYC. So, I made an appointment from a friend's recommendation blindly walked in ... If you are unfamiliar with Black hair care and reading this post, let me preface this with not just anyone can work with our challenging tresses. There's technique and sometimes personal experience that qualifies someone to work with this facet of hair. Regardless of my hair stylist roots he was great - he used great product and made me feel good about my hair. You know those stylists that talk about how poorly you treat your hair with the only motive to make you visit more? We'll he didn't do that and I appreciate it, in fact I will go back!

High School Drama

Dear Readers. This post serves as a plea to share, comment and post to those who need to read this.
I'm seven years out of high school and it's one place/time I would not like to repeat. Even with all my learnings high school was tough, but no matter how dramatic I became as I cried, "my life is over"  - I still woke up in the morning. Unfortunately, for three Chardon, Ohio students this is not the case. My thoughts and prayers go out to the Chardon families - it's an unimaginable tragedy, that for me as well hit really close to home.
For some perspective, I grew up about 45 minutes away from Chardon, but my parents now live about 5 minutes away -- they grocery shop, run errands, walk our dog in the same county. My brother was one year and one township away from attending Chardon, he could've been there...
There have been so many things in the news this last few weeks about teens acting out (the racist YouTube girls from Florida, for example), or even the last few years (school bullying) and it's amazing to me how different "high school" has become - it's really turning into a place you need to survive.
In my day (there goes my old soul) I did become an outcast and subject of ridicule for a good three months of my high school career, where in my most dramatic way I literally thought I would die of embarrassment. Here's the story.
Eleventh grade - I was going through a period of rebellion, hanging out with the a new crowd that I absolutely didn't fit in with. Picture a darker Hilary from Fresh Prince attempting to hang out with a female version of Bone Thugs 'n' Harmony ... Yea, that was bound to work out.
Anyway, if you made one of these girls mad they were all mad and I should've know then their value of friendship, but I digress... Inevitably as you can guess I made one of these girls mad and that's when the drama started. I was shunned at school, literally had to eat lunch by myself or skip it altogether and go home to eat, I was nervous to be in the hallway by myself, it got pretty bad. The biggest worry I had was that these girls would do something to damage or impact my future or mess with my early acceptance into college.
So I get it. I get what it's like to be bullied, picked on, and intimidated. One thing I never forgot was to stay motivated and that no matter what I was going to graduate, succeed and pursue any and all dreams that I had. So this message is two-fold, if you are bullying, it's not worth it - when you get to the workplace, there are bigger bullies that actually have leverage, or as bullies typically wind up: your high school wanna be thug life image will soon be merged with your real life, and while everyone around you is changing, you become static.

If you are being bullied, I can promise you, your insecurities don't run as deep as whoever is trying to stand in your way. I can't remember the last time I thought about that memory of feeling so alone and isolated and that's because I did so much more to never sink and stay persistent with my goals. I'm not perfect, no one is, but one thing I've learned is that "strength comes from an indomitable will" (Ghandi) and that is something you have to believe to make it through.
 High school is 6 parts a painful and 4 parts fun, you make mistakes, some people hang out with bone thug wannabes, but you grow up and you move on. Thank goodness because I do not look good in corn-rolls!