Blog it Out, Bitch the Book

Coming September 2011

 

Welcome!

Most likely everyone reading this was a subscriber to Blog It Out, Bitch over on Myspace. Let me start by saying how much I appreciate you taking the time to check me out in my new home. Hopefully, you’ll stay awhile. And by stay awhile I mean you’ll come everyday to read my blogs. Several times a day in fact.

If you’ve followed the directions left on Myspace you’ve already read the About section of this site and possibly checked out the Who’s Who directory. Now, I want to tell you what you can expect here at Blog It Out, Bitch.

On the main page you’ll notice the Features box with the rotating images. That box will always feature the five most recent blogs on this site. Clicking on an image will take you to the corresponding blog.

Each day you can expect two new blogs. One will be a television review (The L Word on Mondays, 24 on Tuesdays, Lost on Thursdays, etc.) and the other a regular old slice of life Nina blog you’ve come to expect from reading me all those years on Myspace. Those blogs may fall under any of the categories listed on the About page (Blog It Out, Bitch, BIOBaby, Mommy Mondays, Fiction, etc.) The only time you can expect three blogs in one day is if for some reason two of the shows I review are aired on the same night, then you’d get two reviews and one regular blog.

As you get acquainted with my new digs I need two favors. One, go back to the main page and register your email address to receive a daily digest informing you of new content on BIOB. Two, spend some time over the next few weeks checking out the nifty archives. There you will find some of your old favorite blogs and maybe some new gems you missed along the way. Leave comments, let me know you’re here. If you see errors in blogs, please feel free to point it out either in a comment or by emailing me at nina@blogitoutb.com. Any blog you see here will soon be gone from Myspace forever.

For those of you following Sharing Space, the first two chapters have been posted under the fiction section. I’ll be rolling out the remaining chapters slowly to give new readers a chance to catch up. It might also be good for you original readers to use that time to refresh your memory.

Starting on January 1st there’ll be a new blog feature under Health titled, “Too Cute To Be This Fat.” Follow my journey to lose baby weight. That’s bound to be good for a few laughs.

And please have a little patience. I think I did a pretty good job of transferring over the lion’s share of my good blogs from Myspace, but I’m sure I missed a few. As I come across them, I’ll be adding them here with their original post dates. They will never appear in the features section and hopefully, they won’t appear in your daily digest, but they might.

Did I say two favors? I meant three. Finally, I need for you to tell a friend, co-worker, or family member (or five) about this site, and then tell them to tell someone… or five. I could use the company.

Thanks for reading,

N.

(Please note: The e-mail form is working correctly now.)

Who’s Who

Some of the many people you’ll encounter at Blog It Out, Bitch:

Donny – My long suffering husband. He works hard so I don’t have to. I suspect he only puts up with me because I make him laugh and I’m pretty good in bed. Everyone is waiting for the day when he’ll go “white boy crazy” and kill me in my sleep. Including me.

Kali – Our nine-year-old daughter. She’s smart, funny, and incredibly kind. She’s also drop dead gorgeous. She’s a Disney Channel star waiting to happen, but less annoying and without the whole drugged-up, washed-out, has-been future ahead of her.

Jack – Our newborn baby boy. He’s too young to know what a crazy household he was born into. Born in August of 2008 he’s already displaying a sweet disposition (from Donny) and sense of humor (from me.) He’s also beautiful. Like his Mama.

Sophie/Moon – My best friend since I was 12 and in junior high. We bonded over Guns n’ Roses and To Kill a Mockingbird. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two small children. She knows where the bodies are buried.

Richard/Tralfaz – Richard and I met on Myspace over two years ago (profile name: Tralfaz.) He’s one of few people that can put up with me, but I suspect he only does so because I’m one of the rare people alive that watches about as much television as he does. Richard is a magazine editor that resides in New Jersey.

Mike/Armand Assante’s Left Ventricle and Bette/Wonder Bitch – I met Mike and Bette on Myspace a few years ago. For a short time we had an internet radio show which was pretty much us making each other laugh for an hour. Mike and Bette are dating and live in Orlando, Florida.

Tara/Boozy Irish Floozie – Tara, another Myspace friend, lives in New Jersey as well. Tara is like me, but white. I suspect she doesn’t drink nearly as much as she lets on.

Other oft mentioned folk include my father and stepmother who are both retired NYC police detectives now living in Atlanta, my mother in North Carolina (also ex-NYPD), and various siblings so large in number that even I sometimes can’t name them all.

Buck Naked and Tied to a Tree

Don’t you just love that now that you’re an adult you can say stuff to your parents that you couldn’t before?

I was just on a three-way call with my Mom and my sister. My sister is due to give birth any day now and is having a bad night. So, first we’re talking about how we each have known married women who are very religious and that have all forgiven their husband’s infedility because of their faith. My sister and I were like, “That’s just crazy.” My mother, who was in one of her “moods”, you know when she’s not threatnening to “beat a bitch’s ass,” was defending it.

Mom: Let me tell you, when you’re cheated on it can take you to a really dark place. And if she has her faith to allow her to not go to that place, then more power to her.

She then tells this story about when she found out her ex was cheating on her and all she knew was the type of work the woman did and the town. My mother drove out to this town and got lost. She saw a cop at a gas station and asked for directions saying that she was trying to find her friend stranded w/ a flat tire. The cop gave her directions. My mom had a butcher knife to slash the woman’s tires and a five pound bag of sugar to go in the gas tank. When she got there she noticed construction workers hanging around outside the building and it stopped her from doing what she came to do. She calls it the “grace of God.”

Nina: Hmm, I call it being one lucky ass.

Mom: I’m just saying, if having faith stops a woman from doing something stupid that’s not a bad thing.

Nina: Yeah, but the last time I checked, you can’t pray away AIDS.

At some point in the conversation, I notice Kali pick up the DIY book Richard sent for Donny.

Nina: Put that down!

I tell my sister and my Mom.

Naiemah: That’s what you get. That kinda stuff you need to keep in the closet….way up high…in the shadows. That’s where I keep my pornos.

I laugh.

Naiemah: I had to because Malachi recorded over one with cartoons. I was soooo pissed cause it was my favorite flick. It had this one scene…

Mom: Nina, do you hear this?

Nina: Yes! Shut up so she can finish!

Then they’re talking about something and I log on to Myspace. I start reading my new comments on my profile page (Thanks, Zoe!!) and notice there’s an invite to a cocktail party that Totally Tyler is having at his place. This is the third time this man has invited me to a party. I need to write him and tell him the night he’s inviting me is the night Tara gets into town. Anyway, I read the invite out loud.

Naiemah: Buck naked and tied to a tree.

Mom and Nina: What?!

Naiemah: That’s how they’re gonna find your ass if you keep meeting people off the internet.

Nina: Shut up.

Naiemah: How do you spell your married name again? I want to make sure the milk carton people get it right.

This then prompts my sister to tell us a story of when she was in her late teens and met some guy she had been chatting with online for a few weeks. I could literally hear the years being shaved off my mother’s life as she spoke.

Apparently, my sister was picked up by this guy in Brooklyn and he drove her out to Queens where they would supposedly see a movie. She says he heads to this rural area with trailers.

Naiemah: I didn’t even know New York had trailer parks.

So, this guy pulls into a parking lot next to a park and says to my sister, “You ready to fuck?”

Nina: Sweet Jesus.

She goes on to tell the guy that she wasn’t going to do anything with him and he starts trying to talk her into it. Thinking quickly, she says she has her period and starts looking around. She notices three white guys sitting on benches in the park. The guy in the car then demands proof that she has her period. She starts screaming and jumps out the car. He tries to pull her back in, but she’s too quick.

My sister starts running towards the white guys and notices that they’re all bald and wearing black jackets.

She says she faltered for just a moment.

Naiemah: I thought, “Great. I’m going to die either way.”

The guy in the car peels out the parking lot and she starts walking away from the white guys. They start calling after her.

Possible Skinheads: Hey, shorty. You okay? Where you going? We ain’t gonna do nothing to you. You need help?

Having no idea where the hell she was she allowed them to walk her to the main road. She had no money, and this is before she had a cell phone.

Naiemah: Turns out these guys weren’t skinheads. They just liked being bald and wearing black. Who knew?

Anyway, they walked my sister all the way to Atlantic Avenue where she was able to find her way home.

Morals of this story?

Forgiveness is nice, but don’t be stupid.
My mom is ghetto fabulous.
My sister got lucky.
Not all white people are crazy.
Be careful who you meet off the internet lest you find yourself buck naked and tied to a tree.

A Blogging It Out Bitch

Writing this blog everyday has become more than a habit. It’s downright addictive. I think that’s because it has proven to be a form of therapy for me. All the things that I can’t, or won’t, say in real life are poured out on the pages of this blog. I can blog it out, put it out there, and not have to worry about all my emotions overloading my system because I don’t have an outlet for them.

Oddly enough when I blog and when I don’t blog both leave me with the same feeling: as if I’m that man on the board game Operation. When I blog I feel all open and exposed as he is – my insides laid out for all to see and pick over. When I don’t blog I feel like the slightest touch, the smallest bump in the road of life, will cause me to react as if anything would set off an electrical charge throughout my body. Given that, I choose to go with the lesser of two evils. I’d rather put it all out there and be free, and scrutinized, than to walk around a ball of nerves.

When I started blogging in November of 2005, I had no idea that it would evolve to such a level. Back then the only people reading my blog were those related to me and family friends. This totaled about 8 people. Seemingly out of nowhere, people began to find my blog and leave comments. A dialogue, and an addiction, began.

Of all the hyphenates attached to me; mother-wife-student-blogger, blogger is the most surprising. I thought bloggers had to be incredibly tech-savvy people who wrote about things of great importance. As it turns out, a blogger can be anyone with internet access and the delusional notion that people are actually interested in anything they have to say – important or otherwise.

Lucky for me there are people out there, at least 2000 at last count, who consider my mostly normal, but sometimes crazy, life interesting. They log on everyday to read about my latest adventures in motherhood, matrimony, and college life in my 30′s. That kind of attention can also be addictive. Now, I am known as the blogger in my family. I’m the one that people feel the need to preface their conversations with the warning, “Don’t blog about this…” I find it hilarious.

One person who isn’t laughing, well, maybe on the inside he is… a little, is Donny. For some bizarre reason he takes exception with me writing about our sex life, his tendency to sometimes rock a very scumbag looking mustache, and our wacky conversations. I tell him to lighten up. How sad would life be if we couldn’t laugh at ourselves… and share it with others who are, more often than not, going through the same bullshit? Blogging has given me a connection with people all over the world I would never otherwise meet. I couldn’t stop now if I tried… sad, but true.

I knew my blogging addiction was spiraling out of control when one night the plan was to work out and then join Donny in bed. After exercising I decided to log on, really quickly I told myself, to see what comments had been posted on my latest blog. One thing turned into another and I found myself online for hours engaging in conversations with my readers as I sat ruminating in my own funky sweat. By the time I realized the time and tippy-toed upstairs Scooby-Doo style, Donny was already asleep. I quietly made my way to the master bath and turned on the shower. Why not just quietly slip into bed and go to sleep? Why run the risk of waking him up to call me out on my late night addiction?

Because you just don’t crawl into bed with your husband smelling like gang bang.