I've been tried and tried. Wheeeeew!

I prayed and I'm getting through it. Thinking negative thoughts, to my bro-in-law having to go to the ER twice, now my car giving me problems... I'm just thankful to be alive and keeping the stress at a minimum. Me a few years ago would be a wreck with all that I have going on. I thank God that I've been given the strength and that I've grown in my faith, so that I may turn things over to Him.

I've made it too hard in the past to put trust in Him, when it should be the easiest thing to do. No worries. Everything will work out in the end.

rom here If you don't have a tumblr account, get one. I love tumblr.

esterday I finally bought more memory for my Mac. A couple of weeks ago, my Mac did some ummm...foolish things. I was working on a spreadsheet, had Firefox open, Apple Mail and I believe I was just working between those three windows. I got to save my spreadsheet to my thumbdrive and it wouldn't save. This thing straight objected to saving anything. So, I went to eject my thumbdrive and Mac wouldn't eject it so I just yanked it out. Now, my computer tells me that I shouldn't have done that blah blah, but who pays attention to all of that...oh you probably do lol. I knew the thumbdrive was fine, I put it back in, went to try and save again after closing the prog for the spreadsheet and opening it again and it did the same thing! So then it tells me it can save my spreadsheet in some temp folder instead and I save it but I don't know where to retrieve a damn temp folder on here and I can't just have it floating around on my mac as it holds important info. So, I said f it and restarted. I went to restart and I left the room. I'm gone maybe 5 minutes. I come back and every program has shut down, but my desktop background is staring me in the face, looking all lonesome with nothing else on the screen. I'm like, umm, what's the deal? I close my Mac. I open it back up. Still on the desktop background. I had to force a shutdown. WTF??? I've had my Mac now for about ohhh, 3 years and some months. Aside from an issue with my iSight (had it replaced once), I haven't had anything like this happen before.

Fast forward to me making an appt. with the Apple store and bringing in my Mac. They ran some sort of diagnostic on my hard drive (after asking me 3 times if it was okay because apparently I could've lost EVERYTHING...do your weekly backups folks). Whilst running this diagnostic, it finds an error or some sort of damage to my hard drive! I had no clue that actual, physical damage could happen to a hard drive. I was told that my Mac being moved around, sat down, or possibly bumped could cause the problem. Uhh, it's a laptop, that happens right? Right. So he says that the hard drive is like a vinyl record and the needle can "scratch" the disk. Somehow it magically repairs itself with a press of a button and all is well and I haven't had any probs. My Mac still starts up slowly and progs take a bit longer than they should to open so I purchased another gig of RAM. I'm going to install it myself and hopefully I don't screw it up. To have Apple do it they charge you 30 bucks. Kinda pricey for just unscrewing something and putting something in a slot. I'll post an update on this later and hopefully it all works out.

et's get into it shall we.

sidebar-I'm infatuated with dropcaps now.

I was listening to some MJ before I started to count the songs.

Song #1
Share My World - MJB

Song #2
Human Nature - MJ

Song #3
4 Season of Loneliness - BoyzIIMen

Song #4
Richard Pryor talking about interracial dating - Richard Pryor (yes I have comedy tracks in my iTunes)

Song #5
The Single Man - Frank Sinatra

Song #6
Black Republican - Nas ft. Jay-Z

Song #7
Gimme - Jill Scott (this video is so fun)

Song #8
Little Green Apples - Frank Sinatra (having almost every song he has ever made causes iTunes to shuffle to his music quite often. I'm thinking about cutting Frank down a bit)

Song #9
The Whut (Animal Shit) - Joell Ortiz (this mixtape is a must have)

Song 10
Say Goodbye To Love (remix) - Kenna ft. Lupe Fiasco

"Me And The Devil"

what Jay really wanted to do, but didn't do. Besides, Gil's song actually goes with the vid. I'm jus' sayin'

Hey ya'll. I haven't been updating too much here and I kinda suck for that, sorry.

I feel like the catching up on things isn't really nearing. My business is doing great, however there's a lot that has to do with me getting Belle Butters out there that's kinda sorta overwhelming me. Don't get me wrong at all, I love being busy. I have to create challenges or have challenges come my way to be motivated. What I like about having a business is that there is rarely any monotony. I've touched on this before where I've felt like without some type of change, I get bored with what I'm doing.

I'm so blessed right now, it's just amazing.

So, right now I have a few things going on and my customers...I have the BEST customers! The word of mouth method is what's driving my business. One of my customers belongs to a Yahoo group that consists of 2400 people and she told me this morning that she broadcasted a message out to them this morning about Belle Butters! Shortly after that, I received an inquiry about Belle Butters from Canada! My mother told me the other day that my primary care doc wanted me to mail in some business cards. He has a lot of patients who have biracial children or couples who have adopted African-American children that need some help with which products to use for their hair, etc. Customers are blogging about how Belle Butters is working for them, and I have an ad that I need to come up with that will be placed in a playbill next month.

WHEW!

Lots to do. In addition to all of that, I will have a new product rolling out next week! Hopefully, my packaging will come on time and if it does, the new product should be avail for purchase by next Thurs or Fri (1/21-1/22).

I can't say enough how blessed I am and how glad I am to have taken a risk to venture out into the world of skin and hair care.

I just wanted to update folks who do not follow the Belle Butters blog as to what's been going on with me. If you want to follow the Belle Butters blog, please click on my profile link and it will direct you right to it!

Now, I have to get back to work!

Your donation today will go directly towards helping getting medical help to Haiti. They need doctors and medical supplies immediately.

Shout out to Nato Caliph (one of St. Louis' own) for this amazing vid and MESSAGE!

Can't stress it enough folks, GET TESTED!

Afrobella is rounding up links of different organizations that are taking donations to help the victims of the earthquake.

You can see them here.

I donated to YELE using my cell phone by texting YELE to 501501. Your donation will be $5 and charged to your cell phone bill.

The guesstimate for right now is that 100,000 Haitians have lost their lives.

While the concern is for the victims there, it also needs to be for the families living in the U.S. as well. I have a friend who is very near and dear to me who has family in Haiti. Communications are down and he hasn't heard anything about his family yet.

I also know someone who does ministry work in Haiti and while thankfully she was not there at the time of the earthquake, she was headed there in a few days. She does however, have friends and co-workers who were in Haiti at the time of the quake and she was fortunate enough to hear some good news that they are all doing okay.

Please pray for the people there and ask God to protect and heal the wounded and for Him to lay his grace and mercy among the grieving.

An Erro freestyle.

They are always awesome and funny.

My bad weather dreams resurfaced last night. *sigh*

They make me kinda sad actually. Don't misunderstand me. I am actually quite fascinated with torrential weather, I'm not sure why, but seeing thunderous clouds form and high winds actually gets me pretty interested in nature. However, I'm not one of those people who will stand near a tree in a storm. I'm more than happy to observe from my window.

These dreams I have, it's always more than one tornado. For example, it will start out as a big and wide tornado and then split up into two or three. Like in this picture.

I'm always looking out the window at them. In this dream though, there were a lot of people in my dream who I didn't know, never met before. I wasn't telling them or begging them to get to safety as I've done in prior dreams. Whatever they chose to do, they did and I got to safety, however this group of people was still in my presence. Didn't leave or anything. It was a bunch of men now that I think about it. All around my age. I'd say about 4 men or so. I don't know. When I tell you that my dreams creep me out, I f'n mean it. No joke about it at all.

Normally this type of dream is brought on by stress, and I think I know what the stressor is, however, it hasn't been anything else going on. Maybe it's the smells in my room. Working on Belle Butters, I pretty much store everything I use in this small space. My essential oils, shea, everything isn't too far away from where I sleep. Can smells effect what you dream about? I don't know.

So many questions, not many answers.

Facebook turned into Myspace.

I participated and it was fun. However, if this continues to happen, I'll spend more time with my precious Twitter.

I freaking love Twitter now. At first I hated it, but it's opened up so many opps for me to network, more than facebook has and it's helping my business. Can't be mad at that.

"More Than Love"

I really like this song. The vid could've been better...typical and predictable. What Fab does at the end though gave me a chuckle.

The past week I have been working, hustling Belle Butters, and spending some quality time with the internet. I've stumbled across some amazing folks and blogs and things. In it's own kinda way, the internet makes it possible for us to have this virtual six degrees of separation. It allows for better "net"working and inspiration above all else, IMO.

Let's take a gander at what I've stumbled across shall we?

Adore Daily

Nice clean design of a blog, amazing posts about fashion, and she's a naturally curly gal. It appears that she is working collaboratively with others on a fashion line called Gas'd. She also rocks the dopest heels, I drool over shoes believe it or not. If I could manage to lose some weight and get back to my feet being slender again, I'm jumping my shoe game back up.

Here's a short vid about her clothing line.

Met Her on Thursday Trailer from GAS'D on Vimeo.

Photography by Tone

I stumbled upon this photographer when I saw a Tweet @mention of Street Etiquette, a spiffy lil' fashion website ran by some very good looking black men :) This photographer recently did a shoot for them and I peeped his website. It's full of WIN. I'm always looking for photogs I've never heard of, and I always seem to be absolutely amazed by what I've found. Rarely have I been let down by a photog find. In addition to being a photog, he shoots film as well.

Here's a short vid about the bloggers Street Etiquette.

GENESIS OF STYLE: MIKE from TONE on Vimeo.

Street Etiquette

I believe it was Clutch Magazine that did a RT of something said from Street Etiquette. I peeped their website and fell in love! I love seeing black men doing it, especially when it comes to fashion, but regardless, the camaraderie is the business and you can definitely see it. These young men teach you the rules of etiquette or Street Etiquette as they like to call it, by giving other guys a very simple run down on how to wear a certain item, be it, shoes, a specific pattern or material, etc. Hopefully this means one day soon they too, will start their own line. Black people are gonna take over fashion!!!!

Notice how he rocks the houndstooth, my fav pattern and one that men can rarely pull off.



Corinne Bailey Rae

She's back!!!! Her new song I love, but what I love most is that she pretty much runs her own site. Not many artists out there add their own content to their website unless there is some special announcement that needs to be made. She adds her own pictures (scrapbook), and other items that interest her. Her hair btw, is looking fab! I'm glad she let it get longer, even though I like the short look on her, the longer hair gives her a fresher look for sure.

In her scrapbook section of her site, as a first entry, she highlighted other curly haired ladies! Awesomeness!

"it must be good for the brain to let your hair grow out and do it's natural kinks and waves . i am going to be speaking endlessly about hair in this scrapbook , just to warn you ." -CBR

I Love My Hair

This site is ran by the same young lady who runs Fly Girl Blog. If you don't know, get familiar. She's a talented artist and her site, I Love My Hair, is especially dedicated to those of us who love to rock our 'fro's. She has shirts (yay!) and cool ass prints for you to hang up to show your natural 'fro love pride! In these prints, she includes very powerful and inspirational messages about natural hair. A must for a newb or a young girl who needs the influence of how what's natural, is great!

"The only regret I have of going natural is that I didn't do it sooner." - this phrase on one of her shirts.

I know the day is almost over, but I've been slowly getting around to really being at my computer. I hope everyone had a wonderful day!

"I'd Do It All Again"

Belle Butters is live!

Go here to read more info or click on the Belle Butters picture on the right to buy!

Thank you so much for your support!

I wanna send a special shout out to everyone that is doing it! Folks that have been in business for themselves and doing well regardless of how much or little support they have gotten.

I know it's going to be challenging and I have to find it within myself often that I AM the only reason I'm doing what I do, because it's something that I love. I can't make everyone happy, obstacles will come my way and it's up to me to figure out how to maneuver around them.

There are many people out there who inspire me to work hard because I've seen them reap the benefits of their work. Like the saying goes, "It's not who you know, but what you know." No one can do YOUR job for YOU. You can't carry on success if you're being carried yourself by someone else. That's heavy load, too heavy.

To everyone doing it well, keep up the good work.

I worked until I filled every container.

Belle Butters coming soon. Actually, I created a blog for my biz! :)

Go here to see/follow it.

I posted a sneak peek of Belle Butters on twitter and fb. If you don't follow me on twitter, go there now and do it!

My biz cards coming the day I started work, solidified things even more for me. I expect to have everything *fingers crossed* up and running by Friday day.

That's all for now. Goodnight!

I would do anything for that woman. ANYTHING!

Taking care of her is nothing. I may joke around and say that she's stubborn (in all seriousness she is), but I can't help but to be there for her as she has been for me.

Cooking...hmmm. This is going to be interesting. Last post I mentioned how I subconsciously leave veggies out of meals. I'm going to work really hard to make sure I prepare them these next few weeks with veggies included. All I have to say is, out of sight, out of mind. So, I'm thinking maybe I need to write the words of veggies on things that I see in the kitchen to remind me to put them in the meal. My ma has to heal fast and good and a nutritious meal will help.

Tomorrow's din-din plan: Baked pork chops, baked potatoes and a side salad or corn with bread.

Monday: She specifically requested that I make the jumbilaya so I will.

Tuesday: She wants fried catfish, gonna put that with more salad, bread and uhhhh hmmm, peas??? Ugh! I HATE peas! But, for my ma, I will cook them and eat a very very small amount.

Maybe Wednesday I'll try using the chicken stock I saved from a few weeks ago to make some soup. Please cross your fingers. I'll have my ma to guide me, but I really want to try and do it on my own.

Everything else has been pretty much taken care of, easy peasy. My ma is enjoying laying in the bed, talking on the phone and watching hours of HGTV and the Food Network. :)