Good Monday Evening... The Birthday Sweepstakes Edition

It is Monday, and I meant to do this post this morning. Sigh. Oh well.

I'm doing it now, and that is all that matters.

So today is my birthday week! I should be doing all kinds of wide swooping cartwheels up and down the hallways!

But I am not.

No I'm not sad about my birthday. That will NEVER be the case. I celebrate each birthday for the simple reason that I have made it to a new birthday.  There are people who didn't make it to a new birthday.  Heck, they didn't even make it to a new year.

But I made it to a new year. And I will hopefully make it to my Saturday birthday.

And that alone is worth celebrating. Indeed.

No, I have just been busy. I am a little more busy mentally than usual. And I haven't been all that engaged like I should be. So there hasn't been this big buildup I have every year, where I give away my birthday gift cards, etc. I almost forgot about all that, lol. So I am trying to get myself back on course.  

Anyway, I am excited about my birthday. My birthday falls on this Saturday, and I would take off Thursday, Friday, AND Monday if I could get away with it. But it looks like I will only take Friday off because I have stuff to do. Oh well. Thank you Lord that I have a job. Period.

With that said, I had a pretty good weekend... save for that odd ending to the Super Bowl.  I had the same face as Richard Sherman had:

That's the face I had. I felt just like him.

Ya'll better be glad I was up waiting for clothes to dry. I was on the phone with my best friend LadyTee at the time. I was screaming "Noooooooooooooo!" louder than I'd ever screamed in my entire life. Her son was in their living room wailing just as hard. She wasn't watching and was bewildered by our yelling. I told her. Then the buzzer on the dryer went off. And I went and folded some clothes, then went on to bed.

I couldn't sleep, so I listened to a trusty Alan Stanley episode on my app. I'd been listening while cleaning up anyway.  I heard something very interesting in the Ask It series of the past month. And I will let it be the Quote of the Week.

So we all have heard, when trying to make a decision, that we should stop and ask ourselves "What would be the right thing to do here in this situation?"

A MUCH better question is the following:

In light of YOUR past experience, in light of YOUR current circumstances, and in light of YOUR future hopes and dreams... What would be the wise thing to do in this situation?

The question just shook me to the bones. Why? Because it brings painful clarity. It is a much deeper question than asking what the right thing to do is? And the answer differs for each person. Everyone has a different set of past experiences, current circumstances, and future hopes and dreams.

And my personal opinion is that it's more painful to deal with yourself than others. Why? Because we are culturally conditioned to be an expert on everyone's lives but our own. We have immediate opinions about what everybody else is doing, but won't face our own issues. Hmm.

Besides, we ask ourselves that question in one way or another. And we do one of two things: be honest with ourselves or deceive ourselves. That question makes everything less... foggy.

Interesting. I will thinking about that question for a long time.

And Pastor Stanley said if you find this question stupid, then you just don't have your own best interest in mind. And if you don't have your own best interest in mind, then who will?

O_O.

Ouch, ouch, OUCH. Wow.

*crickets*

Yes... I will be thinking about that for awhile. And rightfully so.

Anyway, on to a song of the week. I have been listening to a lot of old Wale. He use to do some go-go music back in the day. That's better than this... Mayback Music. I hope he goes back to it. I am glad dude can rap about other matters unrelated to the usual Maybach topics. I can't seem to track down many clean versions, but you know how I love instrumentals. And this one has the hook."Pretty Girls".



That is awesome. Too much go-go gets a little overwhelming, but his old mixtapes are full of it. Go-go is so regional, more prevalent up in the DC corridor, so I don't hear much of it down here in the ATL. I love music discovery, and that was a good find.

That's it for me. Stay tuned for a full load of posts. I figure that if I right that, I will do it.

Yes, I will do it.

I will do it, I will do it, I will do it.

On purpose. 

And I will give away a $45 gift card for my birthday. Yes I will. But I will do that 2 weeks out, around Valentine's day.  That will give me 2 full weeks of posts to produce, perhaps.

For I am waxing nostalgic about the past year. I am turning 45. How have I changed? What's bothering me? How have I grown? How have the events of the past year affected me?

I will peruse, pontificate, and wax nostalgic. You do what YOU do best: comment to win. The more comments the better chance of winning. I have a pretty good system of keeping track of comments, so you can comment here, on text, or on my Oldgirlladylee gmail. Some of ya'll even hit me on the twitter streets. That is fine, as it comes straight to my phone. Glory!

Birthday Sweepstakes begins now... through February 15!

Holler back! On purpose!