Green Thumb growing...

Hey ya'll...

NOTE: For those of you who read Sharon, i.e., Ms. Just Write Now!, you will all know that she was going to donate a kidney to her brother Dee on July 17th. Well, I got a call from her, and all went well with the operation. In her words "Dee is kicking high, and I am kicking low..." I am not sure what that means... I think she is having one of her microphone moments. But she says to let you all know that she is doing fine... and that she she's up in Saint Louis, where the power has been out all week due to storms, so she is unable to blog...

But she is doing well, and recovering well, and will be back to blogging real soon :)

Now on to today's post...

A couple of weeks ago, I planted some flowers in the front yard. I was a bit antsy because my flowers looked like they had been on crack, and needed some help, some resuscitation... something...

But two weeks later, with a little of this Oldgirl's love and tender care... Voila...



Before...



After...



And a picture from a view that the neighborhood prostitutes and crackheads get, from the retainer wall in front of my house...




And here's a picture of two basil plants that I bought at the same time that I bought the flowers for the yard. They were half this size when I bought them! Oh how they have grown!!



I had them on the porch, but I brought them in the house... I learned at the last street association meeting that some of the crackheads are stealing plants off the front porches... Interesting (as always).

So needless to say...

I am getting there...

The green thumb is growing... slowly but surely.

Book Review - The Other Brother by Brandon Massey.

I love Brandon Massey...

Hold up. Pump the brakes and back it up. Let me clarify that.

I LOVE Brandon Massey's writing...

Okay there we go. That's better.

Now, anyone who knows me, knows I love to read. But you may catch a foot in your throat if you try to run up on me and suggest I read some of the badly written, crackhead-edited urban fiction(?) that seems to be all the rage amongst my people these days... And erotica does not impress me... Come on, we all have twerked it out in every whicha way before...

Whatever.

No, I like to read strange stuff: Black Sci-fi, Black Horror, Black speculative fiction. The stranger the better. Come on black authors, impress me, use your imagination, doggonit.

Now, you know my favorite female authour is Tayari Jones, a fellow ATLien. I posted about her back in February.

But my favorite male author is another ATLien, Brandon Massey. He writes some strange stuff. He bounces to the beat of a different drummer. I am not sure how he classifies himself, but I classify him as a horror writer.

Black folks writing horror? Who would have thought.

Well Brandon does and he does it well. I tell you, it ain't NOTHING in the world like seeing Ray-Ray, Quita, and Pookie them going through some ish with with vampires, witches and the like.

But I digress... Brandon has written four novels, a short story collection (which I will review later, and two anthologies of horror short stories written by black folks.

But I could go on and on (and you know how long winded I am).

The Other Brother, Brandon Massey's fourth novel, was released last week. For some reason, I thought it would be out later this month, but when I found out it was already out, I immediately went out and picked up a copy.

Now the Other Brother, like many of Brandon's stories, is set in Atlanta (always a plus!). It is the story of the Reid family: T.L. Reid, founder CEO and founder of the well to do Reid Construction Company; Gabriel Reid, his son, who is being groomed to become CEO of the company one day; his wife, Margaret, the ever loving family matriarch; daughter, Nicole Reid, who, although not involved with Reid Construction, is a successful corporate lawyer.

...The perfect upper middle class (or high class, really) family...

(In other words, bougi high post black Atlanta negroes... Humph.)

Well, like I said, this is the perfect family...

But you know what's up... Er'body got some skeletons in their closets.

And when them damn skeletons come busting out that tight closet and straight up run all over the place... Oh my!

Now Theo Reid, the family patriarch, has a big skeleton... While on a business trip in Chicago some 30 odd years ago, he had an affair with a young lady...

Well, he got her pregnant, and she had a son... Isaiah Battle. Now imagine this: Theo Reid and his perfect family, all successful and wealthy, living it up in the ATL...

...His illegitimate son, Isaiah, living with his mother in poverty with his mother in some Chicago projects. Isaiah has been following his father's career for years- saving all the stories about him and his company and his family, from Ebony magazine, etc... while living in poverty...

So after 30 years, several run-ins with the law, a stint in prison, Isaiah is pissed, and thinking about getting some get back. He jumps in his tricked out Chevy Chevelle, jumps on I-75 south, and roars into Atlanta...

... with a mission.

Isaiah shows up and Theo has to deal with his son's arrival on the scene and it's affect on the family. This is a story about how the family deals with Isaiah's arrival on the scene.

Simple story... but in the hands of Brandon Massey, it becomes delightfully complex.

And to add to all the drama, Brandon weaves in an INTERESTING supernatural twist... I can't talk about it here. You'll have to read the book to, uhhh, catch what was up with that. Some of that sort of reminded me of Octavia Butler's writings (and you know how off the chain she could get with that stuff!)

And that is what I like about his writing... he's a master weaver. I mean you can tell he REALLY thought about this story. He does one heck of a job layering plots and weaving lots of stories into one overall story. For instance, there was some relationship drama in this book. There was a love story, and the struggles of that love, layered in there also. Then there was the whole suspense thing. Throw that all together, and mix it up with the supernatural twists and you've got one heck of a page turner.

... Had me saying aloud... "Dang Man! Dang, man! What's gonna happen? How are they going to get through this? What's gonna happen!?"

Now, this book, which was a supernatural suspense thriller, didn't freak me out as bad as his last book, Within the Shadows, which was sort of like a black Fatal Attraction with a supernatural and horror twist, (I haven't been in the Cascade Road Starbucks since I read that book, and I don't even really care to drive on Cascade road no more). But The Other Brother was an excellent book, with a lot going on... A WHOLE lot. I may have to read it again just to appreciate the depth of it.

This book was quite realistic: I know if I saw my Daddy and his smiling family off in the pages of Ebony, and every other black magazine, and he wasn't acknowledging or helping me and my mama, and we'd been struggling down for a thirty years, living in poverty... Man, I believe I'd be ready to get a little revenge on somebody... Really though. The characters were very well developed. Brandon took me inside their hearts and minds. I felt like I knew them.

So if you are looking for an interesting read... highly dramatic, extremely emotional, with characters that you will come to care about and think about long after you put the book down... if you are like me, and like a good supernatural twist, i.e., something off the beaten trail and highly creative... check out The Other Brother.

Support this ATLien. Support very GOOD fiction.

You know this Oldgirl would never steer you wrong...

The Botanical Novice

You may have asketh...

Hark...

What has the Original Oldgirl been up to?

I've been doing a lot of reading... a little writing...

and planting flowers...

Last weekend, I planted some flowers...

Na'll let me stop lying...

It was more like coming home from Church, waking up my brother, "Milk and Cookies", and watching him sweat profusely while he shoveled red Georgia clay and concrete (thanks to my builders... those bustas!), from around the walkway leading to my brick steps...

I did hand him the flowers from the flower pots, and I did hold the bags while he shoveled dirt and sod into them. And I did drive out to Peachtree City, 30 miles south of downtown ATL, and bought the darn flowers (You gotta go knee deep into the white neighborhood sometimes to find what you need, you know)...

So technically, I planted flowers last weekend.

Don't they look lovely??



Let's back up a little so you can see all of MY hard work... Lovely, hunh?



Before you say, "Gee Ladylee, those are quite nice", have a look at my neighbor's flowers...



Humph...

I can hear my lil' sista super shoe queen blogger Serenity 23 laughing and stomping so hard that she breaks one of her clear heels... Calm down gal... I know you gonna dog me, so go ahead on and dog me, Shorty...

I have to come home and look at their yard and see something out of the freakin pages of Home and Garden...



And look at the small tropical jungle on the side of their porch...



Now take a look at my flowers again...



Shut up, now... I ain't no hater. It's just that when I see my neighbor's Paul and Stan's flowers, I think "these are flowers"...

When I see my flowers, I think "these are flowers on crack!"

Well, while Milk and Cookies and I were out on the walkway slaving away, planting the flowers, Stan walked out on his porch and looked at us like we were crazy or had gone mad...

"What are ya'll doing over there?" he yelled.

Both my brotha and I looked up. "Planting flowers," I yelled back.

"Please don't let him come over here," I murmured to a smiling Milk and Cookies. No sooner than I whispered that hope, Stan was marching across his driveway heading straight for us.

"You know you gotta water those everyday, right. Just a little water, every day, and they will be just fine."

"Um... yeah, Stan... will do."

He went away as quickly as he came over.

Now, I know why he was stressing the "every day" watering. It was because I had planted a peach Snapdragon, the color of my house, in April. The Snapdragon flowers started turning red, and I lost interest... I didn't water that thing, and for a good two months, a collection of dried sticks and stems sat where there was once a beautiful red snapdragon...

And I know that pissed off Paul and Stan, especially when they had to see that monstrosity while cutting my grass! LOL!

So, Stan felt it was his duty to warn me, the Botanical Novice Ladylee, to water the flowers everyday...

I've been heeding his advice, and since we are under a watering restriction, I have even been sneaking out there at night with a couple of gallons of water making sure they are getting watered on my city imposed non-watering days. (Don't trip, word is they arresting people these days, and I ain't trying to be locked down over some doggone flower watering!)

Will my flowers grow? Hmm... I will let you know! Stay tuned for a pic later this month!

The Librarian Mix Tapes

I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, actually doing some work for a change, when I heard the voice of Regina, my friendly workplace librarian, happily greeting co-workers as she walked down the hall...

"Hey everybody!"

"How's everybody doing?"

"Hey ya'll!"

I froze at my desk, closed my eyes tight... she was getting closer and closer.

"I just came up here to see Ladylee," she yelled to someone.

I wanted to wiggle my nose like that Samantha chick on Bewitched, and disappear. It was too late to crawl under my cluttered desk. There was no easy escape from my cubicle.

Then she appears...

"Hey girl, what's going on?"

I pretend to be checking my emails. "Nothing."

"I need a favor," she chimes, as she is rummaging through the close to empty candy bucket on my desk. She sits down at my cubicle mate Cowgirl Cre's desk.

"What, man?!"

"I'm traveling this holiday weekend and I need some music. Burn me a few good CDs."

"Dang, man!" I proceed to have a straight up conniption fit. She ignores my rants, as usual.

There's something about my friendly librarian. She is a big wig on every doggone charity committee in the building, and is able to get me to do various things, everything from donating money, attending programs...

Even making salmon for the African American month celebration every year (see post).



This time she wanted some music.

I bitched badly about her bringing me some blank CDs. She was acting like she didn't know what I was talking about when I made such a simple request. I have about 75 hours worth of music in my laptop and we went through the arduous task of looking through some of it.

"Girl, I want some of that old stuff... you know, like that Clarence Carter, or some of that Johnny Taylor! You got any of that?!"

I looked at her like she had been smoking crack. She is in her late 40's, so I expected her to say some craziness like that. "Hell nawl, I don't listen to any of that!"

Well how about some of that Mary J. Blige, you know, the one about "What's the 411?"

*crickets*

I was completely taken aback by that... How did she jump from talking about some old juke joint Clarence Carter to some hip-hoppy old school Mary J. Blige?

"Um... no Regina, I ain't got old Mary. I got her new stuff, but her old CDs are still packed up somewhere," was my simple answer.

"Oh that's fine," she said, as she proceeded to rummage through papers on my desk. (She is a nosy gal!)

I scrolled through some of the music, playing some of the songs. Others had gathered around by this time. Sometimes we just happen to play music and break out singing, hoping shady management don't come strolling around the corner....

That day, my friendly librarian was having flashbacks of her times some 20 or 30 years ago back in some old hole-in-the-wall juke joint, because she started doing some crazy dances, high stepping, arms flailing, eyes closed tight, lips poked out, face all frowned up...

... you know, them dances...

Like the ones your drunk Auntie with the lopsided wig use to do at family get togethers. Sort of like them dances your crazy uncle, the one with the tight shorts, nylon socks, and dress shoes, use to do at family reunions.

Those dances.

We all made sure to back up a foot or two from her to keep from getting injured.

Well anyway, I made her CDs.

*LadyLee sitting at her desk, quietly burning CDs on her personal laptop, periodically gazing over shoulder, watching out for shady management.*

I even took the time to list out her songs for her. She was quite pleased.

Anyway, here they are...

I think she will have a nice drive with these:

Regina’s Fast 80’s Mix Tape

Juicy Fruit (Extended Version) – Mtume
Been Around the World – Lisa Stansfield
No One’s Gonna Love You – SOS band
Save the Overtime - Gladys Knight and the Pips
Diamonds – Herb Alpert w/Janet Jackson
Hangin’ on a String – Loose Ends
Ghetto Heaven (Hidden Track) – Family Stand
Just the Way You Like It – SOS band
The Glamorous Life – Sheila E.
The Men All Pause – Klymaxx
Saturday Love – Cherelle and Alexander O’Neal
The Finest – SOS Band
Don’t Look Any Further – Dennis Edwards
Sugar Free – Juicy
Slow Down- Loose Ends.


>Regina Oldschool Mix 1

Would You Mind – Earth, Wind, and Fire
I Want to be Free – Ohio Players
Backstabbers – The O’Jays
Love’s Train – ConFunkshun
When Love Calls – Atlantic Starr
Wildflower – New Birth
Flowers – Emotions
Hurry up this way Again – Stylistics
Lady Marmalade – LaBelle
Give Me Your Love – Curtis Mayfield
Inside Out – Odyssey
Annie Mae – Natalie Cole
Eddie you should know better- Curtis Mayfield
Boogie Oogie Oogie – Taste of Honey
Don’t Call My Neighbor – Emotions
Our Love – Natalie Cole


Regina’s Slow Mix

Free – Denise Williams
Making Love in the Rain – Herb Alpert/Janet Jackson/ Lisa Keith
You Can’t Stop the Rain – Loose Ends
Giving my All to you – Johnny Gill
I Wanna Get next to You – Rolls Royce
Ooh La La La – Teena Marie
Tell Me If you still Care – SOS band
Everything I miss at Home – Cherelle
The Morning After – Alexander O’Neal
Go Outside in the Rain – Milara
Nite and Day – Al B. Sure
Whatever you want – Tony, Toni, Tone
Been Such a long Time – New Birth
Whatever It takes – Anita Baker
I Want to Be Free – Ohio Players.

Ja... King of UNO!

The Day... Saturday.

The time? Nine o'clock in the evening.

The house was quiet as a mouse, save for the low hum of my laptop and the soft whir of the bedroom ceiling fan. Everybody else in the house was knocked out sleep... My brother, "Milk and Cookies", my sister "Kentucky".... even my cat Oscar Tyrone was stretched out at the foot of my bed, lost in la-la land...

All of a sudden my phone rings, startling me something crazy. Even Oscar-Tyrone sat up straight, his ears in perking up, eyes wide, ready to attack... or run and hide.

I looked at the caller ID. It was the my neighbor and coworker, the Infamous Hen-Dog (who lives a few houses down the street from me)...



"Yeah, man," I answered.

"Lee, what chu doin'?"

"Looking at blogs, playing on my laptop. Why?"

Now anytime Hen calls that late on a weekend night, he is on his way over. It's always "So-n-so wanna see your house" or "I need to burn some CDs on your laptop" or "What you cook tonight, gal?". Some craziness like that.

"Ja wanna come over and play some UNO," he said.

"Dude," I said quickly. "Dude, give me about 30 minutes to get up and put on some clothes, just hold on. Come on, dude."

I had to tell him that because his convos are usually ended with "I'm about to ring your doorbell right now."

Well, I mentioned Ja. Ja is in town for the summer. Ja is Hen's thirteen-year-old son...

This has to be the happiest kid in the world. Always smiling, always polite... skipping along like a doggone smurf...

So I laughed real hard when lil Hen-Dog, Jr. strutted through my door shuffling a well worn deck of UNO cards.



Now I hadn't played UNO in years. It was the card game of choice for me and my crew back in the 80's, but Ja came through the door with his cards (which were red instead of black. When did that happen??) pretty confident about his UNO expertise.

I immediately went upstairs and woke up a snoring "Milk and Cookies". He'd had army reserve drills all that day and was pretty much exhausted. I drug his dazed behind out of bed and shoved him into the bathroom. I told him to take a leak and come on downstairs. (Okay, I still treat him like he's 3.)

I needed some help beating Mr. Ja at UNO, you see.

First of all, there were some bootleg rules. Some craziness like if you have 2 or more Draw Fours in your hand, then you can throw them all down, thereby having to draw Eight to sixteen cards. If you have a bunch of any cards in your hand, you can throw them all down at the same time.



Like I said, completely bootleg.

I agreed to these stupid rules...

I went and got my laptop computer and loaded up some old school jams. Ja knew every doggone song, and sang his lil' heart out. I thought the music would be enough to distract Ja, but it only served to get him going.

Ja started winning games, which completely unnerved me.

And whenever he was on a winning streak, or if he would win a game (which he did consistently), he would jump up and dance for a few minutes.



We played for three hours straight... Let's just say Ja got his dance on quite often.



Now, I wanted to yell, "Hey Shorty! Why don't you spin around in the middle of that dance move and close that kitchen cabinet for me" or "Hey lil' man, why don't you moonwalk over there to the counter, pick up the thing of carpet freshner and Febreze spray and throw them under the sink for me!"

That would've given me a chance to slide my brother Milk and Cookies some Draw Fours, some Draw twos... something to get that lil' joker with, but as you can see, Milk and Cookies was concentrating hard, like he was taking a test or something...



I finally surrendered at one in the morning... Poor Milk and Cookies had to get up at five in the morning to get ready for his military drills. I had to go ahead on and admit that Ja was the man... I had to give him his props...

He was indeed the UNO king of the world!



But that's alright, though. I'm gonna get my practice on...

And I'm going to give the lil' Hen-Dog Jr. a run for his title!!