Don’t knock a sista down!

Hey homies! Why’d you all go and do such a thing to a divalicious sista like me? I do my booty shake all up in this blog space with my stories and y’all have to drag a girl down! Sheez! I heard my name floating around y’alls mouths about there’s something all wrong with my site. I even had someone go and put me on a condemned list, man. She even gave me a mark of shame.

Why y’all laughing fer? Oh, y’alls saying this is a good thang? Um. Okay.

Moving onto more serious business, Bella at That Damn Expat gave me this Premio Dardos award because she believes this blog has some type of nutritional value to your daily reading regimen. Hee-hee! I am not going to touch that one. By the rules of the game, I have to pass it along to other bloggers who pass it along to other bloggers until we have a worldwide passing contest to see if we can overload the Blogger mainframe bringing chaos and destruction to Internet mankind. Or maybe it is just to show our appreciation for our fellow bloggers. Whichever reason is fine by me. Oh wait! She did post a reason.

"This award acknowledges the values that every Blogger displays in their effort to transmit cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values with each message they write. Awards like this have been created with the intention of promoting community among Bloggers. It's a way to show appreciation and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web."

1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who granted it to you, along with his/her blog link.

2. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you feel are worthy of this recognition. Remember to contact each of them to let them know they have been chosen as recipients.

I still like the chaos and destruction scenario better, yet to each their own. I have to name 15 bloggers. Gawd! Is there anyone left who doesn’t already have this award? Well, if I repeat someone then they will just end up having two awards. I am listing them in no particular order and for reasons of my own, which mainly have to deal with the fact that I like their blogs and the stories they post and maybe even just their waaay cool pictures in my little followers list.

1: Jennifer
2: Protege
3: Caroline
4: L.C. Gant
5: Chris
6: Beverly
7: Buck
8: Laughingwolf
9: Aerin
10: Dani
11: Bella- thatdamnexpat (ha - I gave it right back to you so I can continue my evil plans for world domination by collapsing the Blogger mainframe . . . MWAHAHAHA!)
12: Suldog (yes, I gave you one - take it, damn it!)
13: Angie (yes, I know you got one already - it still does not change the fact that I visit your blog every day like it is the cure for my madness without paying the $100 therapy bill.)
14: Kathryn (yes, I know Angie gave you one - but I am also showing my appreciation to you.)
15: Oren (I know you do not even have a blog, which is a shame because the comments you leave are very meaningful and I think you would be of great nutritional value to everyone’s daily regimen - so I am showing my appreciation because you stop by.)

Oops! Hey! I received another award recently. This is from Protege at Life, Work, and Pleasure.

Um, let me see who should have this one. She didn’t really say how many people I can give this to so I think I’ll just pick three. Okay. I know who.

1: Jinksy
2: Legal Mist
3: Small Footprints

Okay, people! What is going on? I also got tagged with a Random Photo Tag by Legalmist. When it rains, it snows. Um, this is a hard one for me.

Supposedly, I am to go into the fourth folder on my computer that has my pictures, find the fourth photo, and write a story about it then pick four people for the meme. I don’t have a fourth folder. I have one folder holding my photos, and there are not a lot of photos in there because my laptop is almost drained of memory. This is the reason I keep everything on my flash drives. Also, the only time I take photos is when I plan to use the picture in my blog. So I already wrote stories for those pics.

Huh? I guess I could take a different route with this.

I don’t normally talk about my work unless it relates to my writing. The only clue is in my profile where under occupation I have it down as “Wedding Biz.” Basically, I create stationery for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations. This includes flyers, invitations, and wedding programs (the itinerary on how the wedding progresses - these are passed out at the beginning of the ceremony). I do it alone, printing out the information and then doing the rest by hand - and you will not believe the cramps I get in my hands when tying on the little ribbons for 250 wedding programs.

The economy has slowed significantly with this recession (no news flash there) and at times it has become shaky on whether I will continue with this or chalk it up as a failed business. I suppose it can be argued that with the computer age, many people are creating their own stationery. Yet most of my clienteles are low income people who do not even own a computer and cannot afford to go extravagant with their ceremonies. I cater to these people, offering flexible pricing (and why is this story starting to sound like a business ad? UGH! This is the reason I don’t talk about it unless kids shove fried chicken into ATMs at the reception hall.) Anyway, I offer beautiful, affordable stationery for those people who can’t have a guest spot on those shows like “Platinum Weddings” or other such nonsense on spending gads of cash on one ceremony where you could spend it all on buying three houses, and a yacht, and a small third world nation. The way I see it, there isn’t any reason why a low income couple can’t have a wonderful, beautiful party. I try to provide that.

Anyhow, the story I am sharing has to do with this picture, the fourth ceremony I did last year so this should satisfy the rules of the meme. What I want to talk about deals with the balloons in this picture. They were for a birthday party, and the order was for 50 balloons. Only 24 balloons arrived intact and I had the biggest welt on my arm for the entire day.

As for the day, it was a hot one - uncomfortably hot in the upper 90's, which I am sure doesn’t seem like it is hot for some of my readers here who live in more temperate climates. But here in Pennsylvania, anything above 80 degrees is uncomfortably hot. I drove the pickup truck to the store to get the balloons. Yes, I said a pickup truck. See, I don’t normally do balloons because of the hassles involved but the client could not pick them up and I volunteered to do it. I got the helium-filled balloons on this so hot day. Two seconds after leaving the store, they began to pop. The truck does not have a raised cab on the back. Instead it has . . .

Yawn . . . this is boring. Are you sure I can’t write about a stone automaton with the heart of a meteorite and the soul of a critically-ill child encased inside as his father hopes that the science of the 21st century can save his son? But something weird happens and people start to disappear?

Okay. I’ll get back to the balloon story. The truck had a flat foldable (yawn) cover as I tried to shove the balloons underneath. Of course, with all that trapped heat inside, they began to pop faster. When a helium balloon pops next to bare skin, IT HURTS! Trust me on this.

So there I was, driving to the reception hall with a bunch of balloons popping in the back of the truck. I stopped at an intersection as people waited to catch the bus.

POP-POP-POP-POP-POP!

People were ducking their heads thinking gunshot fire was aimed at them. I was lucky I didn’t pass by any police cars because the officers might have shot back. I got to the reception hall safely and told the client what happened with lots of laughter shared around.

Whew! Now I need to tag 4 people.

1: Sandra
2: Natalie
3: Jeni
4: Suldog - Why do I get the horrible feeling that I should not have picked you? Please be gentle, and don’t ruin my reputation with anything. Sigh. I just heard evil laughter.

Have fun!