About Me

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Chatty, mischievous and evolving over with time. I am trying to make sense of everything around me and having loads of fun along the way! Oh, I want to be a better person along the way.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

My Diamond & I (part 2)

Thank you all so much for your comments, I feel blessed. I am sorry I haven't replied the comments, work has been crushing. This post has been set to publish automatically.

If you missed part 1, read it
here.

My mother the prankster. She gets me every April fool's day. She once woke me up saying that my favorite aunt was downstairs. I ran to where she was supposed to be, only to find my mother behind me giving off one of her mischievous laughter. I joined in and admitted she got me again. I am still trying to get her, at least once but she always beat me to it. I wonder what she will do next week.

My mother taught me tolerance and how to love without reservation. She also made me realize that all we can ever really have is ourselves and the love of our family if we are lucky and not to rely too much on anyone except ourselves.

She told me to love my two siblings as they are all I have and anything can happen at anytime and then I would see people for what they truly were. She is never shy about her mortality. Suffice to say that my parents are still here and I have seen what people are capable of so I simply stick with my family.

My mother beautiful like the early morning dew on fresh green leaves. Every time I go out with her, People ask if she is my elder sister. I don’t look like her, my sister is gifted in that department. She taught me self confidence and hard work and not to let my looks go to my head as that could cause me untold trouble, but to combine same with sheer brilliance and then the world will be at my feet.

She tells me to be prudent so every time I buy a new shoe that I don’t really need I have to sneak it into the house.

She taught me how to count my cycle and know my ‘safe’ period. She knows the best to do for a female child is to teach her everything that needs to be taught and allow her make her own decisions as there is very little you can do when they are away from you. Life will always intrude.

You never know what could happen to them when they are away so just pray. I overheard her telling a woman. My mum has few friends. The ones I know are the ones she met not too long ago. I being me pack friends. I am a people person. I always find myself in a circle of them.

My mother the computer guru! When I was younger we would go to her office and watch her stare at those green screens that look like a tv but never speaks to you. After the real work she would allow us play Pacman, then she would play the Prince of Persia while we watched enraptured. Fun times. Each time we have a computer problem, we just call her and ask what to do. Every time I go to her office, people ask me if I am as good with the computer as she is, as if! That was some time ago though.

My mum put herself through University. She had me in her final year. She went to serve when I was 2 months old. She told me the best I can do for myself is to find my feet first before having kids because it’s not easy. One minute you are you, and then the next minute you have these little miniatures of you crawling around and demanding all your attention.

My mother who taught me the joys of reading a good book. I was a very naughty child. I could scream for hours without being provoked I just wanted attention. Once I start, my mum would fill the bath tub with water (I hated cold water) put me in, lock the door and switch off the lights. I was terrified of the dark. I was till I entered University. She would go to her room and start reading. After an hour she would come release me and tell me to stop being naughty.

I look at her books and think boring since they had no pictures in them but I wondered all the time what my mum saw in those books that she would forget me in the bathroom so I picked one up one day and read it for a week. I liked it so I kept reading. I read my first mills & boon at age 7.

She taught me to love music for it is food for the soul. She was the one who told me Left eye had died. She was on Fb before I joined. My sister flipped when my mum sent a friend request to her! I had a good laugh with that.

If there was a full moon, she would put my brother on her laps and we would sit around her while she tells us stories or she would teach us songs. What was funny was some of the songs were by Lionel Richie. Imagine! That was when I was about 5. Every time a see the moon I always remember.

I loved watching her apply make up. She would do her lips and my sis & I would pout for her to apply wet lips for us, she obliges. I remember one day my dad asked her why his 'girls' were spotting lip gloss she replied "it makes my dressing faster they won't get in the way once they have their own".

My mother the gentle tiger. My mum never beat any of us. She leaves the beating for my dad. She can't stand beating. Her strength in that department lies in the power of her words. I was a sully teenager too but she always finds ways to reach me.

When she was going for Hajj, I told her not to come back without the gold capped tooth. She said she doesn’t like it and she wouldn’t get one. I begged and begged because when I was young, I saw it on several people and I was fascinated by it. She succumbed and got one. Anytime we go out and she smiles widely, people go ‘so you are an Alhaja’. She turns and gives me the look that says ‘see what I go through every time because of you’ I just smile back at her.

If I wanted to go for a party, as long as I tell her and she sees the people I am going with and I am not dressed scandalously, I am free. She has saved my derriere too many times to count. She would encourage me to bring my boyfriend over rather than going to his house. That way she can limit the kind of ‘activity’ we can engage in. She needn’t have worried about all that as time has itself proven.

She still wakes up to make my sister and I sandwiches to take to work. I especially love the few minutes we spend chitchatting at that early hour when she enters our room to see if we were ready for work. She would come back from work and ask my brothers what they did during the day and what they ate. Then she is off to the kitchen to make dinner even though she just got home and the traffic was horrendous. I wonder where she gets the energy, once I get home I go up to my room to plan for the next day. Take a shower and sleep or go down for a few minutes.

I hope when I am a mother, I get to be like her.

If I had been asked to hand pick my mother, I wouldn’t have done as good a job as God has given me.

There is lots more I could have written but I will stop before I see my name on the epistle blogger list.

So as she turns 50 this week help me salute my mother my Diamond.

Monday, March 23, 2009

My Diamond & I (part 1)

How was your weekend all?

My mum will be 50 this week. As usual I went to ask her what she wanted for her birthday, I think between my dad and us kids we have gotten her all the gifts there is because her birthday and Mother’s day are always in the same week. We thought of what we have never given her and we all came up with nothing.

There I was on her bed and she answered “as long as you kids are happy, I have gotten all I wanted”

I was surprised and I told her we were happy already and she should come up with a serious gift she wants and she insisted that what she said was all she wants.

That statement inspired this post. It made me think of the relationship between us. I have to say she is my closest friend if I exclude my sister. She knows when to be my mother and when to be my friend.

My mother cool like the waters of a spring. I remember whenever things go awry; she is most times the voice of reason. When you want to take a rash decision she comes up with different ideas that would automatically make you change your mind. She has intervened on more than one occasion when my boyfriends misbehave and I complain to her, she makes me see other sides to the situation that I didn’t think of.

My mother strong like the trunk of an Iroko tree [insert laughter]. I remember when I was in secondary school, my school was a 4 hr drive from Lagos, My mum never missed a visiting day, she would drive down those Saturdays and cook all kinds of food. It makes wonder how many hrs she spends making all those. There would be Jollof rice, amala, fried yam, mashed potatoes, fried meat, fish, dodo etc and she was most often than not the first parent to arrive.

She had this flashy red car, once it appears on the express beside the school fence, I would hear people scream my name that my mum was around. The joy that made me feel is still indescribable.

She comes early so she can spend several hours with us before making the journey back.

My mother the working mother. She holds down a powerful job and still managed to raise us. When I see people making a fuss about raising kids and going to work, I wonder how she managed it, there weren’t too many people doing that, because most people we knew then were house wives. She travels all the time and my dad was always on the move too but she always makes time out to be our mother. The times she is around she will drive us to school and gist with us all the way.

I remember all her training courses when she has to travel all over and implement software for all her company locations, she got a moniker for that, I had finished my SSCE then and I was alone at home, she would take me round the locations with her, We used have so much fun. We traveled round Nigeria. We once took a luxurious bus because she wanted me too see the Lokoja bridge.

She was always making chin-chin, kokoro, cookies, fruit punches, so many things I can’t recall their name now at the weekends. To say our bags were always filled to bursting would be understating the obvious.

When I was younger, every party my mum went to, she would bring something back. She would share it equally and as the custom the eldest being me chooses first but really, there was no needs for that because none is bigger than the other so just pick one and forget it.

Every December, when all the neighbours decorate their houses for Christmas, my mum would do ours too so we wouldn’t be left out even though we were Muslims. She understood kids could be cruel and our house would be the most decorated and all the neighbourhood kids would want to come. I was always so proud of that.

I can’t remember a time when she ever embarrassed me.

Once I caught a cousin of mine having sex with her boyfriend. I was six. I told my mum and she explained to me what it was all about and how I should be careful and never let any boy touch me that way until I was an adult. That lesson stuck and I am glad she didn’t take the high road of most parents and shun that topic.

When said cousin got pregnant, I saw the disappointment in my mother’s face and she told me that if my cousin had been careful, she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant. That it was too much too soon.

To be continued...

Friday, March 13, 2009

Another week and a bat story

I should say TGIF but it hasn’t been a bad week thanks to the holiday on Monday.

I like...

•My 4inch heels that make me tower over the guys in the office and look the very tall ones in the face without tilting my head up

•Waking up early (I need the practice so when i have my babies I won’t find it difficult to wake up to feed them-right)

•Ordering lunch (having the choice of eating what i want without having to cook it)

•Scoping the blokes in traffic while I drive home (it eases the boredom of the traffic)

•Signing my name at the bottom of every document prepared by me (Yes way cool, you
never know who might see those papers)

•Blogging at lunch break when I have a bit of time to spare

•Seeing my sister come into my office at the end of each work day (the reaction she generates when she walks in breaks the monotony of work; I can leave then after another accomplished day)

•Logging on to the office server and seeing the tons of paperwork that I have to be adept at finding and recreating

•Going up to the solitude of the library to chill a bit maybe catch a 5 min cat nap (kidding)

•Saying goodbye to my mum each morning and seeing the joy in her face that her girls have something to do

I dislike...

•Having my car dented by crazy impatient drivers (I have more dents in the past 2 wks than i have had in the past 1 yr; I went to Oyin Jolayemi yesterday, when I came out from the office I was visiting my fender had been dented and the plastic protecting the fog light is missing- i was livid)

•The sound of my alarm clock at 5:00 am

Not much to complain about



BTW....



A bat entered the house on Sunday evening, I woke up on Monday to go downstairs and my sister woke up to inform me that I shouldn’t that a bird was in the sitting room. Apparently she was watching TV late and when she put out the lights something swooped around her head. She was totally spooked.

She didn’t say anything, she just came upstairs quietly. If it were me, I know I would wake up the entire street with my screams.

As I made my way downstairs cautiously, I felt something flapping around my head and I looked up to see a stretching black wing I screamed and ran into my mum’s room. She admonished me about screaming around the house for she ‘knew’ was nothing.

My cousin ran away when he saw it too. My mum eventually got it out the window in like 5 min after expressing her ‘disappointment’ in us for not been able to chase out an ordinary bat. Both my sister and cousin had tried to chase it out for several minutes. Where was I you were wondering? In my mum’s room of course!

My irrepressible sister was quiet for the better part of the morning. I resisted the mountainous urge to tease her. I should be kind after all, she was badly shocked. So I was the magnanimous big sister.

I was thinking vampire, I was really tempted to ask if she got bitten by the thing hehehe. Those things are really ugly eeww!

Have a fabulous weekend everyone.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Experience so far

Thank you all for your comments, really you guys are the best! Sorry I couldn’t reply all. Work isn't bad. My weekend was spent unpacking. I knew it would be hectic and I was prepared but I wasn’t ready for the standing and bending that goes with it.

Traffic isn’t as bad as I thought. I leave early. My sister got a job too! We both resumed on Monday. It’s a lucky thing her office isn’t too far from mine. I drop her in the mornings and she comes to meet me at the close of work. She closes 30 minutes before I do.

I missed a turning after dropping her off on the first day and got stuck in Isale-eko traffic with the rain, I was so mad but I kept asking people and they directed me so I found my way back but i was a bit late. Lucky for me everyone was late because of the rain.

I can blog at work on my laptop at my free moments. If I don’t use my assigned desk top I am home free I guess. I am typing this while preparing for a board meeting. Imagine?

My send forth party was cool. I had so much to drink. Thank God my sis was there. She kept adding ice to my drink to dilute the stuff. I still had to drive home.
We got home without incident though except I was laughing like an idiot and I kept playing with the police men at all the check points.

I tumbled into bed. I slept for for like 5 mins before I started throwing up, I mean it was crazy. My sis said I was just speaking grammar for her. I remember some of it.

I was so dizzy the following morning, thank God the flight was smooth. I was as weak as a kitten.
Got home like 11:30 to find my cousin had gone to school and We had to stay outside with all the boxes at the gate like evicted tenants for more than 2 hrs before he came. I was livid but too weak to do anything about it.

I pitied my sis whom had to go look for him in school and finally went to my mum’s office to collect the key when she didn’t find my cousin.

I admit I need rest but I haven’t been going to work since middle of January so I think I rested well then. Sitting home for me is not an option, my brain will turn to mush if not activated. Mucho gracias to you all. I couldn’t stay away. I will set this to auto post. What have I missed on blogsville? Oblige me please. Have a great day everyone.

That was yesterday, one of the meetings was kind of volatile. I learnt a lesson though- eat before any meeting, you never know when it might end. Woke up 15 min late today I was almost in a panic but surprisingly there was no traffic! I kept glancing at directions to make sure I was on the correct route.

Work isn't bad. I get to do the kind of work I am suited to. I am yet to see the Partners I hear they are away. The co-workers are very friendly( no monsters yet) Ok people got to go. Have a blessed week.