Why Do You Do What You Do?

Credit: Digital Vision

I recall a story about a woman baking a ham for her family during the holidays. Every year as part of her holiday meal preparations, she made a ham, and she always cut off both ends of the ham before putting it into the baking pan. Her daughter saw this as a girl year after year, and when she grew up and had a family of her own, she did the same thing–she prepared a ham and cut off both ends of it before placing it in the oven.

One day her little girl saw this and asked, “Why do you cut off both ends of your ham before you put it in the oven?”

The woman replied, “I don’t know… it’s something your Gramma always did, and so I do it too.” But it got her thinking. She called her mother and asked about it: “Mom, why do you always cut off both ends of a ham before baking it?”

Goal Call (May Edition)

Since my last goal call 2 months ago,  I’ve accomplished a lot.

Accepted!

I have submitted my book to a publisher and it was accepted! The editors at Brown Books Small Press were pleased with my manuscript and followed up with a publishing proposal, which I accepted. I have been requesting endorsements from friends, colleagues, and a few celebrities in the meantime. For those of you who don’t know, my book is a self-esteem/memoir book to empower teen girls to celebrate their uniqueness and use the good sense God gave them. It touches on aspects of every day life for them.

My Girl is a Lucky Curl!

As I mentioned in a guest post on Inconsequential Logic, Real Housewives of Atlanta (RHOA) is one of my guilty pleasures, and I started watching it last season.
According to Carol’s Daughter Facebook fan page the other day, Lisa Wu-Hartwell was to appear at their “Lucky Curl” event from 3-5 pm along with Cynthia Bailey (her RHOA show replacement) at a store about 15 minutes away from me. When I read this message, it was almost 2 pm. 

People always tell me I should get my daughter K into modeling, but I’ve never looked into it. I don’t have any desire to fly back and forth to New York for auditions. (If I’m ignorant and there’s ways around that, feel free to school me.) I’m a homebody, but I moved to Atlanta for many reasons, including exposure. So I turned on my inner extrovert, decided to go, and take K with me.

When we arrived at the store, I was shocked when K said she wanted to get her hair done, even when I told her we’d have to wait in line (we were given an appointment after making a required minimum purchase of $35–and mine ended up being almost twice that). While an associate was explaining everything to me, I noticed Derek Blanks toward the back of the store talking to people (he’s known for doing celebrity “alter ego” photos), but I was talking a little too much to the store help and missed him. Cynthia did not appear.

Lisa was really cool, down-to-earth and happy to take pictures with anyone who asked, waving at a few people from behind the rope, saying ”C’mon, c’mon!” She looks just as beautiful in person as she does onscreen. As K stepped up to take her turn for her “Lucky Curl” contestant pictures, Lisa admired her from the side. I asked Lisa if she wouldn’t mind getting in one of them, and she didn’t hesitate to kneel down in her 5-inch pumps and pose with K, before taking one with me, the real fan (my daughter doesn’t know anything about RHOA or reality TV).

I also ran into her two older sons (her ex-husband Keith Sweat saw to it that they were not featured on the show, so I didn’t realize she had older kids) and they were very polite. As I was leaving, Lisa sat down in the same chair my girl was in and put on a cape to get her hair done (not that she needed it).

Season 3 of RHOA hasn’t yet begun, but it was announced a few months ago that Lisa will no longer be on the show because she and her [fine] husband Ed are basically seen as boring (read: not enough drama) which is the same reason her former castmate DeShawn Snow got the ax after Season 1, even though they (and NeNe) were the only women with husbands on the show. Personally Lisa was my fave of the five, but since Kandi is still there, I’ll keep watching.

If you are my friend on Facebook, you can see my pic with Lisa, but the photos the photographer took with her and my daughter are still TK (to come). Not bad for an unplanned trip to Buckhead!