Back in the Saddle with a Car Seat

I’m back. I say that too often. But I am. Back in the blogging saddle, baby. The only difference now is that I have a car seat behind my proverbial saddle. I have a little one. A mini Ed. Best feeling.

Describe the feeling? It’s like heaven, hard work and fun had a baby, that baby is the feeling of having a baby. I’ve confused us all. Haven’t I? Shrug.

So the big question, “Ike, are we going to start seeing titles such as ‘5 positions to burp your baby while in a car seat’ or ‘8 ways to purée avocados and beets’?”

No.

I’m still the same ol’ me! Only now I have superior skills in multi-tasking, clipping tiny baby nails , doing the Rafikki baby-lift while singing 'Circle of life' and singing non-traditional lullabies remixes of actual nursery rhymes, worship songs, and Daft Punk (It is the sci-fi age after all).

I may mention mamahood sometimes but predominantly, it’s still fiction, love, and God for you and me. Oh, glee.

20 Ways To Adult Like A Pro

Adulting is like nothing I’ve ever seen! There is the professional ladder climb, work politics, crazy-people management, food portion control, dried raisins and carrots as snacks, self-control exercises—such as cutting up credit cards, dependence on reason and a moral code, the ocassional glass of red or two...hundred(kidding), steady-ish relationships, minimal daydreaming(if any), choosing not to meet the expectation of others—but doing you; all this while trying to manage your time the best way you can.

Time was a soothing sea of possibilities when we were children. There was never any hurry, there was ample time to daydream, and yet be productive. Well, now we’re adults, and if you are like me, it feels like time hates you and there’s never enough of it. Not to mention insufficient sleep, that skinny salary due to your sudden affinity for ultra-fine dining, clinking wine glasses and flossy weekend trips. And of course, attending all those weddings and parties.

Well, as adults we need all the help we can get. Here are 20 tips which will help us get through adulthood like pros: 

1. Go to bed early so you don’t feel like a washed-up crab in the mornings

2. Put down your phone and achieve your goals. Don’t have any? Get some, write them down…please

3. Review your work performance yourself every two months. Highlight and quantify your contribution to your organization, update your resume and have a check in with your boss. Did someone whisper “salary increase?”

4. Treat yourself. Yes, you are saving for a rainy day but you deserve to be spoiled, and deserve at least one day when you don’t think about rainy days and Wellies 

5. Reassess your clique from your teenage years, if they are still with you. If “Cool babes” or “True squad” or “Flossy posse” isn’t adding value to your life, you need to put them in the back seat of your life or preferably outside the car. However, if “Cool babes” is still the litest crew and the best friends in the world, then you should shop around for a new name, and forever anahilate that name from the earth

6. Listen to the voices in your head, especially the ones that you know are actually good and add value to our world

7. Get rid of the demon on your shoulder. You know that voice that tells you you can’t make it or that you make a poor worker, friend, wife, husband, mum or neighbor. The one that tells you you can never change or stop bad habits. Yeah, that one, talk back to it and tell it that it’s wrong. If you can, slap it in the face

8. Make good decisions that reflect your values

9. Do not remain in emotionally deficient or physically abusive relationships

10. Eat well. The rule is: whatever goes into your body and acts as fuel for your cells should be good quality. Your cells will dish out what you give them...

11. Call your parents. I can’t stress that enough. They really, really want to hear from you. If that doesn’t make them more loveable I don’t know what will. Call them more and let them talk for as long as they’d like. Remember when you talked their ears off as a toddler? Repay the favor and enjoy it! Also don’t poke around IG or play “Words with Friends” while they are on the line

12. Choose good friends and paralyze them with love, especially when they mess up. 

13. Don’t gossip. Leave the ear-whispering to pimply strangers. There’s no dignity in gossip as an adult. None.

14. Buy a pet or be your own pet. I am my own pet. I love moderately short walks and sugary popcorn, I’d rather throw than catch and I really like taking pet(me) portraits. 

15. Pray and praise more. So many burdens we carry, all because we don’t carry them to God in prayer. Seriously,

16. Save. Whether in a kolo(piggy bank), in the helm of a curtain, in the ground, in the tree trunk of that fruit tree in your compound or simply in a less-dramatic savings account. Save.

17. Travel.

18. Build others up. So your life feels upside down, what better time to build someone else up. You are pretty broke, what better time to give to someone else; you’ve been looking for a job since 2012, what better time to connect a fellow seeker to an employer? Build others up.

19. Find God. He really, really wants to hear from you too. 

20. Know yourself, know especially your strengths and weaknesses. Build on your strengths and don’t dwell on your failures. Stay away from voices that remind you of them always. Listen to voices that encourage and reassure you. Keep your eyes ahead and keep your mind strong and fearless. 

How’s adulting treating you? Have anything to add?

Love At First Try

When I was growing up I was determined to end up with the first person I dated. My only sister married her first official boyfriend, so hey, I wasn’t trying to drift too far from that. Get it right the first time, babe. I'd tell myself.

No seconds.

So I met my first boyfriend...

If I ended up with my first boyfriend, he'd be at the bottom of the ocean“swimming with the fishes” by now. 

Swimming. With. The. Fishes. 

Not the“Godfather”type of swimming-with-the-fishes. He wouldn't be dead or anything. No. He really would have just devised a way to live as a sea creature, so he could get away from me and terrestrial life and anything that was associated with me. Hey, and this is not because I'm not fun to live with(Ed, tell em!) but because boyfriend 1 and I were not designed for one another and living together would have proven mildly inconvenient. And by mildly, I mean any acceptable antonym of mildly. Discordantly. Disagreeably. Harshly. Unpleasantly.

Yes, unpleasantly inconvenient. You see, me obsessing over getting it right the first time would have been counter productive, to say the least. 

I guess one mustn’t be so averse to other numbers and positions--number 1 is great but so is number 3, number 5 may be "the one" and number 11 may even dare to be divine. Be open to dating as many people as it takes to find the one. 

But if you do insist on 1, beware, he may buy himself a scuba tank, some fins and diving goggles and it's sayonara! 

Do you think you should end up with the first person you date? Did you“ace” it the first time? The thirteenth time? Tell us?

Psst! If you've been dating #1 forever and you know it isn't working out. Would you stay because you don't want to lose all that time and resources you invested?  

Mindful Living- The Invisible Gorilla

If a gorilla moved into our home and sat at our dinner table every night- honestly, chances are that I may not notice, might even make him tea. Maybe on Sunday morning when it gets into the car with us as we head out to church, I might eventually notice— at which point, I'd scream until the entire city wakes and then insist respectfully that it take bus.

Thankfully, no gorillas have made it past the front door (at least, I don't think so), though we'll never know. Many times I realize I miss things happening around me because I'm so busy and absorbed into my routine that I really don't notice important and even sometimes, not-so-important things (which have a way of suddenly becoming important).

If you are like me, prepare to be pacified.

In this video, psychologists perform a test to analyze the intuition and minds of observers. The experiment involves an actual gorilla and they go on to prove that the human intuition sees what it expects to see and misses a whole lot of incidents while we focus on tasks at hand. We just aren't particularly mindful about our activities as human beings. [Remember when we talked about apes taking over the world because human aren't paying attention?]

The world is moving so fast, if I didn't know better I'd think it was spinning off its axis and everything was moving at 16x fast forward. It's important to take breathers, like I suggested to Charly once. Mindful living is in, guys. We have to do things deliberately and consciously.

We have to constantly be in a "Earth-to-*insert your name*" state-of-mind; aware that our tasks, the ones we love on and have around are worthy of our attention.

In all things be mindful:

Mindful eating(chew slow);

Mindful sex (hey!);

Mindful loving;

Mindful dates (let your phone kiss the table);

Mindful worship (high-five, God);

Mindful driving (buh-bye Pokémon);

Mindful chilling with your family;

Mindful voting (Aye, Americans);

Mindful spending (or risk a lean piggy bank)

Mindful working (put your mind and back into it)

Mindful speaking (every word is a gift)

Mindful writing;

Mindful socializing;

Mindful everything! Let's watch that gorilla try and break in with all that mindfulness.

 What would you like to be more mindful in? Would love to know your thoughts. If it's mindful sex, just nod where you are, we see ya!

Blogged sitting on Ed's lap, recovering from a cold. Sniff. Wait, is that a gorilla?!

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When Life Gives you the 404 Error Message

If there's anything life knows how to do, it's dish out curve balls, 404-error messages and lemons- unexpected events that try to knock us off our feet.

Recently, life sent me a 404-error message. Lol. It definitely wasn't funny when I got it but I'm "lol'ing" about it now because I can and because I know that "weird times don't last, but weird people do". *Grin*

The bothersome thing about lemons is their ambivalent nature and of course, their timing (it's like they have their own little special calendars that highlight the worst days to show up). They come in various forms, at anytime; "Dear John" letters a day before an exam, market crashes after investing everything we own, a relatively unfriendly spouse after years of being together, a bird who decides to poop while flying above you, as you hurry for an interview (Are you kidding, bird! Who poops in motion anyway?! This has happened to me twice and i honestly think it's the same bird)

Those lemons come. Some are more life changing than others, like a death in the family or a sickness. Sometimes, they come one at a time, sometimes in rapid succession!

I recently saw the movie, War Room and buried beneath it's quirkiness and humor is one clear message, a day will come, a lemon will come torpedoing at you.  What. in. the. world. are. you. going. to. do?!

During this time, we have to hold on to our optimism, depend on the support from our family and friends, build up our strength and cling to God like an undersized wet-suit. The wet-suit-cling is my favorite because the other three maybe fleeting but God is the rock eternal off of which lemons and curve balls ricochet. And the 404 error messages? Let's just say there isn't any network in the rock-delivery failed.

God has been my sole support for about 10 years now. I recently discovered, by the way, that God wants us hard! Not callous, evil or ruthless, but hard, firm in character and unshaking in our trust in him. How fun, finally I can put my intransigence to good use. Hehe!

“If you fall apart in a crisis, there wasn’t much to you anyway!”

— Proverbs 16 vs 10 (MSG)

*When the bible steps to you and drops the mic. Lol.*

If you are going through lemons or error messages, this collection of quotes might help! Stay strong! Please remember to share!

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4 Hilarious Things my Mum Taught Me

I love my mum and if you knew her, you'd love her too. For decades now, all we who know her have tried to understand the way her mind works but we can't. We've given up on the extent of its complexity. However, I do attribute my sense of humor to her. Here are 4 things she taught me while I was growing up that crack me up whenever I think about them: 

"Eye Kinesis"

From an early age like most African kids, I learnt the art of "eye kinesics", which is the communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals mainly through the pupils and eyelids and the eyes in general. This usually took place when other people were around and I was being naughty and mum couldn't vocalize her thoughts.

I'd look at her and surely there would be a message there; whether I was trying to accept a gift I knew I shouldn't be accepting or eyeing the guest's Fanta (Fanta is my weakness), or pestering her about wanting to go to my friend's house in front of guests (who ever used this trick?)

Anyway,  she would dish me some eye-kinesis. 

It was always like those old Asian movies, where the camera zooms in suddenly on the master as he stares directly into the camera with an accompanying smacking sound, then a sudden close-up at the student with a random-"hmmph!" sound. Lol

Mom miyagi-ed me into understanding that it was possible to understand another individual without speaking!

It's remarkable that mum would look at me and I would understand instantly exactly what she meant. I could even hear her voice in my head. Even more awesome, flashes of the things to come, a glimpse into the future if I disobeyed her signal; smacks evermore.

Boob Heads-up

"If you let a boy kiss you, he WILL feel you up."

Mum taught me this at about 14.

Mama taught me that if you let a boy kiss you....he will reach for your girlies. By girlies, I mean your breasts. I always cringed at her bluntness but she was right. Indeed, it seems this is how the masculine mind works: lips connect....right hand/left hand activated (or both, God help you).....up,up, land on boob tarmac.....pause.....wait for resistance or slap.....none....feel 'em up! Mum is hardly wrong, yo!

But how did she know? Hmmmm

Intelligence Gathering

Mum taught me that if I want to get information from my spouse or child, 5AM it is!

5 AM, mum is sitting next to me on my bed and talking. Then she begins to ask specific questions to obtain the information.

"So, what is that boy's name? The one that called you? What does he do? " "Doesn't he have anything to do during the day, other than to be calling you all the time", "Don't let him touch you o.........or has he kissed you?", "You know if you let him kiss you........."

Then I begin to confess like a witch. Lol! The best time to collect intelligence is between the hours of 5 and 6. It's amazing, this skill, of course there is a method to it. You disarm all crankiness by praying softly for your subject at first. Once they are disarmed, softly ask away.

CIA, you guys should employ her. Her skill would be an irreplaceable asset.

"Chill baby girl"

Mum has taught me to chill. Not everytime work, cook, clean, scrub, drive. Sometimes, chill. One of the things that baffle her is the marked difference between the aging process of couples. Men don't get old fast, women do, she says that all the time in Yoruba, "Okunrin o kin gbo o." Truly, I've noticed that women do look older than men as they grow older. She's of the opinion that looking older than your husband at any given time is a No-No! So hire someone to do these things on occasion and chill baby girl. Chill.

What fun things have you learnt from your mum ?