The Cali Life

Do you sometimes find yourself try to fall asleep and not succeeding? I've had times in which I would be lying in bed trying to sleep but unfortunately, because my mind is too active or I had an extra long nap earlier that day or I'm literally in too much pain, I find that sleep eludes me. So I try to sleep. I'm sure that you've been told or have heard some fictional character being told to count sheep when sleep is elusive. I heard it on  Sesame Street.  I don't know the origin of a saying like this, but I find that counting sheep is a fitting title for the attempts to put one self to sleep. I have not really tried counting sheep in some years but what I try to do is lie very still, close my eyes and even out my breath. Usually, my overactive mind takes this opportunity to start thinking about random things so sleep remains far from me. When I finally do fall asleep, it is not because I tried to sleep or if I was even aware of falling asleep. It just happened, natu...

At the ripe age of 15 years old, I watched Madea's Family Reunion: the play. I think my Mom bought the bootleg DVD off of some dude in the street that works near her job. The guy probably sold it to her because my Mom is a Christian so he probably thought that she would love it. So she bought it. And I watched it, and watched it, and watched it. I'm very much into musicals and plays so I loved watching it, but I also admired the character Madea and the way she dealt with situations. There she was, this man in a dress with wisdom and enough holy speech to make it acceptable and then just a little bit of those bad words that were acceptable to make it sound funny and cool. I embraced it full-heartedly. I remember thinking how cool Madea was and I started saying all her sayings. Hell and crap became words of frequent use in my vocabulary. Even the way I tell jokes or stories picked-up the tell-tale signs of Madea plays. I thought that this was acceptable to God and it was funny. ...