top ten latest words and phrases I have learned

1.Urban Tea
3.Fire Skate
4.Woof as in (building type)
5.Conversate
6.axing
7.amanananous
8.skrimps
9.all of a sumthin
10.public offender

Like Mother Like Daughter

I read the weekly blogs of my mother writing about her experience of living In Italy, an outsider vaguely connected through distant relatives and brilliantly colorful stories from my grandfather ,she too lives in a place far away from where she grew up, just an observer made only home by the unspoken family tradition that you are home if your books are with you . I look around my aged tenement apartment in the Bronx at the various titles strewn everywhere. I read on as my mom describes her current towns history, People that have lived there all their life are oblivious to how it came about to be a town and who the people were that brought that history. I too am aware of the history of my neighborhood, I look at the buildings and the architecture and mention seemingly interesting facts and ideas about how it came to be. ,not that much has changed. It is working class mostly. as far as you can see there are wide 5 story buildings lining the sparsely treelined streets, one the same as the next. I hear stories of fire "skates"and great escapes although no one seems to make the connection.I live in a world like my mother where I had to learn the language again, and understand a way of life that could not have been any differant than what I knew. We both adapted and tried to blend,serendipidiously to our surroundings. Both well travelled and openminded we have the ability to survive under any circumstance , and more honestly thrive in our differences.I learned from her to question everything and maintain myself regardless of the atmosphere. Anything can be construed as an adventure, I remember my first in an apartment ,upstate,NY with a candlelight bath , sitting indian style around an upside down bookcase eating dinner, mother and daughter. She told me we were having a great adventure. For many years as my father repeated the story of how he left her I always remember thinking back to those days and how those did not seem like the actions of a woman who had been left. As an adult once being left by a man I questioned my sanity as I thought back to that first night in "our apartment" , as an adult I cried, I wondered when the giddyness would come. What day would i jump up and down on the bed with joy.I was having the wrong reaction somehow. . That was my first adventure, sure it was only 5 miles away and I was 4 years old but the idea of taking yourself out of familiarty and plopping down somewhere new, starting over so to speak. The newness and the endless possibilities have since been most appealing to me. Thats how I started my life of adventures .I followed my mothers lead , though years behind her, I moved out west to europe , back to the east coast. We share the same impressions ,our reactions to each place mostly the same.
I have lived in 15 some cities , 4 differant countries over 3 continents. I found love for each place , a fascination with some part of the history and culture. A great respect for the people and have made irreplaceable lifelong friends..
Today we are seperated by an ocean and we exist in entirely differant cultures from what we would be the closest to calling our own. She lives in a lovely, quiet almost surreal enviroment. She has made her home there ,
Books neatly line the wall of her apartment overlooking a park with mannered people walking , riding bikes .I look out into garbage,there are empty cans and bags obviously just thrown out the window, instead of being bagged and carried into the huge dumpster already overflowing. The sense you get is misery, kindness construed as weakness , I have thrust myself into this culture unaware of the consequences.My boyfriend grew up here and I struggle and search for some similarity to connect us. I beg him to believe that the world is also beautiful and people are mostly good, That you can find a place where you can be yourself , where the rules of the street are more like common decency and most abide by them.He may be too tainted . I know differantly..
Mom and I seem to have the opposite experience of everything at the moment, she complains of people being too polite and I have never seen such rudeness. she says she sometimes feels like she is in a fairytale,I feel like I am in a horror movie. It becomes almost comical and My mother and I joke about the absurdity of things,there and here. Having completely differant experiences but having them in the same way,as an outsider.We dont have a place we call "home" so to speak. We talk about how much we like Paris and that next year it would be nice to live there for awhile. We talk about the places we have not seen and how we will choose where to go first. She tells me to start shipping my books to her , she knows I have a lot although I never said so. I will leave everything behind ,a skill I learned early on and have practiced many times.I am eager to see what lies ahead, a great adventure my favorite thing.
Like Mother like daughter.

10 ways to say i love you in the ghetto

1.buy her a pair of sneakers(from Jimmy Jazz)
2. pay her cable bill
3. Buy your girlfriends baby pampers
4.slap her
5. only screw your baby mama 3 times a week
6. pay for her to get decals on her nails
7. take her window shopping to jimmy jazz
8. tell your friend that is your "shorty" in front of her.
9.dont slap her
10.tell her that her beans and rice are better than your mothers

10 ways to know you are ghetto

1. you call other people ghetto
2. You use ur instead of your and 2 instead of to, two or too in any writing..
3. You think sneakers are a profession of love.
4. You have more than 1 father for more than 4 children.
5. you have no college funds in place for any of them
6. you dont know what a college fund is.
7.You have more than one color on any finger nail or toenail
8. You wear evening wear in the day .
9. You have a tatto on your neck.
10. You are not friends with any woman that has dated one of you exes.
11. Baby mama drama, in any form