Today things are a bit better than yesterday. The weather was nice despite the rain this morning. I think the humidity messed my hair up. I had a cute little braid out this morning, but now I have a huge fro…LOL! At least it’s not frizzy.

I’m still trying to sort things out so I’ll give you some updates regarding that. Also, I am talking to my husband right now as I am typing this. He decided to call me, we’ll see how this goes, I guess.

In other news my haircare line is coming alone, slowly but surely. I have 2 products pretty much complete, but I’m having issues with 2 other products that I am working on. I know I’ll will figure it out soon. The shampoo and conditioner should be easy, but the hair gel and pomade is my biggest issue as of now. More about that later, will keep you posted. I can’t wait to release my line, but all good things come with patience and persistence.

Eternally-me.COM – Vblog 1 from Samara Crayton on Vimeo.

Well for starters. I’ve added a neat little AJAX login to my blog so I can log in easier and so my guest can register and log in easily as well . I had a plugin installed that changed the WordPress logo to my logo on the original login page, but this plugin is even better. I hope you all find it as easy and as convenient as I have.

So referring to my blog title…

I find that at my current job(which I am quitting on August 21st), I am unusually angry by the things that I am required to do there. To help you understand, here is a typical day on the job:

I get to work at 8:30am, and the 2 special needs adults are both still asleep or awake. Their mother usually leaves as soon as I arrive unless she doesn’t have to work, in which she’ll leave later on in my shift to go shopping or something. Anyways, I wake them up at about 10am unless their already awake. – It’s their summer break and I feel that waking them up at 8:30am is ridiculous.

The next thing I do is prepare breakfast. I either make them cereal, toast, and milk, or hotcakes and bacon with milk or juice. While they are eating I administer their meds and then I clean up the kitchen. After breakfast I get them dressed. Sometimes I bathe her daughter so I can wash and style her hair.

Following breakfast, I do activities with them, or I allow them to watch TV or listen to music until 12:30pm. Around this time I prepare lunch for them. I then clean the kitchen again, make their beds, sometimes I have to put their clothes away and clean their rooms too. I also have to assist David in learning to tie his shoes and remind Danielle to go to the bathroom every hour. I then allow them to have some free time until my shift is complete.

It may sound simple, but dealing with 2 special needs adults can be very difficult because of the amount of patience it requires to deal with them. Sometimes I want to tear my hair out when David is humming or being unruly, or when Danielle is being stubborn, or vomiting everywhere. I also have to take a q-tip and clean out Danielle’s nose when it becomes clogged with mucus and boogers -  Yuck!

When I worked at night I basically came in and prepared a snack for them, did activities, fed them dinner, bathed them, and got them ready for bed. My best friend does this shift now until school starts again for them.

After a few months of this, especially when Summer came around, I found myself becoming downright angry with my job duties. I know it’s my job and I get paid to do it, but I feel like the things I’m doing for her kids, I should be doing for my own. I feel like I should be at home feeding my own kids, dressing my own kids, and doing activities with my own kids. I shouldn’t be spending my hard earned money taking her kids to Wendy’s and such while mine are in daycare or at home with Brian. Am I wrong for feeling angry?

I  feel like this job has been taking me away from my own responsibilities as a mother. Here I am basically being a mother to another woman’s children while my daycare is caring for mine.

Even the way their mom treats them angers me. She doesn’t spend any quality time with her children at all. It’s like we (the caregivers) are raising her children. She took fertility pills to conceive them because she wanted children so bad, so God gives her 2 special needs children that requires even more attention than normal children and she puts them off on an agency. Diane doesn’t spend time with them in the morning because she goes straight to work and when she gets home she puts them to bed. On her off day’s she leaves and goes shopping or gets her hair done, while the caregiver cares for her children. Even on Saturday she has help. Sunday is the only day Diane spends with her own children and judging from my experience there she spends approximately a total of 22 hours a week with her children if that!

I really think that’s fucked up. How can I go to the great lengths of using fertility meds to have children just to have someone else take care of them? Sounds crazy doesn’t it?

(more…)

I decided to name this post Auricular because this word isn’t used very often. This post has nothing to do with the meaning of this word so it’s a more of a random title (More about this word later in the post).

I really hate the weather here. It is so cold today. It was 24 degrees today and that really sucks when you have to catch the bus. I had on 2 shirts, 2 hoodies, my wool coat, a pair of gloves, and a scarf and I was still cold! My hands were so cold that they hurt. I really feel sorry for anyone that is homeless in Ohio because the weather is absolutely dreadful. If I was homeless I would make it my business to move to warmer much more bearable climate even if I had to walk the whole way. I always find myself looking forward to the summer when I am in Ohio because that’s the only time the weather is actually bearable and won’t cause me to get ill. Any other time of the year the temperature is up and down like crazy and everyone is contracting Influenza. Luckily I’ve managed to avoid getting really sick which I have to credit my evasion of getting ill to taking vitamin C tablets daily.

In other news I spent today with Brian just as planned. I basically slept in his arms the whole time. All those nights where I only got 4 hours of sleep has finally caught up with me and I’ve been doing nothing, but sleeping  every time we’re together because that’s my only opportunity to actually get some sleep. I am still tired even now and of course Jeremiah is still up right now. *Sigh*

I decided to give Sweetvanillasugar a rest and focus on GrowBlackHair.NET more. That’s the site that has been making me money. My goal for the next 6 months is to get enough clicks to earn at least $100+ a month instead of every 2-3 months. My site comes up on the first page when the key words “grow black hair” are Googled, but I need to add more information and write more articles. At least 4 articles a month if not more. Sometimes I run out of ideas, but when I do I review a hair product until another idea comes to mind. Right now I’m currently in the process of reviewing Carol’s Daughter Hair Milk. I’ve gotten a lot of requests about this product so I went to Sephora and purchased a bottle to test it out on both natural and relaxed hair. If you want to read the review check out my site in a few weeks.

Last but not least, I deleted and edited my categories today. I had the category “Personal” and “Private” which are literary the same thing. I mean those are actually synonyms to each other so I decided to combine those entries and rename the category to “Auricular“, but who really uses that word or knows what it means? So I ended up changing it to “Confidential” instead. I also changed “Writings” to “Literary Works”  — a little more unique I must say.

My family never stops…

Yesterday I noticed a comment posted to my blog on the 17th and the commenter had a serious issue with the post titled My First Laptop. To my surprise when I traced the IP of the commenter I received information on the carrier and the city in which the comment was made which was a near by city. This specific city is in the area in which my sister’s boyfriend lives and where she works. Further more the carrier was Alltel. The only thing I know Alltel provides when it comes to internet is internet on the phone. The person used a cell phone to look at my site and make comments. I know my sister’s boyfriend has his phone through Alltel. On top of that I believe the person was someone from my family and I’ve narrowed it down to being my own damn sister!

I mean really…. she gets all these privileges: free car, cell phone in my moms name, etc. All I get is a couch to sleep on. I get bitched at for every little thing and the only outlet I have is my blog to keep myself sane and it’s like I can’t even enjoy this one small pleasure if you wanna call it that. My family tries to control everything I do and my sister is always trying to start shit. I don’t know why she can’t mind her own business and focus on her own life instead of adding more hell to my life. I could give so many example’s of how my own sister lies and says things without my knowledge to get shit started in our home. Then I have to deal with the drama while she sits back and watches. Lately I was getting bitched at about me writing things in my blog, but my mom and dad don’t know how to use the internet and my little brother just doesn’t do things to create drama like that. Hmm… I wonder how they know what I wrote?

You have a car that you don’t have to pay for, a free place to stay, you don’t get bitched at constantly about everything, and you have a cell phone in our mother’s name. I have nothing, but my children, my cell phone and laptop (all things that I had to get myself), and it still isn’t enough because you still pursue to create drama and make life hard for me.

I can’t wait to move out. This is what I have to deal with on a daily basis. And now I can’t even be at peace in the cyber world.

I was thinking of retiring SweetVanillaSugar and buying a new domain that really fit me and this has given me a even greater reason to do so. As soon as I finish my new layout I will be switching to a new domain. I will added a post and a link to my new domain and it will be up for 30 days. After that SweetVanillaSugar will be officially retired.

Today my mood is happy…honestly happy isn’t even the word. I just found out earlier today that my emperor is not going back to California. He is here to stay and that was the best Valentine’s day gift I could ever asked for. We spent all of… well most of yesterday together. I ended up staying the night because I fell asleep and when I woke up I only had 8 minutes to get my coat on and get to the bus stop that is about 2 blocks down from where he stays. So I texted my mom and told her I was spending the night and spent a wonderful night with my emperor. We ended up watching the movie Twilight until we both fell asleep and he held me all night while we slept. I am so in love with that man. I hope everyone else had a great Valentine’s Day.

I’m thinking about putting braids in my hair for a few months so I won’t have to style my hair. All I’ll have to do is wash, deep condition and moisturize my hair with a good leave in conditioner, oil sheen, or braid sheen spray. I’m going to have my little sister braid the back of my hair because I can’t see back there and I want my braids to look really nice.

Well I have to go to bed now. I am really worn out and tired.

I haven’t blogged in a while. Lately I’ve been trying to figure out how I can start my own hair care line for Grow Black Hair Online. You see there’s only one site that sells acceptable products for African American hair and her products are a bit expensive and they are also only available online unless you can find one of the shops she lists in your area and that’s if their still open. So why send her sales and help market her product when I can make and sell my own product that is just as good or better and a little cheaper. I’d also make a little money instead of suggesting a product without getting any percentage from the people I’ve sent her way!

I’d also like my product to be available everywhere just like products such as the Organic Root Stimulator product is. This way people won’t have to just go online to buy from me because the products will be conveniently located at their nearest beauty supply.

If anyone knows who I can contact or how I should get started please post me a comment to point me in the right direction.

I’ve been pretty down for a while so I let my site go for a few months. I decided to move back to Ohio since Florida wasn’t working out. I was working to pay for daycare and I couldn’t even afford to put furniture in my home. I ended up selling all my belongings including my car to move back to Ohio.

I’ve been in Ohio since July 27th, 2008. Suprisingly I took an airplane home even though I fear airplanes. The last trip actually made me used to the airplanes because since Air Force One was in Ohio we had to circle the airport. We then ran low on fuel after 30 minutes of circling so we had to land in Columbus to refuel and then take off and land again in Cleveland!! I was so heated because I wanted to go home and see my kids.

Anyways, I read this book called “The Secret” by Robin Byne and I’m going to put The Secret to use. I’ve been applying for jobs and I already have a call back from Fitworks as a Sales Associate. I plan to use The Secret to get the job and you know what I already know I have the job! Now isn’t that great!

The Secret has taught me a lot of things and now I’ve begun to realize why so many negative things took place in my life. I’ve learned from this and now I plan to move on to be successful in everything I put my mind too!

I guess I have to write a whole new wish list too of things I want such as my own place, a car, etc. After receiving my new job those are the two things that I plan on working on next by using The Secret.

Oh yeah and by the way. Everything in Forida wasn’t all bad. I did win a 1 year modeling contract with Model Productions. I just need $150 to get started because I have to purchase my own proofs to send out to modeling jobs! As soon as I get a new scanner I’m going to post some of my best photos from my portfolio!

My new site is finally complete! Well the basics anyway. I completed all the pages needed so my site could be eligible for submission to all the major site indexes and search engines. As time goes on I’ll be adding more and more content to the site and I’ve also added a blog to site which will help with the search engine rankings because every time you write in a blog it adds more content to your site!

The site is called Grow Black Hair Online. Check it out and tell me what you think. I still have more work to do, but the site as you already know is still in it’s earlier stages. I really like the color theme i picked for the site! I also stuck with a really professional, but simple layout with a bit of a web 2.0 flair!

I’ve added a new site to the blog called ‘O So Divine. I’ve been working on this site on the weekends and after work and it’s been coming along rather nicely. My site will officially launch in March, but I just thought I’d share it with my fellow readers since it has somehow already appearing in the search engines when I bought the domain name 12 days ago. Crazy isn’t it? I didn’t submit my site or anything and when I decided to do a search for the words “O So Divine” to see what comes up my site was the first one in the search engine results with 40 unique visitors already.

I want ‘O So Divine to be bigger than sweetvanillasugar.com which got 2861 unique visitors last month and has gotten 998 already this month. 10,000 visitors a month the first year will be nice. This is my goal in the next 6 months. I’ve seen it done before and I believe I can do that with patience and persistence.

Something really bad happened yesterday, but I rather not disclose the details of it. Let’s just say it’s a major problem that needs to be addressed immediately and can’t wait. I can’t even go to work because of it. I’ll write about it in my private blog because it’s something I can’t share with anyone I don’t know extremely well. I know God will make sure we are okay.

Speaking of work…

I’ll save that for my private blog too.

So what is ‘O So Divine? It’s a cosmetic, make up, hair care, skin care product review site. It is a place for women to come and write reviews about products they have tried either good or bad so other women can see if the product is any good before trying it. I’m tired of looking for product reviews on products I want to buy so I decided to make a site that will have product reviews for everything…not fake testimonials!

The only other site I saw like this is Icompact.com which from the looks of things it looks like it’s nothing more than a forum with loads of mods loaded to it. I want mine to be better. So far I have a product of the day feature, the product review and ratings section, a skin care and hair care section, and a top 20 products section. More site features will be added in the upcoming months as soon as I finish the basics. I’m also thinking about adding a mens section for men to read reviews on products made entirely for them. Please check out ‘O So Divine and tell me what you think. If you find it useful please tell your friends about the site too.

Well I have to go. Tomorrow is not going to be a good day given the situation we are in right now…

*Sigh*