Hangin' Out at Tar Beach with Mr. J

Big news: I am going to spend July and August with my friend Mr. J. I have a place to go to in July! An awesome, wonderful, big apartment on the top floor of a building, with a fire escape outside of the kitchen window that takes one up to Tar Beach. Mr. J lives farther west in Queens. His roommate had to go to California on short notice for some summer work. Mr. J sent out a mass e-mail yesterday morning about how he needed a roommate and asked us to let him know if we knew anyone who needed a place. He didn't know that I hadn't found a place to go to in July, and he didn't know I'd be willing to sublet for two months before I found a more long-term situation. Well, I called him ASAP and set up everything, and my subletting will begin on July 1st. :) I love Mr. J. We can talk deeply about serious issues, and we can have a ball laughing and dancing and doing impersonations. It's gonna be great to live with him. I'll have much more time to hang out with him. I don't normally see him that often because he's so busy and because I'm still physically affected by my grief and it's such a production for me to get to his house from my lair. So, now we get to hang out more often! :) It's also gonna be good to move from this remote location to a much more accessible area of Queens before my final move to Manhattan. His neighborhood is really cool, with lots and lots of stores, restaurants and other things I like. The subway is ONE BLOCK from his building! YAY!!! I think it will be easier for me to find housing as a student in the Columbia University area/Upper Manhattan for September 1st. And now I have two months to find something! :) Oh, and friend-of-a-friend is chafing my hide. Now she's saying her work friend will probably move in in August and could I move in in October? And she chooses who my roommate will be? I just e-mailed back to tell her that this situation won't work for me, and that I wish her the best with everything. It's a great apartment, but it's not meant for me. I will keep on trying to get everything set up for September...

I bought the diet drug from Walgreens.com. I am waiting for its arrival. I want to start on it on a weekend, in case there are side-effects. I want to lose weight. Really, I do. It seems impossible for me to do, but I'll try. I look at women on the streets as I walk, and I love to see the voluptuous ones. Truly, I think that voluptuous bodies, male and female, are the most beautiful. I do NOT want to be thin. I want to stay a voluptuous lady with big thighs and hips and soft curves all over, but I want to be smaller than I am now. I would like to be 180 pounds again. 180 seems like a lot to some folks, but it's not a lot for me. I'm tall, I am sturdily-built, and I am buxom. That's my body type, which I inherited from my African ancestors who were some of the ones who actually survived the extreme conditions of The Middle Passage and lived through backbreaking labor on the rice plantations of South Carolina for centuries. That's my body type, which I inherited from my Scandinavian ancestors who had long ago been great warriors of the sea; who had braved long, harsh winters, had settled on dramatic landscapes, and survived many famines. That's my body type, which I inherited from my Native American ancestors who survived the violent genocide and the diseases that Europeans had brought over. You wanna know why I'm so sturdily-built? Because my foremothers and fathers went through hell and survived it. They were anything but frail.