I am very sad and disappointed.  I can’t believe that after all of the letters and emails that I sent you, you still decided to get your kids a dog instead of a cat!  When you needed me to go to the polls and vote, I was there for you.  I stood in the line for two hours, on a fractured ankle and this is the thanks I get?  Cats are low maintenance and cheaper to spay or neuter.  In this economy, we have to watch every penny.  They are very attentive and listen to every word you say.  This would be great for practicing your speeches.  To be a role model and to advocate for all of the wonderful cats who need a new home, I changed my name to ”Miss Kitty” and my husband is now and forever “Cat Daddy!”   I don’t understand how any good and decent person can live with themselves and ignore all of the precious kitties of the world!  I have included a picture of my dear misunderstood friend, Miss Lucy.  I promised her a new home at the white house,and she will not be denied!

Miss Lucy

A few weeks ago, I was faced with a dilemma that reminded me of the woman who got in trouble for calling 9-1-1 when McDonald’s refuse to give her a refund.   My daughter, who had just arrived home, called me on the phone to say that a stranger was in our driveway, with something in his hand, looking into my step-son’s car.  She was too scared to park and come inside.  When the guy noticed that she had pulled up, he walked away.

I decided to call the police, to prevent the suspicious character from possibly breaking into someone else’s car.  Since there was no immediate danger, I called what I thought was the non-emergency number in my area, 3-1-1.  This is when I found out that 3-1-1 is not the non-emergency number for my area.  Then I decided to call 4-1-1 (information) to get the non-emergency number for my area.  The number that I was given went straight to someone’s voicemail at the police department.

I went ahead and called 9-1-1 directly.  I called the number and explained the situation to the dispatcher.  She asked if I wanted the responding officers to knock on my door, which I did not.  I then explained that I knew that it was inappropriate for me to call 9-1-1 because no one was hurt or in immediate danger.  The dispatcher was very nice and told me that it was okay that I had called 9-1-1.  For all of you parents out there, please make sure that your children know your local non-emergency number and when it’s appropriate to call 9-1-1, non-emergency, animal control, poison control, etc.  That is my public service announcement for the week.

On another note, my daughter who had driven away and returned, said that she had seen the man walk up the street and get into a car parked about two blocks away.  I have no idea whether the police ever got a chance to question the guy, but I do know that I have no regrets about calling.  My property value has taken a big enough hit with the economy.  The last thing I need is for criminal activity to drive the property values down and my insurance rates up. 

Note to all criminals: please be advised that the “Stop Snitchin” campaign is dead on my block.  If you happen to be in Maryland and see a sign on a house that reads “BEWARE: Overachieving Snitch on Duty,” please take your illicit, iniquitous activities elsewhere.I have no idea if the police ever got a chance to question the guy, but I do know that my property value has taken a big enough hit with this economy.  The last thing I need is for criminal activity to drive the property value down and the insurance rates up!  All parties concerned please be advised that the “Stop Snitchin’’ campaign is dead on my block.  The sign outside my house says “BEWARE: Overachieving Snitch on Duty.”

You want to know if I’ll come back to Facebook,
The answer is “No, you silly rabbit”,
Tricks are for kids, and I’m not falling for yours,
‘Cause Miss Kitty has kicked the habit!

You can keep all of your virtual gifts
I’ve got plenty in my stash.
All of that’s cute, and I hate to be tacky
But call me when y’all start passing out cash!

You ask “What will you do without facebook?”
Well there’s plenty for me to do.
I’ve got a husband, kids, friends, and a blog,
I may even want to visit the zoo!

So farewell Mr. Zuckerberg
I’m not angry nor am I bitter
You just may be online one day
And see that I’m on Twitter!

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

I was really impressed with your little Facebook invention for a while there.  I thought I was addicted to your cybercrack.  I still can’t believe that when I requested that you close my account, you just hid the account and continued to update it.  I almost fell for the banana in the tailpipe!  Well let me tell you something, Mr. “You can’t leave me,” Ike Turner of the internet, IT IS OVER AND I AM OUT!

Last night, I logged in to Facebook one last time, updated my status as “Facebook is the devil, and then I went to my page and deleted everything.  I removed all of the photos, the posts, the notifications, the notes, the groups, and the people you may know.  I cleared out my inbox, my sent mail, EVERYTHING.  Finally, I went to my friends list and deleted them all, one by one.  So the account may be there, but I have nothing to return to.  I’m sure that everything that I did on Facebook is still there on other people’s pages, but I wanted to make sure that it will be so much of a hassle that I won’t even want to be bothered!  Even if I do log in, it’ll be so much of a hassle to add my friends back, I won’t even bother. 

I would rather have a public blog and know that the whole world can see what I’ve written, than to write something on a network that is suppose to be private and have it come back to haunt me later on.  So Mr. Harvard educated smart-guy, I may not be smarter than a 5^th grader just yet, but I do have my moments.  You can count me as one less person who will waste her life away hiding out from the recession on Facebook!

When I recognized that I spent too much time on the web site, I decided that I needed to venture out and re-establish a life outside of Facebook.  When I made the announcement, my fellow addicts wished me well, but warned me of their skepticism.  They told me that there was no kicking the dreaded “Crackbook!”

Things started out really well.  I started writing on associated content.  I started my blog.  I started reconnecting with my friends by phone.  Things were wonderful.  I would log on to Facebook for maybe 10 minutes a day and not really even enjoy it.  I would have 6 messages waiting, but they would be automatically generated messages from Facebook.  I finally decided that the time had come to cancel my account.

When I went into my account settings and chose to cancel my account, just as I expected, the system asked why I was leaving.  I took the time out to let them know that “Facebook sucks.”  I clicked on the option that assured me that they wouldn’t continue to send me messages or harass me about returning.  They lined up all of my friends pictures and wrote under each one “Jackie is going to miss you”, “Lisa is going to miss you”, “Kelly is going to miss you”, “and John is going to miss you.”  I laughed at the cheesy attempt to keep me, especially since the people that were named first were the ones that I found most annoying!

I received a confirmation e-mail, letting me know that my request had been honored and my account had been closed.  I was also advised that I was free to return to Facebook at any time and only needed to log back into my account.

After several happy days in a Facebook-free world, I was unwittingly sucked back in.  A friend called me up and shared some rather interesting information about a couple of people on my friends list.  My curiosity ate away at me until I decided to re-open my account.  When I logged in using my old account information, it was as if I had never left.  I was able to see everything that I had missed for those few days that I’d been gone.

There was no setting up a new account, no new friend requests to send out, no explaining to anyone where I’d been, no re-joining my old groups.  No hassles.

I thought to myself, “Wow, everything in life should be so easy.”  Imagine getting tired of a relationship and deciding to go out and try something else.  Then when you find out that the grass is not any greener on the other side, all you have to do is take your key and open up the door to the house as you always had.  Everything would be just as you left it, no having to explain or apologize, no having to hear “I told you so.”   Imagine having your mate there, waiting with open arms and cooking dinner for two as always.  Actually, anyone who goes for that foolishness just may be a stalker.  RUN!  Bad example.  I digress.

As far as companies go, all of the other companies out there should sit up and take notice.  The banks, the cable companies, the phone companies, etc., should all consider taking the “no hassle, no questions asked, just come back” approach to customer service!

My specific case was actually a civil one. After two days of listening to testimony, the judge sent the jury into deliberations at about 5:00pm on a Thursday evening.  The other jurors were impressed by the defendant’s attorney.  The judge had sustained most of his objections and his multiple attempts to try to discredit the plaintiff had apparently worked.  The six of us took a poll at the beginning of the deliberations to see what everyone else was thinking.  I turned out to be the lone holdout.  While everyone else thought that we would all render the quickest verdict available, I intended to fulfill my civic duty and vote based on the evidence and the law.

Returning to jury duty on Friday morning was no fun at all.  The group had clearly agreed that I was persona non grata. They tried, in vein, to convince me to agree with the group, for several reasons, none having to do with the case.  One guy had an interview.  One was not getting paid for missing work.  One was on vacation and could not get his vacation days back, although he had spent them all serving jury duty.  I found this excuse particularly strange, because he held a union job.  They talked about the fact that the plaintiff had left the court house in one Mercedes Benz and returned the next day in another one.  They offered this as evidence that she only came to court to get money.    

Unfortunately for all of them, I had all day and the following week to deliberate, if necessary.  They tried to bully me into agreement, but I wouldn’t budge.  When I propped my feet up and advised them to “grab a Snickers, because you’re not going anywhere,” they started to see things my way.  From the very beginning, I believed that the plaintiff had proven her case, beyond a reasonable doubt, and that she should be awarded damages.  I did, in the end, compromise slightly with the others and lower the amount of the damages that I wanted to award the plaintiff.

In the end, I was satisfied that justice had been served, but I still can’t help but wonder how many cases end with the entire jury just agreeing to the quickest verdict available.

Let me be clear, except where there is physical abuse, I do not have a problem with anyone who chooses to stay with their man for any reason.  Just the other day, I tried to tell my 19-year old daughter that she needed to mind her business when she felt that it was her duty to let one of her best friends know that her man was extremely flirty with someone else when she wasn’t around.  My daughter and another friend were even nice enough to videotape the misbehavior as proof.  Just as I predicted, before they could even present all of the evidence to their “bestie”, they were shown the door and she was calling him to get his side of the story.  Needless to say, he had all the right answers and my daughter’s relationship with her friend is now strained, to say the least. 

I am sure that I will receive some backlash for this statement, but I would not, I repeat, I would not tell a friend that her man is cheating.  Please don’t call me to ask if you are the exception, because you are not.  I, Cawanna L King, do solemnly swear to mind my business.  What my daughter and many women much older than her need to learn is that a woman does not know what her breaking point is until she reaches it.  It doesn’t matter how much money she has, how good she looks, or how strong she appears to be.  Please disregard all of her proclamations that she wouldn’t tolerate this, or that she would never deal with that, because chances are that she just hasn’t had to deal with it yet, or that she has tolerated something else just as bad.

Please don’t be a hero.  Contrary to what your intentions may be, telling a friend that her man is cheating is rarely, if ever, a good idea.  Don’t involve yourself and don’t get dragged into the situation.  She may call you to talk about him, and he may call you to talk about her.  Repeat after me, “Wow, I hope y’all work it out, good luck and goodbye!”  What eventually always happens is that they’ll work it out, and move on, but your butting in will not be forgotten, or forgiven.

Betty Wright said it best in today’s video, No Pain, (No Gain).  “Say Devil you ain’t got nothin’ here, I’m holdin’ to my man and have no fear.”

Even I had to give Miss Betty a pass on her grammar crimes for the knowledge she just dropped on us!

Note to my fans: You know me well enough to know that I would not condone this type of malicious destruction of property.  This blog is just good harmless fun!

Jazmine Sullivan – Let me be perfectly clear, I believe that Jazmine Sullivan is psychotic!  She destroyed that man’s car because she actually thought it was going to make him straighten up.  She was probably more upset about his car than he was!  I’m sure she called him the next day, and asked “Why do you make me act like that?”  Then she paid for all of the damages, and threw in the new rims he wanted, just to prove that she was truly sorry.  HATED IT!

Carrie Underwood - Now personally, I enjoyed Carrie’s version more.  Her description of the truck, alone, let us know that it was this guy’s pride and joy, and she truly enjoyed destroying it.  She made us all wish that she was one of our girlfriends, who had called us up and told us to pull out our black outfits and baseball bats, because she was on the way!  Now, that’s the stuff that lasting memories are made of!  I’m totally kidding. Really, I am! 

If you ever find yourself in the same situation, instead of following in the footsteps of either of these two, take a look at how Beyonce, Vivian Green, Pink, and Jojo, handled their cheating men!

After reading an article which stated that many employers are using the internet to take a peek into the lives of prospective employees before making any job offers, I decided that I should check my online reputation, so I googled myself.  What I found was quite interesting.

My name is not as unique as I originally thought.  I knew that there were others that shared the same pronunciation as me, but I have actually found other women who spell their name C-a-w-a-n-n-a.  Based on my google results, there are at least 6 other women named Cawanna in the United States.

I smiled when I saw that one of my sisters-in-name is also a poet.  When I saw that she’d misspelled “wife” in one of her poems, I, once again, wanted to scratch my newly transplanted corneas out!  Then there is the professional football player’s wife, Cawanna, who has a well-chronicled history of domestic violence in google results.  Unfortunately, a few of my namesakes have slipped into a life of crime, according to the warrants that have been issued in their names.  Note to self: steer clear of Abilene, TX, Greensboro, NC, and Atlanta, GA; your name is no good in those cities!

About six years ago, a small group of friends at work dubbed me Miss Kitty.  Without going into the elicit details, I’ll just say that there was never a dull moment when Miss Kitty was around.  As time passed, the Miss was dropped (because she’s no lady), and I became simply Kitty.  When I started blogging, I decided I’d better fly under the radar as Miss Kitty, just in case things get out of hand as they often do in the invitation-only chats! 

Now that I am positive that the President won’t be calling to offer me any cabinet posts, I can declare to all of my friends and family members who seem to be confused, that Cawanna and Miss Kitty are one and the same!  So whether you call me Cawanna, Miss Kitty, or Kitty, I will answer.  For any bounty hunters who may be looking for a Cawanna who has skipped out on a bond, please try Atlanta, Abilene and Greensboro, as I have never, *to my knowledge, been charged with any criminal activities. 

To all of my sisters named Cawanna, keep your head up!  Remember, your name means “she who is courageous”, so just know that you will make it past the domestic violence, past the warrants, and past the grammar enthusiasts!  This song is dedicated to all of you.

*Note to readers:   I watch enough CNN to know that you should always add “to my knowledge” to any statement that may come back to haunt you, just in case you are called to testify in front of Congress.  It served Treasury Secretary Geithner quite well!

Two friends and I had gone to lunch at a well known pizza restaurant.  The waitress, who apparently had childcare problems that day, arrived at our table with her 3-year-old in tow.  She asked if she could take our order, but before we could utter a word, she disclosed “Before y’all even start, we ain’t got no pizza crust, except for the personal pan pizza, and no spaghetti and the salad bar is closed!”  This is where I must plead temporary insanity because, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why we didn’t just get up and leave.  I ordered the personal pan pizza, buffalo wings, and a drink.  My lunch mates, who already appeared disgusted, ordered only breadsticks and drinks.  In retrospect, the fact that the place was practically empty during the lunch time rush hour, should have forewarned us of what was to come.

When the waitress and her little helper returned with our drinks, my curiosity got the best of me.  I simply had to ask why they didn’t have the pizza crusts, the spaghetti or the salad bar.  She answered, very matter-of-factly, “Our Dough Master ain’t show up and we ain’t have no lettuce.”  This revelation only left me with more questions, but I digressed.  I thanked the young lady for the information and she returned to her other duties.  My friends and I sat there in disbelief.  The whole scenario was so absurd, we even laughed about it.

I must admit that I did enjoy my buffalo wings.  Unfortunately, the wings were the only good thing that came out of this entire fiasco.  My friends received their breadsticks without the marinara sauce that normally accompanies them.   I suspect there was a shortage of sauce, because my pizza was extremely dry. By the time the waitress finally delivered the cup of marinara sauce, it was ice cold and all of the breadsticks had been eaten.  We had  been willing to overlook the waitress’s annihilation of the Queen’s English, and her babysitting woes, simply because she, unlike the dough master, did in fact show up for work.   Knowing that we would have done the restaurant a disservice by not waging a complaint, we asked to speak to the manager. 

The manager, clearly annoyed that we had interrupted her busy day, came over to our table, with what looked like our bill in her hand.  We calmly expressed our disappointment with the fact that half of the items on the menu were not available, and then shared our horrible experience with her.  Call us eternal optimists, but we had imagined that the she would be mortified at what we’d recounted and first apologize profusely for our inconvenience, then thank us for bringing the matter to her attention, maybe show a little empathy to let us know that she understood our frustrations, and possibly assure us that the company was committed to offering the highest quality food and service available and finally ask us what she could possibly do to make it right.  Regrettably, that is not how this nightmare ended.  The manager responded simply “okay” and returned to her office.  

We were left to ponder exactly what “okay” meant.  We sat there for another 15 minutes, incorrectly assuming that the Manager was making an adjustment to our bill.  When I finally realized that the manager would not be returning, I advised my companions that I would not be paying a dime for the awful service I had received.  I had been willing to pay for the buffalo wings and the drink that I’d enjoyed, but my patience had left the building, and I was right behind it!  My cohorts, still delusional that the situation could be resolved reasonably, approached the front counter and requested the manager again.  After five minutes of waiting in vain, they joined my patience and me in the car, without having paid the bill.

The breakdown in customer service at this particular restaurant went far beyond the two employees that we’d had direct contact with.  The worst part of this entire scenario was that I neglected my duty as a customer to report the incident to the company’s corporate headquarters.  Because of my negligence, countless other customers, undoubtedly received awful service, and the company lost a valuable customer without the benefit of knowing why!