I may not be the best person to say this but my mind tells me this year Obama will run by himself. Romney is that guy from the state where people live in a state. And the Travyon case is almost coming to an end. This does not mean I can stop looking over my shoulder. Yesterday I went to my weekly letter writing volunteer session. It’s that time of the week when I express the part of me that is altruistic – huh. I walked in with a white friend - she’s legally white anyway. She stretched out her hand to shake another volunteer’s hand and they exchanged salutations. And then it was my turn. Not wanting to be rude I decided to do the same thing. Offer a handshake. He looked at me. Looked at my hand and just ignored me. People pretended not to notice. I am not sure what feelings went down. I can remember thinking to myself. ‘You are not worth my salt and this does not bother me.’ And it did not. I only wondered when I started shaking hands again. I have had a couple of racist people refuse to shake my hand and so between this and my mother’s idea that some people do not wash their hands after going to the loo, I generally stopped shaking hands. My legally white friend was furious. She told everyone about it after the session. Went into a feat about how we are never going back to that place. I was not fussed. When you are black and have read ‘How to be black’ by Baratunde it’s almost as if you have a PHD in blackness. You learn what to carry and what to leave behind. Education on blackness is a daily consequence. So I told my friend that we were going back to that session and no one is going to be an obstruction to our success. After-all the either xenophobic or racist person is not an issue.

My friend just told me she wants to go for a physical. Actually she said she needed to call up her doctor to get a physical done so she can go on the pill. I talked her out of it. Not because I do not have healthcare insurance. We are in Canada for goodness sake everyone is covered. Two hours away across the border, I am not. I only talked her out of it because we are on a $500 weight loss challenge. If we are too far apart in how much weight we lose no one gets the money. Not everyone gains weight on the pill but knowing her luck she probably will and then what happens to all the plans I have for that money? They should have called it the ‘Team weight loss challenge.’ So she bought the idea and thinks whoever is on the other side of the playing field should suck it up and just play carefully.

Another friend just told me he is going to write a job application with the subject: ‘HIRE ME DAMMIT!’ I am considering doing the same thing for one of the lesser interesting jobs and see what happens. Sometimes people are moved by true frustration. I said the same thing to another friend who is dating the best man I have ever seen her with. She said he has been hurt so much. I said, ‘maybe that is a good thing because he is extremely respectful of you and also into you.’ I added a bunch of cheesy crap to the whole thing. A huge deviation to the crass I tend to pour out daily concerning their enormous public display of affection which I am totally comfortable with. Am off to the Rock Creek restaurant tonight, join me if you are in Regina and are used to crashing dates. I will be sitting with a man who looks like Simon Baker, only because he does.