PAULA NEAL MOONEY

by Paula Neal Mooney I held the bottle of painkillers in my palm and studied them. It had been a mere month or so since my pretty baby girl was pulled into the world. I no longer awoke writhing with the pain that twisted me awake if I'd gone too long without taking a pill. I no longer needed them, this I knew. Maybe I should keep them , I thought, just in case . That's when a sinister idea outside of my own head came to me, asking beguilingly: "Why don't you just take the whole bottle?" Recognizing the voice of the father of lies, the lord of the air, I tossed the bottle in the trash. Death, be not proud... Thoughts of the grim reaper can't help but emerge as I ponder the blog of my fourth respondent to grab my olive branch of link love , Zaki Yamani . There's something so tender and endearing about Zaki Yamani, a chemical engineer, husband and father. His blog, titled Zaki Yamani World , is plush with order and neatness. It gives me the warm fuzzies. He ...

by Paula Neal Mooney KWiz called me a nut. Then she tagged me for the "five reasons why I blog" meme game. Not the "right wing nut-job" popular insult speak-of-the-moment as some are prone to copy mindlessly and hurl at me. KWiz -- wife of Manchild -- meant "nut" in a good way when she found my blog. Well, it's 2:26 a.m. And as the Led Zeppelin-like lead singer in Almost Famous told Cameron Crowe's character as he sought to interview him: "I'm in too truthful of a mood." But here goes with the real reasons why I blog: 1 - So I won't cheat on my husband Just check out my Cindy George piece to find out all the trouble a lonely housewife can get into when her hand is taken off the plow. Like Bible Girl , I continually cast down wrong thoughts. I used to think I should only meditate on Scripture during the times I succeeded in getting the wrong visions outta my brain. Now I realize I can also think of ways to improve my blog too.....

Five Things You Didn't Know About Me ...by Paula Neal Mooney 1 - Oprah touched me and talked to me. I went to a taping of her show about dating in the 80s. Oprah shook my hand afterward, and during the show she teased my friend and I for moving our seats down front. "Y'all tryin' to get some dates!" Oprah teased. 2 - I slept with a staple in my finger all night when I was a little girl. My mom found it and freaked out and thank goodness I didn't get lockjaw. 3 - I tried to pledge Delta Sigma Theta in college but they rejected me. I was all prepared for the crazy questions they asked my friend who pledged, but during my interview their den mother was there so it was pretty tame and I was pretty lame. Someone told me they usually select darker-skinned girls; others say this is untrue. Still, I should've pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha... 4 - There's a tiny "hereditary hole" at the top of each of my ears, appendages that I can wiggle... 5 - I declared...

Nobody Loves Me, Nobody Tagged Me For Five Things... by Paula Neal Mooney So there's this game called "Five Things" floating around the blogosphere. The gist of "Five Things" is that bloggers tag their blogging friends to reveal "Five Things You May Not Know About Me" on their blogs. I've been reading about all these folks getting tagged by their cyber-buddies to play "Five Things" while waiting like the gangly, clumsy kid I was in this pic on July 31, 1975, in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago (thank you in heaven, Mommy, for writing detailed and intriguing descriptions on the back of our photos). I feel like the 6-year-old I was, waiting for some super-athlete to choose me for his team in grade school. Five Things is growing and growing, as a quick peek into Google blog search has revealed. Loek Bakker "tagged" Joe McKendrick , whose fellow ZDNet bloggers Ed Bott and Mary Jo Foley also played Five Things ....

She Talk Like a White Girl ...by Paula Neal Mooney White girl , he called me. That's Isaac, standing like a Conquistador on the banks of some lake. He's a guy who interned at my job a few years back. White girl , he would tease, mimicking the way I spoke, threatening to revoke my "ghetto pass" when he found out I voted for George W. Bush . It wasn't the first time the supposed "white girl" insult had been hurled my direction. When I traveled down to Tallahassee, Florida, to attend Florida A & M University, roommates who considered me light-skinned would sometimes call me white girl, too. Read the excellent work titled The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color Among African Americans for all the issues us blacks can harbor over skin color. They reminded me of myself as a 9-year-old, when I read in RightOn! magazine that Todd Bridges' favorite band was Fleetwood Mac . Fleetwood Mac! I thought. How can their songs compare to "Lady" ...

Confessions of a Corporate Nomad ... by Paula Neal Mooney This is one of my favorite pics of me and my husband -- and not just because of the sideways angle that whichever blessed passerby who took this puppy used to make us look ultra-thin, but that it was taken inside the Chapel of the Holy Cross , a sanctuary actually built into the gorgeous red rocks of Sedona, Arizona. It was circa February 16, 1997. I remember this clearly because we got engaged during that trip. We'd just relocated from Chicago Title and Trust Company, where we met, to work for a different company in Akron, Ohio. Sedona was just a little vacay. I lit a red candle and said a prayer in that church. For how could I have known that four years later we'd leave Ohio to work for a San Francisco Bay Area firm, then move back to Ohio a year and a half later? Corporate nomadism , I call it. Changing cities, chasing that ever elusive higher pay grade...staying one step ahead of the dreaded reorgs. Some of our belon...

Dr. 44313...anyone, anyone? by Paula Neal Mooney I admit it, I'm hooked on Dr. 90210 - the completely addictive E! documentary that shows real-life plastic surgery patients, their surgeries (not for the squeamish) and not only the patients' lives, but the inside lives of their docs. Perhaps you too have grown to love Dr. Robert Rey -- the warm-hearted, martial-arts practicing and self-aware Beverly Hills plastic surgeon throughout Season 2 and Season 3 of Dr. 90210 ; laughed at yet sympathized with his gorgeous wife, Hayley , as she birthed his two kids and struggled to find herself in a lonely multi-million dollar mansion filled mostly with her and her brood as Dr. Rey worked long hours to try and foot the bill for said manse. This season of Dr. 90210 proves to be even more addictive with the addition of John Diaz, M.D., a Queens, New York, bred doc specializing in breast and facial plastic surgery. Dr. Diaz is a hot new Latin doc who is just cutting his teeth -- or ten...