Travel Reality - the Straight Up UGLY

One of the highlights of my 2016 year was being able to visit my sista over on the east coast. We'd been planning it for over a year, so despite the beginning of my illnesses, I was bound and determined to go even if it killed me.

So what had happened was...

The airline we took was one my sister, my bff who also came, and myself had never heard of. Spirit. Now I know that some of you are thinking, wellll there ya go. We had no idea and I've been on a plane maybe 4 times in my life. But my bff and I had things planned. We'd pay for checked luggage and have our personal items. We were planning on taking post wedding pictures in Philly, so I had my Maid of Honor dress and my good makeup and hair necessities all for it to never show up when we landed.

You always hear about things happening to luggage or see how airlines in general handle luggage behind the scenes, but when your airline gives your luggage to a different airline at an international airport and they can't find it, you may start to panic. The customer service rep in the claims department even said there was a possibility that it could have gone out of the country.

We arrived Sunday, called everyday, bought everything we needed with kept receipts which was about 1500 between my bff and I because everyone knows plus size, big and tall anything is not cheap. They finally found my luggage in Atlanta, Georgia on Wednesday of our stay. Flew it out to the airport but had to Fedex to my sister's house. But!! It rained and the FedEx sticker came apart from the wet luggage and was found in New Jersey. We finally have it returned on Friday and we were leaving again on Sunday.

Now with needing to purchase a week's worth of life from underwear to hair and makeup for the wedding pictures, my bff and I were ready for a fight if we had to pay for another 2 carry-ons on top of what we already paid the first go around. Thankfully it wasn't necessary but the bruises from carrying that bag through security and having that bag checked literally 6 times at security was brutal. AND guess who missed her flight home on the last flight of the day to Dallas? Mind you, it was 4 in the morning on top of it.

Time passes and we have been working on our claim for reimbursement. If I can tell you anything about any sort of claims, it's these main points:

1. Keep your receipts and make copies of said receipts. My bff handled this like a pro because both of us had copies of the receipts for EVERYTHING, even the paperwork and email correspondence.

2. Read the instructions carefully. Everything has a timeline and in our case, it also needed to be notarized.

3. If you need to mail it out, spend a few bucks to get it registered or certified mail. Someone on the receiving end has to sign for it and that was our saving grace because le bff sent it certified and had proof that Spirit claims received when they tried to deny our claim saying they didn't get it in time.


Needless to say, though my luggage is trashed from how it was handled and then being left out in the rain, I've learned a very valuable lesson. Pack smarter and learn to pack tighter to fit things in my carry on.



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B3 - Big, Bad, and Beautiful

So even though I've had this blog up for a bit, I still feel like I'm really new. One thing I know I'm still working on is my niche, my thang, my spot in the blogosphere. While I think that will still be a work in process, I know one thing that I can look to and that is the B3.

My aunt actually came up with this a long time ago and it has stuck with me. She said girls like us are Big, Bad, and Beautiful. And as someone who has kinda been an outlier to societies standard, it was really awesome to have someone say that yes, you're taller and a bit bigger than the average girl but that is ok because you are fierce and strong. I've taking those and looked at the women in my life, my mom, aunts on both sides, grandmas, and it needs to be said.

I am not a small woman; seriously, the smallest things about my body are my ears. I've known it my whole life, people have pointed it out to me in a backhanded compliment or just straight up rude comment or a seemingly innocent comment about when I'm due.

I have this friend and to be honest she's one of my best friends; she's the bubbliest person I know with a shape to kill for. She encountered a comment from a guy about her size and was told she should be ashamed of her body and she just took it and said how dare you?! I'm rocking my body because I love it.

Me being the kind of person I am, was like gimme da signal and you have back up STAT but she said no, she wasn't gonna let one person's opinion affect how she sees herself and the world. THAT is being Big, Bad, and Beautiful. Love yourself, stand up for yourself and let your sparkle shine.

I may not know where my niche will come from in order to point my blog in that direction but it will revolve around the three B's and I hope you'll come on this journey with me. 







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My Pissed AF Playlist

****Reader discretion advised. There may or may not be language that would not be considered lady-like and by that I mean... get over it PDQ before you continue****

My Bff sent me this on FB and I was like RIGHT?!

There are days and then there are days where you are glad that you can't blow things up with your mind. And then even worse when you question if you'd feel bad. I've had my fair share of days where people try to say that it's just one day, not your life. There's times that I can listen to my awesome boyfriend and look at the bigger picture like I did in this post. And then.....then there are times where I just need to be mad as Hell. Call me petty, an Aries, a girl and no I'm not on my damn period either so don't even try to pull that shit. I'm just fucking pissed... for whatever assortment of reasons.

It was Arnold in Terminator 3 who said that anger is more useful than despair. And yes it can be. Look at feelings and plans carried out due to vendettas and plots for revenge and sometimes you can even use it to come out victorious on top of the world when you apply angry to productivity and sh!t....

This was not one of those days. And for days like those, I turn to music, especially. I'm sure everyone does because it, literally, can be the only thing that meshes with what your feeling. So to share this notion, I've found a list of some of my fave mad-at-the-world songs that I have and continue to blast at home, in my car, etc. And yes, a lot of these songs are older but does matter? No bitch it does not but it does tend to make me feel better after a bit.


I'm Not Ok, I Promise - My Chemical Romance.

Crawling - Linkin Park.

So Sick - Flyleaf

Call Me When You're Sober - Evanescence

The Sharpest Lives - MCR

Go To Church - Ice Cube/Snoop Dogg (when he was still D-O-Double G)/ Lil Jon

Rollin' in the Deep - Adele

Lil Homies - 2Pac

Knives and Pens - Black Veil Brides

Move - Ludacris

Disturbed - Down with the Sickness

In the End - Linkin Park

Let the Bodies Hit the Floor - Drowning Pool

Everybody's Fool - Evanescence

Nightmare - A7X

Runaway - Linkin Park

The Change - Evanescence

The Unforgiven - Metallica



Now don't get me wrong, I am all for positive thinking and reinforcement. I am on the road to becoming a more positive person. HOWEVER COMMA, I am also a person who has had that tendency to bottle things up until it blows like Mt. St. Helens. I do believe it's important to acknowledge that anger is a feeling to be dealt with. Regardless of the reasons for being super f*ckin pissed, it is not something that has to stay with you. So I am a firm believer in the power of music.

More often than not, in extreme negative emotions, mad-as-sh!t or sad AF, we are isolated and alone. In the back of our minds, we know that it's not true but the feelings suck. So build that playlist and blast it because it's easier to feel better when you hear someone going through that same emotion. Genre doesn't matter and this isn't the end of my playlist either but it helps. So get your YouTube on, or Spotify, whatever your poison is and look some of these up if you haven't heard it.

Now that I have that off my chest, here's what else has been going on in life.

Beauty 
Life Lessons
Finances

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