22 posts tagged “me”
...Except that it's still raining here in San Francisco. Every other week that is. I know I'm long overdue for a life update. But after so much time it's a little difficult to know where to start. As many of you know, I was impaled by a 400 pound ATV back in February. The short summary for the non-6Aers: four cracked ribs, a punctured lung, one broken collarbone (which now has plate and six screws over it), chest tubes, a medic jet evacuation from Mexico, a week's hospital stay and several more weeks of sporting around oxygen tanks. Oh, and I also burst blood vessels behind my eyes which caused blurry spots around my center of vision. Initially the spots were purple and I thought I was hallucinating from all the morphine. My doctor laughed when I told her, apparently you cannot hallucinate from painkillers. Not even if you take a ton of it.
A horrific experience indeed but I feel blessed to have walked away with mind, body and spirit intact. I've never been more thankful to be able to move my hands and feet than I did on that day. The outpouring of love and support from friends and colleagues was truly amazing. You guys rock, <3. And I was lucky to have D at my side, as he went above and beyond to ensure that I had the best possible care. During those eight weeks of recovery life was really simple, and despite my limited mobility and sometimes painful days, quite enjoyable. Well, except for the part where I couldn't shave my armpits. That was kind of rough. There was a lot of good food (I rekindled a love of apple juice in a box), reading, visits from friends, naps and pretty sunsets from D's deck. The urgency and need for "things" went away because well, I couldn't really do much on my own. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about people, relationships and the forces that move us in life. I don't have any answers for you but I did gain perspective for myself.
Now that I'm back at work, I'm feeling a little bit funky. Bound to happen, right? Most of it is probably due to my adjusting to the new schedule and the general insertion of me back into society. Hello, world. But if having a near death experience doesn't put you down, then a bit of the blues definitely will not. :)
Last night I sat down to an assortment of new alarm clocks and two giant, the biggest I’d ever seen, papayas on the dining room table. “They cute huh honey?” mom asked as she scooped rice into a bowl.
“Are they supposed to be…um, cute?” I prodded one of the papayas. It was bright green and didn’t look like it was going to soften anytime this year, much less this month.
“Yea, mom proud they so big. Good deal. Buy big, less money.”
Before I could comment on how absurd that sounded, the alarm clocks began rattling in succession. What the… 7pm. Oh right, every hour on the hour. This was all perfectly normal (at least in our household) until one of the clocks started belting out country tunes. Country tunes in a robotic, doorbell kind of way, the kind of country tunes found in cartoons with Bugs Bunny chasing the Road Runner down some lonely stretch of Texas desert. First the rooster phone now country tune alarm clocks. WTF.
Mom glanced up and laughed, “It cute honey?”
*****
On this visit, my mom had these two tidbits of wisdom for me:
#1 Saving for the Future:
“Thanh My already bought house. She two year younger than you, no speak English too good. But she came here after and she save, save money. Why you not like that? You know she single, three kid wit BIG HOUSE. She work on nail just downtown. She good daughter…”
Wait. She’s single with three kids and you think she’s a good daughter for buying a house??
#2 Dating Up in Life:
“Mom say you don’t need date. But if you want man, go Vietnam honey. Many rich, mill-on-aire. Take rich boy back wit you. They give you fifty thousand to go America. And you no have to live wit them.
[pauses]
I should have done too when I young like you. But now too late. Still, you go. You pretty girl, have chance to make money. Better than be alone, mommy tinks.”
Nice. I'd rather be alone and um, I think that’s illegal.
What is it about friends posting pictures from years ago, not just of themselves but of you too. Thankfully I like the photo despite the fact that I'm wearing silver-ish lipstick. To be 24 again!
By tomorrow morning, I will have survived almost 72 hours at home. This is a big deal considering my previous visit lasted less than a day. What can I say, my patience for dealing with family has been at an all-time low. Overall though, besides the constant rooster calls (via telephone and clocks) and my parents' inability to speak in anything other than their stadium voices, it was a nice-ish stay. I caught up with childhood friends, shopped with cousins and even bonded with my mother over rice bowls.
Yes. Bowls. Apparently her newfound obsession is with dinnerware, rice bowls in particular. Which is kind of nice considering her past obsessions: there was the year of nylon tracksuits, replaced by Buddhist statues of every shape and size, and then came the chili garden (which is now producing more chili than any of us can eat). Every week she finds new bowls and plates and then ends up selling the old ones or just giving them away. I hope by the time I'm her age, they will have some sort of medication for this.
In other news, I'm off to London and Amsterdam on Sunday. So excited for the shopping and the fact that I'll be ringing in the New Year somewhere else. I'll try to update as often as I can, but in the meantime here are some funny quotes from mom to hold you over:
Mom: You look nice honey. Jacket very nice...
Me: Oh, this? This is old but I love it.
Mom: How much? Tell mommy, it expensive? Must be, look expensive.
Me: Um..I don’t remember..not sure actually.
Mom: Hmm, me think you shop too much. Why you spend so much money when jobs so bad? You waste the money!
****
Mom: You ate dinner already with Chinh? That good. I made soup for you too.
Me: [pause]
Mom: Make sure you eat it. Want to eat it now?
Me: Um..But I’m not hungry.
Mom: What? You diet again?? Why diet all the time? No good look skinny. Boy no like.
****
Mom: You think all the store, they close Christmas? Like no one work?
Me: [pause]
Mom: We go shopping tomorrow, okay?
Me: But all the stores will be closed, Mom.
Mom: So they ALL close tomorrow? Mom no understand why they do that. How they make money?
****
Mom: Eat more, you so skinny. Will die soon.
Me: Um..I don’t think I’m going to die?
Mom: Tsk, tsk, tsk..don’t talk back to mommy. I made soup for you. Want to eat it now?
****
Me: [hands over present]
Mom: I no need new camera. Why camera?
Me: To take pictures with when you go to Vietnam..
Mom: Okay, I take it. Thank you honey. Mommy can sell it for good price at flea market.
****
Mom: You need to drink milk. You want milk, I get for you?
Me: I’m fine without milk for breakfast.
Mom: Why no drink milk? Make you stronger, better bones. You get old, must drink milk.
Me: I take vitamins every day. Calcium vitamins too.
Mom: No, no. Vitamins bad for you. Very bad, just drink milk. Especially from cow.
Me: But um..that doesn’t make any sense..
I got there kind of late in the day but the sun was still shining and the company was great. Yay for free festivals. Heard Bitter:Sweet for the first time and the lead singer was amazing. I will have to buy their album.
A few months ago I started getting into my reader, adding a ton of subscriptions and making plans for less TV. Not too surprisingly I've almost entirely been ignoring the tech feeds (not great for work) and have been engrossed in many design, fashion, photography and art blogs. Apparently I've rediscovered my inner design goddess. In my next life I want to make something with my hands as a career. Until then I'll just blog about it: On Maiden Lane. The site is still work in progress as I figure out the colors and stuff.
The first year I celebrated my birthday without my mother, I turned seventeen and went out with my best friend and her family to dinner. C's family had offered to take me to the Spagetti Factory which I totally loved at the time. I figured I'd do something with my mom that weekend. Not a big deal right? Um, wrong. A very big deal. When I came home she flipped out about how ungrateful I was, and that she brought me into the world not to celebrate my day with another family. That wasn't the worst of it as she continued to remind me of this incident for many birthdays to come.
Fast forward ten years and my mother unbelievably started forgetting my birthday. She was usually just off by a day or two but then one year she totally forgot to call for two weeks. When she finally did, I was beyond being bummed and kind of just in shock.
"HOOooooney, it your mommmy. How is baby?" she said brightly.
"I'm okay, busy with work. And you?"
She laughed nervously, "Okay mommy...mommy know is so, SO bad. But I remember before, just forgot on the day and mommy busy with temple. You know temple. Okay?? HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! You want some money?"
I stared at the phone in disbelief, "OMG mom, I do not want money!!!"
I called her last night because it's been a good month since I've seen my parents. And I wanted to remind her that today was the day, just in case. She called this morning to sing me happy birthday. Except she only knows the first line of the melody and proceeded to repeat that over and over. Thanks mom. :)
Sometimes it takes a few plays before I really connect with bands and their music. I have a tendency to fall in love with albums long after others have started playing them at housewarming parties and they're on request in jukeboxes around the city. When it finally happens I'll listen to a particular album on repeat until I can't bear to hear another single note from it.
There's been many albums where I've done this going back as far as Disintegration, a time where I was going through the years of "How the hell did I end up with this family?", to more recent memories of drinking wine and dancing to Hot Fuss with my girlfriends. Each of these albums takes me back to a place and time, and reminds me of how far I've come and how much further the road is ahead. This month I'm stuck on Crystal Castles:
I've been working on a new painting. It's been awhile since I've been inspired to do something but I saw a Monet in the window of a bookstore and decided I wanted to do flowers. Cherry blossoms rather than his lilies and in a brighter turquoise than the painting's pale blues. The thing with oil painting though is that it's a process. A process of layering on several shades of gray, then complimentary colors, and then redrawing the objects in charcoal. With each layer, you add more and more paint until you're at 90/10 ratio of paint to mineral spirits.
Initially you'll have a lot of "runs" in the paint which is good because it allows the varying levels of color to mix. You can see a lot of them to on the right side of my painting. While I'm not close to being done (there's a lot of highlighting to do and well it's not turquoise :P), I kind of like where it's at. Maybe I should start on another until I'm inspired to change this one? That's the brilliance of oil. Retouch it with paint in a few weeks and it'll come back to life.
My mom's boyfriend has been away on a trip to Vietnam. She hates sleeping alone and I knew she'd want me to come home often. In fact, she called right before he left and asked if I could work from home 2-3 days a week. An extra weekend this month sure okay, but several days a week? Mind you some visits I can barely get through brunch without wanting to bolt for the door. So um, no. And my weekends this month were entirely booked so instead I asked her to come stay with me for a few days. Yes, kind of crazy.
Well mom came up today with the kitchen sink in tow. Literally. She doesn't understand how I could possibly feel aggravated when she does things like this. It's as though she doesn't believe I can take care of myself, despite the fact that I've been living on my own since college. She brought her own bedding and pillows, towels, toiletries, a bag of cooking supplies such as fish sauce, soy sauce and a colander, three bags of groceries including canned goods and a 25 pd bag of rice, AND extra cleaning supplies.
In the first hour, she picked apart what I had in the refrigerator and proclaimed my floors were too disgusting to live with. She then proceeded to wipe the floors down as I chased her around the kitchen saying, "It's fine mom. Leave it alone. No really, I'll take care of it later.." To put my mother in perspective, here are some counts from just this evening alone. The number of times that she's asked me to drink milk: 3; number of times she's asked to me to eat something: 5; number of times she's complained about me being single: 4; number of times she's complained about my hair/skin/clothes: 3; number of times she's mentioned that drinking ice is bad for my teeth: 2.
She's staying until Wednesday, you do the math on those numbers. Though it's not all bad because my mom does have her funny moments. And these are the things that get me through the days:
Earlier when we parked her car in the garage, she seemed very put off by how dark and deserted it was.
"Well, it's a garage mom. There's not going to be a lot of people down here."
She frowned, "Is safe though, honey?"
"As safe as can be with a gate. Let's grab the bags and I promise you don't have to come down here at night."
I went around the side of the car and saw that she had taken out the package of Arrowhead water. "Mom, we have too much stuff here, leave the bottles of water until tomorrow."
"You sure? So dark here. What if someone take? It good water."
"The water mom? Someone is not going to steal the freakin' water. They'll want your stereo over the water!"
She laughed nervously and put the water back into the car. But I'm not sure she really believed me.
