There you go…
Oversharing on the road.
p.s. Will continue until I get home and start the long winding road of unpacking and adjusting to time zone and crying myself to sleep because I don’t want to go back to work…
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In case you are wondering what the hack is happening to this blog. “I did not sign up for a PHOTOBLOG! (not that anything is wrong with it…)” My dear readers, my most sincere apologies. (And if you are actually happy about not having to read my ramblings, you are absolutely welcome!)
Just got back from our one week vacation from the Outer Banks in NC, and right back into Monday blues. I am still feeling quite disoriented. (Probably more because I have not had any coffee yet…)
Temporary cure for Monday Blues? Take two rainbows with a glass of ocean. (Side effect may include: wanting to repeatedly hit your head on your desk when the euphoria wears off)
I saw these for sale when I made an emergency run for coffee at the store: a dozen for $1.99. I normally do not buy flowers, the same reason I do not make the bed: What’s the point? But I made an impulse purchase that day and I am glad I did. Whenever I pass by them, which is all too frequently since they are sitting on the kitchen table now, a smile pulls into my face. Flowers do that to you. Besides, they are so much cheaper than a diamond necklace.
I held out the daffodils the way He-Man pulled out his Power Sword, screaming: “By the power of Narcissus!” Willing Spring the coy bitch to finally show her face.
I did that often when I was young: holding up my umbrella, yelling, “The omnipotent gods, please endow me with the power of miracle!”, the Chinese dubbed version. I harbored this longing to be a super hero, or a swordsman. All of these fantasies involved me cross-dressing incognito. There is a lot of theorizing available behind a cross-dressing story such as HUA Mulan (Don’t say “Fa” please. Use the historically correct pronunciation, in Mandarin…) : being male in appearances somehow signified a path to empowerment and freedom, provided you are not found out.
Back to Spring. Or the lack of sighting of that pesky bitch forever running late or simply no-show even after she had RSVP’d when the universe was first created. The sky was dressed in blue and adorned himself with glorious white clouds yesterday, waiting for her.*
Whenever the kids and I see the sky looking like this, we’d say, “Look! The Simpsons!” And we all could hear the intro music to The Simpsons wafting in closer from behind the clouds. Or maybe it’s just me.
Back to the lingering thoughts of cross-dressing. Sister Merry Hellish recently wrote a great post on “Men in the corporate culture, their ties, and the women who fight them” aptly titled Sex, Ties and Reconditioning. She had asked several bloggers to send her pictures of themselves wearing a tie, and I am honored to be one of them. You really should click over and read the post. Actually, don’t even worry about finishing this post and leaving me a comment (srly sometimes I wonder what I myself would say if I had to comment on the gibberish coming out of my keyboard…). Just stop and hop over there right now!
As always, assignments of self-portrait stresses me out to no end and I did not pick up the camera until the last minute. In the end though, I had to admit that I had a lot of fun posing with a hat and a tie inside our powder room, holding a camera with my right hand, snapping pictures of myself in the bathroom mirror. I, a 40-year-old woman, was playing dress-up in a tiny bathroom, in the middle of the night, by myself. And I had not even been drinking.
Do you ever wonder now what your parents were doing when you were sleeping back then?
It was really late when I sent SMH my submissions, and I knew she waited up for me so she could work on her post before she went to bed. I continued to play with Picnik.com, or what I like to call, A Woman’s Best Friend. After much cropping (for you could see the toilet in the original picture AND I was wearing a pair of hot pink pajama pants underneath. They were only $5 on sale!), massive editing, and over-applications of effects, I have to say I love how I look in a fedora* and tie.
The funny, and slightly disturbing thing is how often I stare at this picture of myself ever since. I know it is not real: Too much cropping and softening and posterizing effects have been involved. But it makes me feel strong inside when I close my eyes and see myself in a hat and tie thusly. Does that even make any sense?
I hope I can manage to retain this mental image of myself channeling Annie Lennox (who is a very strong outspoken feminist. Yes, she does not deny that she is a feminst) on days when I feel oh so unworthy of working side by side next to all these men around the conference table.
Self: I can’t do this any more. These men think I am an idiot.
You’re a bird in the sky now baby
Earthbound
Feet on the ground
Today, in a very self-serving way, I am going to declare that we all need a little bit Narcissus in us.
* On second thought, I guess we can’t blame Lady Spring for not showing up this weekend after all since blue tux & white ruffles combo inadvertently conjures up the image of Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber…
* The fedora actually belongs to Mr. Monk, my 8 year old. I now am convinced that every man and woman should own a fedora.
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I almost missed the postscript. And when I first read it, I was upset that he asked for $100 cash! "You little...!" I thought. I burst out laughing when I saw the instruction to Santa. Despite everything, I did not ruin this child. I think.
Dear Friends,
Yes, you dread this moment of sappiness and it has come. No, seriously, I am so blessed to be surrounded by people who show me what the true human spirit of giving and caring is, not just around Christmas, but on a daily basis.
In the past year, I have been fortunate enough to get to know many of you better through words and some, through images (although to my disappointment, nothing risqué. We need to work on that, my friends!), from all over the world. I have been even more fortunate to see a few of you materialize in the real 3D world. Do you know how awesome that is? It means that I would have more than one Cora waiting next to my Ducati right outside of Flynn’s Arcade when I came out of The Grid if I were Sam Flynn.
I am so grateful for the community I have found and become part of that my heart aches every time I think about it. I find it easier for me to breathe and to be myself every day because of this place right here.
I want to wish those who celebrate it a Merry Christmas and those who don’t, a wonderful long weekend and/or vacation. And for my Jewish friends, enjoy the movies and the Chinese! And you know, by Chinese I mean the food, not ME.
And to all, unless you are a Jehovahs Witness, a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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I have not been motivated to write real posts for a while now because I find lately my stats dispiriting, to say the least…
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Turkeys. Reason why most people visited my blog lately...
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I am kind of not motivated to write a real post... Gobble gobble
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Oh well. This kind of provides me with a great excuse to show you this picture I took when I all of a sudden saw something really interesting happening on my bookshelf at work.
I think I am going to report them to HR.
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I swear. I did NOT stage this. I simply caught them in the act. I suspect they've been doing this for a while now right above me all this time...
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Or, I could talk about how famous people on Twitter actually talked to me today.
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By “famous people” I meant whichever staff member from Comedy Central’s InDecision happened to be in charge of Twitter today. By “talking to me” I mean “Direct Messaging” so I was like the Booty Call that they were ashamed of being seen with.
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And this is why we all need to have a blog: to make sure that we always, ALWAYS, have a way to have the last word.
There. You. Go.
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This kind of explains the tag “You can never go home again” and why I do not really like to talk about the conflicted feelings I have towards home…
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Interesting headlines today:
“[From NPR] U.S. income inequality at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The U.S. also has the greatest disparity among Western industrialized nations.
At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, government data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.”
“[From Forbes] Duarte, Calif., home to the 91008 ZIP code, is a small suburb northeast of downtown LA, near the Los Angeles national forest. The median cost of a house in this tony town is a whopping $4,276,462, making it the most expensive housing market in the country.”
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For perspectives, here is what 91008 looks like from above:
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Perspectives are important.
Case in point: The U of Chicago Law Professor who wrote a blog post complaining about being poor on an income of $250K and ignited a firestorm. What made me laugh out loud and cry inside at the same time was the fact that he was genuinely surprised that people were outraged. Much criticisms and analyses have been published over Professor Henderson and his irk vs. the “electronic lynch mob”. My favorite quote by a pundit came from Paul Krugman (incidentally the 2008 Economics Nobel Prize winner) who penned in his blog post titled “Have you left no sense of decency?” (It’s a very short post. You should consider hopping over and read it in its brilliant entirety…)
“But 30 years ago people with high but not super-high incomes generally felt ashamed of themselves for griping — or at least, felt that they would be ridiculed if they gave voice to their gripes. Today, all restraints are off. The fuss over Messrs. Henderson and Stein is the exception that proves the rule: they wouldn’t be providing this spectacle if they didn’t normally swim in social circles where complaining that you only have 9 or 10 times median family income is considered totally acceptable.
Pretty soon, we’ll be having serious, completely un-self-conscious discussions in major magazines about the servant problem.”