Author Archives: Absence Alternatives

About Absence Alternatives

I have to take on a secret identity so I may speak my mind freely. Nobody famous. Just working while female. Female while thinking. Thinking while breathing. Breathing while working. All done while not come unraveling. This beats talking to myself inside my head.

That feeling of paper between your fingers

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Books. I am talking about books here. Books made with paper (or if you are so inclined, dead trees). Although I do also love the feel and smell of new, crisp, uncirculated bills.

I have been very happy with my Kindle (which I named Marvin) esp. when I was trudging through 1Q84 in all its 944-page glory. It was a blessing to not have to log that book around for several months. (I did say I “trudged through” it…)

But I miss holding an actual paper book in my hand, feeling its heftiness of promisses and anticipation. I miss wandering amongst the library aisles picking up random books because, I confess, the book covers look interesting or the book titles sound intriguing, like a mystery waiting for you to solve.

These are chance encounters of the best kind.

 

 

You all know Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fan, and I know quite a few are rabid fans. How apropos was that I picked up this book from the shelf as I was pondering the enjoyment of feeling papers between my fingers that no technology can replace. In his re-introduction to the re-publication of Invisible Monsters (now dubbed Remix), he said that he wanted to do this book the right way, the way he envisioned it when he wrote the book a decade ago, inspired by his strange encounter with a Vogue magazine (What? No page numbers? And they make you jump back and forth to finish reading an article?)

I really love what he said about his desire to recreate that feeling of holding a hefty Sears catalogue in your hands, not knowing what’s inside, and every time when you randomly flip through the pages, you find something you’ve not seen yet. Full of surprises, promises of surprises.

From Chuck Palahniuk's reintroduction to Invisible Monsters Remix

 

Don’t worry my dear readers. I am not imaging this post to be a book review or something. I suck at that. What I am good at though is to MARVEL at the brilliantness of people and things that I encounter, and at the randomness of such discoveries. There was no reason other than serendipity that led me to pick up This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You by Jon McGregor and scanned through the first few pages. Once started, I was compelled to sit down in the comfy chair and read half of the book while in the library.

I don’t know how to describe the book. It suffices to say that Mr. McGregor is stingy when it comes to word count. But what he accomplishes in as few words as possible is unsettling and seething, the most disturbing kind of malice. I am still haunted by a few of the stories, wondering what happens next?

Brevity is the trademark throughout the book. The story, The Remains, is only 3-page long… The repetition of simple phrases brought chills down my spine. I have been wondering how one could visually, as in a film, convey this feeling so succinctly.

 

And for my stream of thoughts, conveniently, he is also fond of playing with syntax, and more, using the page as his canvas (apology for using such a cliche. I told you I suck at writing reviews…)

Could eBooks faithfully represent pages such as this?

Why We Blog

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He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.   George Orwell, 1984

 

Every once in a while, I have to pause and ask myself, “Why bother doing this? Why blog?” IF I am honest when I say, “I don’t really care if anybody reads these words,” why is keeping a journal not enough for me?

For starters, I have never succeeded in keeping a journal. I must have accumulated dozens of journals with scribbles only on the first few pages: my handwriting progressively became sloppier, and the word counts less, until … blank. Blank. Blank.

So am I really that narcissistic, as I like to accuse myself of – getting it out of the way before anybody else points this out.

This recurring self-reflexive questioning was put to an end when I came across this Time article, “Like to Brag on Facebook or Twitter? That’s Because Self-Disclosure Is like Eating and Sex, Says Study“. The title itself is self-explanatory.

Intriguingly, the researchers noted a distinction between types of self-disclosure: introspection, or privately thinking about oneself, compared with having the opportunity to share those thoughts with another human being. Again, as expected, while introspection was itself sufficient to light up brain regions associated with reward, the effects were “magnified” when participants believed their thoughts would be communicated to someone else.

 

In this other article, “Why We Talk About Ourselves: The Brain Likes It“, it was spelled out even more explicitly. Here is the paragraph that I have committed to memory as rebuttal against my imaginary accusers:

We love talking about ourselves, we really do — that’s what a group of Harvard neuroscientists found while testing the theory that we’re big on self-disclosure, anyway. In fact, say the scientists, we love self-disclosure so much because it tickles our core value centers in much the same way as “primary rewards” like food and sex.

The researchers noted that people particularly enjoyed self-disclosure if they knew other people were listening. When people were given a choice to share their responses with others or to keep them private, they gave up 25% of their potential earnings in order to broadcast the personal info. “[The] effects were magnified by knowledge that one’s thoughts would be communicated to another person, suggesting that individuals find opportunities to disclose their own thoughts to others to be especially rewarding,” says the study.

 

There you have it.

It is in our psychological make-up, part of the evolutionary outcome. How can you fight that?  In fact, more people should be doing this –

Blogging. It is good for the soul.

And since it is 100% fat free and at no risk of contracting STD, it is good for the body too.

Lucky

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Before she started telling you the story, she would have said, before anything else, “This journal entry has a happy ending.”

The red light on her phone was blinking. Somehow she’d missed a phone call when she knew that nobody would be calling her. Not on her cell anyway. Her husband was out of the country, her children only TXT now, and her mother would only call the landline (because she’d never bothered to give her her cellphone number) and always when it was way past bedtime (because figuring out time zone difference becomes a lot harder once day light savings time change is (not) taken into account)

The unfamiliar number shown had the local area code. With smart phones nowadays our relationship is discreetly judged by whether you show up as a name (from Contacts) or as a mere phone number. The persistent blinking red light indicated that the person had left a voice mail. She was annoyed. Really. Who in this day still leaves voice mails? She dreads checking her voicemails on the very few occasions when some un-indoctrinated people leave them. The problem is they never ever come out clear. Press 1 to repeat the message. Press 1 to repeat. Press 1. Often she ends up pressing 7, reasoning that if the message is important enough, the person will surely call back.

It was a call from some doctor’s office but she could not make out which. She did not think twice when she missed another call from the same number later that day. The call showed up as a mere number and therefore automatically deprioritized. Funny how stupid her logics sound in hindsight.

She jumped when her phone suddenly rang in the midst of the somber silence as she and her children huddled in front of the television, watching the retelling of the horror in Aurora, CO, unfold.

Hello. You need to go in for a follow-up. It’s probably nothing. But we just want to make sure. They noticed something… that looked… calcification…

She held her breath and blinked. She’d forgot about the mammogram the day before.

The doctor wants you to schedule an appointment with the hospital right away and she will fax the order in. Call me right back and let me know the time.

She knew that the doctor’s office was concerned when they waited to hear from her. She went back to sit in front of the television at first as if she had just received a phone call from a telemarketer. The chaos on the screen made her comment out loud how fragile life is.

Oh.

She remembered the call and what it could possibly mean. She wanted to cry.

What if? No… It can’t be, right? No way this is happening to me. Maybe I should be freaking out now? She asked herself. Let’s see how good I really am at compartmentalizing.

She shook her head violently. Stop thinking about it! There is nothing you can do about it except waiting until Monday morning.

When her mind immediately, out of habit, presented silver linings to the worst case scenario, “I can finally quit my job!” I am such a fucking idiot, she chastised herself, ashamed and worried that if her friends who had fought and survived knew this was her first thought, they’d be offended by how she’s trivializing the whole thing. It’s not a fucking excuse! This is no child’s play. For some people, this is real. Too many people actually.

She shook her head violently. Stop thinking about it! There is nothing you can do about it.

She did not tell anybody about the phone call. In fact, by Monday, she herself had forgot about the follow-up appointment and almost missed it. She woke up late on Monday morning because for three nights she stayed up channel surfing. She cried through Brideshead Revisited.

At the hospital, the technician made her stay for the result. Just in case he needs to see something more, she said.

When she pulled her book out from the purse, she felt guilty for not feeling anything. Maybe I should cry, she wondered, what’s the proper behavior at a moment like this? When the radiologist walked into the gowned waiting room and called her husband’s name, she was startled by how scholarly he looked. Almost bookish. Like a professor. He blurted out even before their hands parted, “Everything looks fine,” and smiled. “I didn’t want you to walk down the hallway wondering.”

The humid air rushed into her lung when she pushed open the heavy door to the garage. Her breath suddenly caught in her throat. She fled into the car and shut the door before the violent tears came.

You are such an idiot, she murmured.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

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Alas nowadays it seems that the eye of the beholder is an one-eye monster, (ok, NOT that one-eye monster), with its narrow, single-minded vision towards “What sells”, deciding what men want, and therefore dictating what women want (because we all want to become what men want, and yes, the assumption/implicit acceptance of heterosexual hegemony is with us. We cannot deny it)

The eye of the beholder is also imbued with the ruthless power of PhotoShop…

Behold this:

 

I don’t even…

Ugh.

 

Every once in a while someone would say something extremely stupid (MORE stupid than what is deemed as “the way the world works”, I should add), and it would rile us up. We’d rally around the targeted, start a movement, hug each other, decide that we should support one another because we are all in this together.

The latest is the brouhaha over a pro-anorexia (I paused when I saw the term “Pro-anorexia”. Anorexia is a life style choice now?!) blog’s scathing, mean-spirited attack on Kate Upton. As a result, the Internet (aka the world) came together showering Ms. Upton with encouragement and support, and by extension, the entire super model community. It’s been getting so much attention that finally when you type in “kate” in Google Search, the first suggested search term is not Kate Middleton. (Speaking of HRH, the news media is now obsessed with her being too thin, even too thin to have a baby. Thought you may appreciate the Schizophrenia here).

 

I was going to end on a cynical, pessimistic note per my MO, waiting for this particular cycle to end and we all go back to our merry old ways. Everything’s the same. Always. But this time around there seems to be something different in the air… A group of teens started petitions, staged protests and mock runway shows outside the offices of popular teen magazines, Seventeen and Teen Vogue. Since telling their peers to simply not read the garbage is not an option, these awesome young feminists started a movement to demand that these magazines stop The PhotoShopping Epidemic. (Of course, initially, both magazines staunchly denied the practice of altering the photographs.)  They confronted the modern-day taste makers publicly and asked them to “stop altering natural bodies and faces so that real girls can be the new standard of beauty.”

Just say no to Photoshop.

How hard could it be, Madison Avenue?

Perhaps it is time (and I know we’ve said this many times in the past, but we need to repeat it over and over because people are forgetful) that we take the gaze back. Forget about the stupid beholder.

You be the judge. You.

 

ETA: This is the reason why I write less and less here – I can never finish what I start. As I was brushing my hair this morning – it is a new thing for me nowadays now that I have “long” hair, it hit me that what I said as a conclusion above was kind of bullshit. Beauty exists because there is someone else other than ourselves that would be seeing us, no? If I truly, honestly do not care about the gaze, then the concept of beauty has no meaning. It is the “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it” thing, isn’t it?

Keep on Fighting

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Motherhood in the beginning is sickeningly isolating, especially if La Leche League gets their hold on your conscience. Your partner may be super duper awesome and really do the concept of 50/50 co-parenting justice. BUT. When you are up at night alone (because someone has to get up to go to work so you can pay for the diapers and shit) with a crying baby that simply will not go to sleep without putting up a fierce fight, yeah, it really sucks. You (ok, I) feel so helpless, abandoned even. Day after day. Night after night. Waiting for that tyrant who took over your existence to relent and show you some mercy.

I don’t think I’ve ever properly recovered from that trauma of isolation and abandonment. And I believe this psychological scar greatly contributes to my loss of faith in the myth of motherhood and my subsequent cynicism. Paying lip service to what a great sacrifice it is to be a mother is the society’s way of keeping our mouths shut: Yes you are all awesome superwomen. Without you, the civilization will end. Now STFU and make me a sandwich. Nobody in power (yes, balding white male I am talking about you) gives a shit about making it easier for women who maybe want to be mothers and something more.

 

By now you probably have heard of /read the article on The Atlantic penned by Anne Marie Slaughter, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All: The Myth of Work-Life Balance”. Dr. Slaughter is a professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. She served as Director of Policy Planning under Hilary Clinton from 2009 to 2011. Eventually she did quit the high-demanding job that frequently kept her away from her children, a fact that spurred the authoring of this article.

The premise of this article that has been shared and re-shared, lauded, debated, and of course, critiqued, thousands of times could be summed up in this:

Women of my generation have clung to the feminist credo we were raised with, even as our ranks have been steadily thinned by unresolvable tensions between family and career, because we are determined not to drop the flag for the next generation. But when many members of the younger generation have stopped listening, on the grounds that glibly repeating “you can have it all” is simply airbrushing reality, it is time to talk.

I still strongly believe that women can “have it all” (and that men can too). I believe that we can “have it all at the same time.” But not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured. My experiences over the past three years have forced me to confront a number of uncomfortable facts that need to be widely acknowledged—and quickly changed.

 

Although the article does not end in a despairing note, the hope it provides, the solutions suggested — necessary changes in policies, laws, representations, and cultures, simply seems too far to be within imaginable reach. Nevertheless, I actually felt relieved after I read this, that I have not simply been a whiner, or been less fortunate in terms of my choice of a spouse, or timed having children incorrectly, or not been committed enough. It is also good to know that “wanting to have it all” has been grossly exaggerated into “becoming a super human”

I’d been the one telling young women at my lectures that you can have it all and do it all, regardless of what field you are in. Which means I’d been part, albeit unwittingly, of making millions of women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot).

When in fact all we are asking for is to NOT to have to make compromises that our male counterparts in marriage/relationship (i.e. fathers of our children) are less likely to be asked to make, and when they do make those compromises, are less likely to be judged or criticized for it.

I have no wisdom to part with nor intelligent comments on the debate that has been raging on somewhere out there.

One minute I am all Let’s take over the world mother-f-ers. The next minute I wish I had never got into my head to be somebody when I grew up. [Please don’t leave angry comments about how being a mother IS somebody. You know that’s not what I meant. Take your mommy war and agenda somewhere else please.]

Why do we tell our girls to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, mathematicians, that they can be all that they want to be, if in the end, should they get married, they are expected to bear children, and should they become mothers, they are expected to become perfect mothers?

There are regrets that I would never dare to have, What-if questions that I would never dare to ask. If I get to stand at the crossroads of life, which would I choose, hypothetically? And which hypothetical answers will hurt whom and how much?

 

Hello Sweetie. I need to get a grip on reality.

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Seeing how I have been on a midlife crisis overdrive…

Yes, I think I may as well come out and admit it to myself. I have been going through some sort of personal crisis ever since I started this blog in 2008. Some sort of late-onset-puberty/rebellious stage sans hyper-libido. *sigh*

For someone who’s 120% sincere and honest when she vomited a post titled With all due respect, I am fucking scared of getting old, and who’s scared out of her wits of turning into some sort of predator, really, the last thing you needed to show her was a show dedicated entirely to time travel and alternate reality, starring a nerdy yet sexy 29-year-old actor and a 49-year-old actress in one of the most romantic star-crossed-lover (literally in so many ways) storyline. [Oh god, don’t you just LOVE the British? This anti-Hollywood-rule pairing would never, ever, have happened in the U.S…]

What if… BEEEPPPP. Not allowed.

*red flashing light* Compartmentalize. Compartmentalize. *red flashing light* *Steel door coming down*

Brain. Shutting down. Nope. We never ever want to go there. Just stop it right now.

Someone that I don’t know particularly well cornered me in the office one day and asked me a very blunt question about my personal life. I laughed. I laugh a lot, I’ve noticed. I explained to her how I am an expert in compartmentalizing my thoughts and emotions. Because that’s how people survive and function in reality, no?

This. Is not a cry for help. I just need to get over it. It’s full moon after all.

It’s amazing how I’ve managed to not mention the thing I have been obsessed with for the past month even once. Moving along…

I have my own time warp right here: Found this mix tape made by a classmate of mine when we were in college. He made several mix tapes for a girl that he was pining for. [Incidentally, like a plague, I now recall at least four other guys were smitten with her at the same time in our senior year. Still can’t figure out why. We’ve all known each other all these years, and all of a sudden, finger snap, they all fell in love with her…] I have no idea whether he’s given her the tapes, but the rest of us swooned over the mix tapes and like the stereotypical “great guy who never gets the girl”, he made a copy for all of us. I wonder what happened to him. I hope he’s well. Whoever he’s with, I hope she’s not having what I’m having…

Compartmentalization. Complete.

 

 

 

Accomplishments Unlocked

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Accomplishment Unlocked: My hair is the longest it’s ever been, and I finally get to fulfill my childhood dream of wearing pigtails anime-style. At the age of 40+ nonetheless. Yeah. This hair style is not going out of this house. In fact, this hair style is not seeing the daylight.

Accomplishment Unlocked: Did not break down and cry while working through thousands of Excel rows and ten plus Excel tabs for a work project. Nor did I stab anybody while manually adding ~100 comments from one word document to another. (Don’t ask…)

Accomplishment Unlocked: Was told that I am a true wonder. (Shut up!)

Accomplishment Unlocked: Finally finished reading 1Q84 by Murakami Haruki, all 900+ pages.

Accomplishment Unlocked: Shared a passage about erections from a deeply philosophical book about time and space and reality and the power of writing which is also rumored to be a Nobel Prize contender.

Accomplishment Unlocked: Signed up for Weight Watchers and then managed to gain weight. I am allowed to have 26 points worth of food every day. Now let’s see: A bag of ramen is 14 points. A can of my favorite sweet red beans is 24 points. What’s even worse is that 1 oz. of vodka or any grain alcohol is worth 4 points.  Seriously?!

Accomplishment Unlocked: Got kids to become obsessed with Doctor Who too.

Accomplishment Unlocked: Watched the Doctor Who episode “The Time of Angels” with the said kids and were so freaked out that we unanimously decided to skip the episode.

Accomplishment Unlocked: Gave birth to a child of awesome who’s been saying “Bow Ties. Bow ties are cool.” without even being told that that IS an actual meme.

Accomplishment Unlocked: Met another Internet friend in real life and did not encounter any moment of awkward silence the whole night.

Accomplishment Unlocked: Managed to stay cool after sipping Malort, a drink that has been deliberately marketed “on the basis of its aggressive unpalatability“.

Accomplishment Unlocked: Had the BEST grilled octopus and the BEST salty caramel gelato in my life without falling off the weird yet comfy chair in the restaurant.

Accomplishment Unlocked: Pulled off “Smart casual”, dress code listed by Open Table for The Drawing Room. I think we did. We were not kicked out.

Accomplishment Unlocked: Saw Aziz Ansari live on stage!

 

Accomplishment Unlocked: Stayed awake until 5 am so I could do a quick wrap-up because my life is so interesting and I am sure y’all need to hear about what went down in my life.

Now. Your turn.

Graduation

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My oldest is graduating from Junior High tomorrow. Having grown up outside of the U.S., I was blissfully unaware of the tradition of throwing “graduation parties” for kids graduating from junior high and senior high schools. It was a puzzling concept to say the least. Where I grew up, it is kind of expected that you would graduate from high school. Junior high at the very least. Not even a question. [Disclaimer: My second oldest brother and his second son never graduated from junior high. But that’s another post I will never write] That being said, I am happy that Number One Son has several graduation parties lined up where he could go hang out with his school friends IN REAL LIFE and hopefully in the sun instead of spending all his waking hours indoors basking in the glow of the computer monitor on Minecraft.

IMO. The best parties are the ones not thrown by me.

I am going to sound like the old lady that I am by telling everybody, “When I was your age, I did not get squat for graduating from high school.” Well, I would be lying. When I passed the entrance exam and got into the best high school, my parents asked me, for the first time, what I would like as a prize. Without hesitation, I said, “Legos.” Legos were luxury goods back then. My parents kept their words and took me to the “American” toy store (Toys R Us) to pick out a Lego set for myself. It was one of those “dreams come true but then what?” stories – I think I enjoyed the fact of owning a set of Legos more than the Legos itself.

The day when the results of the college entrance exam were published, my dad came home with the newspaper and started looking for my name. When he found it, he asked what he could get me as a reward for bringing honor to the family. Ok. Kidding about the honor part. You didn’t really think we talk that way, did you? I told him, “I would like some cha siu bao [BBQ pork buns].” He immediately went out on his motorcycle and brought home ten piping hot pork buns. I ate them all in one sitting, much to my mother’s chagrin. To this day I know what I would say without hesitation if asked what my favorite food is in the world.

I never begrudge my children for “having it better” than I did. And really, are they really having it better? I never felt any want even though we were poor which I did not realize until much later in life, and only in retrospect. Life was easier for me to navigate because there was only one goal: study hard and get into a good school. (Of course, once you got into that good school, you kind of were lost. What now? …)

I am getting restless in anticipation of his graduation, but probably not for the right reason: I am dying to give him his graduation present.

 

 

 

Confession: I also wrote this post not for the right reason: I simply wanted to show you this awesome engraving.

 

 

 

Old Rules. They just need to be said again.

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I don’t have any new rules to share with the world like Bill Maher and his team of writers. What I have though is a list of OLD rules that I just want to humbly scream out loud into the abyss of the Internet.

  • Old rule: Don’t say that you do your own laundry if you do NOT fold the clothes. Throwing in the dirty laundry into the washer and then moving the clothes from the washer into the dryer is like you accidentally getting a girl pregnant in the back of a Chevy. The real work is in carrying the baby to term and giving birth.
  • Old rule: It does not count as doing the dishes if all you do is rinsing the dishes and stacking them on the kitchen counter.
  • Old rule: Please stop telling people you enjoy cooking. Try cleaning up the kitchen next time and we will discuss how much you still like cooking afterwards.
  • Old rule: Turning on the turn signal AS you are making the turn is the same as NOT using the turn signal, and it makes you a law-breaking d-bag.
  • Old rule: If you drive a sporty car, DRIVE it like a sporty car. Don’t go under the speed limit. It is not Cruise Night. Listen. Your car is crying.
  • Old rule: Just because you can see me, it does not mean I can see you. You can see me because I am driving in a car with its headlights on; I cannot see you because you are effing riding a bike wearing dark clothing at night.
  • Old rule: Just because you can see me, does not mean I can see you. You can see me because your back is towards the sun; I cannot see you because I am driving dead west at five o’clock and the sun is attacking my eyes with its giant laser beams.
  • Old rule: Adding a smilie face at the end of your curt email only highlights the passive aggressiveness of it.
  • Old rule: If you don’t know the back story, don’t tell someone, “Don’t be a bitch.”
  • Old rule: You ask me to have coffee and catch up. Please refrain from scanning the room the whole time seeing who else comes and goes. I don’t know about you, but the whole networking approach taught in B school is really getting on my nerves. You’ve climbed far, more power to you. Next time, please feel free to fail to contact me. It will save us both time.
  • Old rule: It is extremely rude to make that “hurry up” gesture when someone is talking no matter how long that person has been droning on.
  • Old rule: Be nice to people who do not matter, e.g. servers, doormen, delivery people. Your true character shall be judged on this.
  • Old rule: It makes you an asshat if you do not hold the door open for the next person if they are within “the courtesy zone”.

 

Whenever I find myself in the awkward zone, I hurry up so I could get into the courtesy zone asap

 

  • Old rule: When you find yourself in the awkward zone, DO hurry up so the person that’s holding the door for you can 1. stop feeling awkward, 2. move on with their life. He’s not your doorman. You are not god’s gift to men. And for goodness sake, thank them!
  • Old rule: When someone says “Thank you”, the proper response is “You are welcome” and not “uh huh”. It makes you sound bitter.
  • Old rule: Use Please. Thank you. Excuse me. It is really that simple.

 

I know there are a lot more. It’s 4 am. Old rule: Stop telling people what time it is when you are banging out gibberish on your keyboard. Just go to bed already. Anyhoo, would LOVE it if y’all wouldn’t mind adding your own in the comment section.