Tag Archives: NaBloPoMo

Things I should be doing instead of agonizing over falling behind for NaBloPoMo…

I know myself only too well. I already missed the 8th post for this NaBloPoMo thing I decided to participate in. Deadline yesterday. But I am going to cheat by turning time backwards through the magic buttons on my blog dashboard.

It is not because I am a religious person and I don’t believe in working on Sundays. That would have thrown a giant monkey wrench in this whole A Blog Post EVERY Day thing. For that conundrum, Pajamas and Coffee had an ingenuous solution. It would have been due to a religious reason if Laziness counts as a religion. I didn’t write a post yesterday (which is today if you look at the date on this blog) because I actually had lunch with a group of friends and afterwards had a friend over and we finished an entire pot of Spiked Rum Apple Cider. Social life is very inconvenient when you are an aspiring blogger… Just sayin.

So to make up for the missing day (which is today in case you are confused), I am going to insert a filler post called, “Things I should be doing instead of agonizing over Not Blogging” since that was what I did, inside my head, when I was still sober, the whole day yesterday (today, I mean… Ok. You got it…)

Blogging. Duh.
Doing Quicken. I haven’t touched that baby since July. All of our Credit Card accounts have automatic payment set up, so I have been slacking on reconciling the statements with actual shit that I ordered online. I am sure by now there have been numerous fraud purchases charged to my litany of cards now. Well, here is what I am thinking: I HOPE, if there is any fraud charge, it is of a pornographic kind. THAT would be a hilarious topic for my blog to help fill this void I call My NaBloPoMo Idea Bank…
Doing the laundry. I can’t see the floor in my closet any more because there is a mountain of dirty clothes. That should be a sign when you need to hurl yourself over the mountain to get to the other side to reach your clean clothes.
Folding the laundry. I HATE HATE HATE folding the laundry. Probably because it means I cannot be on the computer when I am folding the laundry. There are currently three baskets (the record was five. I love buying laundry baskets) on the family room floor, waiting for me to pay attention to them. My kids have learned to look into the dryer to find clothes to wear in the morning. Did I tell you that I have the best kids and I love them?
Grocery shopping. There is no milk nor bread left: The common barometer for how well a household is faring. No milk/no bread = Irresponsible mothers = Ignored kids = Repressed anger = Serial killers

Nope. That’s not an oversight on my part. Believe me, it’s always the MOTHER’S fault…

So there you go. A filler post. Tissues in my bras. White tube socks in my pants. 99% of the stuff found in hot dogs (which I feed my children with. Thank you very much). The thing they injected into Octomom’s lips… Oh, you get the idea.

When will this thing end?! NaBloPoMo #6: In which I talk about google doodle

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This is me cheating again. It’s only the 6th day of NaBloPoMo, and I am already resorting to PHOTOs. Not even photos I took, but photos that I found on the Interweb! Yeah, like y’all don’t have google at home?… Since I have never cheated in my entire academic career, well, not technically anyway, I consider this payback time.

Google published the google doodle to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit, but only on the google UK page. THIS is the BEST google doodle I have seen so far.

“Cheese!”

I am also partial to this one featuring my favorite Blue character, favorite monster, favorite Sesame Street puppet, and favorite “Masterpiece Theatre” host…

Hey! Maybe this will be my first post that will offend NOBODY? Except the cookies of course…

p.s. I can’t keep my mouth shut: the one with Big Bird and the other one with Bert and Ernie? Those are just lame… Lazy works you might say…

Day 5 of NaBloPoMo: When in doubt, talk about phobias…

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I suck. It is only the fifth day of National Blog Posting Month and I am already wanting to quit. Life and work seem to have a way of getting into the way of daily blogging…

I am totally kidding up there. Blogging should be a supplement to life: a conduit to reflect on life and stuff. It should not become a substitute for life. Blah blah blah. Oh, who am I kidding? Blogging now consumes my free thinking hours. I agonize over what I should blabber about throughout the day. That is why the whole NaBloPoMo is very stressful for me. I seem to have a pathological desire to run away when there is something expected of me. How did I ever finish school?! More importantly, how did I manage to raise two children?!

Ok. Phobias. The real ones. The irrational fear of something to the extent that you cannot function normally. I will talk first, and then you join in with yours, ok?

I have a couple of fears that are definitely irrational, but fortunately, neither interferes with my ability to function in a civilized society:

1. Frogs. I kid you not.

Like many ladies, I am not fond of squirmy things such as snakes, worms, earth worms, silk worms, caterpillars. As a matter of fact, I am dastardly afraid of earth worms and silk worms. I cannot stare at them for longer than 5 seconds before I am absolutely convinced that I have hives breaking out all over my body. Silk worms especially bring back traumatic childhood memories:

For some reason, many Chinese schools make it mandatory sometime during grade school for children to raise silk worms and observe them turning into cocoons. (Hey, it is one of the 5000-year cultural heritage that we get to talk about over and over again. We will remind you whenver the opportunity presents itself that, WE INVENTED SILK.. ) When it was my class’ turn to keep the silk worms in the classroom, I did not want to go to school for several weeks. One day when the teacher FORCED me to pick one up, I broke down into hysterical screaming. Soon red spots started appearing on my arms and my neck. Can anyone say “psychosomatic”?

But I digress. I meant to talk about frogs. Frogs are something else.

I cannot even look at them in the pictures. Posters. On TV. On the computer monitor. Nope. My breath will quicken and my heart beat will start speeding up.

I believe I made my husband swear on his life that he will never never ever threaten me with frogs for any reason. I wonder whether he has forgotten his oath. I need to administer a Spanish Inquisition on him as soon as I am done here.

The funny thing is, I actually loved playing with frogs when I was in kindergarten. I remember catching frogs in the rice field bordering the edge of my school (yes, stereotypes aside, there were indeed rice fields behind the kindergarten…) and throwing them at the boys. One day, we read the book “The Princess and the Frog”. The long passage where the Princess describes how disgusting the frog is left such an unshakable impression on me that, I believe, I internalized the fear deep inside my psyche. From that day on, I cannot stand being in the same room with a frog. Even if it is in captivity.

Wanna guess whether I will go see Disney’s upcoming The Princess and the Frog?

(I am SO grateful I have only boys for this matter. I am not suggesting that boys should not see Princess movies. If I had a daughter, I would really NEED her to watch this DISNEY movie featuring an African American PRINCESS, despite all the controversies already surrounding it, and I would really want to watch it with her; I would have been caught in a bind then since I don’t think I can sit through 90 minutes in the dark with gigantic frogs projected on the screen… But of course, I digress again…)

2. White Milk. For real.

I cannot bring myself to put my mouth to a glass of white milk. Everybody told me it tastes like nothing. At least skim milk does.

“It tastes just like water.”

Uh huh.

The reason why it is categorized as a phobia is because I otherwise have no problem drinking chocolate milk, even the home-made one that does not taste chocolate-y at all (’cause I am too cheap to add a lot of chocolate sauce!) I can also drink strawberry-flavored milk, apple-flavored milk, fruity-flavored milk. I just can. not. put that thing to my mouth when it is white. I don’t know how to explain it.

“Would you drink white milk if someone offered you a million dollars?” My husband once asked me, out of exasperation. And I did give it some thoughts. I even slept on it.

No. The answer is no. At least right now when the question is only hypothetical. Then my answer is a hypothetical no.

Coda: What did I say about google? Google is your friend. Yours. Not mine. On a whim, I googled Frog + Milk. Although I did see entries as interesting as Frog Milkshake, as a fitting conclusion to my rambling, I found something called Amazon Milk Frog. I am attaching a picture of it here for your scientific education because I am generous like that. As for me? I need to go take Benadryl because I am absolutely convinced I have hives breaking out all over my body!

My arch nemesis: Look at his smirk...

p.s. If Robert Redford ever offers me $1 million dollars to sleep with him? You bet ya I would. In a heart beat. Naturally, I did not offer this extra bit of information to my husband. He would not be able to trust me again if we ever meet Robert Redford some day…

p.p.s. Is Robert Redford still alive? And if I have to ask this question, perhaps I should Not be so enthusiastic when he propositions to me…

p.p.p.s. Whew. Turns out he is still alive. And looking darn good…

For a 73-year-old… Darn. I wish he had propositioned to me 16 years ago right after he propositioned to Demi Moore… Too late now, Mr. Redford. Eat your heart out!

p.p.p.p.s. Dear Mr. Redford, you are fine. Please still proposition me and the answer is yes. I only wish that your buddy Mr. Newman were still alive since he was the one I really had the hots for. The more faithful a man is to his wife, the more desirable he becomes. I hope you have learned this from watching your friend.

There should be a law against laziness… (Wo)man up, Award Time!

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On 17 October 2009, the lovely Jane over at They Call Me Jane temporarily lost her mind and shared with me another award that she just won. It is displayed below as Exhibit 1 Exhibit 2:

Kreativ Blogger Award

If I don’t end up in the nut house, it is partly because the love and support from a stranger, who no longer feels like a stranger any more, and her name is Jane. I am not saying this because Jane has given me two awards. Two awards! That’s got to count as something, right?! She is one of the most level-headed, fair, rational, understanding, sensitive, thoughtful, and wisest people I have come to know through this thing invented by Al Gore. Her blog is like a fresh breath of air: a thinking blog that does not put your to sleep. And the most important thing is? She is REAL. She is NOT pretentious. She is naturally cool without having to say one single cuss word.

At this point, after reading her blog on a nearly daily basis, Jane can say nothing wrong in my book. If she says, one day, and this is purely hypothetical, people, that she is actually a bunny killer, Imma gonna guess it is the bunnies’ fault. Just sayin.

It took me more than 2 weeks to officially “accept” this award because I have to come up with 7 random things about me. I guess nothing X-rated is allowed… And you all know, at least those who have read my blog on a semi-regular basis (i.e. more than 3 times in the past 6 months), that I am Asian, more specifically, Chinese. There goes my Number 1 through Number 3: Hi, surprise! I am Asian/Chinese. I can speak/read/write Chinese. I like rice. (I DO! DAMN IT!).

Ok. Here it goes, in no particular order:

I am secretly obsessed with angels. As in, I believe in them. Or, I strongly wish they are/were real, even though I am not Christian. I envision them to be the angels in Wim Wender’s “Wings of Desire” (Der Himmel über Berlin). NOT the Nicolas Cage one. Oh, god, no.
I am agnostic because I am too cowardly to make up my mind. I want to have my cake and eat it too.
I am a classic insecure overachiever. Psychotic. A bit bi-polar. I guess I should have added these to my “About” page. Oh well.
Laziness and fear of embarrassment are the driving forces of my life.
I played Lizzie Borden in a play when I was in graduate school. In fact, I played a few other homicidal characters, including Hamlet and one of the women in “Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage” who gets to wield an ICE PICK! (I was totally typecast, I suspected…)
Being on stage was the only times when I felt completely free. I miss that feeling with a heartache, barely noticeable except during the night, when I am writing to nobody. Like now.
I also played Billy the Kid (adapted from Michael Ondaatje’s book) and I had the best lines in my acting career:

After shooting Gregory
this is what happened

I’d shot him well and careful
made it explode under his heart
so it wouldn’t last long
was about to walk away
when this chicken paddles out to him
and as he was falling hops on his neck
digs the beak into his throat
straightens legs and heaves
a red and blue vein out

Meanwhile he fell
and the chicken walked away

still tugging at the vein
till it was 12 yards long
as if it held that body like a kite
Gregory’s last words being

get away from me yer stupid chicken

I am kind of depressed now because I just realized that none of these things that I have shared with you I share with my co-workers after more than 5 years working together, in a very small office space. Because I don’t think they are interested in hearing about it.

Without further ado, I am going to pass this award along to…. Drum roll please…

Tomatoes on the Vine

Velva’s food/cooking blog is more than that. She genuinely believes in the simple ritual of sharing a meal as the way we create and maintain a community. Besides, it is always yummy to look at the photos.

booshy

On her blog, Jessica comes up with ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. I honestly cannot tell you what her blog is about. But I enjoy reading her ramblings. They make me smile. Her latest “scheme” is to get everybody to come up with a “I am thankful for” list and send it to her before November 24. So why not?!

Life is Not a Movie

I think Robin is a bit insane. I said that with affection and as a compliment. She is a woman of many talents: a radio show, a photography blog, and who knows what else. Warning: She is an avid Kevin Spacey fan. So don’t say anything bad about Kevin. Or introduce yourself as Mrs. Spacey. I never know what to expect when I click on her blog every day. But it is always a nice surprise.

My Wildlife’s Words

Jennifer Lynn is a wildlife biologist. Seriously, I’d never thought I would meet someone in that line of business. She is saving the earth for all of us! And her observations of life are full of interesting perspectives that will make you go, How come I’ve never thought of it that way? (Well, you would have if you were a wildlife biologist. And if you are, do let me know! I’d never thought I would meet TWO!) She is probably going to protest and say, “I don’t write about THAT topic on a regular basis. It was an one-off special edition. Limited time only.” But her post on Elk Vagina, yup, you read that correctly, is educational and hilarious.

Where Insulin Meets Insolence

Lynn is a great writer. She has a great way with words. And metaphors. (Well, duh, all great writers are good at these things. This is why I am not a good writer). This post is one of my all-time favorites: Four on the Floor. I think she should publish some of her essays. They are that good. This is her personal blog where she can be, well, “insolent”. Her essays are over at “I have measured out my lives in MP3s”.

National Blog Posting Month OR NaBloPoMo. Try saying it fast 3 times…

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On the second day of November I learned that November is actually the National Blog Posting Month. (Thanks to Pajamas and Coffee)

The concept is straightforward:

For the entire month of November, the participant will write a post for every day. 30 posts in 30 days.

I have never succeeded in keeping a long term commitment (except my marriage…) Every year, when I was growing up, I would vow to keep a diary. I end up with a dozen journals with no more than 10 pages with stuff written on them. Maybe I am just coming down from my sugar high (left over from Halloween! I wonder whether this is the reason why NaBloPoMo falls in November?) Or I am coming down with the Swiner. I found this idea intriguing. So I am giving myself a challenge.

What is the most awesome thing I found about this movement that is impossible to pronounce without ending up catching myself saying MoFo…?

They have a category for blogs called Psychotic Ranting / Anonymous Foaming

Perfection.

I am going to put that on my badge when I go to BlogHer 2010. IF I do.

p.s. By the way, I totally cheated. And it is only 12:39 AM on November 3… First of all, I changed the publish date from November 2 to November 1 for the post that now listed as published on November 1. I DID write it on November 1, I swear! I just didn’t have time to edit and publish it before the weekend was over. Then for November 2, I totally crapped out by blogging with charts from The Economist. What’s next? Post my child’s artwork and call it a day? (I already did that!) On November 3, I blogged about how I am going to blog every day for the month of November. I can already detect a trend: on November 4, I will blog about how I am afraid I may not be able to keep this up. On November 5, I will congratulate myself for not giving up and blog about it… etc. etc.

How much is the Pulitzer Prize worth?

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I was surprised to learn that the Pulitzer Prize is only worth $10,000. I guess you really need to be in this field for the love of the game.

Now with the doom and gloom not just predicted but realized in numbers for print journalism, and the difficulty in turning online content into actual dollars, we should be concerned about the future of journalism. I enjoy reading a good blog and all, but without the investigative RIGOR that comes with good, solid, journalistic practices, we should be worried. Really worried.

Balloon Boy Brouhaha immediately comes to mind.

p.s. Does the number for USA Today include the not-so-free copies they leave outside your door in hotels across the country? The same USA Today for which the hotel charges you $0.75 a copy unless you CALL the front desk to deny the delivery? And you have to CALL, you cannot just TELL THEM when you check in? The same USA Today that every morning when you leave your hotel room you actually step over because you don’t even bother picking it up to read it even in the taxi on your way to your meeting/office/client’s site?

“How you should behave when you grow up”: a primer for your kids

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My 6 year-old, at the end of sugar high, launched into a campaign for something that he thinks my husband and I should offer to him and his older brother.

“A program. A program for ‘How you should be like when you grow up‘,” he said.

“Mom. I think you and daddy should give us a program so you can teach us what we should do when we have our own kids.”

“What do you mean?” I was intrigued, with caution.

“Well, you see. You and daddy fight a lot. You don’t want us to grow up like you, do you? So you and daddy should give us a program called What you should be like when you grow up, to show us what to do when we have our own kids.”

“Ooookkkkkaaaaayyyyy.” I hesitated. My mind was racing. Tickets in hand to take one LONG guilt trip.

I admit that my husband and I fight. Although we DO fight, I don’t think we fight more than an “average” couple, judging from my conversations with other women, both in real life and online. We argue in front of the children. From the beginning, I actually made a conscious decision to not hide our quarrels. I don’t want them to grow up with a pair of rosy glasses with regard to adult relationships. That being said, we do NOT call each other names. (Well, not in front of the kids anyway). There is absolutely no physical contact during these fights. And I make sure that the kids see when we resolve our differences.

Perhaps this has been the wrong approach? I thought to myself. How much harm has it done? Is it too late to undo the harm? Panic. Don’t panic. I am not sure any more.

Later when I put him to bed, he brought up the subject again,

“Mom. It is going to be just a private program for us. Well, if [his older brother] does not want it, you just need to give it to me.”

When in doubt, be honest with your children and treat them like adults. I tried to take his words seriously without overreacting (which in itself was against my natural instinct…)

“Well, I think you already know what should be included in the program, don’t you? If you know it is not good when mommy and daddy treat each other badly, you know not to do it when you have your own children.”

Taking a deep breath, he turned to me, looking worried,

“What if I still do it even though I know it is wrong?”

This is my 6 year old. Wiser beyond his age. An old soul. Although I feel blessed, I feel inadequate as a mother. There is no witty ending to this story. No closure. Let’s file this post under “There is no manual for parenting” and “I don’t know how to tell you how you should behave when you grow up because now that I am a grown up, I still have no idea”.

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…