Tag Archives: vent

Homebody

Less than a year after we started dating, my husband brought me home to meet his parents during the winter break. Ever since that year, we have been spending Christmas at my in-laws in Maryland. The fact that my folks are not in the U.S. simplifies things since we don’t have to fight over which set of grandparents to visit. And in all honesty, even if my folks were here, I would have supported the idea of celebarting Christmas with my in-laws because they are the Christian and this is a holiday that holds a special meaning for them, especially my mother-in-law.

It does get a bit claustrophobic whenever I am here because we do not do anything. We sit around the house and enjoy each other’s company. We read and we watch movies on DVDs. This is all fine and dandy for the first three days. After that, I would get myself a severe case of cabin fever, knowing that Washington D.C. is only a 45-minute train ride away.

I do lobby for a visit to the Smithsonian every year. This year we did the tour of the White House, finally, and I even managed to force the husband and brother-in-law to have lunch in Dupont Circle. Can you believe it? I have been coming to Maryland since 1995, and this was the first time I had eaten there. If not for Dufmanno, I would not have known a place as cool as Adams Morgan existed.

Yes, I know every guidebook mentions all the cool neighborhoods. In my feeble defense, when your in-laws LIVE so close to D.C. you kind of do not feel the need to pick up a tourist-y guidebook…

I have never been to Georgetown. There. That should settle how pathetic it is. I am. We are.

I love them dearly but these people are homebodies.

Example 1: When we visited my husband’s grandmother and aunt in a Boston suburb in 1996, I found out that my husband and his brother had only been to Boston once. ONCE. They had been visiting the grandmother EVERY SINGLE YEAR and the aunt’s house is a mere 10-minute drive to a T station.

Example 2: The family gets together for one week every summer at the Outer Banks. We go to the beach and read. That’s it. The highlight will be having Chinese take-out one night and going to the 4-screen movie theatre one afternoon.

What’s more: they make me feel so guilty, like there is something wrong with me, for wanting to GET OUT.

On the third day of our trip here, I volunteered to go to the store, perhaps with too much enthusiasm. My mother-in-law, let me preface with this, a very kind and gentle person whom I get along famously well with and from whose mouth I have never heard of an ill word of others, jokingly commented, “You are itching to get out of the house, aren’t you?” “No. Me? Noooo. I just thought I’d go to the store for you.” “It’s ok. We don’t need anything right now.”

I don’t even feel comfortable saying, “I am going to Starbucks” because why do you need to go spend that money if you can have a perfectly good cup of coffee at home? Unless you are a spoiled spendthrift. And why do you need to leave the house when you don’t need anything? Unless you dislike the company of the people around you.

So that’s what I have been doing so far ever since we got here last Tuesday. RELAXING. There were days when I did not see the sky at all. It seriously stresses me out to no end. I feel so restless.

I am just a bad case of spontaneous combustion waiting to happen.

I hope I don’t trigger the alarm when I go through the airport security tomorrow.

How I relax

22 Replies

Visual Representation of My Thought Process

To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me, and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism: it’s my least favorite quality, and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.

– Conan O’Brien

p.s. The picture is from our vacation in Maui in 2008. It was warm. No snow. I was on vacation. No work. My job was secure then. No impending doom. And my kids were still just kids. No freaksoid preteen (Such a category is not even named in Chinese so how do you expect me to deal with this phase?!).

p.p.s. Great. The picture was supposed to help me relax. Now it simply reminds me of things that once were.

p.p.p.s. If I were given $32 million dollars, I could probably also afford to be un-cynical.

p.p.p.p.s. Ok. That sounded VERY cynical.

p.p.p.p.p.s. Sorry. Coco.

Chicken and Egg

41 Replies

I wonder what the statute of limitations is for going on and on and on about a trip one took in the blogosphere. Bear with me here: there is an urgent whining I need to unload…

WTF ASIA?! What’s up with all the skinny bitches?

If you know me, you know that I’d be the last person on earth to reinforce/subscribe to any stereotypes knowingly. I am the self-proclaimed, kill-joy, party-pooper, stereotype police. But I have to say, I felt totally out of place when I was in that part of the world last week. Actually, I felt TOO MUCH OF ME was IN the place.

I left in 1993 and have not been living over there. Throughout the years, I have become complacent. I am 5’7″, so by all measurement, I am of medium height in the U.S. I “carry my weight” really well and I have the advantage of living in the Midwest, to be more specific, in Chicago, the #13 Fattest City in the US in 2009. In addition, I often wonder whether being Asian automatically makes me look thinner, like, here’s my theory, people cannot believe that there are fat Asian women… When I renewed my driver’s licence last year, the man at the DMV refused to accept the number I gave him for my weight.

“You look like you weigh no more than 150 lbs!” So he put down that number. Hey. I was NOT going to argue with him…

As soon as I got on the plane from Washington D.C. to Tokyo, I felt like a giant. Not only was I taller, I needed more girth. I was in the middle seat, and both of my seat mates voluntarily surrendered the armrests to me. That is the kind of nice gestures you make for the overweight… I looked: neither of them filled up their seats. I could see the blue seat cushions. Like the “air between thighs” test, they also passed the “visible seat cushion” test.

As soon as I got off the plane in Tokyo, I had the vision of Godzilla rampaging through the City of Tokyo in my head. Was I merely imagining the worst about myself? I wish.

“You are so fat now!” My nephew said as soon as he greeted me at the airport. With affection, mind you.

“Have you gained more weight since March?” My mom asked. “Look at your arms.”

When I saw my dad at home. “Oh, ha ha ha. Look at you. You seem to be bigger than last time.”

At the restaurant where I saw my brother and my sister-in-law, because that is really all we do: we get together, we eat, we talk, and we eat some more,

“You didn’t lose any weight at all!… Never mind. Eat eat eat. Eat now. Go on a diet when you return to the U.S.”

My entire trip I vacillated between feeling obese and stuffing my face. Often simultaneously.

“You need to lose weight. Now eat some more!”

I love my family.

So here is the chicken and egg question:

Did I feel the urge to get out of there because I knew I would not fit in, in more ways than one? Or did I let myself grow to fit the space that was afforded me, physically and figuratively?

More WTF moments came when I was at various restaurants, roadside stands, shops, stalls, surrounded by skinny women stuffing their faces heartily with delicious food. So fucking unfair…

One of the best beef noodle in Taipei. There is a line outside on a Monday night...

Deep fried anything tastes yummy

Big giant tapioca balls, oh, how I love thee... So much so that I had 6 of tapioca treats in 2 days...

Dan Dan Noodle - a tradtional Taiwanese dish; I had no desire to go to fancy restaurants. I craved the roadside vendors and night markets...

At the basement of any department store worth its weight, there is a tricked out food court lined with shops offering any style of Chinese cuisine (and Japanese and Korean) one can possibly crave. As if that is not enough to mock the overweight amongst us, on the other side of the food court, there are always fancy pastry shops and bakeries, tempting us with the mouthwatering, intricately decorated, baked goods.

Temptations! Tell me this is NOT a case for "f* unfair!"

Another pastry shop. How many pastry shops does one need? Apparently many.

Another fancy pastry shop... Wait for it... It is DD!

Another fancy pastry shop? No. Wait... This is good ol' Dunkin Donuts! Upgraded!

New Year’s Resolutions? Bah Humbug!

30 Replies

I don’t understand why people complain about the frenzy over Christmas yet fail to be annoyed by the hype around New year’s Day. Ok, yeah, I understand why. But I am taking some “poetic license” here…

It is probably just me: No will power. No desire to improve myself. Disillusioned by year after year of failed plan to exercise and diet three days into the new year. Cynical of the belief about New Year = New Beginning. It was just another same old clock ticking. Arbitrary!

I woke up on January 1, 2010 to yell at the kids for yelling at each other on New Year’s Day.

“IS THIS HOW YOU WANT TO SPEND THE FIRST DAY OF THE NEW YEAR?”

I know. My 2010 has already started with a big irony. I can see that this is going to be a great year.

Perhaps it was a wrong move for me to step on the scale at all this morning… Everything just went downhill after that…

I have learned, rather than set myself up to fail, to set individual, realistic goals for each day: Today I vow to do the dishes, wash the bedsheets, finish unpacking, put away the stuff on the floor and vacuum the carpet. Not sure about making the bed with the laundered sheets. That can probably wait until January 2nd.

Years ago when Mr. Monk was still a toddler and I was a happy content definitely NOT-restless SAHM, I learned a few things from some online cleaning guru lady that still apply to this day. It makes the times when I switch my role to that of a housewife “a life full of purpose”:

1. When you wake up, get dressed, and put on a pair of sneakers even if you are not going anywhere. Sneakers help transform all the household chores into “exercise-like” items. You will feel yourself more energetic, and more purposeful. They also keep your feet from getting tired: you know you have a lot to do around the house!

2. Wear an apron with pockets when you pick up the house: you can stash the knick knacks along the way in the pockets and put them back where they belong on route.

3. Put on some music and move to the beat. My favorite is ABBA’s album, starting with Dancing Queen.*

4. My own tip: Have a drink. Add more rum.

Have a wonderful New Year’s Day, Soren Lorensen!

* Our friends FORMER friends put both Dancing and YMCA on the DO NOT PLAY list at their wedding. And those two songs only. I knew then that this friendship would not last… Turns out she belongs to a fundamentalist church and does not believe in dinosaurs. ’nuff said. (The real kicker is? He is a biologist. After so many years, I still wonder how that has worked out for them?)

In which I complain about my seat on the plane… yawn

15 Replies

I finished reading the book that I brought with me 3 hours into the flight. What now? Should have saved the book for the trip rather than greedily starting it before Christmas.

With the detour to Sarah Palin’s homeland I now have an even longer flight with no reading material. And sitting in the middle seat of the exit row by the lavatory does not make it easier to fall asleep, and when I did fall asleep, to stay asleep, I have the opposite issue of a claustrophobic: I like to feel enclosed, better if squeezed into a corner like what they say about colicky babies. I know there is a great story of how I prefer to sleep like a gerbil all curled up but I will refrain and save it for another time… But here I am, sitting out in the open, with all the wide open space, and everybody and their uncle done come and stood in front of me at one time or another during the flight.

And I only have myself to blame…

I have gone and changed myself into possibly. the worst seat on the plane. I reserved myself a window seat in the economy plus section when I first booked my flight. I got status on United. Yessiree. I’d better, after the 40+ segments I done on flying United this past year… But not enough of a status to select the exit row. When I checked in on line the day before, I saw that there were empty rows towards the back of the plane. The plain old economy seats. But I am fine with less leg room if it means I can haz an entire row to myself. Earth to me: too good to be true… I switched myself out of Economy Plus. United.com actually flashed a screen with this question: Are you sure you don’t want Economy Plus? I pity the fool that didn’t listen to the robot…

When I got to the gate, I sashayed to the counter, flashed the agent my most charming smile:

“I am sorry for being a pain, but would you mind checking for me whether this row is still empty?” He laughed but did it anyway.

“The row is no longer empty. Would you like me to change you back to Economy Plus?”

“Oh yes sir please.” I imagined myself batting my eyelashes if I had any.

“Ummmm. Huhhhhh. All we’ve got left are middle seats now. Harrumph. Oh wait. do you want the exit row?”

“Oh yes yes please!” Why you even bother asking? Anybody ever said no? In my excitement, I failed to remember what Seat Guru said about this particular row: The seats are displayed in red on the website because they are right by the bathroom section…

The view from my thrice-changed seat

When I saw my seat I wish I had Seat Guru all memorized. Or that I had the thick skin to say, “Excuse me, I appreciate your help and all, but hold on, while I consult with Seat Guru. Oh no, the exit row you offered me won’t do because lookee here, these seats are in RED! It says here: do not sit here ’cause them by the bathrooms. Oh and this particular seat is in the middle. Why would you think anybody would want to give up their window seat for a middle seat is beyond me? I am sorry if I just sounded like am ungrateful bitch…”

During the excitement of the medical emergency, the three of us sitting in that exit row were asked to move to some other seats on the plane. Nothing but middle seats left in the back. Except one. The row right in front of the kitchen galley that is especially cramped, and the seats do not recline. I sat at the end, after the man on the other end woke his wife up and explained to her that I had to sit where her head was. The lady commented that these seats have got to be the worst seats on the plane, and I thought “I don’t mind sitting here all cozy and secure!” We got to talking and I thought we were having such a good time. I even offered to give her the book I was reading when I’m done. After perhaps an hour, she nudged. “Are you sure you can’t go back to your seat now? Will they let you go back now?”

People do see the empty seats next to them as a god-given right as soon as the plane is in the air. Don’t even think about moving into someone’s empty seats an hour into the flight. You will forever be known as the jackass that took THEIR seat.

Later the plane started making high pitched noise bbbbbbbeeeeeeeeeeeppppppppppppp near the exit door. It was so loud that the flight attendants noticed and asked us whether we’d like to move to other seats IF we could find one. So I walked to the back of the plane as I was told. Sure enough all the empty seats have been occupied by horizontal sleeping bodies. I walked back to my seat. Like a fool. I was not going to move from my seat again. Bathroom or not.

Your mama didn't teach you to close the bathroom door behind you when you are done?

Dude. close the friggin' door! And yes, I got up and closed the damned door BUT not before I took a picture of it...

Play the Sad Trombone: I can’t sew to save my life

16 Replies

I visited Sad Trombone just now. Yet again. I am Today’s Failure #8418.

My failure today, as a mother: I can’t sew worth a damn.

I am not talking about elaborate arts and crafts. I am talking about simple hemming.

I failed Home Ec in high school. Or, rather, I cheated otherwise I would have failed by begging my cousin to make the simple stitches on a sewing machine for a dish towel. Yup, a dish towel. A big X across the fabric that’s all the teacher asked for and I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t, and still can’t, sew straight lines on a sewing machine even if my life depended on it. I can’t do that by hand either, needless to say.

Truth be told: I always have this phobia against sewing machines. I am dastardly afraid that it would sew my fingers together with the fabric. I’ve always had bad luck with adhesives.

Once when the church school asked the parent (Nah. Why cover for them? They actually sent home a letter that said “Ask your mother”. Catholic churches are not big on being politically correct I assume…) to sew a simple line across the top of a piece of fabric for a dowel to pass through, I actually mailed it all the way to another state for my mother-in-law to sew and send back to me.

I file this under “Me failed at being a mother” together with my nightmarish experience at breastfeeding. (But that’s another post I would probably never get around to write. Perhaps after I finally seek out professional therapy will I ever be able to confront the demons).

Like 99% of the elementary schools around the country, my kids’ school has the annual Halloween Party and Halloween parade this Friday. I will be leaving for a business trip this Wednesday and will be missing it. Therefore I am frantically getting things ready, in my absence, for one of the most important days as far as my boys are concerned.

My 6-year-old will be Elvis this year. He will be wearing this costume:

Elvis my gosh

OMG. This kid scares the heck out of me. Please ignore his grimace and pay attention to the flared bottoms of the pants.

It is a JUMP SUIT. You know what that means: The inseam fits snugly but the pant legs are WAY too long. (Always!)

I have been thinking, what if he just walks on stilts on Halloween? Then he could wear this costume without me having to hem the pant legs… Reality called so I just spent the last 2 hours hemming the pants, sewing by hand, ’cause I don’t have a sewing machine AND I don’t know how to use one anyway. Sewing and crying, actually. The whole time I was feeling inadequate, complete with a violin in the background playing the kind of self-pitying music that I am sure Cinderella listened to while she was making her step-sisters’ party dresses. But Cinderella got the birds to help her out. My fingers and my foot (don’t ask) were pricked by the needle several times, so soon I was thinking of Sleeping Beauty too. (The tragedy side of it. Not the getting kissed by the prince part…)

I am going to show you the proof that I really really cannot sew, so you will understand if I vow to myself that my kids will from now on only wear robes on Halloween. Robes or something that I can use the glue gun on. Or a staple gun.

I can't sew

Sorry mommy can’t come to the school, but don’t grow up and murder people ok?

3 Replies

I was reading the article about the so-called Craigslist Killer, Philip Markoff, in Vanity Fair, and like almost everybody, I wanted to find out, perchance through this detailed article, WHY?! Stories like this, a bright young man from a well-to-do family with a seemingly normal upbringing make people especially anxious. If you cannot explain WHY, if the answer turns out to be a shrug of the shoulders, Well, something just snapped and he just did, then the world becomes too random for us to feel reassured.

The reporter set out to find the answers. To reassure the readers.

Markoff’s parents were divorced. That of course does not set him apart in this day and age. But… how about what follows next?

“No one I spoke to in the small community remembered Markoff’s parents or step-parents participating in activities at his school or showing up very often at the local Community Activity Center, where he excelled in youth bowling leagues.”

When I read this, I was all like, WTF?!

It is not enough that I am constantly neurotic about providing my kids with as “normal” environment as I could possibly muster, being a full-time working train-commuting mother with a 9-to-5-only-if-I-say-I-give-up-of-ever-being-taken-seriously-and-why-don’t-you-just-quit-then-what-about-my-own-person-and-my-own-identity job, so now I have to worry about them growing up and becoming a crazed killer because I cannot attend their activities at school??!!

Thank you indeed for sending me off to the grandest guilt trip a mother could have ever taken. I may never come back from this one.

In addition to the Pre-nuptial agreement, draw up a chore chart and sign on the dotted line!

4 Replies

The following is a rant against men who do not help out around the house. You have been forewarned…

I hesitate in calling myself a feminist. Because I am embarrassed. Not because of the label, but because I would be living a lie if I call myself one. I am the woman that Feminists hold up as a bad example.

An enabler.

The truth is: I still do most of the housework around here. I work full time. My commute is over an hour each way. I travel for business. I make as much money as my husband. (Even though this is not supposed to make any difference?) I have a Ph.D. (I regretted putting this here: it was not my intention to brag. But rather a perpetual regret that I have wasted the best five years of my life getting a degree that has proven to be quite useless. And oftentimes a burden on my soul. I have let everybody down, myself especially).

Other couples fight about money, or so the myriad of studies showed. We fight over who is doing what how much when with which one of the children for how long. We fight over fairness.

“If you care about the house being neat, you should be the one that cleans up. You are the one that’s anal. I don’t care.”

I guess I can’t say anything about that if I don’t want to live a bachelor’s life. And, seriously, I cannot expect everybody to want to get up in the middle of the night, like 3 am, to do the dishes, pick up the house, vacuum the carpet. I am like Mr. Monk. Mrs. Monk. Ha.

I am one of those crazy women that get turned on when their husbands do the housework. I am not making this up. One of those women’s magazines did a survey and an overwhelming number of wives selected “My husband doing the household chore” as the thing that arouses them the most.

“How can you complain about doing housework if we have a cleaning lady?”

The cleaning lady comes every other week. I guess it never dawns on him that ours is not ALICE from The Brady Bunch who lives with the family?

Hey, if they don’t mind a disgusting toilet bowl, why should they be the one to clean it up? I can see the logic in that one too.

“If you spend less time on the Internet, you could have finished doing the dishes already.”

Oh. That. Is. A. Good. One. Let me write it down for future references.

I have walked out many times in a fit of rage. Oh yes, believe me. Because I have a chip on my shoulder.

PSA to Men: You seriously don’t want an over-educated wife. Just sayin’ Especially those that have taken Women’s Studies.

Most of the time though, I just swallow things that I want to say. Because, when it comes down to it, do you divorce your husband if he does not pitch in a fair share of housework, on your mental scale? Do you deprive your children of a father because you are tired of being the one responsible for doing the dishes, folding the laundry, picking up the house, and oh, everything related to the children?

Yes, he mows the lawn. And he fixes things when things break inside the house.

Am I asking too much for some sort of help?

“I am going to clean up the house now. I am going to turn on the music. Do you mind moving somewhere?”

“Can I listen to the music too?”

“NO. To be honest, it annoys me to no end to clean up the house while you sit here and read your book. So, it really would be better if you move somewhere else. Just get out of here.”

He moved upstairs. I turned up the music. Way high.

Who is the Queen of Passive Aggressiveness??!!

p.s. Depiste my lament, I am relieved that I don’t have a daughter. I don’t know what kind of an example I would be setting for a girl: “Don’t bother. It doesn’t matter whether you get an advanced degree or not. Probably worse. Because now you know to feel resentment AND guilt when you do everything around the house.”

Live squid is not part of the standard diet in China, or Asia for that matter

2 Replies

Once in a while I get all riled up with my mouth foaming like a rabid dog. My irrational anger especially loves a good target of Stereotype Mongers and Exoticism Panderers. This is that kind of moment.

PMS. Whatever.

The target of my rant today is this book:

Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid

Look at that title, and please tell me it is not being deliberately sensationalizing.

Mind you, I have a great sense of humor. Like all great Jewish comedians (by the way, I am neither) I have perfected self-deprecating humor. I can make fun of myself, ourselves, my people, my race.

BUT I was not impressed with the passages my husband quoted me from the book. My “stereotype police” and “pandering to exoticism” antenna immediately went up when the author starts the book by talking about a restaurant menu full of internal organs of a goat. He claimed that was the first restaurant he walked in when he landed in China. Just picked it out of the random. His good luck then. I would not even know where to find one myself.

Let me emphasize this again:

WE DO NOT EAT LIVE SQUID OR GOAT BRAINS AS A DAILY MEAL.

They are probably sold in some specialty restaurants. But NOT part of the standard diet. Can people just please get over it already?! Besides, you eat moldy cheese which is pretty sickening if you ask me. So there, we are even.

And seriously, I HAVE A QUESTION:

How come it is all chi chi, high class, cultured, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan to eat raw fish and octopus in a Japanese restaurant? And live squid is now, YEW. How disgusting. How barbarian.

FUCK ME!

After browsing through the reviews and seeing a high percentage of the people say that they knew NOTHING or little about the country and the culture before they read the book,

GREAT. JUST GREAT! I thought.

I am becoming more and more agitated by the existence of this book.

TTYL. Now I need to go find a book about how white people can’t jump.

It would have been fine if there were NO instruction…

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…