Long time no write

Oh god, it’s practically killing me to be inside at the computer, watching the tree in my backyard swaying in the breeze.  It’s an incredibly beautiful spring day — we’ve been having an embarrassment of them in the last fortnight, and I just want to be outside.

Somehow I stopped writing.  Partly because I worked more than usual for a marathon-like three week period, and also because I’ve started weight-lifting.  This means uncommon fatigue after a workout, and this being the third one, I’m doing quite well by being conscious right now.

I am terrified that I am wasting my life.  I thought I’d just get that out there.  It seems that many people find meaning in raising children, but since that’s been definitively ruled out for me (by choice), here I am trying to find something to do with my life’s work.

And I’m probably PMS-ing, which makes all this worse.  I just wanted to get it all out there.

And I really should call my mom, but I’m dawdling.  It doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

And I gotta make oatmeal and pay the car insurance bill.

Today’s Zen exercise for the day told me to find some time away today away from the responsibilities, mentioning something about the sun with all the planets that orbit it, still finds time to ripen grapes.  As it turned out, I’d actually done that!  I was in a rush after going to Costco and desperately trying to remember what I needed to buy at 99 before I got there, when a voice inside me said, “Why don’t you take a quick walk at the dog park?  It’s a beautiful day, and look, you’re already perfectly dressed for it” (because I was).  So I did, and it was wonderful, what with the gorgeous springlike weather (I’ve been trying to squeeze every bit of enjoyment out of it all these days) and during the walk POP! I realize that I want to buy rice.  Ah, isn’t it great to relax enough so that the thoughts can flow?

Nuts, just checked the weather for the rest of the week — steadily going up 5 degrees per day until Friday’s high is *ninety*.  Yucks!

So the weightlifting has been great, and I love that Zed & I are actually DOING SOMETHING instead of passively enjoying entertainment together.

I wanna bake Irish soda bread, but I’m trying to lose weight.

My dad’s three acts

My dad grew up in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation, but that sounds bad.  He just grew up when Taiwan was a part of Japan, just like my grandparents did (they took over in 1895).  Japanese was his first language.  Even though he has not regularly spoken it since 1945, when he and my mom went to Japan last month, the Japanese people he spoke with commented that he didn’t have any accent.  Well, he shouldn’t.  That’s the beauty of a first language.

After WWII ended, he began to learn Mandarin.  He didn’t like it; the characters were difficult to learn, and he liked the simplicity of Japanese and its phonetic alphabet.  (That was the one thing the Chinese did not allow the missionaries to do: change their written language into a phonetic one.  It would have made my life a whole lot easier in Chinese school during the 80’s).

Then, as he approached college, he realized that to be a more attractive candidate when he graduated, he should work on his English.  Two of his older brothers worked as translators during their mandatory military service, which kept them protected from the front, so he figured he’d do the same.  Unfortunately, by the time he’d graduated college, the military only took English majors for the translator pool, so that didn’t work out for him.

But as Cheri says, you can have a goal, just don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work out.  It’s the journey, not the destination kind of thinking.  And so it did work out for my dad when he read in a newspaper while working for the US Navy (because his English was so good, he handily passed their English test)  of a master’s degree program at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.  It tested prospective students in a variety of subjects, including language (Chinese), geography, history, and, to my dad’s advantage, English.  They had to write an essay on the topic, “A little knowledge is dangerous.”

Growing up, my father recited too many times to count the story of seven blind men who encounter an elephant.  Each has his own description of what an elephant is from his limited reach (though I’m sure a blind person would have walked all around an elephant, but that’s neither here nor there).  One man says an elephant is like a snake, due to its serpentine trunk, while another says an elephant is like a wall, or like a post, or wrinkly, etc.

Now I know why my dad was particularly keen on this story: today he tells me that he believes it was the strength of his essay, using this old Japanese fable as his crown jewel, that landed him a master’s degree scholarship, room & board included.

Isn’t life interesting?

I’ve been taking a history course from the Learning Company, and WWII has come alive for me in a way that it hasn’t before.  And then I read a book “Dog Man,” about the Japanese man whose love for Akitas may have single-handedly saved the breed after WWII.  And then I realize that my father lived through WWII, and even stranger, was a Japanese national during the war.  So his point of view is unique, at least here in the US.  And so here I found out all this history, as seen from a boy’s point of view.

And he even spoke of karma, as a young Japanese one-star general returned to Taiwan with lots of money and married a woman who bore four sons in quick order.  Tragically, all four sons died of cancer, followed by their mother.  The general was alone and traumatized by the age of 45.  And my father commented that people spoke of what horrors he might have committed during the war, that earned him such personal tragedy, a kind of “pay back.”

I don’t know if I believe such things, but it was certainly the first time I ever heard my dad speak of such things.  It’s really been great talking to my dad as an interesting older person.  This is a great time for our relationship!

And now I hit the gym.

Spring blooms

Sunday we went to the farm where my sister keeps her horse, but not to see him.  We went there to see the spring wildflowers in their glory.  Here in northern Cal, spring is the colorful season, because in as little as four weeks, the verdant grass will turn into yellow-brown hay, giving the hills a wastrel, I’m-a-punk-rocker-I-don’t-care-about-my-future-so-I-dyed my-hair-platinum color.

There were California poppies, giant, in their orange best, facing west and covering an entire hillside.  We took pix in a valley alongside lupine and other purple-hued beauties, as well as a yellow scrapper.

In my backyard, right now I have blooming: a lemon bush (oh! the heavenly scent of lemon blossoms), a giant tree with tiny purple blossoms that give off their heavy treacly scent once the sun sets (it’s a spring rite of passage for me, but I still haven’t gotten around to looking up the phenomenon in wikipedia) a tea rose bush, a lilac tree, and a Japanese maple (blazing red and in full force this spring, thanks to all the winter’s rains).

I don’t consider myself much of a botani-phile, but spring always opens me up.  From the moment my neighbor’s gorgeous cherry tree bursts into tiny pentagonal white blossoms (always the sentinel blooms) then our pear trees, another neighbor’s Magnolia tree, our own bushes that I’ve dubbed tissue-paper blooms for their fragile yet large size, to our pink Camellia bush, Spanish lavender (yeah! the autumnal pruning I did paid off in major dividends this spring), assorted purple wildflowers planted by the former owners, rosemary bushes with their purple accents, and my beloved California-native flannel bush with its brilliant yellow blooms in the front yard, the beauty touches me in a profound way.

The abundance, the resurging of life after a dormant winter, the scents….it’s life-affirming and joyous.  It’s no Garden of Eden, but it moves me.

Happy St Patrick’s Day

I guess my blog is green-friendly, so it’s fitting that I acknowledge the holiday.

Saw a funny thing, couldn’t snap a photo of it in time:

A pickup truck parked in front of a bar at 11:24am this very morning, proudly flying the Irish flag.  I bet that guy is having a good day. (I just hope he’s not an alcoholic).

Jeff is an official Irish citizen, got the passport and everything.  His favorite Irish joke is:

What’s an Irish seven-course meal?

A potato and a six-pack (ba-duh-duh).

I must say that in our Tour of the Capitals trip of London-Dublin-Paris, we saw more drunk people in our first fifteen minutes in Dublin than we did our entire trip.  But they weren’t the Irish-eyes-are-smilin’ drunk, they were Irish-eyes-are-glassy, life-is-rotten-so-I’ll-have-another-surely-the-answer-to-my-problems-are-at-the-bottom-of-this-Imperial-pint-glass drunk.

On the bright side, the crumpled asleep woman I saw on the DART train perfectly held her can of beer so that it didn’t spill.

Here’s AA to you!

Hot Lava

One of the high points at the Big Island was seeing the current lava flow.  The last time the Big Island had “official” lava viewing stations was late 2001-early 2002, but if you look on youtube there are guerilla videos from people who hiked across private property and found some flow.

We were in Volcano Village on Tuesday, Wednesday, and half of Thursday.  Sadly, the lava viewing wouldn’t open until Saturday, the day we left!  The drive to the east side of the island is long, on two-lane country roads that have a 55 mph speed limit, so it takes a good three hours or so to get there.  The prospect of driving there and back in one day was daunting, since I could hardly tolerate one leg of the journey.  Yet, how could we not try to catch the lava, since we were lucky enough to have a flight that left in the evening?

So we left Kona Village at 9am, feeling smug because the official opening wasn’t until 1400, and knew that we’d be one of the early people.  As it turned out, we arrived at 12noon and waited two hours and were the 21st car in line.  It couldn’t have turned out much better than that.  We were lucky to be one of the early few and were able to drive about a mile in before we parked.  Others not so lucky abandoned their cars earlier and had to hike that much farther.  Had we arrived much later, we wouldn’t have been able to view as long as we did in order to catch our plane out.

It was a hot, cloudless day on a road devoid of shade.  Waiting from 1200-1400 was trying, since we didn’t want to run the engine.  I slathered on the SPF 50 sunblock, but I ended up getting some color.

We had bought a case of 1.5-liter bottles of water on the day we arrived, and we were down to 6 bottles.  We decided we could give away three bottles to people we liked the look of.  It was hot on the black lava.  Jeff commented at one point that he could feel himself getting dehydrated sitting outside, despite being in the shade.

What can I say?  Pele is one hottie (sorry, had to).  The lava flow was slow but constant, like extra-thick corn syrup running down a steep incline.  It was flowing over old lava that had hardy ferns lodged in the cracks.  Whenever the lava smothered one of these plants, a small fire would exist for a few seconds, before snuffing out in steam.  This was truly awesome, seeing the force and power of Madame Pele.

A thick black crust on top, which was the quicker-cooling lava, looked like ropes of hair when it bunched up together while eddying around a rock.  We were fortunate to be in a quickly-filling valley and could appreciate the speed that things were moving.

We had to tear ourselves away, knowing that no matter how long we stayed, there would still be a reason to watch.  The photos can’t convey the power, the heat, the outright danger, but it’s something.

Emotional Eating

I love wordpress!

Found a hilarious blog yesterday, stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com; it made me laugh out loud.

I’ll be ready for a blog post, having composed the first few sentences in my head before I sit down to type, and darn it if I don’t go and browse someone else’s blog first because of the login screen that shows other hot action on other blogs right now!

One of them, I really had to respond to.  It was about emotional eating.

From the sound of it, she’s a sugar addict, because she loves her some Little Debbie cakes, but she mentions being on the savory-sweet roller coaster, too.  I’ve been partial to Zebra Cakes myself, so I can’t say I don’t know where she lives.

She had an interesting take, as she described her two children, and how the first-born is a vegetabliphile and the second one just wants to eat ice cream.  The hilarious thing is the little one will wail, “Did you finish all the ice cream?” when she comes home from school, busting Mom’s early-afternoon ice cream infraction.

She mentions that for a time she lost sixty pounds, and did all those things you’re supposed to do when you want to lose weight and keep it off [daily weigh-ins, daily gym workouts, lotsa H2O] but then realized that her life was primarily centered around maintaining the weight loss.  She felt out-of-control then, too.

Ding! Ding! Boy, did that ring a bell.  Hey, I did the same thing, too, way back in 2000-2001.  I’d wake at 5am so I could hit the gym & shower before work, doing a variety of cardiovascular & weight-lifting workouts so’s I could most efficiently burn calories and tone.  I drank liters of water a day, and I worked out six days a week.  It was fantastic, I did this over a period of nine months, losing the weight slowly and by the time my 30th birthday hit, I fit nicely into a dress I had picked out especially for the occassion.

And I felt great because I had said “yes!” to life, but now that I look back on it, what I said to myself was that I was only worth loving if I was thinner.  So then I was ready to hit the dating world once again, a svelte size 8-10.  What then happened?  Well, in quick succession I did find a special someone and also got on the pill because I didn’t want to get pregnant, and just like the other times I’ve been on the pill, promptly gained 25#.

The difference was that I was in a relationship, so the weight didn’t really matter, right?  But the fact is, it did, it always does, because I haven’t worked through this riddle that is self-acceptance.  No matter what the weight.  Self-love, because I am always worth loving.

I always get angry when I see a thin person eating dessert.  Really, I’m not kidding.  There’s always a slow burn of indignation, but now I know a lot of them skinny girls hate themselves as much as I do, hate their bodies with the same white heat, and worse, don’t even get to indulge in whatever their favorite foods are.

It’s just so hard because I don’t even really eat junk food or fast food or indulgent sweets.  I just overeat my healthy, vegetarian, meat-free, organic, farmers-market meals.  I can’t help it that I’m such a fine cook!  Another thing that burns me up is when someone says, “I stopped drinking soda and I lost fifteen pounds just like that!” with a snap of the fingers.  Well, shit.

So it’s been difficult, but I finally got ok enough with my body to agree to go to Hawaii even though I don’t have a bikini body.  Let me tell you, that took some doing.  We’ve been talking about going to Hawaii for as long as we’ve known each other, as I love it so.  So back in 2006 I signed up for a Continental Airlines credit card so that I could get enough frequent flyer miles to fly to Hawaii gratis.  So, this plan has existed in my head for a while.

But all the while, I knew that my unofficial plan was to give myself enough time to lose the weight.  Well, today is my last weigh-in before the trip: I lost something like 13#.  Not bad, I lost a few pant sizes, and my clothes all feel better and looser, which was the real reason to lose weight.  I got a modest and flattering black tankini for swimming, and I’m ok with a body that doesn’t look like a swimwear model’s.

What’s interesting is that clothes really do matter: the drape and cut of the fabric, to enhancing your figure.  I’ve been the same weight for about a month, but everyone was complimenting me yesterday on the same black pants I’ve been wearing since November.  True, they are looser in the booty than before, but essentially I’m the same.  Now I’m at the place where I need to start getting rid of the big clothes!  Yeah!  I remember how I relished giving away all those size 14’s I’d bought back in 2000, which I’d promised myself I’d do when I purchased them.

So here it goes again.  Oh, it’s everything, isn’t it?  I really do want to be the best me that I can, which includes being physically healthy and well, thriving, if you will.  I am getting older by the day, but I can do the best for myself through good diet and exercise and maintaining a good weight, flexibility, good dental hygiene, and meditation.  I’m wiser, stronger, and supported by my husband.  I can do anything!

We were in Sedona last October, watching the sunset against the rock rocks and watching the lengthening shadows, when I realized that I needed to get more of this nature stuff into my life.  It really fed my soul in a way that I recognized I wasn’t getting fed in my day-to-day life.  As usual, I spoke in hyperbole gazing at the colors and declared it the most beautiful place I’d ever been.

“Even compared to Hawaii?” my husband asked, dumbstruck.

“Well, no, but you can’t really compare it, because Hawaii is tropical….”

“What happened to our plans to go to Hawaii?”

I panicked because we were only five months away from when I’d want to go to Hawaii, but that wasn’t nearly enough time to lose thirty pounds, at a pound a week.  He gently reminded me that I didn’t need to weigh a certain amount before I deserved to go to Hawaii.  Isn’t he a great guy?

So here I am, writing a blog, and trying a new way, a new path for me.

[Oh, and those girls who complain that they gain weight when they start taking SSRI's?  It's because the SSRI dampens the voices of self-hate that tell them not to eat the cake, not because an SSRI biochemically slows down the metabolism.  They're just eating for the first time and feeling ok about it, instead of being controlled by the hate.  It's kinda sad, really.  I'd rather weigh a little more and be happy with it than vice versa.  But then, no one said anorexia is easy to cure.  It's more like alcoholism, one day at a time.]

Happy Birthday, Miss Thang

It’s your 10th birthday today, and I love you very much, Miss Thang.  You brighten (literally) our world everyday just by being you.

We thought your brother would make it, too.

Love always.

Three-letters

I got a pair of three letters for ya:

FLU and PMS

‘Nuff said

“Walk the Line,” feh!

Oh Jesus Christ. Dear God. Lord help me.

I *knew* I didn’t want to watch no “Walk the Line.” Why? I’ll tell you why!

1) Biopics are boring in the general case, unless I am interested in the person for some reason, usually due to my admiration of their work.

2) Biopics of rock stars are even more boring: early success, the drunken & drug-fueled despair and fall into the abyss, then the post-rehab walk into the light. Feh! The only thing good about rock star biopics is if you like the damn music. Did I like the damn Man in Black? Fuck no! So why the hell would I want to watch this stupid-ass film?! I’ll tell you: no reason. No reason in the world at all.

“But Laura, it was so good. It made me cry. They were so in love.” Because when people are famous after the fact, breaking their marriage vows is ok. We can all see that it was meant to be.

I don’t like none of that country music. Why would I care about someone I don’t care about?

See, I went to see “Control,” the biopic about Ian Curtis and proto-New Order, Joy Division. I like their music. I am familiar with the music. I cared about the story, wanted to know more. I enjoyed it, it was shot in black-and-white, which gave it a haunting and grainy quality. It had much to recommend it.

Or “Ray,” that story was so-so, but I somehow knew every song in it. Touching and moving. And the costumes were great, and we got to see him overcome his doubly-saddled adversity as a black and blind man.

Now, someone tell me, why would I want to watch a movie about people (whose story I ironically actually knew, courtesy of “This American Life”) were philanderers and drug addicts? I’ll tell you why! Because other people liked their music, that’s why! So fine, go see it because you like that honky-tonk music, but don’t tell me because it was a great work, because it wasn’t.

Maybe if I had scales over my eyes due to the “greatness” of his music, maybe then I would have been urging everyone to see this film. I can see that. This is exactly what turns me off from Hollywood. Not my scene.

I don’t care that it won a slew of Oscars for the actors….I throughly did not enjoy the movie at all, until we put the Spanish subtitles on and I worked on my vocabulario.

How shall I enumerate?

It looked cheap-ass. Like a bad tv movie, with poorly lit, small sets of cheap-ass school gym stages.
Heavy-handed screenplay, like a bad tv movie, see above. Oh, he has father issues, and there is a miserable Thanksgiving. Geez, I’ve never heard of that. How will we ever get over that?

The ironic thing is that we went to see “Walk Hard,” the spoof of this very movie. It was because I laughed so hard in WH that I was finally open to seeing WTL, to get the jokes. WH looked better and made more damn sense.

Week #6 thinks she’s all that

In this, the sixth week of the year, I joked yesterday that all the other weeks are jealous of her, what with her SuperDuper Tuesday (hee hee, it’s so annoying it’s funny.  I actually heard a pundit comment that he *has not* referred to it as such), Mardi Gras, and Chinese New Year hat trick.  Things like that make me happy.

Other silly things that make me happy are dates that are fun with numbers:

9-9-81 (shoutout to my homegirl who was that birthday, lucky girl!)

all the repetitive ones: 1-1-01/2-2-02/3-3-03, et al

additive ones: 6-1-07

sequential ones: 1-2-03/9-8-07

As you can see, I’ve been having a good time in these early years with the new millennium.

Today, sadly, is the last day of the (Chinese) Year of the Pig.  It’ll be another twelve years before it comes around again, sniff.

Just did hella dishes — Jeff did all the dishes on Sunday, and here I did dishes for an hour before they were done!  How does that happen?!  Because we both bring lunch and oatmeal in plastic containers and we cooked all the meals since then, in addition to popping some popcorn.  And this is in addition to running a full load of a full-sized dishwasher!

I am vexed with skin conditions: a very painful pimple on my inner thigh, and one on my back, as well as a kitty scratch right on my chin.  I feel like a freak.  The pimple on the thigh is a real bear.  Hurts like the dickens! (whatever that means).

I am going to try to swim before work on Friday….ride my bike there, swim, hop on BART.  We’ll see how it works.  It’ll take some doing.

In happy weight-loss news, I wore a pair of size 10 Banana Republic slacks yesterday!  By mistake, I pulled them instead of my roomier size 12.  I actually went a whole day with them on, so I feel a real sense of momentum.  It’s been all the beans & rice meals I’ve been eating, no doubt.  The scale didn’t show a great decline in the poundage, but I am sticking to how my clothes feel.

I am working four days this week, a major achievement on my part.  The interesting thing is that now that I’ve gotten through Mon-Tues, I know that Thurs-Fri will be a piece of cake.  It’s all in my head.

For whatever reason, last week I dreaded working the Mon-Tues back-to-back, for no particular reason.  I work at least one back-to-back per week, but it seemed like misery.  Maybe because I worked the previous Thurs-Fri, who knows.  Or maybe because I chose to do it, and that always makes the difference.  Since last Thursday I’ve been mentally preparing myself for this “big week,” and it’s been no big deal at all.  Anyway, I did the same thing this week and I feel great.  What this experience tells me is that I am in control of it, if I can just spin it to myself in the right way.

I feel refreshed and happy to be home, and to sleep in all the way until 7 o’clock!

I have to decide what exercise to do this afternoon: a heart-pounding swim or some mentally calming yoga?  It’s been a while since I’ve done yoga, but the swimming really calls to me.

It’s interesting, my husband is in my dreams more, and usually in a heroic or helpful way.  I think that my subconscious finally trusts him, that I deserve him, and that we’re part of a team.  It only took four years of marriage to get here.   In the early years, he was either not present at all (and I was forced to solve my problems all by myself) or he was a jerk (cheating on me with other women).  Isn’t that interesting, and oh so clear-cut?

The past two days I’ve woken up with auditory hallucinations.  I think there’s a real sound, but it’s one that’s in my mind.  One was my husband’s alarm, another was that he was talking.

I have therapy today.