P.S. We just had another small jolt. I know some people like to equate California with a bowl of jelly but it's usually not and earthquakes you can feel are relatively rare, being rather few and far between. I can't even remember the last time I felt one. However, there was a 3.7 earthquake on Wednesday, a hard jolt last night (I can't seem to find any info on it), and another one about 15 minutes ago. Here's hoping that the holidays don't bring on the big one.
I can’t believe 2006 is nearly over. The thought that in a week and a half or so this year will be over makes me weep, and laugh, and ponder, and hope. You see, in SO many ways, 2006 has been one of the worst years of my life; or rather one of the worst years of my life as far as I can remember. This will be the year that J and I faced some hard realities about grown up life and had so many roadblocks hit us that we’re almost literally limping to the end. Accentuate the positive they say, and I know I wrote a list of what I was thankful for around Thanksgiving, but this year, there was so much that was absolutely awful that I really have to think positive or I’d go insane. I will give you a hint as to why the year was bad. Let’s just say it had to a lot to do with real estate we couldn’t keep, and yet were unable to sell and other depths of financial despair. As any divorce lawyer can tell you, amongst the top things which can destroy a marriage and family, are money issues. (Of course, being Asian, I would never dream of detailing my money issues specifically.) It’s a testament to our relationship, that J and I have made it through this year still in love and still together.
I tell myself all the time, that I don’t want to be Cinderella, I don’t need to be saved. I can take care of myself. I don’t need someone to come in and sweep me away from everything I need saving from; my family, my past, my present. Still, some parts of me look at stay at home moms and women who don’t make more than their husbands and who don’t have the weight of everything upon them and I can’t help but feel envy. I can’t help but feel bitterness and resentment towards J. Here I am, posting 55 hour average work weeks and making over 90 percent of our family income and failing in the game of keeping up with the traditional societal expectations of house and home with the white picket fence and two children and pet. Not to mention that I felt like I was always in competition with someone else’s child. My parents kept telling me about their friend’s children who made such and such who didn’t have to support their families on their own and goodness, did I know that Auntie X’s daughter’s husband was a doctor and took his wife abroad every summer and bought her a new beamer? What’s my husband doing? He’s in school and takes care of the kids. What? Still??? My mom would ask if my daughter grew up and were in this situation, wouldn’t my heart break? Wouldn’t I want someone who would take care of her and make her life easier? I love my mom and she loves me, this I know. I love my J, more than I love myself, this I know as well. My mom and J don’t get along. Love can be blind and bitter and extremely depressing. This I learned in 2006.
Sometimes I think I went back to school to escape, so that I don’t have to hear comparisons, questions, or expectations. Sometimes I think I need a long commute to clear my head and focus. And when I focused, my path was clear, the road to the future so very well defined. I would do this, this, and this. Easy. Then I actually had to do it. I actually had to take those classes, write those papers, read those books, take those tests, work those hours, feed those children, communicate with that husband, choose the family I chose to have over the family I was born with and they’d actually have to accept it, whether they liked it or not. And it happened, and I made some progress and I found out that I am a lot tougher and a lot more capable than I had imagined. This I also learned in 2006.
And finally, this is the year that I remembered something about the man I love. That he loves me more than he loves himself. I remembered that he is smart, kind, thoughtful, patient, and strong. He tried his best; he finally finished his degree this fall, that one last class was finally, the last class. He was supportive when I quit my job because he was ready to make the sacrifices necessary to allow me to go to school. He found a job that allowed him to work from home and be with the kids while I went out there and did my best to be some superwoman, crazy woman, overachiever to prove to no one but myself that I could. He was civil when people accused him of being a lazy slacker husband. And he was patient when I forgot all that he had done for me and our family. My husband is a wonderful man. This I had forgotten for most of the year, for most of our married life. This I’m most grateful to have relearned in 2006.
On one of my long drives, I thought of the equilibrium of life. I remembered the true connotations of yin and yang. That no matter how bad things get, there are always an equal number of things to be happy about. For every end, there is a new beginning to look forward to and that you only have to know where you’ve been to know that you’ll survive the road ahead. I'm sure that you don’t want to read a bunch of clichés so let me just end this long post with these wishes.
Happy Holidays!
- May your celebrations bring you the company of those you hold most dear - May your joys provide you with happy memories - May your sorrows leave you with great wisdom - May your New Year be filled with new beginnings and the completion of accomplishments great and small - May you remember the important things, and if you forget, let it only be for a little while
With much love to you and yours, Lien
Ugh…3:04a.m. I have no work, I have no homework, the kids are asleep, why can’t I??? I have to wake up at 7:30am to help the Little Goose get ready for school! Which reminds me, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted about her progress kindergarten; first trimester down, two more to go.
It turns out; that despite beginning kindergarten as one of the youngest students in class (she started school at 4 years, 10 months, 2 weeks, and 4 days old) she’s doing quite well. We received her first report card and parent teacher conference where J was the epitome of cool and I was the parent to kept babbling about our kid and her entire little life and the issues we had with her and the things we did to prepare her for kindergarten because I was so dang NERVOUS! Which I didn’t have to be; turns out the Little Goose’s teacher is extremely nice, professional, and knows how to keep a bunch of 5 and 6 year olds in line. She basically told us a few things we already knew, but reassured us (well, me) that these are all perfectly normal for a child like the Little Goose.
First, per her teacher, it is extremely obvious that the Little Goose spends the majority of her time with adults rather than other children. This is exemplified by her patterns of speech and maturity level. I had always been a little freaked out that my baby girl seemed a bit different from the other kids in terms of her socialization erm…methods. While some kids liked to run around and play, the Little Goose seems to like discussion, the formulation of plans, execution steps, and general high strung type-A project management. Play is not just a slap and go thing for her, there’s always a well planned methodical purpose to all her activity that’s all in her head and which she only discusses when asked. For example:
Me: “Honey, where are you going with that blanket and those pillows? And why on earth are you moving the chairs?”
LG: “I’m building a tent Mommy. I’m going to put the blanket over the chairs and then sleep underneath it. See? Like this…Then tomorrow I’m going to go to school because there’s school tomorrow.”
(Ok, so that wasn’t a very good example, but it’s just the WAY she says these things that invokes images of what she will look like when she’s 50. It’s the calm and cool, matter of fact speech that is supposedly not…usual.)
Apparently, most 5 year olds who interact primarily with other 5 year olds do not talk like this. And thankfully, her teacher didn’t mention anything about this being bad or anything, it’s just the way the Little Goose is, and that’s ok. She gets along well with the other kids and seems to be enjoying school and having her own little friends. And that’s comforting news for an agoraphobic first time kindergarten parent who doesn’t want her child to be a loner like she was.
Secondly, the Little Goose is doing very well academically, she was able to achieve 100% on all the term review questions which included, letters, numbers, and sight words (that is, the spelling and reading of words like the, there, he, she, one, two, three, we, are, it, no, was…etc…in KINDERGARTEN y’all. Times sure have changed.) The teacher mentioned that the Little Goose appeared to learn new concepts quickly and is able to apply what she learned and that the foundation that we had provided for her prior to the start of kindergarten (i.e. letter recognition, shapes, pattern reading, colors) was obvious. In other words, we did well in that area. Yay!
Thirdly, we talked a bit about all the Little Goose has gone through since the beginning of this trimester. It’s been a hard three and a half months for her since she had had too move from her home a few months before school, adjust to school itself, and conform to a new, earlier bedtime (she’s a night owl like her parents and it’s been rough, she has to be ready and at school by 8:20am :sigh:) As I said, so far so good, at least she gets her homework done…somehow.
And lastly, during the parent teacher conference, the Little Goose’s teacher mentioned lunches that I make and how they were “beautiful”. =D Yay on that too. I don’t normally take compliments well (having never learned HOW to take a compliment since I was taught that I was an idiot who didn’t know how to do anything properly to be modest on all occasions and not let anything go to my head) but I beamed with pride on this one.
I should mention however, that the report card itself indicated something that J and I have been very familiar with as of late. That is, the inability of the Little Goose to listen to instructions. I think this has something to do with her being 5 now. While she’s doing well academically in terms of things like math and reading, she rushes too much on her work and doesn’t do her best work in terms of her handwriting practice and coloring. And, per the report card, "At times…she does not wait to listen for instruction which causes her to become confused with what she is to do.” Gotta work on that.
Otherwise it was a very good report card for a kindergartener. They don’t receive letter grades, however, I’m interpreting the checks and check pluses as A’s and B’s. This is excellent for her first trimester. I’m so proud of her although the feeling of being proud of my daughter for her grades is so ironical to me when I spent most of my childhood anxious about my own marks. I’m just happy that she’s doing well and is neither the top of her class nor the dunce and despite her old soul is still a normal happy child. In fact, so far, the most important thing to me is that she’s making friends.
The pictures are from the Little Goose's first school performance. The kindergarten girls did two different dances (one African dance and one "ballet"), sang three songs, and demonstrated what they had been learning in drama class. It turns out that the Little Goose's school has a performance arts charter program. I did not know this until last Friday! Pictures of the performance can be found by clicking here. Most of them are of the Little Goose and her current BFFs Seph (the beautiful tall one in the middle) and M (the cute little one on the right). When the Little Goose and Sweet Pea are together, I think the Little Goose is a giant, however, it turns out that she's one of the tiniest kids in her class.
Ok, let me just write this down before I forget...Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 11:15am (approximate time), Sweet Pea the super ebullient active toddler boy proclaimed to his mommy in a shower of kisses, "I buhb eee you!" (translation: I love you!) Just out of the blue with no prompting whatsoever! Hurray! (And before daddy too!)
Of course, my reaction was cool and calm for someone who felt like she disolved into a billion tiny bubbles. I did what any mother in such a situation would do, I gave him dozens of kisses and hugs and ran out of the room and proclaimed to astonished family members that he finally said IT on his own. And while my family members proceed in trying to prompt him into saying, "I buhb eee you!" to them, I am proclaiming to you my dear e-friends, that my baby at 20 months and 4 days old, finally said he loved me.
I got straight A's!!! Holy shit! Well, two classes, one A- and one A. How the hell is that possible??? I submitted my final paper a week late and the other final paper was written two hours before it was due and was at least a page and a half short. I thought I failed miserably on the final considering I didn't reference any specifics. Did they just feel sorry for me and my two hour drive??? Should I just shut up and be grateful? Yes, I believe that's a viable reaction...shut up and be THANKFUL HOLY MERCIFUL GOD (now about that house thing...)
Ok, so generally, I consider myself an open book in terms of the not so deep and dark secrets and really, there’s not all that much to me. So, when Carol tagged me on this meme, it actually took some thought and all I could come up with were some intensely personal things. Most people who know me well already know these things, but I think I can go ahead and share them with my internet buds too.
Here we go:
Five Things You May Not Know About Me
1) I’ve actually been engaged three times. – No, I’m not hot or incredibly desirable or anything. I’m actually quite frumpy. What really happened was the first guy didn’t know what the hell he was really asking (being in that first love, college sweetheart kind of mood), AND I was only 19 years old, so that was a no. The second guy I just didn’t love. And the third guy, well…you know the results. Although the proposal can not be described as “romantic”:
J: “You want to get married?”
Lien: “What? YOU want to get married?”
J: “Ok.”
Lien: “Ok.”
Or something like that. I think he had me at “get married?” Things were sort of helped along by the fact that we had just gotten pregnant. And that conversation went something like this (to put this into context, we had sort of discussed my suspicions of being late beforehand).
Lien: “Guess what?”
J: “You’re pregnant.”
Lien: “Yup.”
J: “Ok.”
2) I am slightly agoraphobic. – This actually stems from childhood. Before my family moved to California, we lived in areas that didn’t have all that many Asian people and so there weren’t all that many petite little Asian ladies around (other than my mom and aunties) and per pictures, I was your average American sized kid. In other words slightly chubby but in no way what you would consider fat. When we moved to California, my parents made contact with the small Vietnamese community in Salinas (the town where we lived). I was always a shy kid before, but I never really considered how I looked.
Anyway, one of the four foot something, ninety something pound ladies that we got to know, took me aside one day and pinched my arm and put her arm next to mine and said something along the lines of, “Look at your arm, it’s almost as big as mine, you’re so fat, what do you even bother going outside for? People will think you’re ugly.” She also had her kids call me the fat girl from then on out.
This, in addition to the sudden rash of kidnappings reported in the news and my parents’ sudden need to keep us all indoors, plus my naturally shy nature sort of combined into producing an extremely anti-social person who hated going outside and meeting anyone. And for a few years, I didn’t go outside if I could help it. Things got better for me as I got older and had to leave the house for school and I did have friends at school, but still, the prospect of meeting someone new, always produced a mild anxiety attack. And I always felt that everyone was staring at me and wondering why someone like me would bother being in public or think that there was something wrong with me.
I still get anxiety attacks when I have to meet someone or go to places where I might receive some attention. I hate people looking at me, I hate being stared at; my heart starts beating much more quickly, I’d start to feel light headed, and I have to tell myself over and over and over that people meet people all the time and no one is going to judge me. It feels like I’m being self absorbed and I have to will myself into not being so self centered and I have to tell myself that most people aren’t like that lady who said those mean things. And most importantly, that I don’t have to smile and take it anymore if someone did say those types of things. I’m a grown up now…I think.
3)I love looking at little things. – To me some of the most beautiful things in the world are small and fleeting. For example, I love it when it rains and I can look through the rain drops on my window to see a reflection of something ordinary as if it were painted in watercolor. I love looking at leaves and trying to see all their little details. And I love to hold and stare at my babies’ feet. And when I was a kid, I used to watch insects and how they moved and lived. They still fascinate me even though, somewhere along the way, I became too dainty to touch them. (Image borrowed from http://www.rene-schwietzke.de/)
4) I like to take walks, even though I haven’t done much lately. – Before I was married, I used to walk about six miles a day (around Lake Merritt twice) alone. I’ve never been able to run due to the fact that my lungs are scarred (tuberculosis when I was kid), but when I walk, I get lost in my own thoughts and I like to look at things along the way. Now-a-days I walk maybe 500 steps a day (desk job, plus homework, plus children who generally don’t need running after). I can’t stand walking on a treadmill (there’s something completely unnatural about treadmills), but I think I’m going to have to start soon, for my own sanity and health. The Oakland area has a wealth of hikes and walks that I could take; now I only have to find time during daylight hours.
5) I’m very blessed. – I have a loving husband; beautiful, joyful, happy children; a job that pays the bills; and a disposition that thinks that these are the only things truly necessary in life, everything else is gravy. Like the A- I got in one of my classes this quarter. Booyah!
Yet another delay in the closing of my escrow. Apparantly, the buyer's lender hasn't submitted all documents to our title company yet. :sigh: Probably tomorrow or Wednesday before we sign they say. So, in order to get my mind off my house woes, here is a meme that I found over at the "Silent I", not quite my usual 10 things. If you know of any other worthy distractions, please send them my way.
Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Credit Operator for a 1-800 phone sex line
2. Project Coordinator
3. Data Architect
4. Systems Programmer
Four movies I've watched over and over:
1. Love Actually (I love this movie, simple and sweet, that’s all I ask for.)
2. Finding Nemo (One of Sweet Pea’s favorites, it elicits screams of, “MOMO! MOMOOOO!”)
3. Cars (Sweet Pea’s other favorite, it elicits screams of, “CAR! CAR! CAR!”)
4. Gattaca (Jude Law stating, “My eyes are prettier”…damn straight!)
Four places I have lived:
1.
Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. Heroes (Well, really, just Hiro.)
2. Full House (The Korean drama that is. I watched the whole thing in three sittings and would not mind watching it again.)
3. Tony Bourdain’s No Reservations (I love Tony Bourdain, can’t help it, there’s something incredibly cool about him, and for a guy who doesn’t have any kids, he seems very good around them whenever they’re in an episode.)
4. How Its Made (I love learning how things are made…although it occurs to me that all these things are made in
Four places I have been on vacation (I seriously need to go to more places):
1. My bed (vacation means sleep…sweet precious sleep.)
2.
Four of my favorite foods:
1. Pho
2. Lindt White Chocolate Lindor Truffles
3. Soon DuBu Chigae
4. Grilled Salmon with Lemon Butter Sauce
Four places I would rather be right now:
1. In my bed sleeping
2. Disney World
3. At the mall with a million bucks
4. In our own home
Somehow, my little brother (who works at Circuit City until he knows what he wants to do with his life) got first dibs and bought a Wii and played with it for half a second...and didn't care for it. So of course, being the awesome li'l bro that he is, asked us if we wanted it. Duh! Half the world wants one for themselves or their kid, pfft...did we want it? Hell yeah! And so now, with the exception of the overpriced, overhyped, so-totally-not-worth-it Playstation 3 (now, if Square Enix had remade Final Fantasy VII and Sony had that as the PS3's launching title, instead of just teasing FF7 fans with a measley tech demo, I might have actually cared to wait in line and buy it, instead, I'm not even going to bother), we have practically every video game system on the face of the planet. Well every video game system that your average video game geek wants...and contrary to popular belief your average hard core gamer is probably between the ages of 25 to 35 and not necessarily male. Why? Because they're the ones with the money who grew up with this stuff. My first console was someone's cast off Atari 2600 that I played when I was in KINDERGARTEN. (Of course, the console that really made video games a part of my childhood was the Nintendo. Ah memories...)
The Wii itself is actually quite cool and so far even the kids love it as it's much easier for them to use the contollers. I'm not going to go into the details of the system as 1) I'd be wasting space as someone else has already done so right here. 2) Stephen Colbert declared the Wii the Number One threat this holiday season in an amusing clip you can find by clicking here...and finally 3) I really wrote this post to show off a picture of Mii. Spitting image, I'd say. =)
You there? It’s Lien again. Sorry to keep bugging you, but you know, you really ought to make my life a little easier and maybe that way I wouldn’t bug you so much. Maybe, if things went well for me, I’d be less dependant upon your mercy. I mean seriously dude (or dudette); you could give me a break once in awhile. If I didn’t believe you were benevolent, I’d really think you had a mean sense of humor. You know what I’m talking about. Do I really need to go into the sick details of the broken sewer main and the sewage spewing out of my front steps one month after I moved into my “new” house and not having any of it covered by my homeowner’s insurance because it was outside of the house AND having said homeowner’s insurance raise my premium for even ASKING if it was covered? Yeah, I KNOW that was you dude. But it’s ok, I know I’m just your little pawn and peon and of no real importance to the rest of the world. I get that I’m ordinary. I UNDERSTAND!
But this time, seriously, cut it out. I REALLY need you to let my house close already. Please! We’ve been under contract with a buyer since mid-September. SEPTEMBER! With no other bids, what are we supposed to do? Throw away the only buyer we’ve got? I mean, sure, they keep lying through their teeth when they say we’re close to closing the deal, but seriously, did you really need to have them go through three different lenders to get an approval? (Thank you for finally getting them approved by the way.) At least we’re getting somewhere and at least, you got them to finally get to the point where the title company is drawing documents so that we can all sign and move on with our lives. Thank you for that, but please, I’m begging you…don’t pull this out from under me. I know you like to do that sometimes when you know I get my hopes up about something miraculous and then you take it all away. We’re supposed to sign our documents Monday and hopefully be done by Wednesday. We were supposed to do all this last week, but you know, you had my realtor and the buyer’s realtor tell me that we were ready to sign and then all of a sudden you had something go wrong with the papers and the lender needed to verify a few more things and we had yet another delay. So yeah, don’t you think I’ve suffered enough? At first it was like, ha ha, sort of funny, but now, seriously...quit it! Of all the other real estate transactions around, why mine? I know you think you’re funny and most of the time I laugh, honest, but this time, please please please please PLEASE…just cut the joke short. I’ve been pretty patient for the last three months.
And don’t you act all innocent with me bub. Yes, I’m blaming you. Because seriously, Buddha doesn’t care about real estate being enlightened about material possessions and all (plus he’s a bit high and mighty with the enlightenment thing don’t you think, so what if I love my chocolate and am attached to my babies? What’s wrong with that Buddha?? What? That makes me too attached to the world to join your club in Nirvana? Huh?? Where was I?), and I’m not sure “Heaven” is really an entity where I can place blame and so you’re all I’ve got for a scapegoat.
Let us close on the house so that we can move on with our lives. That’s all I’m asking. I’ve been good this year. Look, I only drank coffee on average four days a week and not six like I used to (ok, so I’ve been getting triple shots, but that’s because I’ve been working almost 60 hours a week and going to school at the same time! You gotta give me props for that), but c'mon...it's almost Christmas!
Anyway, gotta go watch Heroes on Tivo now that I’m free for the night.
Amen and all that.
Love,
Lien
This is actually a repost from August. But I am still incredibly in awe of the Prokudin-Gorskii photograph collection. I was just thinking of my family this morning and the luxury that we have of having pictures of our children at so many stages in their lives. We can literally store a snapshot of everyday of their lives for the rest of their lives and prove that once upon a time, they looked like this. I wish that I had such a record.
************************
I know it's silly to think that the world didn't exist before my time. That's j
ust how I feel sometimes. I can read all I want about what the world was like, what the people wore, what they ate, how they lived and loved and died; but it will never be fully appreciated. History is the idea of days gone by, not the impressions of what that they actually were. That said, before today, every photograph or movie that I'd seen before today that was made before, say, the 1960s, was in black and white. Don't get me wrong, I love black and white photography, but some will agree with me that it drains the life out of many of its subjects and makes the image rather abstract. That's how I viewed much of history and the world before the advancement of color media...abstract. That is, until I saw the photographs from this site.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/
All of these photographs are from before 1920. They are amazing. I can only imagine that most if not all of these people are long gone as well as many of the cultures so vividly portrayed. The one that sticks out the most to me is the Chinese Foreman at the Chakva Tea Farm. Probably because I am of east asian descent. I mean, think about it, he is not wearing the cultural costume of his ethnicity, but actually what is probably his best suit. What he is wearing is not an anthropological artifact and his normal attire isn't western clothing. That is just amazing to me. The richness of the color and the process that was created to produce these images is incredible.
Just imagine for example, if Abe Lincoln had a color photograph. Would he not feel more real to you?
I'm such a nerd, but I don't care. =)
I know I’m late on posting how I feel about this, but it’s been on my mind for the past few days.
Last week, J was working at a conference out of town for four days. He was incredibly busy and wasn’t able to call home much or at all. During those four days, the Little Goose kept crying for her daddy. She kept whimpering, “Mommy, I miss Daddy! When is he coming home? I wish daddy were home.” It was painful for me to see her cry, but it was equally comforting to know that J would be coming home at some point.
I can’t sleep, I know I should, and I know I need to; but I just can’t. I’ve been mourning James Kim, a man I didn’t know and whom others have eulogized far better than I could ever hope to; and I keep thinking of my kids and how they felt last week when their daddy was only gone for a few days. For Penelope and Sabine Kim, their daddy is never going to come home, and that, more than anything, breaks my heart.
Tomorrow I'll write about the end of my first quarter back at school, but tonight, I had to write something about the Kim family. May God and Buddha and whomever else may be up there bless them.
-3 hours downtown parking so that we could watch the Oakland Holiday Parade and have dinner: $8
-Dinner in Oakland Chinatown, 1 block from parade route: $30.15
-Spending the day with just me and my babies; watching the city of
(And did I use my mastercard? Absolutely. That gives me a right to rip off their ad I say. =)
Ah, past midnight and still working. While I wait for the server I’m working on to respond, I thought I’d write a little bit about stress and de-stressing because, dear GBH, what an awful week. I won’t go into the sick sad details, but you can rest assured that you can trust me when I say that it was bad and that if you knew what was happening you’d respond that it was bad and I should get some rest. No, no one died; it was really just a more hectic than the usual crazy week.
Anyway, when I am feeling stressed my brain stops focusing and I feel like I need to go into full multitask mode to get everything done at once. My heart would start beating faster and if anyone asked me anything I’d bite their head off. (My poor J, Sweet Pea, and Little Goose had a rough week because of me I think.) Thankfully, I usually have the sense to stop and take a moment to try and relax. When I’m in the office, this usually entails a deep breath through the nose (or mouth if the nose happens to be stuffed to my eyeballs) and full exhale, repeat with eyes closed and back straight and then attempt to clear my mind (yes there’s something there, shut up J). If I’m at home, I’d run out to the living room and back, fall onto my bed and bounce a bit, close my eyes and imagine that I won the lottery. Can money buy happiness and peace of mind? Probably not, but it can sure help you have some fun.
How do you de-stress? Do you ever just say screw it and go to sleep?
