last cousin standing

not considering those cousins who are in their late thirties and beyond, all of whom are married with children, i am the only family member of my generation who has yet to attend graduate school.

i graduated from college when i was 21 and even before i turned 22, my aunts and uncles were already speculating when i would be returning for more. to their surprise, they still are. at our family gatherings, i can always hear concerned voices above the clamoring of chopsticks. "what is she doing with her life?" "is she going into law like her brother and sister?" "she's going to go get more education, right?"

lately, the sentiment has been sounding more dismal "she is going to be too old in a few years. you should tell her to just apply anywhere." even my friends are starting to nudge. "time is precious." "the next few years are critical." "what are you waiting for?"

before i finished my first year at UCLA, i promised myself that i would not attend graduate school until i was good and ready. for the past four years, i have been trying to decipher what i want to be when i grow up. to be perfectly honest, i am still not sure. that being the case, i have been feeling more urgency as of late.

i think some of my friends and family are under the notion that i do not like school. WRONG. i love school and it has thus far loved me in return. i just was not ready. after many years of casual consideration, and more recently many months of option weighing, i am rigorously preparing for the LSAT.

even i concede that it is about time that i conform with the masses. it is not easy, after all, to be the last one standing--or perhaps as some would see it, lackadaisically fence-sitting.

on hydraulic lifts

late morning, i went to the house to discuss the painting details with the general contractor. i finally decided on the colors for the various rooms and wanted to make sure that she was clear on which colors were designated for which rooms. i also wanted to point out areas of the walls that i thought needed more sanding.

after ten minutes of debriefing, i was ready to head back to the office. i got in the car, ignited the engine and pressed on the brake pedal. before i could shift the car into reverse, the car started to jolt up and down like a hydraulic elevator. my first instinct was that the car was shaking because it was about to explode. in an attempt to prevent such a thing from happening, i let go of the brake pedal and turned off the engine. but, the shaking just persisted. i was really worried about what the problem might be when one of the laborers came running from the side yard yelling "did you feel that?"

why, yes i did. and apparently, you did too.

i am such an idiot.

my fiftieth post

the title above has a certain "my first pony" feel to it. come to think of it, i never owned a pony doll or an actual pony for that matter. i think i will settle for the posts.

had i opted for a more relevant title, i would have used "nothing in particular."

i will be a bridesmaid at my brother's wedding next month. the bridesmaids' dresses are black. the outfit additionally calls for a black colored shrug, notably the piece of garment my friend refers to as a "boob sweater." can you hear the enthusiasm pouring out of my keyboard?

i returned home this morning after being away for the weekend and noticed that all of the rough plumbing was installed for my bathroom. tears nearly leaked out of my eyes. i am finally seeing the light at the end of this expensive and dusty tunnel. a friend recently asked me for help with the remodel of his new place. my first reaction was "well, we aren't married, so we can't get divorced." that is me being positive about this.

tomorrow marks my first day at work of "managing" more people than the square root of my age doubled. i am scared shitless. people keep telling me that "pressure makes diamonds." and now, i will reply back "yeah, and it also pulverizes."

my schedule has been packed as of late. as it is, i am having difficulty meeting those obligations i had committed to prior to the start of the recent surge of chaos. i am anticipating life to return to some sort of normal early september. perhaps this is just wishful thinking, since i have large milestones set in early october and then again in december. nonetheless, one of my first orders of business for this coming fall will be preparing meatless chili. i realize this sounds insignificant to some of you, but i have been trying to do this for nearly a year. between now and chili day, i will have to decide on the color of my new dutch oven.

last lecture

"And he put his arm around my shoulders and we went for a little walk and he said, Randy, it’s such a shame that people perceive you as so arrogant. Because it’s going to limit what you’re going to be able to accomplish in life. What a hell of a way to word “you’re being a jerk.” [laughter] Right? He doesn’t say you’re a jerk. He says people are perceiving you this way and he says the downside is it’s going to limit what you’re going to be able to accomplish."
-Dr. Randy Pausch, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

karmic economy

People that just give, without cultivating the self-awareness to manage their own interests, aggressively distort the Karmic economy, crash the fair pricing of "help" by flooding the market with too much of it, and encourage other weak beings to just parasitically draw on them instead of cultivating their own inner strength--thus weakening the Karmic economy at large.
- AS

the kind of things people have posted on their office walls

"coffee, chocolate, men. some things are just better rich."

conversation

lady: "will you hold me please?"
me: "sure."
[hold]
lady: "so what time you want to come in for wax?"
me: "is 4:30 okay?"
lady: "yeah. 4:30 okay."

vietnamese ladies are great.

to everyday wake naturally

about two years back, i adopted a friend's single life goal as one of my own: to everyday wake naturally. words alone may not convey my disdain for being abruptly forced into consciousness first thing in the morning. i consider it comparable to a loud blow horn sounding within close proximity of a newborn baby exiting the womb.

yet, as of late, i have been having difficulty living by my own doctrine. in fact, it would be more accurate to say that i have been all together ignoring the notion of alarm free living. i have had all of three "natural" mornings in the last 90 days. it is quite pathetic.

so as i set my alarm tonight, i take a renewed commitment to abuelita living--early to bed, early to rise. and hopefully, just hopefully, i wake tomorrow with enough time to disable that awful alarm patiently waiting to disturb my morning's peace.

the voices in my head

"be the change you wish to see in the world."
"pain is weakness leaving the body."
"do or do not. there is no try."
"that is but a statistical anomaly."
"this too shall pass."
"c'est la vie."

live dangerously

"the secret from harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously." -friedrich nietzsche

italian yogurt

trader joe's STOPPED carrying my beloved spega yogurt. i knew it might happen one day. i got attached anyways. i am most sad.

nostalgia

earlier today, i was sifting through one of the many boxes that are piled in my living room hoping to find a book that i have been meaning to read. i stopped looking when i came upon an old journal dating back to my third year of college. i opened the back cover, started reading my last entry and spent the next hour or so indulging in my own youthful stories.

i am a bit embarrassed to admit that the primary focus of the latter half of that journal is my first "real" boyfriend. reading back, i cannot but feel that assigning such a title to this young man may be a bit misleading. we dated for all of two months, i do not recall being "in love" with him, and if i remember correctly, we broke up over his love for world of warcraft.

for some reason or the other, my last entry in this particular journal was a long list of the sweetest things this boy had done for me. i wrote it less than two weeks after we had broken up. i am pleased to see that my 20 year old apparently heart broken self could find enough sensibility to recount the happy memories.

below are portions of my old writings, recording some of my sweetest boyfriend memories. the he's are kept purposely anonymous to preserve the privacy of those who may be embarrassed by this would-be public outing of closet romantics.

"i doodle when i am bored and i bore very easily. tulips had just come into season, and so they were a frequent subject of my latest notebook artwork. a week or so after he had commented on one of my floral sketches, i received a photo of three red tulips with a note "tulips for my two lips." later that week, a small potted plant of beautiful red tulips magically appeared outside my front door in the hands of a grinning young man. i never told him that tulips just so happen to be my favorite flowers."

"for the first time in my life, i strained prunes through a mesh sieve in order to test a lower fat chocolate chip cookie recipe. luckily, they turned out well. while i was cleaning the large mess i had made, he walked into the kitchen with a foil heart, constructed from what was used to line the cookie sheets, clothes pinned to his t-shirt. for some particular reason, i was very moved by this. so much so, my joyful expression seemed to make him uneasy. the gesture was sweet and simple, priceless really."

"he gave me a $2 bill folded into two hearts for valentine's day. he explained that years ago, his grandfather had given him a two dollar bill, which he still, to this day, keepsakes in his wallet. he said that $2 bills mean a lot to him for that reason, and he added that he hoped that they may one day mean something between the two of us."

the tulips wilted. i never made those chocolate chip cookies again. and i have no clue where that $2 bill is. in fact, i am happily without a he in my life. but the presence of these memories remind me that love can be grand, and that moments, though ephemeral in nature, can live on forever in our nostalgic minds.

words

adulation: excessive flattery or praise
visceral: prompted by natural tendency or impulse
usurious: greatly exceeding bounds of reason or moderation
loquacious: very talkative
bespoke: custom made
tawdry: gaudy and cheap in nature or appearance
flaneur: an aimless idler