It’s not you, it’s me!

Hi everyone!

Yes, I know I’ve been really bad lately. The past month has been a whirlwind of work and people. My planner has never been this full: every night of the week and every weekend have been teeming with activity. This is not to say that I am complaining, I rather like being busy and social. However, I am left somewhat tired and desiring of some alone time.

The best thing that I could have done today (and that I ended up doing) was de-cluttering my room. I will go into detail at some future time (since it’s almost 1am and I do have to go to work tomorrow), but let’s just say I am HAPPY with what my room looks like, and it does make me feel more energized, as Karen Kingston (the author of the book Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui) promised. I was so energized that after I finished my room, turned off the light and went to bed, I turned the light back on for a second round of de-cluttering. It is now very nice and clean, and I have lots of clothes to donate/sell. I am happy 🙂

Thank you, Ina, for the book suggestion! It was really well received.

Love to all, and good night!

Work ethic

I look in the depth of your eyes:

There is a storm waiting to start

And I don’t have an umbrella.

.

You toy with my emotions:

Yank my chain

Pull my leg

And then let go when I think you have me.

.

You lied to me so many times I can’t even keep count,

And I keep believing you

Because you pay me to.

.

I count the days until my sustenance comes from elsewhere

And I can untie my chain and walk away…

Until then, you have me to toy with,

Like I have the little rubber soldier on my desk.

My butterfly

I looked and looked, afraid to touch. Afraid to even move, in fact, because if I moved, it would fly away. Finally, when time became too short, I reached out my hand gently and carefully, and took it into my palm. It STAYED. It let me take it, it didn’t fly away. Now it is my butterfly, and I am happy!!

Translation: I got a job which will sponsor me for a work visa for the next two years here and I AM HAPPY!!!!!!!!

(of course, this brings with it looong days like yesterday and today, working two jobs for three months, and a lot of stress. BUT at least I am happy, and relieved. I will get paid enough to go visit my friends around the country, and I will have paid off my college loan by June. Life can be worse, right? I AM HAPPY!!!)

Feeling blessed to have all that I have: the people around me to love and to make me smile, a good job, security (relative) and the power to follow my dreams.

Good night, friends! You’ve made it with me so far, and I’m staying!

It was the smile that did it

I am poor. Below-average-wage-for-my-position poor, actually. And when that position isn’t CEO of a large company, or big-shot doctor or engineer, but a mere research assistant, this is saying something about my purchasing power. Such being the case, it might not come as a surprise that when I saw the large black man with an armful of red carnations walking towards me, I felt helpless. I knew what he wanted, and I knew I couldn’t give it to him. A shake of the plastic cup (with a few quarters and dimes) that he was carrying confirmed the former; a look in my wallet, the latter. Defeated, I looked up at him, shrugged, smiled and motioned, offering him a seat next to me on the wooden sitting area at the Harvard Square stop.

As I kept listening to the [other potentially homeless] man trying to make an honest buck in the station, a very talented chap playing the guitar and singing beautifully, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head, and here was the black man offering me a red carnation. He looked me in the eye and said: “It was the smile that did it.” After a pause, he added: “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

As a warm wave of happiness descended over me and my eyes lit up, all I could muster up was “Happy Valentine’s Day to you too!” This was the first flower I have ever received on Valentine’s Day, and it made me happy! Even though it came from an unknown, potentially homeless man.

No: ESPECIALLY because it came from an unknown, potentially homeless man.

Humanity is everywhere, all we have to do is be alert enough to notice it, and open enough to receive it. I love the world!

Happy Valentine’s Day! Happy Chinese New Year! Happy Sunday!

I am happy!

How does it feel when your life changes for the better? I ask myself that on the bus on my way home. I am wiping the sweat off my brow and breathe deeply. I look out the window and notice, as if for the first time, the red and white lights of the bars and 7-Elevens on the bus route. I look at the bright blackess of the man next to me and at the dirty newspaper on the floor. I take it all in, and it is all beautiful to me. I love it. It is my new home.

I am moving from the suburbs of Boston into Central Square. This is something I didn’t think I was going to do this year, and now that I am actually doing it, that it is actually happening, it seems like the best decision I have ever made. I deserve to be happy all the time, not only when I remember to decide to. I want to buy a fish and name him Bobby, and a plant and name her Ana. I want to cook chocolate souffle and beouf bourguignon a la Julia Child. I want to sit and watch stupid tv shows at midnight in my blue fleece robe and feel at home on the livingroom couch. And if I fall asleep there, I want to feel warm and cozy.

I want to love every second of every day, the smell of the butterscotch candle on the night table and the morning ritual of choosing my earrings. I want to worry about my heart bursting with happiness, and about the fact that I can’t see all my friends in the same week. Because I have too many.

I want to be able to keep my promisses to myself. I want to start running this spring, and write at least three times a week in the blog, and keep in touch better with all my friends, and dream more. And make my dreams come true.

It all starts with a moment. The moment when you realize every opportunity is right in front of you. So reach out and grab it. You’ll be surprised what it’s willing to offer you in return for its freedom.

Thanksgiving 2009 – the party

After all the work and sweat in the kitchen, it was time to enjoy the feast. We had turkey with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, stuffing, green bean casserole, broccoli with cheese sauce, and wonderful rolls fresh out of the oven. We even had homemade gravy! That was the only time I broke my rules of “homemade or dead” and made some more gravy out of a can, and good thing too, because my gravy, which took the longest to make (turkey notwithstanding), ended up being the least tasty of all treats. But it was there, nonetheless. Next time it will be better.

We drank wine (the father had bought a HUGE bottle of rose wine that none of the others wanted to drink (not then, anyway), but I sipped most of it by the time I left three days later). I had started the previous night, while cooking, continued that morning, and settled into the drinking at lunch. I thought the taste went great with turkey. Not many agreed. Oh well, more for me. We told stories (it did get a little morbid when the father talked about his recently deceased wife – I felt really sad for him, it must be hard especially at times like these), praised the food (hihihi) and enjoyed the company. What a great time!!

Two hours later, it was time for desert. The valiant 8 people crew managed to clear the table and clean the dishes in record time, so that when the pies came out, they were well received. Between the 8 of us, we had 5 pies. I had made pecan pie that day (I actually only supplied the recipe and some guidance, Cori’s friend, the other Diana, put in the labor 🙂 with delicious results). The father had bought a lemon pie (again, delicious), our guests had brought a lemon tart, super good and tart, and a pumpkin pie (the black sheep of the evening), and Cori’s bf made a chocolate pudding pie. I put away so much pie, I thought I wasn’t going to get out of that chair. YUMMM – the pink wine went deliciously with that too, I don’t know why others kept insisting on opening one or another red or white wine. I was fine with my hugilistic bottle for the night.

Then it was time for games. Thanksgiving is usually a time when family comes together to celebrate, have fun and rejoice, so of course most families have family oriented games. This Thanksgiving, it was time for me to try Pictionary for the first time – it’s like Sharades (or Mime), but with drawing instead of miming. SO much fun!! Our team lost, which I hate, but we were so close, and so good, I didn’t even mind that much. I was also pretty happy (meaning pretty far gone) by that time, so nothing really bothered me at all. I was all warm and fuzzy inside 🙂

And this concluded a perfect, PERFECT Thanksgiving. Nothing could have made it more perfect – I got to cook, people enjoyed my food, we were together, we played, we drank, and we had an overall wonderful, warm, enjoyable time. A weekend to remember!

Thanksgiving 2009 – the preparations

When my alarm went off on Thanksgiving morning, I was in the middle of a wonderful, enticing dream. For the life of me I can’t remember what I was dreaming about, but I know it was great because I clearly remember not wanting to wake up. Seriously though, who would want to get up at 8:15ish on their first vacation day in a month? The only thing that pulled me out of bed was the thought of 8 people who depended not on me, but on the turkey that no one else had the guts (no pun intended) to pull the guts out of. I had been called to the line of duty the night before, told that I needed to take the insides out of it, and that no one else had been able to do it. I had tried, looking, poking, spooning… Even shoving my hand up its ass didn’t seem to do it, so I had gone to bed wondering where the darned turkey’s guts were. The next day I woke up with an epiphany: turkeys have two holes it seems, one on each end, and I had only checked one. A thorough check in the neck cavity did in fact turn up a paper bag with its heart, liver and gibblets, hidden by a skin flab. Wonderful!

Cori’s boyfriend had had the genius idea to buy one of those oven bags you can put a turkey in and forget you even have it in the oven (well, until the timer goes off anyway). So, since he didn’t want to touch the turkey, not even with the tip of one finger, he was in charge of preparing the spice mixture to rub the meat with, while I placed the turkey bag flat in the oven pan, spread out some onion, celery, apple, garlic and grape tomatoes on the bottom, then put the turkey on top. I then stuffed some garlic cloves between the skin and the meat of the bird (and some under its wings – I mean, if your armpits are going to smell, they might as well smell like garlic) and the rest of the veggies (some more onion, apple and tomatoes) inside its thoracic cavity. I them rubbed the aromatic spice mixture all over the beast, as I affectionately called it (someone did comment on the pleasure I seemed to be taking in fondling its breast – I gave up men cold turkey, what can I say?) and locked it in with some oil. Finally, we tied the bag (I wondered wether we should remove the plastic tie from the turkey’s legs, but it seems that it’s oven safe) and in it went!

Then it was time for the actual cooking to begin.

I asked Corina and her bf to peel potatoes while I cooked the cranberry sauce (10 minutes – the easiest thing I had to do, really!) and prepared the broccoli and cheese for broccoli with cheese sauce. The cranberry sauce, even though it only takes 10 minutes to make, takes a while to chill and coagulate, so I wanted to get that out of the way. By the time we boiled and mashed the potatoes, and boiled the broccoli, the other guests started to arrive. We were joined by three Romanian (mostly) friends – Corina’s former Mt. Holyoke friend, her bf and his cousin (which I had confused completely until someone cleared up the misunderstanding – must have been all the wine I had while cooking – adds to the fun). We immediately put all our friends to work: one was making the pecan pie stuffing, the other one was cutting some lettuce for the salad, the third one was assisting with advice and good cheer 🙂

Finally, at about 2:30pm, we were ready to sit down to eat (not before I snapped plenty of pictures to document my first Thanksgiving feast! I think the only reason I was humoured for so long was because of my previous contributions in the kitchen – as I then found out, the father is not a very patient man, so he really must have swallowed his feelings while I was arranging the food platters in “nice” and “esthetic” patterns and asking for the fifth picture of the whole group, because the lighting changed). Mind you, I had been awake since 8:15am, so I felt like it was a great accomplishment that we were eating lunch… well… for lunch.

Precious

I am SO tired! But I am not feeling down, as I do sometimes when I am tired. I know it sounds horrible, but seeing people in worse circumstances than my own makes me feel… hopeful and good about my life. I guess there are always people to compare yourself to who are in worse circumstances, so this should probably not be my standard, but tonight it is. I am too tired for anything else.

I just went to see “Precious” – the movie – and it was SO hard to watch! So raw, so jarring, so sobering… there are people out there who struggle to get out of the house every day, who struggle to believe that they deserve to be alive when the same people who gave life to them are then unspeakably cruel.

“Love aint done nothing for me. Love beat me, raped me, made me sick.”

Who am I to sit around saying I don’t believe in love? People like Precious suffer so much more, and still have the strength to get up and move forward. Her mother beat her, her father raped her and gave her two children.

It broke my heart. But it also put it back together.

My Life in France – by Julia Child

I will write a longer entry about it, but for now, I STRONGLY recommend the book, especially if you saw the movie “Julie and Julia.” I saw the movie twice, and I am reading the book right now, in preparation of a third viewing of the movie 🙂 Yes, I am that intense about Julia (not so about Julie, I have to admit).

But really, the book has the best parts of the movie: the French air, the details (much more details, of course, and so much lovelier to read, wonderfully described!), and it is longer. AND the recipes are described in detail upon delicious detail. I SO want to try one, or two. Or all! I love it!

If nothing else, at least I’ll try sole meuniere for a special occasion. MMMMYUMMM

Have you ever wished you were a boy?

Of course, the question is mainly addressed to the ladies reading this blog 🙂

Why would I ask something like this? Because I, as many other fellow women, have some preconceived ideas about men (boys, men, same thing… most of them never grow up anyway), ideas born out of life and observation (don’t I sound so wise) and exacerbated by emotion.

I keep reading the book I mentioned in yesterday’s post, and some things strike me. I am only halfway through the first of ten psychoanalytical stories, and it is the one giving the title of the book: “Love’s Executioner.” It is about a woman in her seventies, having a love obsession. The woman says “I am living my life eight years ago” (when she had had the love story that ended inexplicably – at his decision) and her therapist (the author) ponders that she will never get over her love obsession until she strips her former lover of his power over her – until she stops caring about what he would think, and about him in general. I thought a lot about this, because it’s something I struggle with a lot – of course, there is a long way to go from just suffering to developing a love obsession, but there are common characteristics worth exploring. The therapist said something that kept my attention for a long time. He thought that she was not even living in the present any more, choosing instead to relive her past love affair and miss everything that was happening in the here and now. I realize that I sometimes do the same: no matter how much fun there is around me, I can’t pull myself out of my own head enough to enjoy it.

The therapist also said that every psychologist is interested in problems that he or she experiences personally (of course, aren’t we all just a bit more interested in ourselves than others?) and that one’s own experience of problems can help shed light on the patient’s problems in therapy (for example, this therapist had had a love obsession himself). So maybe I’ll become a relationship counselor. (I don’t want to know what my closest friends think about that. Really, I don’t)

So I get to the reasoning behind the title of my entry. I believe that women and men feel differently. They most certainly act and react differently, and I think that reflects exactly what goes on behind their eyes. I wish I could experience that ease, that lightness, that carelessness that I see in them, just for a little while. To be able to wash away everything but my innermost feelings, my deepest desires.

The poor woman (in the story) tried to commit suicide because she was so desperate. Do you think a man would EVER do that for a woman? Let me answer that for you: NO. I am not saying I agree with what she did, and in fact I am completely against suicide. All I am saying is that women feel more than men do (in general). And I wish there was a way to control that.