September 2017 – Page 2

my childhood bestie

I talked with my childhood best friend tonight. It was wonderful. We haven’t talked much in the past year, simply because she’s been busy as ever, and I’ve been over in Japan. We still weren’t in the same place tonight (Facebook Messenger video chatting), but being in the same city really helps with the timing thing.

Talking with her always brings up loads of memories from my early childhood, most of them wonderful. There are only a handful of not-so-good ones, though they were all rather impactful. Mostly, though, the good memories come to mind.,. Like the time she and I watched “Lake Placid”, shortly after seeing “Deep Blue Sea”, and we ended up jumping all around on her furniture after the film, somewhat joking, but also somewhat paranoid that a gator would pop out from under the sofas and eat our legs off… Or the time my mom was at work, and my friend invited me to come over, so I left my mom a message on her pager, telling her when and where I was going, and I very clearly stated the phone number of my friend’s house, and repeated it (even though she could look up the number in the school phone book once she was home, if needed), just as was desired if I were to go anywhere while she was gone…, even to be complimented on it later by my mom, but told that I unfortunately had given my mom my mom’s number, not my friend’s house. Those might have even been from the same day…, though I really don’t remember for sure.

For my birthday one year, she and her mom decided to give me some money and a gift bag of macaroni and cheese boxes. Almost every time I went to their house, I would end up eating mac ‘n’ cheese, so they decided it was a perfect present for me. I loved it, of course, for the pure genius of it, as well as the love and attention that went into the present, despite its being quite simple. I really did love mac ‘n’ cheese.

There are two sad memories that always come to mind regarding this best friend. Though, one of them was actually kind of happy, because of what it meant to me. The one memory, the more sad one, was when we were riding the bus for a field trip, and she and I were playing a hand game. She was sitting by the window, back to the window/wall, and I the same for the aisle. The game was this one:

That’s the way
Uh-huh, uh-huh
I like it.
Uh-huh, uh-huh
That’s the way
Uh-huh, uh-huh
I like it.
Uh-huh, uh-huh
I got the looks.
You got the books.
Splish, splash
In your face.
Brick wall, waterfall
Girl, you think you know it all.
You don’t.
I do.
So *poof* with the attitude.

On the *poof*, my friends and I usually made an effort to face palm the other person somewhat, pushing her head away as part of the “Talk to the hand” gesture. However, not everyone did this, I discovered, so, shall we say, competitively as I did. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to face palm someone else, as I wanted to do it first, so as to avoid having it done to me. Well, when the *poof* came along, I was ready and prepared, and I pushed a little harder than necessary in my haste to be first, and my best friend’s head knocked backward against the window with a good noise. I was instantly remorseful, and her immediate upset hurt like no physical pain can. I still feel bad about that now, years and years later, though not in the same, sad way.

The other sad memory was the morning before school that she called me while I was showering. My mom came and brought me the phone while I was in the shower, telling me it was my best friend. I wondered why she was calling so early in the morning, it was even a little excited about the phone call. However, the news of the phone call was not good: angel, her dog, had died that morning. She was calling to let me know, because she knew that I loved Angel, too. Well I was incredibly sad about Angel, one of my favorite dogs, I was also incredibly grateful for the friendship I had – for that is a powerful friendship to make a call so early in the morning about something that could have waited until we got to school. But she wanted me to know before the rest of the world. I was and still am honored.

Gosh, now I have loads of memories piled up with this friend, and memories keep diving into the piles, turning them into something more like a mountain range. I used that only makes sense, when we’re talking about a childhood best friend – there’s so much time and joy and learning spent together as kids. Now she has kids of her own, and almost all I want to do is everything I can to help them have the best possible upbringing in the world.

Post-a-day 2017

Just keep swimming…

I swam today! And I don’t mean just playing around in a pool. I swam laps. Half a mile did I swim, and, though this is nothing to what I once could accomplish in the same amount of time (a mile or more), I am incredibly proud of this half mile, because I have not swum a lap in at least four years. Not bad for starting out, I say!

In college, I discovered a love for swimming. Laps, that is. I spent about ten years on swim team as a kid, and I kind of hated most of it. I absolutely loved the social aspect and the fun of the meets on Monday nights, and even getting ribbons for my race efforts. But practice was something else entirely.

You see, I was never very good at swimming. I certainly was not bad by any means. However, put me against the kids on the team who were considered “good”, and I paled in comparison. I was better than the couple tubby kids, and I had decent speed, but my endurance just wasn’t there. Because of that, I was never at the front of the line in practice, and near the back was not where I wanted to be. I was also utterly exhausted before practice was ever even over. So, I didn’t much like swim practice, and even disliked it a bit…, which meant that I went less and less often as Ingrew older. This also meant that I get worse and worse, when compared to all the kids who actually attended every practice (and most kids had been on the team as long as I had).

All of that being said, I was truly surprised when I fell in love with swimming in college. I always respected and almost revered swimmers as glorious doers of beautiful sport. I always rather envied them (minus the really broad shoulders). But I also always disliked practice. It’s almost surprising that I did swim team longer than any other sport, but for the fact that my mom required us to do swim team. To this day, I do not know how I got out of swimming in Open (ages 15-18), but I was beyond delighted that my swim team days were finished before I had to be slower than everyone in my age group. 13/14’s were tough enough for my morale.

I wasn’t on the team in college or anything, but I did attend the meets that happened on campus, and I loved them. It wasn’t until my third (and final) year that I started swimming myself, though. I joined a water sports class and tennis class in order to fulfill my sport credits for school, and somehow also ended up going swimming in the pool during the nighttime opening hours. Perhaps my inspiring friend Genevieve got me to go with her one night to start, and then I kept going on my own after that.

In the water sports class, there were mostly non-athletic people in it, and so we often just had inner tube water polo on the schedule. I disagreed with the inner tubes on principal for the game, but the level of competitiveness actually got me quite irritated in class. This is not mean to be harsh, merely matter-of-fact: If you aren’t good at something, you aren’t allowed to be fiercely competitive in it. Some of these people were yelling and going crazy over this game that Inhad already passed as casual and fun, since almost no one was any good at it.

So, I eventually asked the coach if I could swim laps instead for class. He might have denied me at first, but then realized how desperately I wanted to do it instead of water polo, and so allowed me for any time we played that particular game (which was often). The first time he agreed to it, he told me that it was ‘okay, but only if you swim a mile.’ I honestly told him that I likely was incapable, but he chuckled and I realized that he was joking.

I trained at nights on the days we didn’t have class, and worked hard in my swimming. I still remember the excitement I had on the day I climbed out of the water near the end of class and told him, “Okay, done.” I had swum a mile during class, which was only a 45-minute class. I had barely done it in time, but I had done it. The coach was nearly baffled. He expressed that he had been merely joking about the mile. I told him how I knew that, but figured I’d go for it, anyway. He was impressed. He didn’t think he was capable of swimming a mile in any length of time. I had earned the recognition I had hoped in my silly endeavor, which only added to my joy of accomplishing the task itself. I was not a swimmer, but here I was, quickly swimming a mile, and able to rush off to tennis class immediately afterward.

One thing to add about that time swimming: My body was incredibly happy, and it looked great, too. Ever since then, I have been convinced that swimming is one of (if not the) the best full-body workouts around, with amazing results.

Here I am, years later, finally in a pool again. I have more to my body than I would like for there to be in certain areas, and not enough to satisfy my muscle goals for my body, so I truly hope I find a way to get this swimming to be a regular and often thing again, and that I do it. Because I really do love swimming.

Post-a-day 2017
P.S. A fellow ALT (assistant language teacher) recently mentioned how she had a student who was attempting to express that he was a swimmer, and so he wrote, “I am a breast stroker.” Gotta love things getting lost in translation. 😛

rainy days hold my heart

There’s something about rain that makes everything in life seem okay. Sure, when the rain is more like a torrential downpour that includes flooding all around town, things don’t seem so great. However, regular rain, rain like early this afternoon, with sunlight still visible here and there, that kind of rain is the perfect rain for life.

I never feel like a trapped kid on rainy days; I always feel almost liberated due to all of the creativity and possibility of life indoors for just one day. Board games and reading and art projects are a few of my favorite things, and rainy days tend to put them as the likely activities, removing the social expectation to be “more productive” with one’s time than sitting about, doing silly but fun things with ones one loves. Perhaps, too, I enjoy the fact that I can be certain that I am not “missing out” on anything out in the world when it is raining, because no one else it out doing anything either. Perhaps…

I remember a day a year and a half ago, when I lay on the floor with my cat, just hanging out while the sky released its water. We even went and sat on the covered walkway right outside the apartment door, watching the rain and the clouds together, smelling the sun-touched rain and its clouds. That was a beautiful day.

Post-a-day 2017

Mass: exercise for the brain(?)

I critique the priests’ sermons at Mass. I don’t mean to do it. It just happens automatically for me. Just like how I automatically correct anything I read, people with whom I talk, and even the conversations I overhear, I critique the sermons at church.

Grammar is one thing, of course, and it is always being tracked in my mind. I regularly use a certain phrasing or structure that I know to be incorrect, but that I know is, essentially, necessary for understanding for the listener or reader. (I also know that errors show up on here all the time, but that’s mostly due to either the previously mentioned reason or the simple fact that I am writing on my phone, as I lie in bed, ready to go to sleep… Not the best time or means for correct writing, I know, but I’m lazy, so it’s often the situation I have.) For the sermons, however, my brain decided years ago to treat them like essays. I analyze their quality in terms of how they connect with the readings, how they connect with the audience (congregation), and how they create an inspiring message and clear means for doing good in the world.

It takes a true writer to come up with a sermon that would earn an A from me. Most of the time, unfortunately, sermons earn somewhere around a low C. Occasionally, there are bonus points awarded for specific tidbits within the sermon, but the sermons as a whole are not so great right now. (This was actually one of my main reasons a decade ago for why women ought to be allowed to give sermons at Mass, even if they couldn’t be priests – not everyone is good at writing and giving speeches.)

This isn’t to say that I actually award points as I am sitting in Mass. Certainly, I do not do that. My brain is just in a sort of passive automatic critique mode, coming up with ideas for betterment in the sermon each time it hits a rough bit. I do take care to focus on the actual sermon, especially since I know myself to do this critiquing so automatically. It’s kind of like background noice, really, and so I only end up fully focusing on it when the sermon is really terrible. (Fortunately, that isn’t too often.)

Post-a-day 2017

Boys’ Choirs

This afternoon, as part of an Oktoberfest celebration, my mom and I listened to and watched the Houston Saengerbund. They are an organization all about promoting German language singing and culture, and they seem quite kind and fun as a whole. However, hearing their name instantly called to mind the name of Wiener Sängerknaben, which is the German name for the Vienna Boys’ Choir.

One of my brothers was in a boys’ choir when I was little. I remember going to their performances and concerts. I loved it. The music was always absolutely beautiful. I suppose it was one of the many reasons I have always looked up to him, thought him awesome. I think it was because of this that I was perhaps a bit more aware of boys’ choirs than the average kid. I grew up knowing about the Vienna Boys’ Choir, and dreaming of how amazing they must be. They were seen almost as gods, when compared to my brother’s boys’ choir, but how could I even imagine such a thing, when, to me, this boys’ choir, the one with my brother, was already singing music of the gods? I imagined the Vienna Boys’ Choir as perfection, and left it at that.

I never even considered hearing them perform. It was that far out of the realm of possibility.

But, of course, since my life is so dearly blessed, this unacknowledged dream was fulfilled. While I was living in Vienna, my mom and I went together to hear them sing. It was the only time I have paid to attend Mass.

When we did some research about it, it seemed all too easy. I could hardly believe that we merely had to buy incredibly affordable tickets to attend Mass at the Wiener Hofburgkapelle (Wowzer, that place is gorgeous, by the way!) in order to hear the boys sing. But we did it, and it was absolutely amazing. I think I could’ve cried during the Mass at almost any given moment, and I might have actually cried when the boys came down in front to sing a couple other songs after the Mass. I don’t actually remember. That wasn’t exactly my focus at the time.

There’s no way to describe the experience appropriately, so I won’t bother. It was a dream that I had hardly even dreamed, and it was being fulfilled. Perhaps you know what that’s like. It was magic being real in two ways: First, in their music, and second, in my being there to hear it firsthand. It was perfection (in the cold, since it was the middle of winter).

Post-a-day 2017

Malts

Today, I did what one would call volunteering while my mom was at work, and then she and I went to a shake place, so we could get a malt. I even called ahead to verify that they had malts. We didn’t want a shake. We wanted a malt. My mom briefly suggested that we just make our own at home, but I pointed out that half the purpose of going to get a malt was to be out of the house.

So, we went to the Galleria, the huge, high-fashion shopping complex in Houston, so we could try out this shake place. We got a chocolate malt to share, and then walked around the complex a bit, drinking simultaneously from straws in the same cup, as though we were little kids who could wait to have their malt. As we first walked out and saw various store names, we discovered that neither of us was even interested in window shopping. So, we finished our malt, watching the kids ice skate below, which was far more interesting than shopping.

It was a good time.

As a whole, today was on a completely different level from yesterday, and in a very wonderful way.

Post-a-day 2017

…holding out for a (anger) management position…

“The thing about giving yourself a pep talk is that secretly you know it’s all bullshit.”
That’s a quote from a Sophie Kinsella book (Remember Me?, I think). Today has kind of been a day where I got to live it. Though, since I already knew this, any effort to give myself a pep talk was dropped almost before I started. It’s not that I actually think life as I know or want it is coming to an end – indeed, the good stuff has only just begun. But knowing that has almost no effect on the feelings of total misery and hopelessness that arise when I hit places like my current one. Sure, I accept then, thank the feelings for sharing, and then move on to what’s next, but they really do suck when they’re busy hanging around.

I have been experiencing another one of these odd feelings of waiting lately. It is as though there is a set amount of time I must go before I find a job again, and then, after that time period, everything will fall into place perfectly, and the waiting will have been totally worth the misery.

However, when I get these feelings, I always have to take a first step, be proactive somehow, in order for things to fall into place. As I see myself growing more angry and on-edge each day, I find it more and more difficult to do anything productive, anything that could help with that first step. I even have some plans for that step, yet here I lie, miserable and without having taken any action for them today. I guess I would have to give up the idea that this isn’t where I want to be right now, living at my mom’s. I moved out years ago, intentionally, and had no intentions of returning for residency. Not for desire to be independent or anything of the sort, but because I don’t want to live the lifestyle of this house… at all. Nor do I want to be treated like a kid again, as my mother does automatically most of the time whenever I am here. Any time she has visited me in my own home, or anywhere else when I’ve not been living with her, she has treated me differently. Sure, she’s always still a mom, and fussed at me for this or that. However, it is not like how a parent talks to a child, how it is now.

Anyway, I have some things to get started with doing. I want to live elsewhere, and yet here I am – this is what is available to me currently. I want a good job that I love, and here am I, without employment. So, little by little, I guess I have some steps to take, including figuring out what they are. I know I’ll be all right, I really do. It has just been mentally rough lately, and I so want to be finished with this near-constant anger, annoyance, and sense of hopelessness. Guess it’s well about time I chat with Jude, hmm? (I’ll start there, and see what I can brainstorm in that mental conversation.)
P.S. Bonus points to you, if you know what movie helped to inspire the title of this post. It’s a family favorite of ours. My cat even watched it with me after I first got him. And he really did watch it. It was kind of weird that he did, really, but also totally cute.

Post-a-day 2017

Got confidence, or passion?

Today, I leave you with these words from Robert M. Pirsig, which were somewhere near the middle of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. They really got me thinking, and I like them, so I figured that I would share them somehow. They really are good thinking words.

Post-a-day 2017

Love Notes for the World

My mom sent me an e-mail today that reminded me of one of my fun activities in college: my (love) sign.

You see, when I was in high school, I was doing partner dancing. A guy in the dance community in Houston died at some point, and it caused people to reminisce often. I’m not sure if I ever met the guy, because he died shortly after I began going out dancing (as opposed to just dancing at the studio and in classes), but there’s a chance our paths crossed a handful of times. Nonetheless, I have always remembered this guy. My friend’s dad was talking about this guy, and talked about “his signs”. I inquired, and discovered that this guy would carry around signs – I think they were poster boards, actually – with various messages, and would use them when at the club for dance socials. The specific example I remember was how, if two people were really flirting or kissing, he might hold up a sign that read, “Get a room.” As this is by no means a social norm, the idea always stuck with me.

In college, for some reason, this memory arose right at the time my flatmate was in an art class and had extra art paper at home one night. It’s the really thick, soft paper that is similar to poster board, but is used specifically for drawing or painting (or possibly both). So, that night, I had a torn-off section of this art paper, and I decided to make my own sign. On one side, it read, “you should, too”. The other read, “I love you”.

I carried this poster around with me almost everywhere for the remainder of that semester. I think I even had it while I rode my bike (actually, yes, I do remember riding my bike as I held on to it). It was incredibly odd, but completely accepted by my college. I was really nervous about it at first, but very quickly became comfortable with carrying around the sign. I mean, come on… kids do all sorts of odd things in college, so this was just one more in a million odd things we would cross.

Anyway, I loved it. I miss it at times, even. I don’t exactly live the same sort of lifestyle now as I did in college, however, I think I could work out something. The thing my mom sent me was about business cards that read simply “YOU MATTER”. And I think I want to make some more of my own things, but following this fashion of a small card that can be given to others.

When I lived in Vienna, a friend found a stash of the ‘Our Daily Bread’ cards, which is a sort of deck of little cards, where each is shaped like a bread basket and has a bible verse on it (these had German on one side and French on the other). We handed them out to people at the train station late at night, while another friend would do his regular harp serenading for the late-night folks waiting at the station. (Yes, that is a whole other story.)

So, I guess, my point is that I am now planning to combine these three ideas. I don’t know exactly what I’ll put on my cards yet, but I know that I want to do them. I can start this week, and see what comes up, see how I like them, and see what to change for the better.

What I wrote with this one on Facebook, back when I originally posted it:

A girl in the WG found a bunch of little cards with Bible verses on them. One side was in German and the other side was French. I think they were made in Belgium. No one really knows whence they came, but the girl decided to start giving them out to people, specifically in the subway station when David, the harpist, would play late at nights. I am now hooked, and want always to have some on hand, that I can give out to people as food for thought – you never know what people have going on, and thus never know what might make a difference in someone’s life. So don’t let anything stop you from sharing your love and care for others. Rather, find a way to have those things that are holding you back actually Help you to accomplish that which you wish

Post-a-day 2017

The article my mom sent to me today

A word scramble: as though my words were a Japanese tote bag or t-shirt with English writing

Sometimes, the bottomless blue of life’s desperation is a swirling mass of deepened encroachment on one’s territory. The beyond selfless doubt is innumerate by the believers’ paradise of above, unwillingly taken before as a response to the redeemed unbeliever’s unity. How dare we approach such a despair without the embodiment of the soul in tonight’s united way of thinking into being? I know I couldn’t let anything less be of service in this matter of importance for tomorrow’s gain of grains, without gaining the pounds… because what else is a pigment in the imagination of your animals worth, without glory, anyway?

I love it to be lived, and beyond the walls of belief I am… and prestigiously so, indeed. Incongruous, without a doubt.

Post-a-day 2017

A few Japanese t-shirts for reference on style