Author: hannah.ananas

that 1%…

Have you ever had strongly disagreeing viewpoints with someone close to you, on a topic of great importance?  I have, and I currently still do…

You see, someone rather close to me – let’s call her Carol – has a completely different view on money than I have, and in a way that we disagree on how to go about certain things.  To her, people with money almost have a responsibility to give money to people who don’t have money.  Now, I don’t mean in the sense of homeless people, or people who do nothing with their lives.  She believes that people who work hard and who are smart just kind of deserve money, no matter what careers or jobs they have.  For me, for example, I’m kind of a high school teacher.  That maxes out my salary at around, say, $60,000 per year for a lifetime in the career.  Most of my acquaintances began their first jobs post-college making at least $50,000, and have gone up from there – they will surpass my lifetime maximum within ten years at most in their jobs.

These are the situations in which Carol believes that the money-making acquaintances have an almost-obligation to give money to people like me, – or at least to do things that cost money for people like me – since we have no chance of ever affording it ourselves, through no direct fault of our own, per se.

And this is a point on which we disagree entirely.  While I certainly appreciate when people do things like that for me, – and I know that I would do things like that for people, if I had the money (for I already do with the little money I do have) – I do not believe that they have any obligation to me.  I regularly feel as though I am being encouraged to take inappropriate advantage of friends, family members, and acquaintances, because we so much disagree on this.  For me, it is not seizing the opportunity, but strangling out every penny someone could possibly give to me.

I did, to a certain degree, select this work.  (I avoided it for a while, because I hated the idea of the salary, I really did.  And yet, here I am, anyway, teaching.  Nothing else has ever piqued my interest.  Though, I’ve had lost no experience in anything else real, really.)  But Carol believes that people need to give me their money, give me their airline miles and hotel points and all the other benefits – not so much that they themselves suffer the loss, of course, but just so that I get to benefit alongside them – that their high-salary jobs afford them.

And, while I would love to find a partner in life who’ll provide loads and loads of money for our lives, – let’s be real: I’ll probably give most of my share away – that is the only person I would expect to provide me with money or benefits of any kind.  And not because I’m lazy, but because there is something valuable for me to do, that we both see as valuable, but that is not up there on the high-salary scale.  No one else even comes close to being expected to share anything but a little time with me.  That’s why I have the friends, anyway, is to spend time together.  Not to take their money.

 

I feel like I’m not saying any of this very well, and that I definitely am not making a worthwhile point… I’m just exhausted tonight.  Today has been unique and somewhat terrible, as some days do turn out in life… I look forward to the balancing of the scale for today soon.

Post-a-day 2018

Unpacking & Unboxing

Three and a half thoughts:

1.  I spent my afternoon today opening and sorting boxes from Japan.  I finally have the much-needed winter clothing I’ve been wanting the past month and a half.  Good thing it was almost warm today.

2.  I was happily surprised that almost everything I brought back was totally practical and useful and something I really like.  I was worried that I wouldn’t like loads of it all.

3.  It’s interesting to me how Japan no longer feels like a sort of adventure.  It actually surprises me when people have big reactions to the fact that I was there, living there.  It feels the same as saying that I buy vegetables at the grocery store – it’s just something simple and everyday.  I lived in Japan… and so do millions of other people.  I know that it isn’t the regular deal for people around here; I’m clear on that.  I just mean that it feels so not special to me specifically.  It almost feels more unique that I floss my teeth every day (sometimes more than once a day), than that I lived in Japan.  I guess it’s just old news for me now. So does that mean I need some new news, then, if only for myself?

1/2.  Wait until you see the tubs of kimono that I have…!  (Doesn’t that sound like ice cream or something?)  😛

Post-a-day 2018

Dreams disregarded

Have you ever been reminded of a sort of dream you once had, and then wondered if it might still be a dream of yours?  Tonight, participating in something I haven’t done in a while, and in a slightly new way, I was reminded briefly of a dream I once had relating to it all.  I wanted it so badly, it hurt not pursuing it back then… and I pursued it somewhat, when finances allowed for it.  But, eventually, something happened, and I stepped away.  Ever since then, I’ve been kind of tentative being involved at all…, yet I saw tonight that that dream might still be within me.  And something has me terrified of it in a bad way, while part of me feels entirely comfortable and at ease with it, kind of like a, ‘Well, of course I’ll do that.  Easy.’

My stomach is quaky with caffeine right now, unfortunately, so I’ll have to see how I feel in the morning and tomorrow.  Is the quaking just the caffeine, or is it more?  (I’ve got my fingers crossed (and terrified about it) for it being just the caffeine.)  We’ll see.  Perhaps I won’t even remember it tomorrow.  That might be the determining factor, actually.  I really might not remember tomorrow, it is of so little real importance to me, this disregarded dream I once had.

Post-a-day 2018

Teatime with the girls

A sort of short story about a girl’s casual, 30-second train of thought.

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“…I go on a job interview there, and that’s how we finally meet up, and discover that we really do like one another in a dating capacity.  And so, I start working over there, and we start dating.  That’s easy enough, you see,” says Eliza.

“Okay…” replies Karen speculatively.  “And then?”

“Well, and then we realize that we totally love one another,” continues Eliza, “and we’re ready to get married.  But the question is whether we get married here or over there.  If we got married there, it would be totally classy and cool, but then all of my family and friends here likely would miss out.  But then, I think, what people here do I really care about having at my wedding?  Most of them would be invited only so I could show off my amazing husband and wedding to them, anyway.  And wouldn’t it be accomplishing the same thing by getting married in Europe instead, where my husband is from?  It shows how he’s exotic, and so am I, getting married over there.  Plus, then all the ladies could wear their fabulous hats and everything would be so chic and practically straight out of some fashion magazine.
“I would have a dress that is inspired from the princesses’ wedding dresses in London over the years, with a hint of French flare and loads of my own personality, all tied together beautifully and stunningly.”

Karen cuts her off, “You have the dress planned already?”

“Well, I’m not sure about the whole thing exactly, but I know how the sleeves would look, and they’re spectacular and classy.  And YES, they do exist, despite all this recent fashion of sleeveless wedding dresses.  So not my style.”

Karen shakes her head, and takes a sip of tea as Eliza continues.

“Anyway, so that could be cool.  And we’d have a super-fab old Church for the wedding, and that would be amazing and not cliché, because it’s actually just normal in Europe.  But then, we’d have to have some kind of something here in the US afterward.  I’m not sure what, exactly, but something to celebrate specifically with everyone here who couldn’t make the trip.  But nothing lame.  Too many people do a lame ‘Oh, we couldn’t invite all of you to the wedding, but we still want to celebrate with you’.  Aka ‘Give us presents, even though you weren’t good enough to be invited to the wedding.’  Not to be harsh, but you get the point…”

“Who’s she talking about?” whispers Lorena, who has just returned from flirting at the tea bar.

“The guy from the photo I showed you yesterday,” replies Karen, sighing.  Lorena accepts this, and begins to process what Eliza is saying.

“Then we’d continue living over there, and it’d be perfect, because it lines up with my wanting to live over there, and we’d be so close for an easy trip up to visit Christine and her husband whenever we wanted for a long weekend or whatever.  Or I could go alone super easily.”

Astounded, Lorena cuts in, “You mean you’ve already decided on wedding plans with this guy?!  You haven’t even gone on a date, yet!”

“He hasn’t even asked her out,” chuckles Karen.

Only slightly defensively, Eliza replies cooly, “Well, if we can’t agree on a wedding location and place to live, then it isn’t really worth bothering dating in the first place, now is it?  We’d be wasting our time if we knew so soon that it never would work out, yet went forward with it all, anyway.”

“She has a point,” allows Karen, raising her eyebrows.

After a pause, Lorena replies, “True…  I still hold that you’re nuts, Eliza.”

“I’ll second that,” throws in Karen.

“Third it!” laughs Eliza.  “Oh, I know I’m totally nuts.  That’s why it’s so important that a guy and I be compatible through and through before we bother starting anything.”

They erupt in giggles and laughter, enjoying the ridiculousness of the conversation, and knowing how true Eliza’s statement really is.

“Weirdo,” says Lorena, playfully.  “Okay, let’s have some lunch.  I’m hungry, and now all I can think about is smoked salmon…”

The other two frown questioningly at her.

“What?  You were talking about weddings.  Weddings always make me think of smoked salmon.”

“Weirdo.”

“Total weirdo.”

Lorena laughs, “Whatever.”

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Post-a-day 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘I am not a robot…’

You know those automated checkouts at grocery stores?  Well, my mom and I had a giggle fest at one this afternoon.

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Okay, so there’s a lady’s voice that says everything out loud for you at the self-checkout, right?  Usually, she is somewhat bland and middle-of-the-road with her interest in your shopping spoils.  “Please, enter your alternate ID on the keypad now,” she says with command and a certain ‘Hurry up, you idiot,’ edge to her voice.

This is how she usually talks.  Her sentences are prerecorded as sentences.  They are all somewhat monotonous and easily ignored.  We still mute the sound whenever we use the self-checkout, nonetheless, because we don’t want to listen to the noise, since it isn’t pleasurable in and of itself.

Today, we discovered that, when she did the recordings for the individual names of the fruits and vegetables, she did them in a somewhat happy mood.  Instead of plain old, regular “Bananas,” you have, “Bananas!”  And we discovered this by overhearing someone else’s station, of course.

Our station is silent.  My mom and I are scanning and placing the juices in our homemade bag without much conversation.  In between the few comments we have been exchanging, slightly annoyed with one another, we suddenly here the self-checkout lady’s voice come from the checkout station next to us.  An older man, grandpa style, is scanning his shopping selections.  We hear the regular monotony of the lady’s voice at first, but then, mid-sentence, we are surprised with her joy before she finishes in the original monotony.

“Please, weight your… Bananas!… now.”

We catch one another’s eye and practically convulse with silent snorts of suppressed laughter.  We aren’t at all sure why we find it so hilarious.  We remain silent, and continue our checkout routine.

The cashier lady voice continues a few moments later, “Please place your… Bananas!… in the bagging area.”

We bite our lips, finish checking out, and walk out the door.  By the time we are in the parking lot, we are almost falling down with deep, full laughter.  Getting into the car, I attempt to repeat the voice’s phrases, and fall apart at “Bananas!” both times.  “The fact that it was an old man…,” I manage to say, shaking my head, “…and she was just so… Happy… about the bananas…”

My mother agreed, and we continued our fits of laughter as we drove off from the store, feeling ridiculous for having laughed in the first place, but enjoying the incident nonetheless.  At least, now we know that the fruit and vegetable names are happy recordings.  I guess the lady likes fruits and vegetables.  Or, rather… at least, she likes bananas.

 

P.S.  Yes, I know that I am ridiculous.  I am aware.  😛

Post-a-day 2018

 

Full Moon Dreams

Today was the first day of the year.  Tonight was the closest the full moon will be to us all year – it is called a Super Moon, and this one in particular, as I understand it, is called the Wolf Moon.

Occasionally, we do collages – my mom and I, and sometimes others in our family – with the full moon, following the theme of the specific full moon.  They are specifically dream boards, done in collage style, using magazines that my mom pulls out from somewhere.  Tonight’s full moon, the Wolf Moon, brought with it the question, “What are you hungry for?” for the dream board making.

We went out and looked at the full, bright moon at 20:24, while it was at its fullest here, and admired its brightness, shining directly through the clouds.  We even – well, I did, anyway – got a brief view of it without all of the clouds, through one of those occasional holes that do appear in the screen of clouds that sometimes occur at night.

When we came back inside a minute or two later (it is darn cold out tonight), we began our boards.  My mom’s and my own always look drastically different from one another, yet someone tied.  Even through our artwork, one could tell that we are mother and daughter – entirely different people who share so much, one could never list it all.

As I made my dream board, I kept saying in my head, “I am hungry for…”  Over and over again, I said it as I flipped through the unsatisfactory pages of the magazines.  This is one of the funny, read “odd”, things about these dream boards: It always feels like nothing will be quite right, and yet the board turns out somehow perfect-feeling in the end every time.  The trick is just to flip through, almost passively, and just notice what is on the pages, while keeping in mind what the topic of the search is.  In doing that, things will just pop out, and, when they do, I pull out the page, set it aside, and continue flipping, almost without pause in the flow of the flipping.  At the end, I kept feeling that I needed space.  I hadn’t found anything that really fit it.  I flipped through the last magazine and found a large, white sofa.  It had space.  So I went with it.

Putting it all together was intended by my mother to be on this piece of cardboard she’d taken from a cookie box I’d just recycled today.  However, I almost never do that, because what I pull out for my dream board never fits on the cardboard.  I did put the collage together on the cardboard, though; it was the support for pressing the pages together as I glued them in place (which was because the carpet gave in too much).  My mom laughed when I mentioned that afterward.  How I put it together was almost exactly as I’d unconsciously laid it out on the floor while tearing the chosen parts out of the pages I’d set to the side.  It was just kind of almost finished already for me.  It almost always is.

So, I looked at it all to take it in before gluing.  Yes, space was still not properly represented.  I knew exactly what page I wanted.  I found it quickly, tore out the whole thing, and then discovered that I wanted to use the whole thing.  I easily stuck together everything rather quickly, and then my board was completed.  Though, the glue was really crappy, and that made it kind of odd, mashing the stick glue onto the magazine pages as the stick bent oddly one way or another.

Anyway, I was happy with my dream board when I finished gluing.  I always make it a point to put it somewhere that I will see it easily and often (and hopefully in a good mood), and this one is no different in that sense.  It rides on my wall in my bedroom, next to my door, in a spot that I couldn’t miss it, even if I tried.  And it is lovely.

Happy Wolf Moon, everyone.  For what dreams are you hungry?

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Post-a-day 2018  (The first one, anyway)

Longest and Shortest Years

Okay, please exclude February 29th from existence for this reading and any further conversation on the topic.  Kay, thanks.  😉

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Thus ends the longest year of my life.  It began in Tokyo, Japan and ended in Houston, Texas, thereby making it 13 hours longer than any regular year in my life.  Last year, 2016, was the shortest year of my life by 13 hours, because it was reversed: It began in Houston, Texas and ended in Tokyo, Japan.

Before this year, my shortest year had been 2012, beginning in Houston and ending in Vienna, Austria, making it 7 hours shorter than usual, and making 2013, which ended in Houston, 7 hours longer than usual.  Those years are now in second place for the shortest and longest years of my life.

Fun, huh?  😛

When I was little, I made several lists of things I wanted to do in my life.  I remember writing into one at some point that I wanted to live the longest and shortest year possible one day.  That means spending one December 31-January 1 in the first time zone, the following in the last time zone, and then the third in the first time zone again.  I now actually have friends in both locations, so it is totally possible.  Let’s see if I can pull it off, shall we?

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Just to drive me nuts, these had to clash with leap years, instead of working with them.  I’ll get there some day, I imagine.  I’ve gotten so close without even putting forth a conscious effort already.  I can only imagine what I’ll pull off in the future.  And I know it will begin with the January first of a leap year, whenever it happens.  🙂

Post-a-day 2017