Fashionably late

Tonight, after all of our own family activities and general gay atmosphere hanging out, my mom and I headed to my high school boyfriend’s family’s Christmas dessert gathering/social.

I sent him a message when we actually were getting close to leaving, but received to reply, and so I called him when we actually were leaving my brothers’ dad’s house.

The party was slowing down, but we could for sure come hang with him, if everyone else was gone, he said… and so I had him verify with his mom that it was still okay for us to come over (because we live over half an hour away), and she said to come on!

And so we went… and his dad’s dad was practically walking out the door as we arrived, the final guest at the gathering.

And yet, the whole family was there to greet us happily with hugs and cheer, and then hung out with us for what turned out to be about two and a half hours of good and real chat time.

We finally walked out the door, and we were shocked to find it was just shy of one in the morning(!).

But it had truly felt like we’d received a sort of VIP treatment for the party – when other guests are present, conversations are cut short/off regularly, and often only last a minute or three at most, and often less time with the host of a party… and yet we spent two and a half hours with direct conversation with the hosts of the party.

How often does that happen during a party?

Quite rarely for me, really… it’s always only if I arrive really early or stay to the end that I get the one-on-one time with the party host.

And yet we had full attention the entire time we were there – it was certainly like special treatment for this party!

I definitely feel like this puts a whole new level/dimension to being “fashionably late” to events. 😛

Post-a-day 2018

Will they get along?(!!!)

Imagine bringing your partner home to meet your family over Christmas.

… for the first time after everyone knows that you even have a partner.

Now, imagine getting extremely sick, fever and emergency room visit and all, and being buggered up in bed the entire time after the first day and a half.

Let’s hope your partner likes your family and vice versa, because they’re spending all the time together, and without you.

How terrifying that could be, but also how true a test of the match.

So far, we really like him, so it’s all good on our end… he even survived and participated well in game night fun with us all… super bonus for us.

We’ll just have to see if he ever comes back… ;P

Post-a-day 2018

Self-worth can hurt

Sometimes, we just have to re-evaluate situations that have always gone a certain way, and consider if they, when going that particular way, are consistent with who we are and with valuing ourselves.

Whenever family comes into town, I spend those days at my mom’s house, and I clear my schedule for those days – I am, therefore, nearby and always available and flexible for whatever activities everyone else plans.

I might plan a something or three myself with some of that family, but that is always extremely flexible, and I regularly move it around to accommodate other plans made by others as needed.

Today, I had a sudden discovery that I accept this situation, because I don’t want to be alone…, and I assume that no one will reach out to me to spend time with me, if I’m not nearby and readily available…., because I’m not worth it / valuable enough for them to think of reaching out to me, let alone coming across town to see me – I must go to them if I want to see them, because it doesn’t work the other way around.

That’s how I’ve seen it for years, anyway… (Whether it’s actually true or not is yet to be discovered, but it has been very real for me for quite some time.)

It hurts my heart for this little girl who feels this way…, undesired by her own family whom she loves, praises, and adores…, and then I recall that this little girl is not some third party, and I just want to shower myself with love that I somehow cannot see already, as I feel the hurt inside of feeling unwanted, and only passively loved.

(That’s not meaning that anyone wants me not around, but that nobody wants me around specifically.)

And so it kind of sucks all around right now…, but I also see that this new perspective can be of extreme value – I can begin now to set up standards and situations and expectations that support me, instead of ones that feed negatively into my life, decreasing my sense of self-worth via an excuse of, ‘Well, that’s where everyone else is,’ and ignoring the second half of the idea, where ‘and I’m not worth anyone’s reaching out or coming so far to spend time with me,’ is waiting secretly, sneakily…

So, this new discovery is still a bit difficult to stomach slash not bawl over over and over again, and I’m still glad I’ve made it – it is terrifying to face, and yet I find it to be about time for me to deal with this whole deal in all aspects of my life…

I am worth it…, and it is high time to have my actions support that, instead of the contrary.

Post-a-day 2018

Future reasonableness

People ask me what I’m going to do with a Master’s in English, whenever they hear that I am in grad school…

I’m never too sure what to say to their question, because I mostly only plan to have it be a fun fact that people discover out of nowhere about me, and that then surprises and impresses them…

So, essentially, I plan not to talk about it and to be awesome… beyond that, I’m not sure yet – it’s another year and a half away from now.

At some point, I would like to be my own sort of JK Rowling, going from super struggle to extreme financial success by writing.

Somehow, I don’t see most people accepting that as an answer to the question of what I see for myself in my future… the unreasonable has almost always seemed reasonable, even standard and normal, for me.

But it’s what I am aiming, dreaming, and striving toward, the unreasonable….

Well, here’s to the unreasonable being normal for me:

Cheers! 😉

Post-a-day 2018

My brother’s birthday

Today was the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice.

Today also was my brother’s birthday.

It was wonderful – I got to devote almost my entire day to delighting, empowering, and loving someone else, and it happened to be someone who openly appreciated it all and who truly experienced the love from all of us around him.

I’m not so sure there is much of a better feeling to be had than that…

Perhaps this could be something I organize doing more often, and not merely for special occasions… it is just so wonderful.

Post-a-day 2018

Siblings

I sometimes wonder if my attachment to objects is somehow strongly connected to how I grew up with my siblings…

You see, during my Freudian development years, I have five siblings, and it would be anywhere from all five to non of them around, depending on the current situation… and I have a feeling that it was more often none of them around than any.

I have this vague memory of having a room full of toys when I was really little – it’s just a glimpse sort of memory of this one moment in this one particular house and bedroom… I wonder if my mom kind of surrounded me by toys – granted, we had awesome, genius-type toys and books, not stupid stuff, but there might have been a decent amount of them around – as a means of giving me the company I lacked from my siblings… possibly not, but also possibly so, just not consciously so…

Or maybe I just associate with objects as very important, because those were the versions of my siblings that did stay around whenever the real ones left…

It is difficult for me to let go of things, – I let go of them nowadays, though it definitely takes a lot of work for me to do so – and I wonder if it isn’t in part due to their representing my being surrounded by people who love and care about me.

Maybe not… it was just an idea that floated around for a while, and sounded like an interesting possibility.

I do think it is kind of odd, though, how often it seems I was alone, sibling-wise, in my early years, when considering that I technically had five siblings.

That’s just how those divorces worked out, you know?

Post-a-day 2018

Doi!

Do you ever have those super obvious facts and connections that just never occur to you until you ask a blatant question about them (and then feel kind of stupid for asking about something so obvious)?

They happen to me somewhat often, I think.

It’s like the other week, for example: I was watching one of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, thinking about how they have British accents, and I suddenly asked myself, ‘Where is Port Royal, anyway?’

Immediately, upon asking myself the question, I emitted a sort of guffaw-snort sound, declaring it a duh question – I thought to myself, ‘I mean, come on: Pirates of the Caribbean?’

It was a good moment of absurdity, and not at all a foreign one. 😛

Post-a-day 2018

Milk-buying debacle

I was thinking the other night about buying milk in Japan.

It wasn’t an easy task initially – I looked up the right words to find and everything, because nothing was super obviously milk in the store, and because I had been told that there were various types of cow milk sold in Japan.

And so, having looked up my info, I went to the grocer with my words to recognize real ‘milk’, and I was confident in my chances of finding milk.

You see, I thought this one section was the milk.

And I was right… mostly… it was the milk section.

But it was also the section for many other beverages of various similarities and differences to and from milk.

I don’t drink milk, you see, so I had always just bought the almond milk, which was easy for me to figure out.

But, when I was making pralines as a gift for my weekend host family, I needed milk, so I went and bought one that was ‘100% natural’ (or something much like that), because that was what I had learned as the differentiating factor in the weird milks versus the good/real milks).

The pralines were good, but a little sweeter, thinner than I’d expected – it was my first time making them myself, though, so it was easily a possibility that they were just always like that for the recipe I was using.

A week or so (or less) later, a friend was over, and I offered her the carton of the remaining milk (which was kind of a lot), and she accepted (remember that I don’t drink milk).

Somehow, it comes out – I think she might have poured herself some milk or sniffed it and then poured it to check or something – that the milk is really off… the color is totally wrong, and it is definitely not milk.

(Actually, I think it was more than a week later, and so we’d figured the milk was bad, and she was pouring it out in the sink… or maybe that wasn’t how it happened… I’ll have to check to see if she remembers…)

Turns out, it is juice – 100% natural juice suddenly makes much more sense to me than ‘100% natural’ milk – and it makes perfect sense about the pralines having been a little off.

I was actually surprised the pralines were any good at all, let alone quite delicious, seeing as how I had filled them with some juice mixture instead of milk!

We had a good laugh over our sudden discovery.

I was sure, therefore, to look up the specifics of milk cartons when I was making pralines a second time, this time for a goodbye present for all my local friends and my coworkers.

Fortunately, it worked out properly this time around, and the pralines were even more delicious, and they totally blew people’s minds (because pralines are definitely not a thing in Japan).

Post-a-day 2018

Home, I guess

Three and a half weeks ago, I moved the last of my belongings into my new housing location… tonight, I am spending my first official night here.

‘Why?’ you ask.

Because first, there was suddenly no hot water (first two weeks); then, it was fixed, but I was in the middle of my final papers and didn’t want to mess with moving myself during that (slash to a place with no internet during that) (one week); and then, I just got nervous about staying here, because it had been so long of not being here and of being in a place where I was emotionally comfortable (at my mom’s, spending lots of time with her) (this past weekend).

What’s funnier, is that I was supposed to move in here another three weeks before I did, but it was pushed back, due to a huge crack in the ceiling from the foundation repairs over the summer.

So really, it’s taken 47 days to move from one place to another, only a few neighborhoods over. 😛

Totally nuts, huh?

And then tonight, while showering, I find that the hot and cold are switched on the shower – I was genuinely concerned at first, since no hot water was arriving, but it worked out (phew!) – and then, when I gently turn the shower-head so that it isn’t pointing really far to the side, water starts shooting everywhere.

I quickly turned the water back to the tub faucet, and worked to remedy the sudden spewing situation on the shower-head, by tightening it back into place… only to find the shower-head suddenly in my hand – apparently it was waiting to break off.

I actually laughed at the absurdity of it, it was kind of like the straw that broke the camel’s bag of laughter – I was in no way stressed, but merely finding the total humor of it all.

It was a clean break, and so I set the shower-head on the floor and turned the water back to the shower function, using just the metal tubing to which the actual sprayer of the shower-head had been attached… it isn’t as efficient, for my shower or the planet, but it works, and it’ll do for now.

Oh, the delights of life… all of this on top of the fact that I’m home super late tonight, but have to be up early tomorrow, and I started feeling the symptoms of my body fighting infection this afternoon (super sore muscles in my upper back and all the way around of my neck).

God, thank you for these blessings I have received – please, help me to be happy, healthy, holy through them all.

Post-a-day 2018

Teeth

I was thinking tonight about a recent opinion I heard (I think I heard it, anyway, but I might have read it) about teeth in the USA.

I think it might have been from a comedian, and he was contrasting Japan’s (or a country’s with a similar situation) teeth with those of the USA… in Japan, everyone’s teeth are different, and very noticeably so… in the USA for his first time, he noticed that everyone has the same teeth – orthodontia’s being standard has removed the individuality and the personality of people’s teeth here.

I had never thought of straight teeth being a means of stripping one of his individuality or personality.

Even now, though, months into digesting this idea, I find that I still want my teeth fixed up with orthodontia – I still want those straight pearly whites.

For me, I notice teeth in people… when they are bad teeth, it is difficult to see anything else… when they are good teeth, they kind of receive a mental check mark, and I move onward, seeing more of the person…

For me, clean and straight teeth allow for me to see more of a person… the crooked or stained teeth end up being a distraction.

Certainly, those shiny bright white teeth are also a distraction, because they are just so totally unnatural-looking… but that’s not the kind of teeth I’m aiming to see and have – those are a bit absurd (Think Ross Geller in that episode of “Friends” where he gets his teeth whitened, and they end up in a room with blacklights, making him extra freaky.).

Nonetheless, I still have that mental space reserved for preparing myself a way to have orthodontia and a tad of teeth whitening at some point in my life… I want my personality to show in other ways, not from the teeth I never would have picked, you know?

Yeah… something like that

Post-a-day 2018