Some days, staying awake 12 hours can feel like the longest, most exhausting day of one’s life.
Post-a-day 2018
Tag: postaday
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.
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?
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
Nerd-ing
I am years into having a smartphone, and my most visited webpages remain almost exactly the same as when I started using one. They are translation websites and dictionary websites. Originally, it was wordreference.com and dictionary.com. Wordreference.com was an easy one, because I had already done the research for my preferred translator for French, Spanish, and German. But, after some research into different dictionary websites, I found that I preferred merriam-webster.com over dictionary.com. So, today, my most visited webpages are wordreference.com and merriam-webster.com. (I would add in Google Translate, because of my constant use with Japanese on it for kanji translations and photo translations, but I had to download the app almost immediately, when I moved to Japan, so that I could use it almost constantly to understand things around me. Therefore, it isn’t a website I’m visiting, but an application I am using.)
I’m just a word and language nerd. It’s like that day at work, earlier this year, when I spent an hour looking up information on certain punctuation marks – I am a word nerd, and there is ample evidence to support the claim.
Post-a-day 2017
the body
Do you ever feel betrayed by your own body? Where you believe in something intensely, and then clarity suddenly sets in, bringing reality along with it, and you see easily and perfectly that things are not as they had seemed… perhaps this betrayal is the worst of all betrayal, because the body has no conscience nor malice, nor does it have an ability to love or to hate you… it just betrays you.
Post-a-day 2017
Tying up dirty boys with grammar
Changing laundry from the washing machine to the dryer (It’s a machine, I know!!!!!!!*), I saw a towel on the floor between the two machines. It was originally intended for the load of red shades earlier today, but the load was too large for comfort, so I pulled out the towel. I left it on the floor, because a towel load needed to be done today or tomorrow anyway, so why bother bringing it back upstairs just to bring it back down only hours later? But that isn’t the point.
The point is (sort of) that I saw the towel sitting there, and I had an almost-urge to pick it up and put it in the dryer with the laundry I was transferring. Not that I wanted to put it in with the clean laundry, but that, usually, whenever something is on the floor there, it is because it has fallen in the transfer between the two machines. So, I simultaneously wanted not to touch the towel, to put it in the dryer, and to move it to the dirty towels upstairs (since I wasn’t doing the final two loads tonight, but doing them tomorrow). And, for a good moment, I was worried that I would pursue the final of the three, and accidentally fulfill the second in my tiredness and in the middle of routine muscle movements, and then wish for the first.
I managed to let go of having to deal with the towel now, and I left it on the floor, for fear of the second result.
As I thought about that possible second result, I was practically distraught at how it would ruin the fact that I had already put the load of clothes on to wash. By putting one single towel in the dryer, I thought, an entire load of laundry would be considered dirty. Now, why doesn’t that work the other way around? Why does one piece of clean laundry not make a load of dirty laundry clean, when mixed together? The dirty still win out. And how come a whole load of clean laundry can’t overpower the one dirty article? The clean just can’t overcome.
And then – now, this is the point of this all – I wondered about what is life is like this, if anything. Almost immediately, I thought about gender pronouns (and particularly in Spanish and French, because I learned those first). It’s just like guys and girls. A group full of guys, the dirty clothes, is (let’s use French) ils. Add one girl, the clean clothing, and it stays ils. A group full of girls is elles. Add one boy, and it becomes ils.
So, no matter what, if there are any boys, it is ils, dirty. The only way to keep it elles is to have only girls – no boys allowed.
And how odd that the boys are the dirty laundry and the girls are the clean… so like life, and I hadn’t even intended it to be so.**
Anyway, isn’t all of that fun?! Towels to grammar to life comparisons – I do lead an extraordinarily interesting life, huh? 😛
*Japan doesn’t exactly do dryers. People are expected to hang clothes outside, because every has a stay-at-home wife, you see… not. Everyone used to have a stay-at-home wife, but the lifestyle hasn’t changed. It just takes days and days to do laundry as a solo-liver, because weather can decide to soak your clean clothes while you’re off at work, or hide the sun from them, or be too humid for them to dry at all until they start to smell of mildew… I just hung mine all indoors, because I’d heard too many stories from my brother’s issues. Plus, supposedly people steal women’s underwear from the drying clothes in Japan. I didn’t need to deal with any of that nonsense. So, I set my air conditioner to a daytime setting to keep the apartment mildew-free, which also helped dry my clothes!
** I once wrote a poem about how boys are dirty. I didn’t exactly believe any of it, but I knew that people thought boys were dirty and smelly, and I rolled with the idea.
Post-a-day 2017
Clothing
We went to the Oscar de la Renta exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts today. Inside the exhibit, a display said that Oscar de la Renta deigned his clothes so that they would inspire women. I certainly was inspired looking at the outfits alone – I was filled with some kind of hope, delight. And now, afterward, I want, more than ever, to make my own clothes. And I want to have a cape on at least one dress. If he did it, then I definitely am allowed to do it, right? I want capes and cloaks.
Post-a-day 2017
Ninja Gym: Round Two
I tried out the ninja gym again today. My brother is again in town, and one of our stepbrothers came with us to the gym to check it out. Apparently, my brother hadn’t even really considered going while he was in town this time, because of his trip being about family time and all, but he was glad that I came up with the idea, and that we turned it into family time after all.
Really, though, I didn’t just come up with the idea. I’ve been exercising specifically to help myself be able to go to the ninja gym with him the next time he was in town. I’ve slipped off the goal exercise dramatically the past two-ish weeks, but I still have done way more exercise than I was doing the first time we went together.
Now, since my brother wasn’t planning to go, he didn’t have his special shoes with him. They’re these special parkour shoes that were apparently ranked as the parkour shoe to have, but that aren’t made anymore. The soles of the shoes look like they have a car tire pasted onto them. I call them his cheater shoes (lightheartedly, of course). So, he had to be with us mere mortals today without his special shoes. (We both were laughing about it throughout the gym time.)
Our stepbrother got to nerd out with my brother in a way that made me just want to watch the two of them. They had a good time trying the different obstacles together, and they were a good matchup for it. Whatever one could do well, the other only mediocrely, and vice versa. So they got to help one another figure out things, and work through it all.
As for me, I brought my gloves, muscles, and endurance, and went for it. I didn’t attempt everything they did, for sure, but I gave a lot of things a good go. I watched for a bit to start, and then went and ran on a treadmill for a quarter mile to warm myself (it was cold today, even inside the gym). I tested obstacles I’d failed doing before, as well as loads of new ones for me, and made it through almost none. I had a really good time doing it all. My goal was not to succeed in the specific obstacles, but to attempt them, to have the ability to do something with them. I was still terrified of various things, and so still haven’t done any lâchés, but I actually got up on a bar, swung around a bit, and even considered going for the jump. I even tried a swing and jump on a ring-style lâché. I almost got it, too, but my fear got the better of me. (I actually was worried that I’d flung the ring across the room when I missed, because I was so immediately focused on landing safely, but it had only flown and landed about two feet in front of me.
So, I still had tons of fear present, and I worked through some of it anyway, and I had a great time. I can tell that this kind of thing is really a process with me, for various reasons, and I accept that. It doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on it, not at all. It is just that I have to keep making new efforts and new goals, always with the plan of going to the gym again with likely very little notice. I definitely have a goal for myself with this kind of gym. No, it is not to be like the other guys doing all the obstacles in it. Not in the least. But there are certain specific motions, movements, and obstacles I can envision myself doing… that is where I want to be with my fitness and my confidence and this gym. That’s what guides me forward in this endeavor. (Even when I have other stigmas that hold me back from my goal fitness.)
All-in-all, I had a great go my second time at the ninja gym today, and my family is still awesome – notice how we so easily turned fun exercise into family time.
Post-a-day 2017
hannah ananas 