Skeptickle

I realized that I don’t tend to write a whole lot of personal stuff on this blog, mostly to protect myself against people who don’t/won’t understand or are just plain mean. Fortunately, I recently turned 26 and have developed a thicker skin over the past year so I care less about the approval of others.

I loved this idea from Holly Becker of decor8 because it’s so me. I’m usually neither a glass half-empty nor a glass half-full person because I can see things from both perspectives. I always start out with analyzing one side and then I take a look from the other side too.

Hmm, why are we talking about glasses when we can eat ice cream instead? Num num num...

Half Empty: Our little apartment is a mess and is cluttered due to our rapid accumulation of material possessions in the past year from wedding gifts, Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, etc. Both Rob and I have been very busy this past week so most chores have been neglected. I’d be ashamed to invite anyone over.

Half Full: I can still invite my brother over because he loves me unconditionally, sort of. We’re moving into a place that will accommodate these gifted possessions, or as I’d like to call them “artifacts of love”. I’m also being productive by doing the laundry I’ve put off doing for the past few days. Yay me!

Click below to keep on reading…

Continue reading One of those days…

…, if all goes well *knocks on wood*, we will be moving into our new home! I really can’t wait because we have seriously outgrown this one bedroom apartment that we currently live in. Seriously. Every room has gotten to the point of becoming multi-functional. For example, our dining nook is also our library and office storage area. Our living room is also our office, Rob’s electronics work area, my crafting area, exercise area, and guestroom all rolled into one. Our deck is also our storage space. You get the picture.

Our new place is an actual house! Not another apartment, or townhouse, or a duplex, or a rented room within someone else’s house. A whole house! With a yard! For someone who has officially moved 21 times her whole life, lived in 25 different places (including a Motel 6 at one point), and always dreamt of having a house, this is a huge deal. As much as I love to travel and satisfy my wanderlust, I equally crave an anchor, a place where I could call home and mean it in every possible way.

Before last month, the concept of buying a house within the next three years never even entered our plans. I mean this is California people. The average house in our area is around $500k with a $100k downpayment. We were simply not there financially, even though the interest rates were low, and the tax incentives were there, and both sides of our family and even some of our friends were urging us to buy. I thought there was no way it could happen. And then it happened (and happened fast!), mostly thanks to a generous gift from my goddess of a mother in law paired with our rather meager savings. Words cannot describe how grateful I am, how much I love my MIL, and (it’s true) for how much shame I feel for accepting the gift.

The whole house-buying process is extremely complicated and I still don’t know everything I probably should know about it. However, I think we did pretty well with what little knowledge we did know and acquired along the way. Our house is no mansion, but it will serve us perfectly as a first house, especially since we don’t plan to have kids anytime soon. It’s in a good location, in a friendly neighborhood, and is in immaculate condition because the owner is a clean-freak.

The only big problem that I can see is that it only has one bathroom . Also the power lines pole is right in our backyard so we’d be dealing with PG&E coming through occasionally. Speaking of which, as I was writing that last sentence I saw on the news of a power line falling down in Oakland and setting two cars on fire. That seems like a bad omen if I ever saw one!

Anyways, I really can’t wait to have all our stuff in separate rooms and to finally have a garden I can work on . Though, I’m going to really miss my current city and the immediate area that I’m living in now. I love the walking trail in the back and the fact that most things are within walking distance or a short drive away. I’ve also invested a lot of time, effort, and even $ into the local community, government, and businesses, so I’m hoping that we can eventually move back here when we’re looking for our next home. But for now, Rob and Sophia are off on another adventure: homeownership!

Here’s a picture of our cute and cozy cottage:

We started 2009 by celebrating my 25th birthday at the infamous Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, CA. The food was excellent, the ambiance was romantic, and the staff even gave us a tour of the kitchen!

Most of January and February was spent organizing our up-coming wedding. We had our fairytale wedding in March surrounded by nature with our closest friends and family.

Afterwards, we had a four-day minimoon in Napa and enjoyed world class food, wines, and the wonderful company of my sister in law and her husband.

We started the process of changing our names in April. Rob and I now share same middle and last names.

In May, we were busy attending all the faires and festivals in our area, including the Hawaiian May Day Festival, A La Carte and Art Festival, Boogie on the Bayou, and Maker Faire. We also celebrated Rob’s 28th birthday at Rabbit’s Foot Meadery and Chez TJ’s.

We celebrated 4th of July in Lake Tahoe and watched fireworks over the lake.

A lot of the late summer and fall months were spent hanging out with friends and catching up with people that we haven’t talked to in a long time.

The Franz Ferdinand and Green Day concert was the most enjoyable concert we’ve ever attended. We had the opportunity to witness Rob’s ex-business partner and his fiancee tie the knot. Rob got to fly internationally for the first time when we visited my aunts and cousins in Taiwan. It was great seeing them after 9 years and I learned a lot from that trip.

October was a fun month with all the different harvest festivals going on. We took salsa classes at our local community center, attended the Bridge School Benefits concert at Shoreline, and spent Halloween at a rockin’ party where we demonstrated our new salsa moves. My first interview with CASV went well and I began the 2 month long training, background check, and interviewing process.

I was busy in November with training and various events that we and our friends hosted. Thanksgiving was a success. Our friend D and I cooked up a storm in her kitchen and we had a lot of fun doing it .

We went hiking a lot in December.

I finished training, was sworn in by a judge, and picked my child. I also began interning for the city under the new mayor. Rob and I got to meet Thomas Keller at the Ad Hoc cookbook signing, which was awesome and one more thing off of my bucket list. Tonight we fly to Ohio to visit my mother in law and her family for Christmas and will be flying to New York for New Years. We booked a hotel right near Times Square so it’ll be an exciting end to an exciting year!

Now that we’re in the final days of 2009, I wonder what 2010 has in store for us…

Will Sophia be able to attend the graduate school of her choice? Will Rob get a raise? Will they be able to move into a new house once their current lease ends? Will Meow finally stand up for herself from Zahki’s bullying ways? Find out next time on Skeptickle…

Darco! He came to my rescue yesterday after I unwittingly dumped an entire glass of orange juice onto my open laptop. I mean, it was soaked. What was worse was that a few seconds after I dumped it, my laptop went into trauma-mode and shut down by itself. I knew that was bad bad bad. Panicking, I called Rob at his work. Here’s what he instructed me to do:

1. Shut off the laptop. Already there

2. Take out the battery.

3. Turn it upside down so the liquid can drain out of the keyboard.

4. Wait until he comes home so he can assess the damage.

He came home a few hours later and went right to work unscrewing everything and wiping down what he could. Like a doctor, he sounded optimistic at first but eventually concluded that “it doesn’t look good”. All I could do was wring my hands and sit helplessly on the side like a damsel in distress.

After he was done wiping down the insides, he put everything back together again and pressed the power button. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier hearing the Mac start up sound in my life! Okay, maybe it rivals the time I watched WALL-E with a theater full of Apple employees and when WALL-E recharged his battery he made that sound and the entire theater erupted into whoops and hollers. But obviously this is a different situation entirely.

So yeah, my husband is the best (and in more ways than what I had described) and I dedicate this post to him. I’m going exercise some restraint by withholding further gushing but let’s just say he’ll be coming home to something special tonight .

my mother lost her battle with cancer. She was very young, only 47 years old, when she died. Most people don’t have to deal with bereavement and grief for a loved one until much later in their lives. I had to deal with this loss since I was 17. To me, it feels like a phantom limb. Each special occasion, each family gathering, is somehow lessor because she isn’t there. This was especially true at our wedding. So to honor her during the ceremony, my brother carried with him a single peony-rose when it was his turn to walk down the aisle and placed it on the seat where she was supposed to sit if she were with us.

A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take. -Cardinal Mermillod

Everyone deals with grief from losing a mother differently. My brother shut down emotionally for six of the past eight years. He would either be emotionally cold towards me or he’d be lashing out angrily for the smallest of infractions. He didn’t even want me to mention her until two years ago. Didn’t want to think about it. He seems to be doing much better now that he had worked through those issues. Our relationship is much less strained because of it.

I dealt with it in an almost opposite way. I felt it was my responsibility to be the strong one of our family even though I was at my most vulnerable. I wanted to talk about it and work through it as much as possible. I wanted to remember her. Nothing’s more difficult than to have to accept the fact that such a disease is stronger than the strongest person I’ve ever known. It changes one’s entire world-view. I used to think certain people were invincible. Like, cancer to them would be akin to removing a mole or something. A minor inconvenience, but then we can go back to living our lives. I think all the cancer survival shows somehow convinced me of that. My naiveté still astounds me. It’s not like the cancer cells were thinking “oooh, you’re an especially tough one! I think we’ll leave you be.”  There is no discrimination in that situation. The ripples of that realization still affect everything I do and think.

There were positives that came from the experience. I value the time I spend with people I care about a lot more. I take them more seriously. I ended being stronger, more mature, and more introspective than those my age. I no longer let petty dramas into my life. I’d rather spend that time learning more, loving more, and relating to my fellow human beings. I registered to be an organ donor and a bone marrow donor. If I could give a second chance at life to someone else without taking much out of mine then why the heck not?

There is so little time. We are all given once chance to live this life well. Even if you believed in an afterlife, why be apathetic to the here and now?