hello my name is: confused

I've mentioned before that sometimes people look the same to me. Other times I think somebody looks like another person, but no one else around seems to agree. So today I decided to put it to the test. I'm not usually one for tests, but I recently was ridiculed for my constant confusion between Ryan Reynolds and Jason Lee, so I felt like I needed some validation.

I guess it's not as bad as I thought: I scored 94% (84th percentile) on the face recognition and 100% (93rd percentile) on the "verbal" (recognizing names in print). However, in recognizing objects, I only got 88% (55th percentile). However, I'm not really sure how scoring 20/20 still puts me at only 93. I also got 93% on the recognizing famous faces one and 94% on the regular-people faces.

still, i think everything would be a whole lot easier if everyone came with nametags.

bees and dogs can smell fear

Without going into the messy details, let's say that there once were some people who got overlooked in favor of something bright and shiny that turned out to be a big fat letdown at the end of the day. You know, kind of like how Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s character in Jerry Maguire was overlooked by his agent in favor of that guy (not Uncle Jesse) who married Rebecca Romijn. And let's say the agent never came to his senses in this particular scenario, so one of the people got fed up, took a stand and pulled a Jerry Maguire "Who's with me?" speech.

Well, I'm one of the ones who went with. And now I'm starting a new job and hoping for the best. It's not going to be easy, but I believe it was the right thing to do.

However, me and my eight-pound human head are still a little scared about it.

i think my mom even has that sari

Back in October when 30 consecutive days of posting were glaring at me from the calendar, I put out a request for post ideas. Guyana Gyal suggested I let loose a stream of consciousness--with no editing*. I tried it a few times, but most of my consciousness streams are just spouty releases of my mental circus of neverending worry: How's the job thing going to work out? Is my brother going to make fun of the woolly socks I'm knitting him for Christmas? Will I be able to make my mortgage payments next year? Did I forget to set Pushing Daisies to record? Am I going to have to run for the bus again tomorrow morning? Are H and I going to have to move to Poughkeepsie to be in the same zip code? Are we out of oatmeal?

But I just watched a movie that liquified my already-chewy center, so I'm feeling a little more consciousness-streamy than usual. It made me cry the good cry. You know the one: when the tears slip down their tracks and make a puddle in the hollow of your neck. As opposed to the ones that fall off the side of your face and into your ears. I really hate those; they're uncomfortable. But mostly because things must be really, truly crappy if I've burrowed under the covers to let it all out.

It was the movie based on The Namesake, a Jhumpa Lahiri book I read years ago and adored, not just for the premise of not knowing where you belong (with which I identify very strongly), but because there weren't any flowery descriptions or clever setups; the author just said it how it was. And honest, that IS how it was for me. The extremely specific details snuck up on me like a fight scene from the Batman tv show. The author was just going along talking about these Indian people trying to get their footing in America and BAM! I recognized the nervous excitement from snapshots of my mom getting off the plane here in 1977. POW! I saw a freeze-frame from an auntie party in my own living room in 1995. WHAM! I heard a snide remark like ones I made to my friends back in junior high. I knew these things were coming, but I had no idea they would hit me so very squarely upside the head.

I gave the book to my mother and she identified with the characters too; mostly the parents' struggle to figure out what the heck they were doing when they got here and how to hold on then let go of their children after they'd sort of gotten an idea. However, other people have said the story was too typical. Cliche even. And that might be true; this is a land of immigrants. But aren't we all just writing about what we know and hoping somebody else will read it and get what we're trying to say? I know I am, most of the time.

One thing's for sure: I've never had a story capture feelings of my own experience so precisely that the glimpse of a mustache in the cold drawer of a morgue seemed so potentially familiar that my heart constricted in panic, if only for a second.






*Sorry, gg, I had to edit. The actual stream-of-consciousness version of this post didn't make no kind of sense.

one challenge i think i'll save for later

When I went to visit my brother in Alabama last month, I noticed a glass jar on their kitchen counter with the words 'FESS UP scrawled on it in permanent marker. There were about three coins in the jar, and my brother's use of obscenities seemed pretty seriously curbed.

I was impressed. Mostly because I have known him to be quite a curser at times, which has never bothered me because I can be quite the curser myself. My dirty mouth is especially jarring to people who haven't been around me much because I come off as a sweet little ethnic girl who knits and bakes zucchini bread. And that is mostly true--until you're sitting in the passenger seat of my car when I'm following a chronic braker or I'm bumping up against a big deadline and starting to lose it. At those times, there's a veritable hailstorm of four-letter-word combinations, complete with fist-shaking and voice-raising.

I blame my line of work. In the Waiting For Reports world, there can be a lot of last-minute do-overs and attempts to accomplish what would normally take eight hours in what is closer to 20 minutes. And one common denominator of all the places I've worked is that the more important the assignment, the more drops of the F-bomb. It's not every day you hear "b*stard "and "c*cksucker" flying around the office and realize it's an exchange between your supervisors about that evening's schedule. Granted, these words are never used against anyone personally--they're just an expression of the stress that we can sometimes be under. It's so prevalent that one of my colleagues at the last place would play this Bud Light commercial every morning after she started her computer. You know, just to get in the mood.

H suggested I get my own 'Fess Up bucket and put in five bucks every time I slip up, "so then you can come visit me ALL the time!" He tends to exaggerate, but I do think that I probably should try and vent my frustration some other way. But even though I love myself a challenge, I refuse to put myself on the jar system. As you may have seen from the last 30 days, I really go out of my way to keep promises--even if that means telling my boyfriend to busy himself with something else for an hour every night he's in town or take myself to a library under construction to make sure I've maintained my oath to Nablopomo. Once I sign up for something, I'm in it for the long haul.

But dammit, only for those hauls that I think I can manage.

what? i thought it was funny

"Here. You can use my brother's ski gloves while you're in town. I don't want your hands to freeze."

"Thanks. But can you help me put them on? I'm from Southern California; I don't know how these newfangled things work."

"What?"

"Well, according to your blog, I'm too simple to operate a revolving door, so I wouldn't want to tackle something as complex as winter gloves."

"Har har har. Would you feel better if I told the Internet all about how you built your own computer from spare parts?"

"...Maybe."

I said 'who the f *** are you? I've been here for awhile'

My grandmother was a tailor and a genius. She lived with us for a year when I was seven and imparted what skills I could grasp: mostly knitting, crochet and some basic embroidery. I had already been a crafty kind of kid, so I soaked up every bit of knowhow and my Barbies were the best dressed (if you consider bulky knitwear haute couture) on the block.

But no one my age did those kinds of things. As I was growing up, my friends teased me for acting like a grandma and asked if I'd rather sit at home knitting an afghan or some baby sweater instead of going to a party. And despite the fact that I love to kick it almost as much as anyone, I can admit that there were some times I would have rather sat at home with a bundle of yarn and a good movie than get all dolled up just to dodge projectile postparty puke. If that qualified me for an AARP card, then I was ready for my senior discounts.

Nowadays, knitting has become sort of like a religion to some people. And that's awesome; there is so much more variety available in yarn, needles and ideas that I can make so many more projects that wouldn't end up taking top prize at an Ugly Christmas Sweater party. But at the same time, I can't help but feel snotty that it's become so trendy. I used to be so unique knowing how to do that stuff. Most "knitters" out there these days could probably cable circles around me as though it was no big thing.

But I guess I can take comfort in the fact that I'm the only one of my nani's 14 grandchildren who ever got the hang of it.



*The title of this post came from a Transplants song my boyfriend put on a mix cd for me. However, there are times when I actually do talk like that.

don't you dare say my people are "so last year"

I've never really been into fashion. Sure, I leaf through the magazines and marvel about how fads spin back around on one big old lazy Susan of pantleg widths and sleeve lengths, making what was fugly in high school somehow cool now. And yeah, sometimes I make clothes, but sewing is more an exercise in seeing if I can pull it off than actually parading around in something that executed my "vision." Once in awhile I'll put together an outfit that makes me feel like a million bucks all day long, but most days I'd rather sleep in a little longer than put in the effort.

But Indian clothes are the exception.

For most of my growing-up years, we socialized with a whole community of Aunties and their families who gathered once a week for tea, one-upping each other and some religion. The women came dressed to impress. Whether they were sporting a cotton salwar kameez or a two-ton gilt sari, they'd always have jewelry and shoes to match. And on Christmas, New Year's and Easter? It was a virtual fashion show up the aisles.

I understand that prancing around like that defeats the entire pious purpose of worship. But when it comes to The Community, you've gotta keep up with the Singhs. And there was no way my mom was going to let me get showed up by any of those other chickadees, so every week I'd wear a simple-but-cute outfit with matching anklets, bangles and jewelry. Even though I put on quite a showy protest of being hassled, I secretly loved having the whole morning to sleep in then take my sweet time getting ready. And being fawned on by the Auntie Patrol made it even better.

I don't make it to many of their gatherings anymore, and I kind of miss those quirky people with their junior-high drama about who didn't invite whom to what and tasty tasty food. And I have a walk-in closet full of salwar kameez, lenghas, chaniya cholis and saris that rarely get to see the sun (my extended family goes way overboard with the gifts whenever we come to visit).

Spread from the October issue of InStyle magazine, featuring saris as "the look."

On one hand, it's freaking fantastic for me to see what I grew up thinking was beautiful and elegant getting mainstream American fashion attention. But on the other hand, it just takes me back to all the other novely fashion spreads from years gone by with headlines like, "Trendwatch: Bindis and Bangles" or "This season add a touch of Spice to your wardrobe" over photos of models in skirts with sari-like trim or "Indian-inspired" blouses. Don't get me wrong, I wear a lot of that stuff. And I think it's cool that other people do, too. Indian fashion is so diverse on its own that it's really very insulting to see such a big part of my identity being reduced to a fashion fad.

It seems the magazine editors are starting to recognize this, which is refreshing. In Aishwarya Rai's caption, they gave Tarun Tahilani props as designer and have chosen a variety of styles to profile. Perhaps if I see more of this stuff in the magazines, I'll feel comfortable enough to bust out my outfits on the streets of mainstream America, too.

he even threatened to take my card

H got into town the day after Thanksgiving, and when we went to my parents’ house, my mom served up the choicest cuts of turkey leftovers along with some of her homemade cilantro chutney. Personally, I found this particular batch of the sauce to be really potent and chased my little dab of it with a big mouthful of mashed potatoes, but H was all about it, slathering it all over the turkey and going back for more and more. Frankly, I was a little surprised, but he earned some major cool points with my mom just by being himself.

The next day, we headed over to BW-3s/Buffalo Wild Wings (an old favorite from my Champaign days) and ordered up some medium-heat hot wings and appetizers. For some reason, I wasn’t able to handle it—my nose started running and my tongue was lolling just a little bit. H was looking at me like my hair had spontaneously burst into small, flickering flames, because normally I like things pretty spicy.

“That’s it,” he said. “I think I might have to revoke your Indian license.”

a long, cold post about a long, cold night

My parents have a huge tv. And by huge, I mean of wooly mammoth proportions: a 60-inch screen, rear-projection behemoth that was WAY too large for their modest-size family room. And is probably near woolly-mammoth status in age, too. The red in the picture is completely gone and in the last few weeks, the blue has steadily started to wear away, too.

So this past August, for their thirtieth anniversary, my brother and I decided to get them a new one. Mostly because they didn't want us to throw them party or send them on a vacation, and we didn't want the milestone to go unrecognized. So H helped us find a great online deal on a 42-inch flatscreen HDTV. We were thrilled.

Unfortunately, my father was not. You see, when technological items enter our home, they rarely get to leave until they've become fossilized. My father is a very handy type of person who doesn't believe things should ever break or wear down, and somehow manages to resuscitate everything, from the '80s water heater to the vacuum cleaner he got as a company gift in 1979--we used that sucker until last year when Hoover discontinued making the vacuum bags it needs. And because we keep things forever, he's extremely picky about what we buy. In fact, he had some charger-thing on backorder with a tv repair shop for the woolly mammoth that is set to arrive and bring back the colors sometime in the next six months.

So the nice anniversary tv with all the colors went back before it even arrived at the house. I was disappointed, but not terribly heartbroken about saving the money. But now that the woolly mammoth is starting to lose blue, too, we decided something needed to be done. Even if it meant shopping during the nightmare that is Black Friday.

H mentioned that the electronic big-box stores were having some sweet deals this year and the tv we had bought and returned would be another $400 cheaper. If we were to get it, that is. But I had learned my lesson, and we got my dad to pre-approve a few models before we went out there. It turns out, he only liked one: a Panasonic flatscreen HDTV 1080p model, and we had to talk him down from a 50-inch to the 42. It was advertised on a non-BestBuy website as being for $899, normally $1799.

So we knew what we wanted and we knew where to get it. No big, we thought, Best Buy will open its doors at 5 am and we just have to show up a little earlier to make sure we get in. Right? But then H mentioned something about hearing that they gave out tickets of some sort at 3 am, and that you could only get those doorbuster deals if you had one. And then my brother's ex-girlfriend called to say that she saw on the news that people were already lining up around the block at the Best Buys around St. Louis, so maybe we should drive by and take a look at our chances.

So we headed over there. Not to the store in the bustling mall area, but one in a smaller town that we figured wouldn't be as crowded. And there was still a line nearly two blocks long. At midnight. Oh, and did I mention it was a whole TWENTY degrees in Chicago that night? It was a good thing that we both were wearing two shirts, sweatshirts, two pairs of pants, two pairs of socks, ski gloves, hats and scarves. But I still sent my bro home to get a folding chair and a couple of heavy blankets. And we were the amateurs! There were people with TENTS set up, and even a group with a propane-fueled heater. We were embarking on a serious mission here, and there certainly were some haters who drove by and shouted things at the line. One even threw a cup of coffee at people.

My brother and I took half-hour turns sitting in the car. H kept me company on the phone, but after he'd gone to sleep all I could think about were homeless people who didn't have many options for warming up and how I was doing all this for a freaking television. If it weren't for my parents, I'd have really thought again. I was sitting stiffly in the chair with a blanket around my legs and the heavier one over my head, and suddenly everyone got up and started RUNNING toward the entrance, leaving their chairs, blankets and empty thermoses strewn along the sidewalk like the wake of a tornado. It was quarter to 3 am. I didn't know what the hell was happening, but flung off the blanket and ran as fast as I could, hurdling all the debris.

People who got in line an hour after us were suddenly way ahead of me. There was a lot of grumbling camaraderie, and a woman who had done this many times before explained the drill: you get a ticket for the thing you wanted--no mercy for browsers--and if you're lucky enough to get one, you have until 9 am to claim your prize or else it'll be open to anyone. We grabbed the ticket for the tv and I held it to my heart. The very vocal black woman who had come all the way from Chicago told us that the other Best Buys in her area had lines twice as long at 11 pm and that she had her heart set on a laptop. The couple ahead of us (who really should have been behind us) wanted a TomTom at $119. We forgave their cutting because we weren't going for a tv.

By then, we had been in line for three hours and some minutes. My feet felt like sheets of glass that would probably shatter into a million pieces if stepped on or used in any way, and my brother said he didn't think he still had fingers. We decided not to stay for a second item and to go home to warm up and get a little rest. But first we wanted to verify that our ticket was getting us what we had hoped for, only to find that instead of 1080p, it was a 720p television.

So it turns out the deal we waited outside in below-freezing temperatures all night for wasn't quite as sweet as we had thought.

That was kind of a bummer, but we didn't want our wait to go to waste. Plus, if my parents had any idea that we were going to have to wait outside in the cold, they'd never allow us to do it or they'd yell at us for acting like fools for a tv that they'd say they didn't really need.

The tv is up and running, now with a gorgeous picture--with all the colors. No one really said much as far as praise; probably because very few televisions could live up to the hype created by what we went through to get it. But one thing's for sure, it's a giant step up from the woolly mammoth, and I'm sure as hell that nobody's going to complain.

Or maybe her real name is Alberta

"You know, I was thinking. Why are the parents named normal things like Fred and Wilma, but their kid's name is Pebbles?"

"Yeah, and Bam-Bam? What kind of name is that? Sounds more like a caption from the Adam West-era Batman."

"Dude, if Pebbles and Bam-Bam got married, she'd be called 'Pebbles Rubble.' "

"She'd probably keep her name. The Flintstones were pretty progressive for the Stone Age."

black friday

The reason today is called Black Friday is because that is the color the tips of your toes and your nose turn after waiting in line outside in the middle of the night in 20-degree weather.

It is also the color of the hearts of people who think it is okay to cut in front of you after you've been waiting for four hours.

happy thanksgobble

I hope that all of you are stuffed full of love and good food and are snoozing away on the couch. I give thanks for every single one of you.

let's just hope we don't get stuck

The first time H came to visit me in Chicago, it was an unusually warm November weekend. We did all the cheesy Chicago touristy things like hang out at the top of the Sears tower, indulge in delicacies from Portillo's, wander around Navy Pier and catch a 3-D Imax movie about space narrated by Tom Hanks. You know, first-datish stuff. And I was doing all the normal beginning-of-the-relationship test stuff, like see if he held the door open or noticed when I was cold and tried to do something about it. Things were going well, and he earned all E's for effort on that report card. Then one afternoon we tried to enter the Kenneth Cole on Michigan Avenue--through a revolving door.

There are some revolving doors out there that are designed to accommodate multiple people. You know the ones, they're found in hospitals and all-you-can-eat restaurants, and sometimes they even have motion detectors and rotate by themselves. However, in my experience, the pie-piece spaces in a run-of-the-mill revolving door are designed for single capacity only. And when H got right into the space with me, I came to know exactly why. When there are too many people in a revolving door, there's no room to move your legs and actually make it revolve. It took some fancy coordination and Fred-Flintstone-like quick babysteps, but we finally got out of there. I turned around and said to H, "What the HELL was that?" He was like, "What? That's not how you do it?"

It turns out that they don't have a whole lot of revolving doors in Southern California. Their main purpose is keeping the cold outside and the heat inside. And because the weather is always 70 degrees F and gorgeous, they don't have a whole lot them where H is from.

He's coming back to town soon, but I'm pretty sure that after two years he's got the hang of the whole revolving door thing. I just want you all to know that I don't plan on missing any posts for the rest of the month. But I just want it on record that getting stuck in a revolving door is a legitimate excuse.

so ridiculous it still makes me smile

In my first job out of college, I worked in two offices. From Tuesday through Friday, I was at my desk in a small satellite office. And on Saturdays, eight of us worked in the huge main office that looks sort of like a spaceship from the highway. The were no suits on the weekends, so we could dress down and joke around as loudly as we wanted as long as the work got done. But outside of our small group of cubicles, the empty building was really creepy. And I've never been good with lonely places.

Cc was on that crew, too. When I first met her, I admit I was a little intimidated. She was all business, striding around the department with her black boots and New York accent and focusing on work with steely concentration. But after several of those relaxed Saturdays, I noticed her sense of humor would break through the serious facade and catch everyone by surprise.

One afternoon in the mothership, I was walking around in a bit of a fog because I had been out late the night before. I left my desk to use the restroom. It was a huge one with a carpeted foyer area with a chair and a couch, where rumors said the weird IT guy slept late at night. And that day the feminine product machine must have been broken, because there was a gigantic box of them on the counter. I remember seeing that box on the way in and thinking, Damn, that's a lot of tampons.

I went into a stall and was minding my business, when a shower of unused tampons suddenly came raining down on me. I hadn't heard her come in, but cc was throwing them over the door and laughing hysterically. Especially because my gut reaction was to yell, "Heeey!" not unlike a little kid would if someone snatched her candy. She just wanted to see what I'd do and it seemed like she enjoyed the reaction. It was so ridiculous. But for some reason, that's when I knew we would be friends for a very long time.

Even all these years later, cc can make herself crack up just by thinking about my reaction to those flying tampons; it freaks people out on the train or in the elevator when she laughs to herself for no apparent reason. And now that I know her a lot better, when I think back on that incident, I can't believe I was surprised.

Happy Birthday, cc. Now if I enter a stall whenever you're around, I know to cover my head.

there's a reason i'm always ten minutes late

My mother has this habit of "rounding" the time. Like when we were growing up, when there was a 8:30 am dentist appointment, she'd tell us it was at eight so that we'd be strapped into the car by 8:15. This was clever, but we really got screwed during the times when the appointment actually was at 8 am.

I blame her for my overly optimistic time-judgement, which has put me in a perpetual rush for nearly all of my life. It's been a running joke in the family that I've only been on time once in my life, and that was on the day I was born: Monday morning at 10:30 am. It was the target day the doctors had expected and I showed up, just as predicted.

So while I've been unemployed, I've gone through some of the boxes of miscellaneous things and happened to stumble upon an envelope stashed among old magazines and tax bills from 1987. In it were our birth announcements, Christening announcements as well as the little placards they put on our clear plastic cribs in the hospital nursery where we hung out to be gazed upon through the window after we were born.

Of course I was comparing them, because I like to win. My brother was 19 inches long and I was 19 and 1/4 inches long; he weighed 5 pounds, 8 oz. and I weighed 5 pounds, 10 oz.; even my room number was higher than his (I was in room 234 and he was only in room 232.) All was right in the world. Until I looked at the birth times. It turns out that I was born at 10:40 am, not 10:30.

Suddenly I felt like all my life, I'd been living a lie. And when I told my mother, she she shrugged it off. "Eh, 10:40, 10:30, it's practially the same thing."

From this point on, I take no responsibility for my inability to show up on time.

because if i can't feel, i cannot complain

All I remember about when my childhood dentist numbed my face was that odd no-sensation feeling. For hours, I kept making sure I wasn't drooling or if all the food got from my fork safely into my mouth. Sometimes, just to check if the Novocaine had worn off, I'd smack myself and be appalled that it felt like slapping a side of beef that was somehow glued to my head. Even though, duh, that's what was supposed to happen. But still it amazed me. Every time.

So yesterday my dad gave me this spray to resolve some of my throat issues. One spritz and the itch was gone, but it left the inside of my throat completely numb. So of course, after a few minutes I began "checking" to see if it was still working. Swallowing hard, clearing my throat, trying in vain to get the insides of it to rub together somehow and locate any sensation.

It was such a bizarre feeling, especially because it was coming from the inside of my neck. After awhile, I was concentrating so much on testing it that I couldn't really pay attention to anything else. Eventually it wore off, but instead of reaching for the spray I felt a sense of relief that I could feel again, even though it was unpleasant. I decided that these newfangled medicinal treatments are probably more trouble than how much they help and busted out a bag of Ricola throat drops instead. I'm not ready to shout from the mountaintops yet, but I'm getting there.

throat for sale

What is it about throats that makes them all sandpapery and itchy, so much so that it inhibits your ability to understand the plotline of Heroes and forces you to rewind every few minutes; however, only a few days later it's so slippery and slimy-feeling that you have no choice but to turn the television up to maximum volume to still be able to hear the Desperate Housewives' desperation over all the hacking attempts to get it back to only just feeling sandpapery?

chilling...till the next episode

People, I have a problem.

It all started when CBS had long-running football, which would push back Sixty Minutes, which would in turn push back The Amazing Race. I had to start taping Cold Case (which comes next) to make sure I didn't miss a single second of the Race, but then when football stopped being a nuisance I kept taping it.

And now I am thoroughly hooked, like a stiff, dead body hanging frozen in a meat locker.

I don't know if it's because of the redemption factor or because I like the era-sensitive musical score or the way they cut from characters the way they were back in the day to present. H has made a very logical case for how the storylines are farfetched, but I don't seem to care. In fact, I now dvr the late-night reruns and catch up on episodes when Justin Chambers from Grey's Anatomy was Lily Rush's partner instead of Danny Pino (who is an improvement, in my opinion--Alex is better in a hospital environment).

It was all good until that episode about four innercity kids who were made to stand in a box and then locked up in storage-unit freezers with their fingers cut off and it was all because some kid had a bad experience in a home when he was young and... oh I had a nightmare about that one.

But I bounced back quickly; Now I just won't watch it very late at night.

in that case, i'll just drive dirty

a) indoors, surrounded by concrete cinderblock
b) no music?
c) NO MUSIC?!?

if one of those lands on me, you'll find it in your eyeball

I do not care WHO you think you are, it is NOT okay to clip your nails during a crowded and herkity-jerkity train ride. Wait till you get outside, away from hordes of people! I have no idea where you were sitting/standing, but after I heard those clip-clip noises, there was nothing I could do to get back to sleep for fear there was an errant former piece of your body lodged in my hat or my hair.

I'm still shuddering thinking about it.