Diamond In The Rough

Kat left for Tennessee on Sunday. She is more and more womanly each time we meet. She arrived on a Wednesday night in skinny jeans and high platform heels…her teen years finally affecting her sense of fashion. I was a little taken aback by her grown-up image. She looked like a young woman rather than a girl. There are some moments I detect her flaunting this teenage hubris and it is intimidating, but underneath it all, she is genuinely natural and sweet.
Before she left, I reminded her of her father’s upcoming birthday and if she can think of anything she wanted to get him. She hadn’t any idea. I suggested either something electronic or the polished crystals that he likes so much. Without hesitation, she generously handed me $50 to buy something for him.

I feel for Kat as she talks about the dramas of high-school life. I feel like I’m watching the movie, Mean Girls again, but this time, Kat cast as Lindsay Lohan’s character. As Kat is in the midst of this conflict (and she is only a freshman!!), I am happy to witness her resilience to the rumors, gossip and jealousy that surrounds her each day. As this is all part of the coming-of-age process, there’s nothing I can tell her now that will make any difference. In fact, my message would be a little demoralizing, if I were to tell her that life is about competition and she will experience many more sessions and scenarios like these throughout. It would be wrong of me to tell her that she will likely encounter a quarter-life crisis and then a mid-life crisis…that she’ll always have a full plate to deal with.
She is a trooper, though and I adore her for what she teaches me about life and love. This summer she has accidentally called me, “mom” several times and though we laugh at this slip, somehow it warms my heart. She said her own mother refers to me as her ‘stepmom.’ What a magnificent collision, me and Bubba...and this package he brought along: Kat. There is justice after all in this mad, mad world.

Ham Dinner and Pie Production

I finished reading, Eat Pray Love. Then I went a few days literature-less. I had to let the story sink in. I didn’t want to impede my mind with any other images after having joined the author on her whirlwind journey. I found myself liking the idea of consuming more Elizabeth Gilbert, though. She wrote another book called, The Last American Man where she chronicles an actual man (Eustace Conway) who renounces modern life to return to living in and amongst the wild. The plot reminds me of Bubba and his brother and their skills in living off the land. I checked with the public library and found that all copies of this book have already been borrowed or reserved.
We celebrated Thanksgiving with Bubba’s girls at my mom’s. Kat flew in from Tennessee for the holiday break. Her and her older sister took to the kitchen and made the desserts since Bubba and I opted for the pre-made ham meal from Safeway. (However, even that required a few hours of reheating.)
I tended to the dishes while the girls worked on appetizers and two different pies. Kat made deviled eggs, mashed potatoes and a pumpkin spice pie and tasked her older sister to make a chocolate pecan pie. The pumpkin pie crust came out a bit undercooked while the chocolate pecan pie came out with a burnt crust and an uncooked soupy chocolate center. (I suggested we treat the pie like a fondue dip.) The pre-made ham dinner was ok. The sides were not worth bragging about. The scalloped potatoes, corn medley and green beans all tasted very preserved and salty. We referred to the green beans as rubber beans.
After the meal, (I really only filled up on the fresh mashed potatoes and a bottle of champagne), my mother and I talked about how the grand production of Thanksgiving never really capably satisfies the palate. She suggested that a meal of barbequed NY steaks or even my kalbi specialty would have been more appropriate. We agreed that the next traditional meal be a little less traditional. (For Christmas, Bubba and I will be winging it solo in Hawaii, so maybe we’ll find a luau or something to go to....)

A Phrase In Every Language

I am still reading the book, Eat Pray Love. I am towards the tail end of Gilbert’s story. The last chapter covers the time she spends in Bali, Indonesia. The second section was on her four-month pilgrimage to an ashram in India. It took a while for me to digest her heavy and heady descriptions of her spiritual experiences. Now I am coasting along with her in Bali, meeting a slew of characters and I don’t want the story to end. The author brings up such an array of insights.
There’s a humorous part in her book where she talks about “pretty power.” Simply put, beauty is an asset and can serve as a tool. It reminded me of all the über-attractive people I’ve known in life and how their looks did enable rules to be bent. There’s my friend, Jill who lives and works in DC now. We went to school in France together in 2000, a year before the travesty of airport security began. She showed up at the airport to discover that she had no flight reservation on file, even though she paid a travel agent. With her looks and charm, no doubt, the airline agent (a guy) ran her through security and forced boarded her on the departing plane bound for France. There have been countless other episodes I’ve witnessed of beauty at play.

While hanging out at my friend’s new condo the other night, her neighbor/colleague, Lea, came over. Lea wants to do a quick winter hop over to Spain but she does not want to go alone. Her other option is to travel with an ex-boyfriend. I encouraged Lea to go solo and promised her that she will meet the most extraordinary people. Lea described the courage of her sister, a petite blond, who has traveled the world solo, but it was an incident where her sister encountered a crazy in Greece and literally got beat up that holds Lea back.
I can recall my very first transatlantic trip at age 22 and I shared it with Lea, to give her reassurance. I booked a flight to Paris, France shortly after my then boyfriend, Daniel, suddenly died from complications of an asthma attack. He was only 24. I can still remember the intensity of my grief. I figured life was too short and it was time to see the world. I arrived at the Paris airport disoriented. I followed the mass and somehow boarded the right subway train that took me to the location of a hostel I had reserved in advance for $20 a night. When I ascended from the subway station, my eyes were treated to the most delightful sights; colorful storefronts, a veritable boulangerie and slender, pretty women in chic fashion walking amongst the hustle and bustle of rush-hour. After checking in that evening to my bunk-bed dorm room in this historical-mansion-turned-hostel (the sexes are separated), I was befriended by one of my roommates, a Korean girl who spoke perfect English. She was majoring in French literature at the Sorbonne. She described Paris to me and though it was late, she took me on a tour of Paris via subway. The following days, the hostel filled with other travelers. I met some Australian girls and other Americans who quickly became my traveling companions. Therefore, the lesson here, I told Lea, is the guarantee of finding new friends, if we put ourselves in that position.
To combat this universal fear of being alone in a foreign place, I have developed my own sure-fire technique to deal with trouble. I make myself learn important phrases such as: “Help Me”, “Leave Me Alone” and “I am Sorry” in all the languages of the places I visit. It helps to be able to have a psychological edge when encountered with an unforeseen. I have told panhandling gypsies in Italy to leave me alone after the initial and polite "Mi dispiace" fails. I have learned to keep, "Au Secours!", on the tip of my tongue through France. My story only caused my friend to insist the more that I go along with Lea on this trip. But, with the need to continue budgeting, unfortunately now is not the right time, Bubba and I have a lot more saving to do before another big, big adventure.

Still Some Routines

Come to think of it, I’m not a real routines-renouncer right now…I still have a daily set of rituals. Everyday, I wake up at 8:30 am. I put on a pot of coffee and I sit down in front of the computer to read the daily news on MSN. If something strikes me as interesting, I will spend the next few hours reading related, peripheral articles. If not, I will turn on the radio and hula hoop with music for a while.
I’ve had a voluminous week filled with errands and erratic moods. I started out my week by lugging a few bags of clothing to sell at Crossroads Trading Company. A friend turned me on to this concept of selling or trading our unwanted clothing. I was pretty impressed with the ability to swap my stuff for cash or for someone else’s unwanted stuff. I used to bring in jackets or shirts (it has to be in re-sellable and fashionable condition) to exchange for a purse or a pair of shoes. It’s also a place people bring in gifted clothing that did not suit their taste, so it’s common to find new, unworn stuff. I visited three of the four Crossroads stores in the city and successfully sold pieces at each one. I would have walked away with extra cash in hand, if it weren’t for my browsing. I ended with adding a darling Kenneth Cole leather jacket to my wardrobe.
Bubba and I went to UPS to ship out some magazines and Christmas paraphernalia to some US troops we know in Iraq. We happily learned that they will package the goods free of charge, if it is going to a soldier. (We just pay the postage.)
I spent an afternoon reading a featured series on MSN entitled: Startup Nation. It listed the top 100 start-up businesses in the nation. I devoured the articles with curiosity, scanning the businesses that I found intriguing and closest to my heart. Three of them caught my attention; there is a woman who sets up culinary trips to Italy; an American couple who renounced their professions as doctor and lawyer to provide real estate savvy and service in France; and a woman who found her niche helping property owners market their homes to vacationers.
The article jumpstarted my juices as I imagined the intricate network and connections I’d need to explore to create a start-up product that feels natural to me. But nothing solid manifested…which then led to a day of boredom and swinging moods. I reserved myself to a day of silence until my good friend, who I haven’t seen since we both left town for the summer, paid me a visit. She recently purchased her first home after devoting herself to a steady bio-tech job for five plus years. She felt she was in the position to buy. We went to her scantly furnished condo envisioning the different interior decorating possibilities. I was absorbing the fact that she now has her very own space and she does not need to answer to anyone. I felt envious (though not of the mortgage) and wondered how it’d feel the day I would be unlocking the key to my own home. Though, Bubba kept a lovely roof over my head the last five years, we didn’t have anything permanent. I like the idea of permanence but it conflicts with my current principle of being transient. As ever, my quest continues for my happy medium.

Decluttering and a Gnawing Wanderlust

The sun was out today, after a week of gray skies. We had another garage sale. Today was a good day. We sold off more clutter, especially the bigger things that have been taking up space. We sold a wheelchair (we had 3, now only 1) and two large pieces of exercise equipment. We found buyers for our inversion table and our Gazelle. Perhaps the new owners will treat them much the same way we did, be dazzled by their novelty, use them consistently the first week and then banish them into a corner in the basement or garage.
It’s a good feeling, this decluttering. For a few moments, as our stuff is being sold, there is always a slight regret on my part on whether I might need that particular item in the future, but then again, all this relinquishing is definitely enabling us to become more mobile.
Bubba treated me to the book, Eat Pray Love, on Friday. What a story, what a writer. I found myself laughing out loud and completely absorbed by Elizabeth Gilbert’s style. In just one day, I plowed through the first 36 chapters, which covered her Italy trip. The last two sections cover her India and Indonesia trips. As I carry on with my bookworm behavior, I noticed that Bubba has developed a taste for anime and Asian films. He has been on a video-watching marathon. I’m on one side of the bed obsessed with my books and Bubba is on the other side, watching his movies (reading subtitles) with TV headphones on, so as not to disturb me with sound.
These entertainment escapes are definitely stirring up my wanderlust. I am so eager for a trip abroad. I suggested to Bubba that Korea be our next destination. I’ll line up an English teaching job, we will get an apartment and we can spend our days absorbing the culture and eventually the language. It is living amongst a foreign people that we come to realize how similar we really are. I can still remember reading a magazine interview with a US astronaut. The astronaut talked about looking back on planet Earth from outer space. In witnessing such a spectacular scene, the astronaut said it puts everything into perspective, we are reminded how we are all part of the human race.

Take Copious Notes

After being revisited by the memory of my nanny job in France, I realized that I must take better notes, ample notes. It’s disappointing that I merely file these special memories away into a vault somewhere inside my cranium. I suppose that is why I haven’t succeeded at being published, yet. I don’t take enough notes and the notes I do take, they discriminate. I won’t be forgetting any time soon the rendezvous my friend and I had in Spain, when I talked us on board a French Navy sailboat docked at the Barcelona pier. Or the time I successfully invited the two waiters at the tapas-bar to take us out with simple Spanish words I recalled from high school: “Aquí-cerrar-qué-hora?-Bailamos-salsa-esta-noche-Sí?” With the broken Spanish I strung together, I charmed the boys into agreeing. “I’ll take the blonde,” I told my traveling bestfriend, Tonya. “He looks like Ricky Martin.”
Nope, these memories don’t get filed and tucked away into oblivion.
I have been rereading the book, “What I know Now, Letters to My Younger Self.” The author sought out well-known, self-made women and asked them to pick a significant time in their younger days and to write a letter addressing this youthful version with the wisdom they have now. Some of the participants included: make-up magnate, Trish McEvoy; US Senator, Barbara Boxer; singer, Macy Gray and TV correspondent, Ann Currie.
Most of these letters addressed an apprehension they’ve had in their youth. I imagined taking on this exercise. At what point in my life would I write myself a letter? I admit that I am very happy with most of the big choices I made in life, such as studying and living abroad and performing military service. Of course, in hindsight, there are always some things we wished we did. I would have found a way to invest in real estate in France back then, when the US dollar was strong. But I was young and didn’t have a stable income. I would have stayed longer in that military meeting that was recruiting women for special ops missions, but I left early.
There is a lot I know now, but best of all, I have become more self-assured and not struggling with my self-esteem. Luckily this is the beauty of being in our 30s and I hear, our 40s (and beyond).
The letter I write would address me in the present. It would simply tell me to take copious notes of my world, as it goes by, for it may make a very enjoyable book someday.

American Nanny in France

I finished reading the book French Lessons yesterday. Suddenly, stark images I haven't recalled for years, played out before me while my eyes were still open: a tastefully furnished room with stone-tiled floors and an antique-looking gold-rimmed mirror hanging above a fireplace. There were window doors all around letting in bright light. I was sitting in this room with little Pierre, the boy I watched on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
It was through a network of French friends that I met Pierre’s family in the town of Aix-en-Provence, where I spent a college year. Pierre’s father wanted him to be exposed to English. My job, at the rate of 50 FF per hour (about $7 per the exchange rate in 2000: $1 USD to 7 FF) was to pick 8-year old Pierre up from his school, accompany him the one-mile walk home and to talk to him in English until another guardian returned home, either his sister in college or the dad who commuted weekly via air and rail to a job in Paris.
The job became more like a pro-bono gig as I treated Pierre to a mini quiche or ice cream after school. (The little schtinker tricked me into buying him a chocolate bar my first day on the job saying he was allowed.) I came to learn his dad was a single parent. I got the impression his mom succumbed to a personal, bohemian calling and left for a life wandering abroad. She sent her son postcards from Africa and gift packages from India and Canada.
The forbidden after school snacks were my way of animating his childhood. I also bought him coloring books. In the exchange, I ended up learning more French than he learned English. He did not like it when I spoke to him in English. He did not like repeating after me as his French accent was so pure and thick. He would simply respond to me in French telling me he didn’t understand my foreign tongue. To show his dad that we were at least progressing, I made up games to help young Pierre learn to recite the alphabet and to count in English. That he did. The rest of the time, I made sure his homework was done and he'd chat with me, training my ears to colloquial French while we sat in that living room until his sister came home to relieve me. As I walked back to my studio in the heart of town in the evening hours, I admired the town’s architecture, the hidden alleyways and the signature shutters that dressed each window. I remember feeling so attached to the town and how everything felt so magical. I remember wishing that my life there would never end.
I also remembered Pierre’s teary eyes and his rants for his mother when I explained to him that it would soon be time for me to depart his beloved country for my home....

Hula Hoopin' Away

Bubba was busy tending to his vehicle this weekend so we didn’t have a garage sale as I had hoped. I wanted to sell off more clutter. It’s entertaining watching passerbys browse our goods and decide to buy things they may not necessarily need, such as a propane lantern with a tripod or a router saw. I get flustered with those who talk prices down even though we are already selling for bottom dollar. Bubba has an excellent method to deal with these characters. When someone tries to reduce a price in half, Bubba will double it on the spot. Someone who offers fifty cents on a one dollar item will be told it now costs two dollars. They normally retort, “But you said it was only $1.00!” With the rude ones, Bubba will simply say it is no longer for sale. I’m unable to attempt this method with a straight face so I have learned to name a higher price and to wait for a lower offer.

We had a warm weekend. Having read to the brink of eye exhaustion, I decided it was time to take myself out for a brisk walk or jog. My attempt to run for the first time since my fracture in July did not fare well. My left foot felt swollen in my shoe. My new set of x-rays explained it all. The fractured bone recalcified along the sides but not the center. I still have a crack in the center. Because I sustained it as a ‘spiral fracture’ and I didn’t have any medical intervention, the bone will have a harder time piecing itself back together. Seeking medical help now means the doctors will have to re-break the bone to insert a screw. (I still don’t have insurance, either.) So, I’m done with running for awhile. How depressing. Running is like zen to me. Desperate for an endorphin rush, I suddenly mastered the hula hoop this weekend. I have never even owned one. I spent a day researching online literature on how to hula hoop and I asked Bubba for a slow demonstration. I was absolutely determined to learn it. After trying repeatedly in hiding, I figured it out! Now, I intend to hula hoop everyday!

Literary Escape

The weather here has been swinging. Cold and hazy one day, warm and bright the next... makes for calamitous moods. My spirit is dampening, as I await the next big adventure. There’s been friction going on in my world. As much as I find myself missing San Francisco, I somehow can’t keep myself contained here. I spent years past escaping it. I’ve trained and traveled all over with the military. I even found myself relocating to France for a college year. I used to catch a winter flight to Europe annually and would rather brave the ice cold in the old world than the new.
This need to keep moving is invading me again. I have been difficult with Bubba and my mom. If it weren’t for our complicated set-up, I think I’d be in Europe now, finding sun in Spain or eurailing from France to Italy on an overnight train. But since our Hawaii trip is on the horizon I have to learn to accept this temporary monotonous lifestyle. Books are the only thing cheering me up. Put me in a bookstore and my contentment resumes. I’ve been spoiled by small town thrift stores this summer, bagging up dozens of books with the coins in my wallet. I have to get used to paying with bills for the second-hand books here. I just finished reading the novel, 'Balzac and the little Chinese Seamstress.' The title grabbed my attention. What an extraordinary meeting of worlds! Besides being a Francophile, I have always wanted to hear more stories about the Cultural Revolution in China and the enforcers and the enforced subjects of this ‘reformist’ movement. The book was described as an overnight sensation and I, too was seduced by the book, finishing it within 2 days.
Now I am on the prowl for more books to get me through this month. I picked up ‘French Lessons’ by Peter Mayle, author of the bestselling, ‘A Year In Provence.’ I plan to pick up the book, 'Eat Pray Love.' Oprah featured it but it wasn’t the endorsement that sold me. It was skimming the first page where the author, Elizabeth Gilbert described her language exchange tryst with a young Italian in Rome. Her description revitalized my memories; there I was singing along with a group of Italians playing acoustic guitar on the Spanish Steps on a hot summer night; there I was walking to a Parisian laundromat holding a glass of red wine; there I was having drinks with newly made international, traveler friends in a hillside café in Portugal; there I was looking out the bus window and seeing the breathtaking views of the town Ventimiglia as we drove out of France and into Italy. Alas…books for now are my only escape.