(A room that is important to you)

In the notes section of my phone, there is a list of writing prompts. The third prompt is “A room that is important to you.”

==

My parents have a hot tub. The hot tub is just the latest item in a long list of reminders that I don’t live at home anymore.

How could they go from normal parents one day, to hot-tub-owning parents the next?

“But where is it?” I ask my mom over the phone.

“On the deck,” she says.

“What deck?”

“Oh yeah. We added a deck, too,” she says. Her tone is so casual, like she doesn’t realize she’s telling me about major home renovations. “You guys should come visit. You can sit in the hot tub.”

While it sounds amazing, especially now that California is having some actual winter weather, I can’t quite get used to that whole hot tub thing. I mean, I still feel homesick for the way our house was when I was a child – eight and ten and fourteen years old. It hasn’t been like that for almost half my lifetime.

I knew everything was different when I went to college. Not my freshman year, so much, when I still came home all the time and most of my stuff was still up on my bedroom walls. But once I started living in apartments, and my room at home started becoming storage, it was a slippery slope to “I don’t live here at all anymore.”

Probably moving to New York right after college had something to do with that. I didn’t go home that summer, except for a week or so before we got on a plane from SFO to JFK, in mid-August. And then I was gone for three years and the transition became even more complete.

I’ve been back in California for four and a half years. I have never in that time moved back home, and where would I have lived if I had? On the futon couch in the living room, probably. Despite multiple passings-off of my childhood stuff from my parents to me, there is still, inexplicably, more of my stuff in my bedroom, although it becomes more and more hidden among things that aren’t mine. My stuffed animals stick it out, though, sitting on a shelf above the bay window, covered in dust and, I’m positive, spiders. Every time someone suggests I go through them, I shiver and say I will as soon as they’ve all been run through the dryer or something.

The same thing happened to Drew. His room became an office, although his parents had to wait until we came back from New York and essentially stole all his bedroom furniture. But he and I are both in the same position of peeking into our childhood bedrooms and remembering them in a totally different way than they are now.

A few years ago, (after the my-bedroom transition but before the deck and hot tub,) my parents added a bathroom and walk-in closet onto their bedroom. Growing up it was always a point of contention/argument/self-righteousness (depending on one’s mood at the time) that our house only had one bathroom. But after the kids were out and it didn’t matter anymore, they fixed that. It’s good for resale, I guess, but I don’t even want to start thinking about that house being sold to strangers. It’s cool to see the addition, and cool that it happened, and surreal that there’s a whole add-on to the back of the house that wasn’t there when I was growing up.

I guess in a twisted way, that’s the room that is important to me. Because the addition, followed soon after by the deck and the hot tub, is something that I had no part in, I didn’t help at all with the planning, in fact I didn’t even have an idea something was up until it was already going down. And that just means that I definitely, unquestionably, 100% don’t live there anymore. The addition changed my childhood home in a way that putting in hardwood floors, moving the furniture around, and storing all the craft stuff on shelves in my old room does not.

Most of the time this doesn’t bother me too much. If my childhood home isn’t the same, well…neither am I, certainly. And it’s not like I want to stay in one place and never grow or change or move away.

But I’ve gotten so good at writing things down and journaling and documenting and taking photos – I wish I had been better at that at ages eight, ten, fourteen, eighteen. I wish I could remember more about all those summers spent at camp, or my 8th grade graduation dance, or some random trip my friends and I took to Cupertino my freshman year of college. (What the heck were we doing in Cupertino??) My memories of childhood are fuzzy. When I try to remember, I just end up picturing myself now, but like, wearing t-shirts with cat pictures and drawing with chalk pastels and making mix tapes.

On second thought, maybe the 90s are just not an inspiring time to keep constantly at the forefront of your mind. Maybe it’s good enough to know we made it through them unscathed.

6 Plot Holes in Disney’s “Frozen”

There was A LOT of hype around Disney’s latest film, Frozen. So when Drew and I finally saw it, we were both like, “Oh, okay…I mean, okay.” Some reviewer was running around calling it “The best Disney film since The Lion King,” which…no. And our friends were really talking it up.

But we walked out of the theatre with a lot of questions about a lot of plot holes.

WARNING: There be spoilers ahead.

For instance:

1. Wait, why is Kristoff’s family the trolls? Wasn’t he the son of one of the ice men in the opening number? If he wasn’t someone’s kid, what was he doing there? Where’d he get a sled and a reindeer?

2. I’m not sure I understand why the trolls have to modify Anna’s memory. There’s no other way to fix her? Why do they have to create this big fear in Elsa and her family? (See number 6)

3. At the end. How does Elsa suddenly understand how to thaw everything with love? What the heck does that mean? And how does one project it onto a frozen kingdom?

4. Why do the villagers suddenly accept Elsa and her sorcery, when they were previously so scared of her? But now it’s ok because she made us an ice rink?

5. Okay. So Elsa is a sorceress, Anna takes off after her, and leaves Hans in charge of the kingdom. He rules benevolently, handing out food and blankets to people. And then he mourns Anna when they all believe she is dead. No one in the kingdom knows about his treachery…So why do they all applaud when Anna punches him?

6. Do the trolls have to apologize for ruining so much of Elsa’s life with their fear mongering?

So, like I said, Drew and I both walked out of the theatre a little bit blah. We were both glad that Disney had made this movie, found it enjoyable if not thrilling, happy it’s part of the Disney oeuvre, etc etc.

But then, a crazy thing happened. Over the next 5 days, we must have watched the video of Elsa’s (Idina Menzel’s) coming-of-age song, “Let It Go,” a total of 2000 times. That is only a slight exaggeration. The view count for this video goes up by, like, millions every day. It’s insane.

Here, watch it now:

And now tell me that you’re not like, drooling to see this movie (even if you’ve seen it before). The more I watched that video, the more I was like, “Yeah! I can’t wait to see Frozen again!”

I started spotifying the soundtrack, and making coworkers watch the “Let It Go” video with me.

For our holiday gift exchange at work, someone gave me a CD of the soundtrack. And I wasn’t disappointed.

One night, I just searched out scenes from the movie on YouTube, then watched some behind-the-scenes footage with Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel…then just watched some Kristen Bell videos. (She is adorable, by the way.)

So now, yeah, I’m a fan of Frozen.

But I’d still like to get answers for the questions above.

(Or am I being too picky? Should I just…LET IT GO??)

ISON as we know it

The other day, my dad asked me whether I’d heard about this comet. I had, in fact, just noticed the super bright…star? Venus? incredibly slow-moving plane? in the sky that night.

My dad was not super clear on the specifics of the comet, so I had to do a bit of googling. And here’s what I’ve concluded:

1. The comet’s name is ISON.

2. In the next month, it will either a) fly around the sun and away again; b) melt to oblivion when it gets too close to the sun; or c) crash into the sun.

3. I probably don’t have to be afraid of it.

4. But I still wish people wouldn’t say things like, “There is absolutely, positively, 100% no way that ISON will have any effect on earth.” That just seems like asking for trouble.

Because here’s the thing. Comets remind me of a book called Life As We Knew It, written by Susan Beth Pfeffer. It’s a YA novel, so naturally it’s the first of a trilogy. A trilogy about a regular, everyday comet that crashed into the moon, and surprisingly, knocks the moon closer to the earth, which interferes with the tides, volcanoes, etc etc etc. I had such anxiety while I was reading this series, which is all told in diary entries. From the characters realizing something is wrong, and rushing to the grocery store to stock up on canned and nonperishable food, to volcanoes covering the earth in a layer of ash so no food can grow, to a terrible, terrible scene in an elevator…this series gave me super bad dreams. I still think about the story all the time (obviously).

I so wish we had a pantry that I could pack with bottled water and canned goods. I’m sure this is nothing. But still.

Love locked

My parents recently went on a trip to Italy and Spain. When they returned, they posted hundreds of pictures on Facebook, which I dutifully scrolled through last week, liking some so that they would know I had looked at them. One of the pictures they posted was this one, from Borghetto:

I have a vague memory of hearing about this phenomenon before, but thank goodness my uncle posted a link to the Love Lock wiki page, so I could refresh my memory. You write your names on a lock, fasten it on a fence, and then pitch the key into the river – because your love will never be undone. (It’s a little cheesy, but I think that kind of stuff works in Europe and in the Napa Valley.)

Thank goodness my uncle also posted a comment that there is a love lock bridge in Napa, just a quick trip north of here. Which set my mind to working…

Today is Drew’s and my fourth wedding anniversary. We didn’t make any plans to go out tonight. (I mean, Survivor is on.) (Also, we have this baby.) But over the last couple weeks, I’ve been tyring to think of something cool we could do together to celebrate.

I figured Napa would be a good day trip – we could get brunch, seal our love with a $6 padlock from Ace Hardware, and we could even take B with us. So on Sunday morning, we packed up plenty of baby accoutrements, stopped by the hardware store for a lock, and drove up to Napa.

When we found the restaurant I had randomly picked from Yelp, we saw the long line outside and drove on by. But we were in downtown Napa (I guess?) and so we just parked and walked around. We found a place that wasn’t crowded, and had plenty of outdoor seating, with a view of Napa Creek. After brunch, we walked the half mile to the Napa Valley Wine Train, where the bridge is located.

There wasn’t much call for ceremony, so I snapped the lock on and we took a couple pictures. We debated throwing the keys away, but in the end kept them as a keepsake. I like keepsakes. Then we walked back to the car, stopping on the way for milkshakes.

(It was pretty bright out.)

It was a fun trip. I’m glad we did it. I’m glad that my uncle posted all those comments (thanks, Uncle Pastor!), and that my parents uploaded 336 pictures of their trip, and that I took the time to look through them because I thought that’s what a good daughter would do.

Four years. We’ve now officially been married longer than we were just boyfriend-and-girlfriend (not counting the 9 1/2 months that we were engaged). That’s nice.

I take him for granted, sometimes. This has been a pretty emotional year, full of ups and downs (although even the downs have their silver linings). I think the roller coaster nature of this last year has shown me how strong our relationship is, which is good to know. I’ve heard that the first year of marriage, and the first year of parenthood, are two years that test relationships. So far we’re getting an A+.

Happy fruit-and-flowers anniversary! Four more years! Four more years!

A 1-year-old is an unreliable wedding guest

A couple weeks ago, we took B to a wedding. A francy wedding.

(I meant fancy, but I accidentally typed francy, and I immediately fell in love with that new word I just created.)

This francy wedding took place at St. Dominic’s Catholic Church in San Francisco. Drew and I were a little nervous about the whole day, for the following reasons:

a. wedding of a medium-close family member who might not be forgiving of 1-year-old antics;
b. ceremony at 3pm, reception at 6pm across the city;
c. our particular 1-year-old doesn’t always behave well in francy situations;
d. also we have to dress up

As a bonus thing to worry about, our car situation meant we were taking my parents’ bug, which is stick, so I had to drive.

We left plenty of time to get ready, get everything in the car, and get to SF. We got there about 10 minutes before 3:00, which was perfect. We parked right outside the church, which was perfect. I hopped into the backseat to pull B out of his carseat…and was greeted by an absolutely remarkable smell.

We opened the trunk (do you realize how small a VW bug trunk is??) and laid him down in it, button down shirt and all, to change his diaper. It wasn’t until I had the diaper half off, and Drew was digging through the diaper bag looking for the wipes, that I remembered I had used up the last wipe and forgotten to put a new package in. There were some exclamations of dismay. I mean, we were on the side of the road, outside a francy church, dressed in our best, trying to change our squirmy child in a trunk, and we had no wipes.

Luckily we had pacifier wipes, so we survived.

We got everything put together and went inside. The church was beautiful. We sat down in the back row, on the outside aisle, ignoring the waves from Drew’s family to come up and sit with them. Through a mixture of mouthing and mime, he told them, “Our kid is going to lose it so we need to be able to slip out quickly.”

We were sitting down for about 4 minutes, and the family members were being escorted in, when B opened his mouth and let out a “Aawwwk?” And then his eyes got big and he looked around, as he realized what a great echo there was in here. I jumped up and tried to jiggle him to keep him occupied, but once he started squawking, there was no turning around. We saw the bride come in, and then I ended up taking him out to the narthex, where we walked back and forth for the entirety of the service. Sometimes we went outside.

But B was smack in the middle of wanting to walk everywhere but needing to hold hands, so I spent an hour alternating between being kind of hunched over, and tossing his 25 pounds into the air to make him laugh.

After the service, we had all this time to kill, and we thought if we drove around he might take a nap in the car seat. Well, we were wrong. So we drove all around San Francisco, went up to Twin Peaks and got gas, and got caught in the worst ever traffic on the way downtown to the financial district, where the reception was.

Despite being the most anxious about the reception, it was actually really lovely. As soon as we got to the table, one of the waitstaff came over and said, “Do you want a high chair?” and Drew and I were both like, “YOU HAVE HIGH CHAIRS??” Also, the first toast of the evening was by the bride’s father, and rather than being champagne, it was a tequila shot with cinnamon and orange. So good. B lasted for a really long time before he started melting down (like 9pm – like 2 hours after his usual bedtime) – although right at the moment when we decided it was time to get him out, they started other toasts, and then one of the bridesmaids gave like a 15-minute toast and were trapped on the side of the room opposite the door.

Anyway. B’s first wedding, and it was francy, and it was inside a Catholic church, and it was late at night. And he did great!

Blurry backwards camera!

Anne of the Island

I’m still reading…but honestly a little bit ready to get through Anne’s House of Dreams so I can get back into “real” reading.

In the meantime, I’m still having fun with this typography thing. Although I might be delving too deeply into various background patterns. It’s starting to look like something that might be found on a Geocities website circa 2001, with glittery rain falling and roses waving back and forth. I’ll scale it back for the next one.

Typography: Anne of the Island 1

I read Anne of Green Gables in middle school, but I never got around to reading any of the sequels. About two years ago, I found sequels 2 through 5 at a used bookstore for $2 each, so I bought them, but then just stashed them on the shelf. (It wasn’t the first time.) Apparently there is at least one more that I should track down.

So I’m currently reading my way through the first 5 books (I did start at the beginning with Green Gables), which is just delightful. Gilbert Blythe, I’m pleased to report, is just as much of a hottie as certain of my friends have always maintained. Anne and Gilbert getting together, although obvious from the beginning, is a welcome payoff in Anne of the Island (#3).

This quote came from a letter Anne’s mother wrote to her husband, about Anne as a baby. (Obviously I changed the pronouns.) (The font is called Dark Roast; the arrangement is mine.)

From that same book, there’s another quote, longer and more complex, which I’m hoping to tackle next.

What’s In My Purse?

Apparently, “what’s in my purse?” is a thing. I mean, like, a YouTube/tumblr/Pinterest kind of thing. So last night I was cleaning out my purse and I thought, Hey, why not?

1. Star stickers! I just carry these around even though I never. ever. use. them. (I should figure out a way to use them.)

2. Sports Authority loyalty cards. I bought 2 baseball pitch counters there for work, accidentally signed up for an account, and then got promo emails from them practically every day for a month. I finally unsubscribed and last night, I finally finally threw out these cards.

3. Placecards (for Drew, B, and me) from Jocelyn and Kevin’s wedding!

4. Assorted feminine hygiene products. I can 100% promise you that I will eventually pull out one of these, when I’m looking for a pen, in front of the Artistic Director or something.

5. 1 stack of post-its; 1 rubber band.

6. 1 tin of Altoids smalls (cinnamon); 1 cinnamon-caramel Worthers (sugar free) (I ate it this afternoon)

7. 1 fancy ladies’ hook so I can hang my purse from the table and not have to set it on a bar floor. Might come in handy if I ever went to a bar. (Fun fact: I was given this for Christmas in 2009, in my first round of working at TW.)

8. 3 button batteries from a Baby Einstein Maritime Octopus. The octopus stopped playing music, so I ripped out the seams to get to the music box, in the hopes that if I replace the batteries it will work again. Why wouldn’t they make it easy to get to? (PS. The batteries were 3 for $1.17 on Amazon.)

9. Assorted Sharpies and other pens. (The ones I will be going for when I humiliate myself in front of senior members of my company.)

10. Headphones! I suddenly can’t live without these, from listening to my audiobook on my commute, to talking on the phone hands free, to music at the gym.

11. My planner, still opened to Memorial Day weekend. For some reason I just don’t find myself as dependent on it anymore.
11a. Birthday card from JA!

12. Giant wad of keys.

13. Annex to giant wad of keys (Drew’s grandma’s house keys)

14. Baby powder for those days when I think my hair is “clean enough” but I’m terribly wrong and my bangs show it.

Not pictured: pile of old paycheck stubs; pile of trash; 2 letters marked “return to sender,” 1/2 of a…crayon? How on earth would that get in there?

…I’m guessing this whole “What’s in my purse?” thing is more interesting when Beyoncé or Kate Middleton or someone does it.

Throwback Thursday: Memoir

I pulled this gem off my old LiveJournal. I’m actually surprised (but very grateful) that I still remember the password.

This is from August 5, 2005. I’m really working hard to restrain from editing. (Oh, and as far as I can tell, the title means nothing but was probably the angstiest word in the song I was listening to at that exact moment.) Enjoy!

==

COLLAPSE

I have been at UC Davis for three years, and the number of things that I have exclaimed “Yes, let’s do that!” and then never done is astounding. Here is a brief list of examples:

1. Run through the maize maze (Woodland?) in the fall.
2. Gone, with any sort of regularity, to the Farmer’s Market. (And “But it’s SATURDAY MORNING” is no longer an excuse, as they have Wednesday evening FMs for which I know I am awake.)
3. Mini-golfing…Scandia…Sacramento…wherever.
4. The Davis Public Library: If I’m missin The Babysitters Club, they’re only a couple blocks away.
5. The MU Games Area.

Until tonight.

A bunch of us went to go bowling. It’s cheap, it’s accessible, it’s fun, it’s not too athletic (heaven forbid we do something cardio), and we all claimed to be bad at it. (Which was a huge lie, be careful of Drew, he will try to hustle you, but he’s bad at hustling.)

As far as I can see, bowling is bowling (*unless it’s $1.35/game and $.85/shoes*) and I thought it was all going to be very…familiar. Bowling. Ugly shoes and socks with shorts (what else could possibly be hotter?), and people watching your back, golf clapping for you whenever you turn back around but secretly chanting “gutter ball!” to themselves.

HOWEVER, UC Davis, well-known for several things, cows and a ginormous library being not the least of them, also features a “Rockin’ Bowl” to put all other “Rockin’ Bowl”s to shame.*

*Note: Writer has never actually been to any Rockin’ Bowls, nor does she know whether the term is “Rockin’ Bowl” or “Rock & Bowl,” but frankly, neither does she particularly care, and if you are still reading this, maybe you should just marry editing if you love it so much.*

So it seems to me that “Rockin’ Bowl” is made up of 4 main components. I will go through these for anyone who is unlucky enough to have never experienced the majesty.

#1. The music. Already loud when you walk in, and louder when you descend into the bowling pit, I mean area, it is turned up by a kid who can’t be older than 18 who tight-rope-walks down someone’s gutter to crank up the volume on the speakers sitting mid-lane. The number of times this exchange occurred is more than I want to remember:

*something unimportant*
“What?”
*repeat something unimportant*
“What?”
*repeat something unimportant, again, and louder, and also in a slightly embarrassed tone*
“What?”
“Never mind, it wasn’t that funny.”
“WHAT?”
“NEVER MIND!”

Then both parties would pretend to have heard the other, and that bit of conversation would be over.

Oh the glory.

#2. The music videos. Four large projection screens plummet from the heavens, and for the next…I don’t know how long it lasts. From then on, music videos are played on these screens. Music videos for songs whose names I only vaguely recognize. Music videos that are not nearly as clever as Britney Spears’ “Lucky” or Blues Traveler’s “Run-Around.” Music videos with angsty-looking men whose voices remind me sort of Phish, except I’m not thinking of these men as fondly as I think of Phish.

If I wanted to watch music videos, I would have been sitting at home whining about not having MTV. Or I would be going to Erin’s gym to “work out” and watch TV. It would not have occurred to me to go to Rockin’ Bowl at the UCDMU Games Area.

#3. The lights. Strobe and disco, namely. As soon as the fluorescents dimmed and the colored lights began to spin and I began to think about maybe getting a headache, I was also transferred immediately back in time to high school dances. (Probably more middle school, honestly, because in high school I went to 1 dance that was not a prom or formal (neither of which seemed to feature strobe lights to the degree of your everyday school dance), and I left that 1 dance pretty early.) So, middle school dances. So why was my impulse, on the strobe lights, to make out with someone? I was definitely not doing that in middle school.

Hold up, I wasn’t doing that in high school, either.

#4 and finally. The fog. I didn’t notice it for awhile (or maybe it didn’t get going until a little bit after the lights, etc., made their appearance on the scene), but once I did, I was transported to the backstage area of the Mondavi Center, kneeling on the ground, with my head in the Coke machine, filling it with fog so that the guy who played Eddie could trip over me to get in it before all the fog drifted out and we missed his entrance.

It’s funny that I “hated” Rocky Horror so much while it was going on, but now I can totally look back fondly and think “Awwww. Backstage at Mondavi, dressed up with Katie and Tyler and Eric. How cute. And foggy.”

So while, for a minute or two, I was thinking to myself, “Man, I suck at bowling…good thing I’m good at mini-golf,” I spent some time post-our-game checking out the other people playing, and I realized that most people are not that good. Except for this one girl who got three strikes in a row, I saw on her screen. There was a little cartoon of bowling-pin Caesar in a chariot. But I digress. I don’t think that the UC Davis Memorial Union Games Area is the place to be super-concerned about your bowling skillz. (I am, frankly, more worried about my inability to write “skills” instead of “skillz.”)

So all in all, I guess I learned a good lesson tonight.

And that lesson is, remember to bring socks so I don’t have to wear socks that I find in the backseat of the car, socks that dump sand everywhere when I turn them right-side-out.

Oh, and I also learned not to stress about my bowling abilities.

Back in my day

In high school, I sucked at sports but my friends didn’t. So in order to hang out with them, I kept stats for the softball and girls’ basketball teams. Kind of dorky, but it was fun, and I was good at it, and I have a lot of good memories of away games (and home games too, for that matter).

But things would be very different if I were doing this in 2013. For example, two vanfuls of girls used to drive back from an away game in Ukiah or Willits or Fort Bragg or Colusa or wherever. When we got back to the high school parking lot, the one coach (a father of one of the girls) who had a portable phone would unpack this briefcase so we could all call our parents to come get us. The reception was terrible (likely the fault of the isolated county, and not the briefcase phone).

 

Oh, the good old days.

An even better example – but one that it’s possible I’m slightly misremembering – is the time we were headed up to Hoopa for a big annual softball tournament. (I think it was softball.)

This was a very exciting event for us, not least because it was so far away, and we would have to spend the night, and we could probably also fit in a trip to the big mall in Eureka. (No mall in our hometown!)

(I loved the Bayshore Mall growing up, but now Yelp gives it 2.5 stars and calls it a “small town mall.” Ouch.)

The way I remember it, we drove all night long, but now that I’m looking at the the driving time and everything…we probably just left early in the morning. I was in a car with our chemistry/physics teacher, beloved by everyone, his wife, and his daughter, who was on the team. Side note: I love everyone in their family. They were and still are awesome all around.

I remember sitting in the backseat in a pile of blanket and pillows, and driving through the dark. Marilyn was asleep in the far backseat. (Like I said, it was like 2am…right?) There was some weird station on the radio and they were playing Dr. Demento and some other similar song, and the only part of it I remember is an increasingly insane “Poppies poppies poppies poppies!”

When the internet first became the thing that it is today, I searched for that song a little bit, but now I think I prefer not to ever find it and know what it is.

It was pouring rain and I guess it eventually got light outside but I don’t really remember that part. I do remember arriving in Hoopa to find out that the fields had been completely flooded and the tournament was canceled.

I guess there was just someone hanging out at the school, telling everyone that it was canceled. And probably, they made some phone calls in the morning when they had to cancel the tourney. But if the only number they had was the school, and no one was at the school…and none of us had cell phones that the calls could have been relayed to anyway. So we made the entire probably 5-hour drive for no reason.

Well…not NO reason. We did go to the mall and go shopping and get lunch or whatever.

And then…we drove back home. I guess.

We were in Lakeport this weekend and so I’m being sweetly sentimental about a lot of late-90s/early-2000s things. But, I’m also very happy to have internet and a smartphone and all the improvements technology has brought into our lives. I’ll even take the complications.