Still Not Considered Trilingual Despite The Spanish & American Sign Language Flowing Off My Lips And Hands

Whenever I go to fill out an application and I get down to the part that says List Languages Spoken or List Languages Fluent In, I always stumble on this one and usually end up only marking English.  For one thing, I am used to be pretty fluent in American Sign Language.  But it doesn’t really make sense to list it as a spoken language since it isn’t…spoken.  And then there’s Spanish which, I’ll be honest, I’m not fluent in at all, but which I can stumble along brokenly.  I really hate this and wish I could speak multiple languages.  Hey, does it count that I can sing in Italian? And possibly French? Because I can!  Oh, except for that little problem where I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING.  It always makes me feel like a stupid American to admit that I am not biligual when so many other people in the world are at least bilingual and know their mother tongue as well as English, plus there’s people who know even more languages, like my sister-in-law who can speak Visayan, Tagalog, and English.  And then there’s my mom.  Let’s not even talk about my mom.  Oh okay, fine.  At one point in her life she was offered a job as a translator with the U.N., as in the United Nations, because she could speak so many different languages.  I don’t remember what all they were, so I’m going to guess here, and I’m sure she’ll correct me: English (obviously), French, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Swedish, and a bit of Japanese.  Um, hello!?!  Where did I miss out on the language gene? She turned the job offer down, by the way.  And what is proper: translate or interpret?  I’ve never been too sure as they seem to mean the same thing to me.

So today for about 2.5 seconds I pretended to speak Spanish fluently. And it scared the pants off me because I worried that the person I was speaking to actually believed that I really was fluent and might want to continue the conversation, leaving me floundering around going, umm…. “No comprendo, lo siento.”  But I needn’t have worried.  Here’s how it went:

I was wandering the aisles of TJ Maxx as I sometimes do, looking for a tiered fruit stand that I had seen two months ago. Of course there were none left.  Of course I should have bought it two months ago when they had a dozen of them lying around.  And then I heard,

“Hola”, a little voice said.

I looked up and saw a very cute little munchkin of a boy with curly red hair and olive toned skin, about three years old, grinning up at me.  He was with what appeared to be his two older sisters, about 6 and 9 years old.

“Hola”, I replied.

“Como te llamas”? he asked me.

“Ciarra”, I replied.  “Y tu?”

“Cristobal”, he said.

“Cristobal? Mucho gusto.” I said.

They all smiled at me and then I laughed and said, “That’s all I know!” The oldest girl laughed and said, “Well at least you tried! I was surprised!”  Yeah, I was surprised, too.  I wondered how much further this little three year old was going to take the conversation because I was soon running out of replies and plus I didn’t know if I’d understand much more out of him.

But it was all good.  I love it when things like that happen, don’t you?  Now if only I could put it on my resume that I can speak Spanish fluently, then I might be more satisifed with myself.

Bad Manners, People, Bad Manners

Remember in the “olden” days before cell phones and call waiting and even before answering machines when you’d call your best friend to see if she could play and the phone would ring, and ring, and ring, and you’d sit there, listening to it ringing, afraid to hang up because, what if she and her mother were just now getting home from the grocery store and had run into the kitchen to grab the phone and you had hung up right then and there, and then you never knew that she was home, and she never knew who called so she’d never be able to call you back, and so you let that darn phone ring about 100 times before hanging up? Oh okay, just one more ring!

Well, that sort of happened to me today.  Except that I was waiting for someone to come into my office to sign checks.

See, my boss is on vacation and so he has arranged for a friend to be able to sign checks when he is gone.  I called her this morning (actually I called last night but as it was already 4:30 I doubted she’d be coming in that late to sign, and then she never called back anyways) and she asked me when she should come in to sign.  I (foolishly!) told her “anytime” because I didn’t anticipate her coming in being such a big deal.  Evidently it is.  So she said she’d be in before 2:00.  She adamently said “BEFORE TWO”.  Okay. Great.  It’s about 11, 11:30-ish, I can wait until 2 to go to lunch because I do it all the time and who knows when she’ll be in other than that it will be sometime between now and 2.

So I wait.  And I wait.  And I wait some more.  And still I wait.  And it’s 3:30 and she hasn’t been in nor has she called and I’m getting pretty annoyed.  I mean, thankfully I had brought my lunch with me to work and I just ate it at my desk. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get a break to run my very important errands on!  But I can’t go anywhere now, can I, because she might arrive at any time.  She might show up minutes after I’ve left and if I’m gone for an hour then she can’t possibly sign the checks which means I can’t possibly send out our bills nor can I (most importantly) possibly deposit my paycheck!

GASAHK@Q#$%JK:#%J@:KL#$J@#!:KLAJFSL:DAKJ%@#$:L^J#@:L$%~!~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOL. I don’t know why in the world that linked itself above.  I wonder what it is linking to? LOL.  That is funny.

Oh, guess.what.

She just drove in about 40 miles an hour and skidded into a parking space driving a convertible with the top down.

How.freaking.typical.

@$^*%$#@#$$@#^*&*$&%@#%#^!@$#!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I mean, it’s not the fact that I had to wait.  I don’t mind that.  But she could have called to say, “Hey, I can’t make it in until 4:20 because I have a doctor’s appointment.”  That would have been cool.  Then at least I could have left and done my business. 

*sigh*

I suppose I set myself up for that when I said she could come by anytime.  I suppose I am the twit who lets people walk over me.  I suppose I could have just left anyways and been all “see ya later, chick!” if she had shown up.

Okay.  I need to visualize some nice lazy tropical waves or something and get my blood pressure back down to normal.

At any rate, I’m off to deposit my CHECK! and run my other ERRANDS! and just leave for the day since it’s an hour before quittin’ time and I never took my hour break. So THERE!

So rude.

Hub-E’s Newest Creation

Have you ever been into one of those old houses that has never been updated and you walk into the kitchen and there are the ugly wood countertops, all waterdamaged and full of scratches and stains? No? Well, I used to work in a house in the foothills of Carpinteria that had been converted into an office and there were countertops like that. Which is why I referred to that as a descriptor. But really, that office has nothing to do with this post aside from the fact that it had ugly wood countertops that were old from the 1960s or so.

Anyways.

One of Hub-E’s ex coworkers gave him a big hunk of old ugly wood countertop that had been pulled out of a waterdamaged kitchen.  Hub-E thought it would make an excellent butcherblock cutting board and this weekend he turned that idea into reality.

Behold!

All he had to do was sand it down, trim it, route the juice grooves into both sides (so it’s reversible!), and route the edges to make them softer. Then he sanded all the edges and added cabinet pulls leftover from another job.  Isn’t he handy?

What a good example of recycling and reusing! Thanks, hun. Now I’ll be expecting you to chop your merry way along of multitudes of raw fruits and vegetables every day.  There’s no excuses now!

(Something about that top photo makes him look like Lance Armstrong.  Is it just me or can you see that too?  I think it must be the hairline.)

Help! I’m Starving!

Today I thought I’d try out this new cafe in town - The Healthy Palate - that I recently heard about that serves only organic food that is all natural without preservatives, chemicals, fake sweeteners, etc. They have an array of smoothies, sandwiches, salads, and teas.

I quickly browsed the menu and my eye fell on the Caesar salad: lettuce, tomato, onion, olives, and nuts or chicken. I ordered it with the chicken. It sounded good.

The person preparing it came out to tell me that the chicken was frozen so did I want something else. I said I’d just go with the nuts (trying to be really, really good by eating nuts for protein rather than meat).

She made the salad and put it into a brown paper bag. When I got back to the office and pulled it out of the bag, here’s what I found:

A bed of romaine lettuce, slices of tomatos, slices of onions, large green olives staring me in the face like eyes, and a bunch of cashew nuts sprinkled on top.

I’m scared.

I keep looking at it, willing myself to just dig in.

See, when I saw “Caesar salad”, I was picturing a baby greens type of salad or at least something other than romaine. I can’t stand romaine. It’s gross. I’ve gagged on it before and it wasn’t pretty. Also, green olives? *whimper whimper* Ummm, I thought these would be black olives. Help? I’ve never liked the tart sour ewey taste of green olives. It’s bad enough that I’m forcing myself to eat raw onions, which I thought would be compensated for with chicken, black olives, and baby greens. And then there’s some kind of dark brown mystery dressing in a separate container. I wonder if it is an anchovie dressing? This salad is unlike any Caesar salad I have ever seen. It doesn’t have the creamy dressing, the parmesan, or the croutons. I suppose this is the “natural” version of a Caesar salad. What have I gotten myself into?!?

I’m so starving, but this looks absolutely scary. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to eat it. I’ll let you know in a few minutes, mkay?

********

(Some time later)

Ahem! *wipes mouth with napkin* I’m finished. Stop the presses - SHE FINISHED HER SALAD! So here is my review of the Unexpectedly Different Caesar Salad.

It took me a few minutes of staring at it, willing myself it eat it. Then I poked my fork into it and stabbed some tomato and lettuce onto it and held it there, hovering over the salad, for a good minute. It’s like when you’re about to take your first dive into a cold pool or the ocean and you stand there, knowing that cold water is about to cover you.  If you’re like me, you don’t inch your way in starting with your toe. No, you just take the plunge. That’s how it was with this salad. I took the plunge and took my first bite. Once I got past my initial distate for the crunch of the romaine lettuce with its watery taste, I found that the salad wasn’t half bad. The dressing was surprisingly very spicy, but in a good way. My lips are still tingling so I’m not sure what sort of spice was in it. Maybe black pepper. With my next bite I decided to try a green olive with the lettuce. I totally forgot about pits being in olives as I bit down on it. I slowly made my way through the salad, determined to eat all of it. With the exception of four very small pieces of onion, I did.

Overall it was a pretty tasty salad, although next time I think I’d want the chicken just to round it out a little more. I don’t mean to say that the cashews weren’t good: they were excellent! I was actually glad to have them there in the salad, and a lot of them, because they lent a good, nutty, crunchy taste and texture and balanced out the tart of the olives and the spice of the dressing. The only thing that was annoying was the pits in the olives (I had to use my fingers to pick the olives apart to discard the pit) and the fact that I couldn’t pick the cashews up with my fork very well. I had to keep popping one or two into my mouth to go with the rest of the bite that I picked up with my fork.

Would I get it again? At first I thought no way. But after I got about halfway through with the salad I thought “this isn’t so bad”. So, yes. I would get it again. But I’m not sure it would be my first choice. I guess I’ll have to go back to try out other items on the menu.

The Cucumber Boat sounds scary: half cucumber filled with nut pate, carrot, tomato and salsa. Oi. I might have to challenge myself and try that next.

Oh, and about those “tart, sour, ewey green olives”? They weren’t half bad. In fact, I actually liked the meaty texture of the flesh once I got them picked off of the pits. So, I guess I’ll have to eat my words on that one. You could say I…ate my salad. 

Har! Har! Har!

——————————————————————————-

(Second update)

AHA! I was RIGHT! I was just looking at my receipt and I see it says “BLKPPR/B.VINEGAR”. As in black pepper/balsamic vinegar. For the dressing! I knew there was a load of black pepper in it! Boy, am I good.

Update

Thanks, everyone, for your words of encouragement. Some of you were more blunt than others *ahem!*, but overall I am happy with the response. Hub-E has been very supportive, too. We were at our local health food store on Saturday and he picked up a detox/cleanse kit which we started on Sunday. So for the next two weeks we are doing the detox and also eating as much raw food as possible. This means less cooking, more finger-food type meals, and lots of veggies. It’s a challenge for me, but I’m up for it and willing to do it for the sake of my health.

Yesterday Hub-E made a lot of food for us to keep us from being hungry and not craving sweets.  For breakfast we each had a banana.  Then later in the day he made sandwiches as follows: rye bread, toasted with a bit of raw butter (raw in dairy means it’s unpasteurized), slices of raw carrots, slices of tomatoes, slices of raw cheddar, and a few strips of high quality bacon.  It was quite tasty. I believe there might have been some horseradish mustard on it or some Vegannaise, but I’m not sure.  On into the evening we had two small dinners. The first one was more of an appetizer: a platter of sliced zucchini, a large garlic that he roasted on the bar-b-q, slices of raw cheddar cheese, a bit of horseradish mustard, and some sliced white onion with a bit of sauce over it. It was sort-of like eating cheese and crackers except that the zucchini was the cracker. I had to go very light on the mustard because the flavor is an odd spicy one for me that is just “eh” or so-so. But overall they were very tasty (especially the roasted garlic…mmmm!!…we ate the whole thing!) and filling. Two hours later I was still satisfied, but Hub-E was getting hungry so he made part II of dinner:open faced meat sandwiches. These were made of one slice of rye bread, slices of raw tomatoes & carrots, a spread of leftover homemade salsa, sliced raw cheddar, and some sliced ball tip that he had bar-b-q’d a few days ago.  Pretty good, too, although the salsa had marinated and gotten really strong in the last few days since I made it. I woke up in the middle of the night with some seriously foul onion and salsa breath. It was awful. But hey, at least it was all fresh, with the exception of the meat. It was uncooked, veggies, and unprocessed.

For breakfast this morning he made us strawberry-banana-egg-protein powder smoothies. I also brought our last peach to work for a mid-morning snack.

Go me! I’ll see how long I can keep this up. At the end of the two week detox we plan on doing the yeast elimination diet to rid ourselves of built up sugars & yeasts (candida). Which basically means doing an all protein diet but it’s just for two weeks to get rid of the yeasts and stuff. Then you can reintroduce foods one at a time and see how they effect you. I know some people have mentioned that I might have a thyroid problem, and I think that may be partially true, although I think that the ill-functioning thyroid is a byproduct of a candida problem. So we’ll see how things go in the next month.  I’ll be sure to give you all regular updates. Thanks for stickin’ with me through this!

I’ve Got The Blues, But I Ain’t Singin’

News flash: I’m depressed.

It doesn’t feel like my normal blues that come and go that most people get. No, this is something more. Something deeper. Upon realizing that I am depressed (and thus the reason for my lackluster work performance, my cravings for being at home constantly, and my general malaise and obsession with getting lost in one fantasy novel after another) I went back in my mind and figured that this has been slowly coming on over the last month or so. It only made itself apparent today as I sat on the edge of my bed for twenty minutes, staring off into space, thinking about nothing, yet obsessing about why I’m depressed.

Was it about finances? Despite the dismal state of our finances, that’s not really the reason why I’m depressed. True, our finances are pretty bad right now, but I generally don’t get depressed over them because I know that things will be looking up in the next three months. What I am depressed about…is my weight. Now if you don’t feel like reading about a fat girl whining and crying, then stop here. Otherwise, if you have any empathy, feel free to read on. But please realize that what I need right now is not someone to tell me to Buck up! or Snap out of it! or But you’re still really beautiful and you always look so good the way you dress. I know I’m a good dresser, I always have been. And for the love of Ben & Jerry’s, please don’t tell me You’re just a big girl. You’re big boned. If there’s anything I despise being called it’s “big boned”. That’s a sure-fire way to make me feel like a military tank, thanks. What I really need right now is just a listening ear, sympathy, and encouragement to get off the fat train.

The thing is, I haven’t been depressed about my weight in quite awhile, maybe eight years, I’m guessing. Mainly that’s because I’ve held my weight relatively well within five to ten pounds for all that time. But eight years ago I had only been married for a year and I think I put on thirty pounds in one year. Maybe even forty. It was awful. I cried and wailed and moaned and called myself names. Eventually I got over it. Well, I sortof got over it. I’ve never been completely over it. It’s always lurking back in my mind. Then one time about four years ago I was at the doctor for my annual check up and I saw on the doctors chart that I was labeled as “obese”. That was the first time I had ever been called obese and it hurt, it really hurt. I suppose I’m beyond the “obese” category now. I don’t really feel like I am; I still feel like the healthy, balanced person inside that I used to be. That is, until I see a photo of myself. Ugh. There are so many issues I have with myself, but I won’t get into all of them right now.

It’s funny. Yesterday I read an article on MSN about this doctor guy who took these women who thought they were horrible and ugly and fat and made them assess their bodies and put a blown up picture of their underwear-clad bodies on display for all of Chicago to see in order to get feedback on it and tell the women how ridiculous they were being and that they were truly beautiful. And they are beautiful! But guess what? One of the women complained about wearing a size 14, 16, and sometimes an 18. Dude. If I could wear a size 14 or 16 I’d be jumping up for joy and parading around in a swimsuit. When the doctor guy told the women all of the great comments that passerby had given about the blown up photo of their bodies, it made the women feel better about themselves. For me, the cynic, I thought “Yeah, well, they’re just not telling them about all of the horrible comments that people made!” and thoughts like “Those women are still lighter and skinnier than I am and I can guarantee you that if you put my body up on a huge poster that you would not get good results.” *sigh* I know. Real good self talk, isn’t it? I know, I KNOW! I’m supposed to have good self talk. Whatever. Good self talk sucks.

So anyway. This is a disjointed post because I’m just typing what comes to mind and letting my fingers flow even though I have other things I’m thinking but they sometimes don’t get expressed the way I want them to. So as I was saying, I haven’t been depressed about my weight in some time. But now I definitely am. I mean, all I see when I look in the mirror is a pregnant stomach that is not pregnant that pooches out further than my boobs which everyone (thanks, everyone, I love this) tells me are so huge. Being told I have huge boobs also depresses me although I don’t know why. Well, maybe I know why. For one thing, I’ve always had big boobs and being in highschool with all these perky little popular stick figure cheerleaders going past you, the tall Amazon girl with the big boobs, does not cultivate confidence. Especially when word gets back to you about loathsome guys making rude comments about your boobs. And then there’s the whole thing when I was in my late teens/early twenties, before I was married, when I was told more than once that the group of guys that I was hanging out with hated big boobs and only like small-chested girls. Wow. There went my deflated balloon. I had no chance with any of those guys that I might have had a crush on because “they don’t like big chested girls”. Thank you very much to the person who told me that. You’ve done me a great service all these years. Yup. (Granted, I married Hub-E who is not averse to big boobs, thank goodness.) Plus there’s the fact that I personally associate smaller-boobed women as being physically fit. I mean, everywhere you look, in Lands End, LL Bean, and JJill catalogs, what do you see but slim women with small boobs? You just don’t see women with big boobs unless they are modeling for Avenue or Lane Bryant.

Enough of my boob tirade.

My point was that my stomach pooches out even further than my boobs. This is a new development in my figure and it absolutely disgusts me. All these years of being heavy and “obese”, at least my boobs were bigger than my stomach. But suddenly I’m always bloated. I eat one pancake and I’m full. I eat one egg and a piece of toast and i’m full. I eat one sausage and a half a cup of rice and I’m stuffed. And my stomach is just not going back down. I may as well stop wearing jeans and skirts with a hook and eye closure. I may as well just join the stretch pant brigade and get some elastic waist pants.

The hard part is that I feel so utterly hopeless, as if I have so much weight to lose (100 pounds, to be honest, but I’d even be happy with 60), that I’ll never be able to accomplish it. How the heck does a person lose 100 pounds? Sure, I could quit work, abandon my life and walk across the United States like that one guy did. Except I’d probably end up divorced by the end of it if I wasn’t killed along the way first. Or I could wallow in mysery and pig out on nothing but carbs and icecream and junk food and just make the whole sugar craving cycle worse and worse until it’s a vortex that sucks me in and kills me. Or I could go on a 3 week “fast” where I eat nothing but vegetables, legumes, and water in order to break myself of the sweets addiction. The problem with this is it would probably require three weeks off of work because I would be a total, emotional wreck coming off a sugar craze like that. And I don’t have three weeks to take off work. Plus somebody would have to take away my ATM card so I couldnt’ sneak to the store and buy sweets and hide them in my car or desk at work (which is sadly the case right now….*sniff*).

What I’d really, really like to do is, I’d like to join a program. A healthy program. One where I could meet with people who are trained in this to encourage me and keep me going on the path to being healthy. Sure, it’s easy for my mom or Hub-E to tell me that I don’t need a counselor and I could do it on my own if I really wanted to, that I already know what to do. But they don’t understand. This is a deep seated emotional problem for me that I need help with. I don’t have the belief in myself that I can do it on my own. I need people to help me, you know? I need people who are motivating and encouraging and who have been there but concquered, who know how I feel.

I heard of a place called The Healthy Way that I’m very interested in. Only problem is, I can’t afford a program right now and they are located a good 3 hours away from me. Sure, I could wait three more months until I can afford the program, but I need help NOW, dangit! Plus Hub-E bummed me out by saying that a 3 hour drive was too far to go. But I don’t think it is. Not if it’s worth it. It’s only every 6 weeks or every 10 pounds lost. I can make the sacrifice of driving that distance if it means I get specialized treatment and care, especially if I see results.

In the meantime, I’ve started up my exercising again. Despite what you may think, that I’m a fat person who’s a slob and looks gross and doesn’t care about my appearance, I actually do care quite a bit and I have always been moderately active, physically-wise. I am constantly starting and stopping exercise programs, though. Sometimes I walk at work. Somtimes I walk at home on the treadmill. Sometimes I sign up for swimming laps. Sometimes its aerobics. The point is: I’m not a lazy person. I guess it’s just that I get tired and stressed and depressed and sick and life just seems to interrupt my exercise programs and then I get off track for a few months. This time, though, I’m going to try to stick with it as long as possible. Because I want to look like this again:

 

I know, I know. It’s not practical to think I could go back to my highschool weight. But.. wait a minute, it is practical! Plenty of people do it!

 Thanks for staying here long enough to get this far. I appreciate it.

Update: I got home from work today and, after giving Hub-E his daily end of work hug, I told him how I was feeling, all bloaty like. He opened the fridge and pointed to the probiotics. “Been taking your probiotics?” he asked. “Noooooo”, I whined. “Well there you go”, he said. ” ‘Get on your bike and ride!’ ” he sang as he wiggled his hips to the silent music that played in his head. I couldn’t help it. I cracked.up. I knew what he was referring to, and he even said it out loud for my benefit in case I wasn’t certain: Fat Bottom Girls by Queen. LOL. What a guy. That’s my guy. Always able to make me laugh in the face of gloom. Thanks, Hun.

The Flickr Montage That Everybody Is Doing, So Why Not Me Too?

Okay, like you don’t already know how to do this, but here it is just in case:

You type in the answer to each of these questions below into Flickr.com. Then you choose one of the photos from the first page of results on Flickr to represent the answer to your question. Then you put the pictures into a collage maker of some sort.

So, here goes:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

The results:

 

And just in case the pictures aren’t self-explanatory, here are the answers:

1. Ciarra
2. Chicken Tikka Masala, an Indian dish (although this is a tough question for someone who loves food)
3. Ernest Righetti High School. That is a picture of Ernie Righetti himself.
4. Lime green. Hey, it’s been in my top running now for about 7 years. But I also really like a certain shade of turquoise, sherbet orange, and other bright, summery, juicy colors.
5. Gerry Butler. Phantom of The Opera. Dear Frankie. Timeline. Hellllllo.
6. Spiced chai latte. Hot or on ice.
7. Tahiti.
8. Coffee Heath Bar Crunch.
9. Gardener. Again, another tough question. Well, if I’m going to be a career woman, I’d like to be an interior designer/decorator. It I am fortunate enough to be a homemaker, that would be great!
10. Friends. This one was also difficult. I could have put a number of things here like love, peace, unity, family, etc.
11. Sweet.
12. Chiada. This is actually a picture of my bathroom at my old house. Horror story, I know. At least it’s not my house anymore.

When Fashion Goes Awry

First off, because this is relevant to my story, did you heard about Southern California’s heat wave last week? Well, the town I live in should normally be experiencing a marine layer during this time of year, meaning fog in the morning, burning off by noon, and high’s in the low to mid 70s. In actuality, in rare form, in a very unexpected turn of weather, we have been heating up every day going from hot to hell-o operator! Today when I left the office for lunch my car’s temperature gauge read…wait for it…117. That’s not a typo. Of course, it cooled down as I started driving to, oh, 111. And there it stayed. In my entire life of living where I do, I can’t ever remember a time when it was 111.

Anyways! My story. My point. So last night the house got down to a balmy 73 degrees. Oh, that’s great. We had all our fans on, the down comforter was kicked off the bed, and the top sheet was draped across one leg while the other leg was sprawled out on top of the sheets. The window was open and we tried to sleep. We tried and tried and tried to sleep. Well, we must have fallen asleep at some point because along came 4 a.m. and we suddenly woke up with the dog whining in our face, wanting to be let out. Once we were up we noticed that darn almost-full moon shining brightly into the room. The bright light, combined with the dogs being outside and running around playing, followed by whining at the window to be let back in an hour later, made it so we tossed and turned for the next two hours. Which meant that we finally fell back to sleep at 6 only to be waken by the alarm at 6:30, only to turn it off and fall back to sleep again until 7:30.

Which meant that I had 45 minutes to get ready before I had to leave.

Which meant that I did not have time to wash my hair.

So I decided to do what anybody would do: wear a scarf wrapped around my head to disguise the oil pit that would soon take up residence in the frontal sections of my hair. I pictured myself looking all cute and hippie-like, like the super-pretty Holly. Isn’t Holly cute in her head wrap? That’s how I wanted to look.

 

Buuuuuuuuuut, NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! Instead I ended up looking like John Belushi on Animal House.

Not one of my more attractive moments. *sigh* Don’t you just hate it when you can envision something in your mind, a certain look, but it just is, shall we say, not in your genes? It’s very disappointing.

Oh well. Until my inner thin person reveals herself, I’ll just have to work on being funny like John Belushi, John Candy, and Chris Farley. That or be really, really obnoxious.

How To Be A Good Teacher

The other day when we were at the Live Oak Music Festival, I had the following experience with my 7 year old nephew:

“Here you go”, I said, handing him a dime that I found lying on our blanket.

“It’s only ten cents!”, he remarked as he tossed it away from him.

I picked it back up again. “It might only be ten cents, but did you know that if you have just ten of these, just ten, that you’ll have one whole dollar?”

He took it back from me.

“And if you have another ten of these dimes, you’ll have two dollars. And another ten dimes and you’ll have three dollars. And ten more dimes and you’ll have four dollars. And just ten more dimes..and you’ll have five..whole..dollars. Five dollars!”

“Mom, I’m gonna get ten of these and then I’ll have a dollar!” he said as he showed his mom the dime.

I smiled to myself. I think I did my part to teach a kid a few things:

1. The value in small things
2. How to save your money
3. Math

Hopefully he’ll remember.

PLDLO 2008

Peace. Love. Dirt. Live Oak.

Last Saturday we - Hub-E, Sista-M, Cam, Lance, and I - went to the Live Oak Festival. Yes, we are “Live Oakies”. Some might even go so far as to say that we are hippies, but that would be going to far. True, none of us wore any makeup, and there was lots of wrinkly linen, hats, and flip flops involved, but that was about the extent of our “hippiness”. Since we were bathed and all. But we did smuggle some glass containers in that contained a fermented substance… oh, rebels!

We all piled into Sista-M’s mom-van and made our way to the beautiful Santa Ynez Valley where the Live Oak Camp is located. We piled out of the van and loaded our chairs, blankets, and ice chests up onto the hayride that took us all up the hill to the festivities, and then found a nice, sunny spot in front of the stage to spread our blankets out and pile our chairs and bags. A very hot, sunny spot. That stayed sunny until about, oh say, 7:30 at night? We pretty much picked the sunniest spot in the whole place despite there being several large oak trees that provided shade. Unfortunately about 90% of those spots were already taken by the time we got there. I didn’t mention that it was about 95 degrees, did I? Yeah, shade was pretty crucial. After being there for about 15 minutes some guy came up next to me and told me I was starting to get burned on my shoulders and back. Awesome. Only 10 more hours to go before we leave!

Playing on the main stage when we got there was a reggea band. The kids and I rocked out while Hub-E and Sista-M went back down to the van to get more stuff (i.e. beverages). Unfortunately there was quite a scuffle with security because they didn’t allow glass containers in and Hub-E, being the non-drinking-from-plastic hippie guy that he is, only drinks from glass containers and only packed water in large glass jugs. He was pretty miffed over that. They had to divide the water into plastic jugs that Sista-M thankfully just happened to have in the van. He also had to haul the big icechest on wheels back down the hill to the van because it had the glass in it and he wasn’t allowed to take it in and he wasn’t allowed to just let it sit outside the entrance. By the time he and Sista-M finally made it back up to the blankets the reggea was already over and there was a break from the main stage.

Somehow or another the kids stayed entertained for most of the day, in part because Sista-M bought them each a hoola hoop. It took them most of the day to figure out how to keep it going and even then they still didn’t really master it. But they were seeing other kids and adults hoola-hooping it up all day long and it made them want to keep trying. Then there was the people spraying the dirt down to keep it dust-free and the kids ran under the sprinklers and got themselves soaked. That was fun. Later in the evening when The Derailers came on (so, so good!) Sista-M and I took the kids up to the front of the stage where a big group of people were dancing and we danced with the kids for at least 45 minutes. We were plum tuckered out, I tell ya.

For dinner Hub-E and I got food from one of the food vendors - Indian food! Soooo gooood.  I got the chicken curry combo that came with naan, some kind of vegetable stirfry (korma, perhaps?) that tasted like it had cinnamon in it (I’ve had it before in one of those Amy’s microwavable meals and it tasted pretty authentic), and some other kind of mashed something-or-other. Oh, and the mango lassi…mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!! Talk about hitting the spot! Now I’m going to get back on an Indian food kick and retire our Thai food kick for awhile. Chicken Tikka Masala, anyone?

So, that was another Live Oak year. One of these years we keep telling ourselves that we’ll camp for the whole 3 day festival. But even just one day is good, too. If you ever are out this way during Father’s Day weekend, I would highly recommend it.

P.L.D.L.O!