zen practice
Last week I pondered whether hell would consist of an
endless, uphill, dusty run/bike. I must
revise that. Surely my personal hell
would consist of some pack of toddlers w/ their delusional parents & naggy grandparents, and an endless stint
within a Fry’s electronics.
My cheery disposition today comes courtesy of multiple
factors. One is, I am coming up on the 12 month anniversary of working 3 jobs
& seriously on the verge of total burn out (my final day at my main job is just a few
more weeks to go…let’s hope my sanity holds).
More importantly, I am in the laughably named City of
Angels
visiting for Father’s day and my adorable nephew
Cam
’s 3rd birthday.
And to top it off by body is in some kind of dietary shock. Airport food was the start of the grim
transition. We left home munching
organic nectarines and apricots.
At OAK we ate industrial fried fish ‘n chips and a
thousand calorie Fenton’s hot fudge sundae. The food with my MIL is delicious, but foreign to me. Instead of
crumpets, oatmeal & fruit, breakast is a chicken broth porridge studded
with shrimp, meat, mushrooms and ginger. In the car we ate taro and banana slices breaded with coconut and sesame
and fried to perfection. Today’s
desayuno was deep fried homemade Pilipino empanadas. Our taste buds are singing, as my guts & arteries are
screaming for mercy.
At the kiddie party, cute kids in cute outfits cutely
wandered everywhere.
The little ones toddled all about the brand new playground,
and the adults grinned like idiots, in hot pursuit with video and digital
cams.
I know this madness a bit, applauding the Pinata
beating as if it were the Nobel Prize ceremony, and reveling in the momentary pleasures of a tiny hand
gripping mine firmly as Cali practices this newfangled thing called walking. It’s hard to resist touching those silken,
wispy, locks.
Our friend H4 pointed out that grandparents are nuts, “it’s
like they’re on crack cocaine regarding grandkids.”
I wish I had a buck for every question I have fielded this
week about why we don’t have a kid of three despite 4 years of matrimony. Heck, we’d have enough money for my plane
ticket home.
And it’s not just the
kiddie questions that are grating, it’s the random suggestions such as “have
your kid and we’ll raise it in
L.A.
and you can take him back after he’s walking.” (Uhhhh. “reactive attachment
disorder” anybody?!”) or “why do you need to work anyways?” (you mean why am I
not a kept woman eating bonbons and harassing a poolboy? Gee, better ask my
husband) or “Your mom can babysit.” (my
mother is a divorcee, too young for Medicare, who pays her own bills & has
interests, property, and a life of her own). Then there’s the helpful advice to “stop being outdoors too much, you’re
getting too skinny.” (all who’ve endured the experience of loving me know well
that keeping me indoors would foment psychosis) And besides, when I’m
not being appraised as too skinny, I am too “thick”, not waify & pale like
most Chinese ladies.
The crowning moment of
Cam
’s
party are 2 homemade works of art cakes from his Vietnamese grandma. Both are Thomas the Train themes, one
sculpted out of layers of coconutty Jell-o, with train tracks, letters, clouds,
all masterfully created with food dyes and molds. The layer cake is chocolate sponge with
strawberries and cream, featuring a Thomas cake topper that actually motors
around a tiny track atop the tinted frosting.
Bless their hearts, my in laws mean well, but it’s like
Martians trying to converse with Plutonians. I’m planning a curriculum to teach professional workshops in
Beijing
,
and she wants to talk to me about tenderizing shrimp. She teaches me a yummy recipe, and I bite my
tongue because I won’t use MSG tainted bouillion or deep fry things in my
home.
I’m proud of my years in community work, my commissioner
role, my volunteerism. I view my time
serving post-Katrina as among my finest hours of life purpose. She tells me not to be stupid, to make money
while I’m still young..
I want to increase my understanding of global politics & she’s commenting on my pores,
my hairstyle, and yet more of everyone’s favorite overused topic: my womb.
The more they tell me to bow at the altars, “sawadee” bow
and greet in Thai, the more fiesty and oppositional I become. Doubtless the more bizarre I become, the
harder they try to guide me. The
miscommunications are practically galactic. These conversations occur in Mandarin, so poor P sitting besides us
knows not what’s discussed.
“What did she say?’ He asks, helpfully working knots out of
my neck.
“You don’t want to know.” I reply.
No point in ranting and spreading anymore negativity in the
world. “I know they mean well, but they just never listen. We’ll leave it at
that.” Repeat the following mantra, I tell myself, "they mean well, they mean well, they mean well…"
After a windblown day at the park dealing with frosting
smudged little mouths and chasing balls our of the bushes for the babes, we
find ourselves at Fountain Valley Fry’s electronics. Many amigos find Fry’s a playground, but
it’s a conglomerate of everything I can’t stand. Flabby, pasty crowds of people who really
ought not be parked in front of any screen, stuffy air permeated with cancer-causing
electromagnetic fields, tacky faux romanesque columns and statues, dreary
lighting, noise pollution from a thousand competing appliances, grimy
restrooms, and worst of all-this Fry’s has no café. Just cases of crappy corn
syrup laden sop.
I stand helplessly with
P and his Dad before a hundred monitors and laptops. I peruse junk items and mourn that natural
resources were used for this crap. My
favorite kitschy piece of waste was the “humping dog” decoration for one’s monitor (I don’t make
this stuff up. Must be from the same manufacturer as the “
Battery
powered Farting man on toilet knickknack my BIL bought).
I imagine that surely
this sort of thing signals the collapse of American cultural supremacy…a throbbing headache ensues. I begin to fantasize about making a break for it, a bid for freedom, to ponder the fate of animals who gnaw off their legs to escape from bear traps…
Finally, I remind myself that we are here for a good cause (P to help Dad) & dashing away over yon hills singing "Born Free" would involve ditching my beloved and not endear me to the in laws one whit. Besides, for god’s sake I’d be stranded in freaking Orange county. I find 4 bottles of Perrier, an issue of COLORS magazine
featuring
Beijing (en espanol y ingles)
& a pack of red vines. With these
reinforcements I hunker on the steps of the Disneyesque statue to read and
drown out the electronics and bustle. This place, this geek paradise, is utter hell for H3.
I’ve oft told B and P about my struggles to practice the Buddhist advice to
“wish good things on your enemy.” I also
forever recall reading, way back in 7th grade or so, the quote that
“everything you dislike about others tells you something about yourself.”
Yes, yes, I know, I know, I swear I am trying hard to
practice such levity and empathy throughout my daily life.
I have a colleague named MC who is superwoman. A beautiful, kind-hearted lady who fled a war
torn country, eventually earning a Master’s degree, a mother, wife, and
grandmother, a funny and irreverant woman, and now also a fellow licensed
psychologist. We play favorites at work:
she feeds me hawaiian purple roast yams & home made organic salad dressings & I slip her Nunn better cherries
and wonderful reading materials. When things
at work are in an unusually sad state of clusterf**k we look at each other and
say : “breathe.” Or we laugh since
there’s no point weeping. We once took a
mental health day with 2 other therapist-supervisors- a blissful memory of
sunshine, spa, picnic and vino al fresco, and the company of such fine womyn
warriors/healers.
The other day, snippy as heck, I went to MC’s desk and
noticed this pinned within her cubicle:
“Truly recognize your own faults,
And don’t discuss the faults of others.
Other’s faults are just your own.
Being one with everyone is called great compassion.”
—-Chan Master Hsuan-hua.
Oh, I loved that little card. Copied it down and smiled to myself,.
Gotta laugh at our crabby, judgmental selves.
Others are irritating and infuriating
in the same way that surely I must be equally irritating (if not more
so!). I suppose it takes the great
masters’ a lifetime to learn their infinite compassion, so in this early phase
of life- I’m not TOO behind…
Muddy years
Four years now I’ve entered the MuddyBuddy road race. Each year I convince a new person to be my "Buddy" & each year until the present, mi esposo has refused to suffer the indignities of the mud pit beside me.
My first partner Jaime had recently run a marathon, and was also easy prey to machismo-baiting (i.e. threaten his manhood & one could get him to do most anything. Come on guys, you know how it is…) Thus I convinced him to race with me, as well as to allow my 2 cute girlfriends to borrow a bike from him so they could race too (not like I had to twist his arm on that one). Race was a blast, within minutes finishing I was saying "Again!"
and Jaime proceeded to curse me profusely in his own subsequent blog entry.
Say what U want Jaime, you know you liked it…
ahem.
Without fail, each year kicks off with me arising before 6am to strain my way up & down the dirt paths, and asking what masochistic abnormality drives one to pay good money for this sort of pain & suffering!?
Yet always there is my favorite obstacle: the giant inflatable slide that has to be climbed up with rope ladder and then flung down the other side, and by the last mile I am thinking of the beer garden at finish line & the sheer exuberant, stupid fun of splatting frontside into mud and swim-crawling to the finish line.
Pl, the partner of last year’s MuddyBuddy T, came along begrudgingly at an ungodly hour to cheer us on.
"I just can’t get over the idea that there really are this many people who actually want to do this." Pl said.
In fact, this year marked the first sold-out San Jose Muddy Buddy- that means there were 1800 people ready to mudhop & roll.
Muddy buddy teams are sorted by type (co-ed, all male, all female, and-you have to love this "beast" and "masters"). Then the teams are further broken down by combined age i.e with P we are combined age 67. Beast teams have a combined body weight over 400 lbs., and Masters are the kick ass seniors.
When T (trim, fit & pushin’ 60) was my partner-the neighboring teams stared at me:
"how OLD is your partner for you to be in this age group start line!? What are you-like 12?!" Well, no, actually our team age was a ripe 89.
Then there was the year my office spouse partnered with me…and the bike tire went flat by the time we hit our 1st obstacle. Thus, our plan to "leapfrog" and alternate bike/running the 6.5 miles became an unplanned running of the entire course by both parties. But hey, we made it to the finish, I inadverdantly flashed the finish line spectators (note to self: heavy hunks of mud in clothing tends to flop out/weigh things down), and baby D got a cool Ninja turtle Mini MuddyBuddy Tee for his mom’s valiant efforts (although D would not enter the mudpit despite or perhaps because of watching swarms of wild eyed adults wearing bike helmets,viking
helmets, and frog costumes flop and claw through said pit).
After 3 years of this, P agreed to be my MuddyBuddy. Hurrah!
The Flying Ranas (significa ‘frogs’ en espanol), almost missed the startline of the entire friggin’ race due to the black hole that is time management w/ my beloved, as well as both of being so zombied at that hour that we missed our freeway exit. An hour later, we finally arrive at the packed to capacity park.
"..but I have to go to the potty!" I grouched.
Instead, we biked/ran like bats outta hell just to reach the registration table, pin our race numbers on, and find our start group, bodily needs be damned.
How to explain it? The blurred boundaries between fear and fun, pain and exhilaration? It’s something like a roller coaster, suspense movie, or dom-sub sexuality I suppose. Waiting for the starting gun to shock you into movement, taking in the buzzing excitement of fellow racers & hollering spectators.
Running up infinite hills in clouds of choking dust, quads & lungs burning, and turning each corner only to find more hills - I started to ponder that maybe Hell would be like this. That would make sense really, an entire level of Dante’s inferno devoted to running a never-ending dusty race with the promise of a water station enticingly around every corner-yet never materializing.
I tell myself to enjoy the obstacle course, and to remember that the next leg of the race I’d be on a bike. Then I’d actually trade off with P for the bike, and find quads burning yet gain as my wimpy ass stands on the pedals to crawlingly take on even more Hades hills; then I’d be zipping down a trail at high velocities. The bumps in the trail and the speed of the bike almost blinding me as I fly. In between grinning like an idiot at the rushing of cool air, the rest for my quads, and that primal thrill of speed - my adrenalin shot sky high with fear at the realization of how little control I was maintaining on this bike, that I would flatten any runner who wanders into my path, and flashbacks to my previous bloody mtn. bike wipe out at the adventure girl race. I remember having to touch myself, my face, my legs, stunned that nothing was broken, cataloging signs of neurological damage, of my hero-the dude who patched me up enough to continue the race, and of the revolting state of my bruised legs and torn up elbow. Ok, ok, this is no time for PTSD.
We finish the race. P kisses me, and says "you owe me!"
Not sure if that means he doesn’t want to be my buddy next year?
We see a mud covered couple wrestling and laughing in the grass surrounded my friends family members. One of them talks about how MuddyBuddy is a good metaphor for life. Then they unfurl a huge homemade banner: "Would you be my MuddyBuddy for Life? Marry me."
A collective "AAAAaaaawwwwwwwwwwww, how sweet" goes up among all the muddy crowd, and the family tries valiantly to wash enough mud off her finger that they can get the ring on after she said "yes."
There is a huge public hose area where dozens of people in various states of undress and muddiness do their best with garden hoses and low pressure. This year Paul Mitchell was a sponsor, so you had filthy people hosing down with dirt in a park yet smelling lovely of teatree formula Paul Mitchell shampoo which had to double as shower gel. I put on this year’s race tee, always too big, and have taken off my shorts to deal with the mud. A truck of other racers cruises by, "Good stuff!!" some guy hollers. Whatever. I’m not "butt-wild nekked" as my sweetheart once termed it, and there is little place for modesty in this crowd at this point.
We snag some swag, meet friends & take pics with the disposable camera I carried in a ziploc during the race, and dash home. After that exertion, P is craving salt. I point out that anyone selling fries after a race would make a fortune. We wind up at a crowded In N Out as I pray we don’t run into any of my clients who may be traumatized at the sight of me.
Despite the public hose down area, one can only clean up so much after such a profuse dipping. I am cursing his fastfood needs as I stand there trying to look nonchalant and normal with pebbles in my underwear, dirt coating my legs and under my fingernails, & mud caked on my pigtails.
Within an hour: presto. My alter ego. Shortly after 2:00 I am doubly showered, re-clad in bronze ballet flats, silk shirt, jacket and slacks, wearing my "Commissioner" name badge at a city event honoring the volunteers that keep our library, parks and rec, fire and police stations running. P and I eat cheesecake, schmooze with the Mayor and my fellow commissioners, clap politely.
After that I count on Paddy’s coffee to sustain me as I drive to my private practice to see a client. She thanks me for letting her come in on a Sunday and frets that she is inconveniencing my life and keeping me from things. I reassure her that I’m not missing out, it’s my pleasure to work with her, and I think to myself, "if you could have only seen me 2 hours ago…"
Join the fray next year dear reader, come on, you know you want to…
www.muddybuddy.com
Get Ur Freak on
So now my Cuz is an expert on Freakin’…
This whole rump shakin’ groove trend makes my school dances seem so tame in comparison-the most scandalous thing that happened amongst us was
that I wore a strapless dress to a middle school dance and was
accosted in the hallway by the vice principal the next weeK…
"Helen." Foreboding stare.
"Yes, m’am?"
"You wore a strapless dress to the dance…DON’T do it again."
Now all the kids think that dancing means gyrating ’til the cows come home & if U can grab your ankles, all the better! Man, my trademark undulations are way, way old school in comparison…
So anyways, here’s Huan on MSNBC sharing his great insights about freaking-
"A producer saw it and asked me to come on. anyway,
here’s the story:"
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-05-16/news/getting-your-freak-on-just-got-harder.php
and here’s a couple videos, courtesy my friend’s blog:
http://westroy505.blogspot.com/2007/05/freak-dance-expert.html
Odgen food
Meeting an old friend for lunch (another "P"), I suggest my regular joint: Nordstrom cafe. It’s the most convenient option near my SF office (barring of course, the unacceptable greasier neighbors).
P insists it’s my birthday treat (I get to celebrate for 4 whole months!!) & recommends a Bradley Ogden restaurant.
Hmm. Yankee Pier at Santana Row was just kinda all right…but that’s his more casual restaurant (doesn’t take a culinary degree to do clam chowder.)
Off we go to Lark Creek- it’s lovely and airy inside, yet the entrance consists of an imposing dark wood panel, which had always led to me think "steak house" whenever I looked at it. Of all the Bloomingdale "restaurant collection" selections, Lark Creek is the only one I haven’t visited. The others including the Mexican place with the $12 guacamole, and the bakery with the $9 croissant sandwich…and Straits cafe, which while lovely, serve fare no tastier than that of many other Singaporean joints (which charge less.)
Initially I was rther distracted yt he fact that the menu advertises $69 designer shirts that the waitstaff/servers all wear available for purchase. Do I really want to dine at the same place I buy a striped work blouse?
Fear not, as it turns out-
The extra belated b-day lunch was "a bloggable meal" by definition.
Afternoon delight for the legally employed…
Indeed there was an entire page of steaks of all ages, cuts, and sizes on offer. But I’ve now a limited tolerance for large slabs of meat in my system.
"No meat shall ever enter this body." was the motto of my more strictly veggie youth. (one can imagine all the double entendres that one incited…)
Sans steak, we opted for the Lark Creek stated aim of serving local and fresh as much as possible,
We split the entrees:
a softshell crab lightly fried & in a sanwhich with advocado and aioli (perhaps a touch of chipotle), with plaintain chips of perfection (not greasy, just crisp enough).
local asparagus and black truffle risotto- which was melt on the tongue heavenly. Such a velvety tongue teaser that we both laughed and said we did not want to ever know how much cream or butter was in there with the truffle bits.
Ah, bliss!
If only, If only, I was not booked with clients that afternoon there were wine offerings which would have improved even more upon this culinary interlude. P urged me to seize the day "just have coffee afterwards, too!"
Alas, I don’t think those who pay me more than 100 bucks an hour would do so if I showed up boozy/drowsy/tipsy.
My spouse has previously informed me he thinks I am much more fun when drunk, but my clients… not so much.
We’re about to make a break for it outta Lark Creek and hit the bakery case elsewhere - when our server points out that their "malted milkshake" Panna Cotta won SF magazines "Best Panna Cotta" award- much to the chagrin /woe of Italian restaurants throughout the city.
Hmm. The best?
Oh, really…
Is this culinary blasphemy that the American panna cotta dares take on the Italian classic?
"Well, I do like malt balls," P says.
"Me too! I love malted everything!!!"
and, I note, it has salted caramel too.
The Panna Cotta arrives in a generous sized glass, a sheen of salted caramel across the surface, broken malt balls accenting the lot.
P and I tentatively taste; then dive in. Where do they get these delish non-Whoppers quality malt balls?
Likely in our Lark Creek lunch I consumed enough calories to power a small farm for a week, but hey, it’s my birthday…(again!)
Bradley Ogden, you’ve won a convert! That dessert alone could lure me back weekly…
Fruit pickers
On a bit of a whim we took Auntie P to pick cherries on her
last day in the
U.S.
When I was a child, I remember my parents driving us to
Brentwood
to pick fruit, that it seemed like hundreds of
miles away, and that it was unbearably hot. I can still picture my normally rather proper mom holding some
farmer’s garden hose over her head to cool off. Back then we lived in Daly city-infamous for impenetrable fog 300 days of
the year, when I only owned 1 pair of shorts in my entire wardrobe, and it
was a happy occasion to visit my Godmother in
Sunnyvale
when we could don the one pair of
shorts.
Mom is wearing a blouse made of blousy material, semi sheer,
with a collar and buttons up the front. Yet it’s in military camouflage print. Hmm. Kinda chic, I think to
myself. A little hip edge to a
traditional style.
“Camouflage!”, P says when he sees her, “nice.”
Mom laughs, “I had a green sun hat on earlier with this, and
my sister said I looked like a Communist, so I changed to a sun visor.”
So we hit the road with the Communist and Aunt P, they plied
us with unhealthy driving fodder like green tea cream cake and apple turnover
crusted with sugar. Good Lord. I am wondering if my arteries will survive this day.
I’m stunned by what we find on the branches -cherries so luscious and bizarrely perfect
that my mind spouts the term “food porn”. Certainly I did not invent that phrase, but feeling up these fat, juicy,
glossy orbs (you have to feel them up carefully with your fingertips prior to
picking to make sure it’s unblemished by bird/insect attack) it seemed
fitting.
One can eat all you want in the
orchards and only pay for the pounds you haul out, so we gleefully stuffed
ourselves as we foraged, munching on the deep burgundy, firm cherry flesh.
“Isn’t it miraculous?” I asked P.
He glances over…”what are you talking about?”
“That trees can make something so amazing out of…practically
nothing at all. Dirt, and water.”
A hour later: 4 fools swingin’ 4 plastic pails of cherry
perfection, we take pictures, eat more cherries, and finally walk over to the
nice young lads in their dayglo yellow “Nunn Better Cherries” tees. (these cherries were so damned perfect that when I brought them to work, I fielded endless inquiries from colleagues who needed to know which farm we had bee to so that they could go too.) Nunn better indeed.
The damage? Twenty four lbs. of fruit - $48.
We meet up with my sweetheart (the Georgia Peach) & her
hombre, and head over to Mike’s Peach orchard. K mentions an article she read about how the cold snap killed most other crops but was a boon to our cherries.
I’ve always thought peaches look suspiciously like luscious little butts…downy fuzz, blush, bi-sected, and all. Or maybe I’m projecting.
Mom starts to look swoony, feeling sick from the heat, the long, meandering drive, and "probably too much excitement & cherries off of the tree!"
We dash quickly into the peach orchard and let her and Aunt P rest in the car with the AC & our water cooler.
Returning with the peach bag, I see Mom has emerged from the car.
"Are you feeling better?"
She smiles oddly. "Yeah….but I actually threw up."
"What! Are you OK?! I didn’t know you really felt that bad!"
Then she and Aunt P start to laugh. "OMG, you should have seen it…hao shiang too shwua."
Then she pauses and says in english "look like a blood."
She shakes her head at the horror of mom’s exorcist moment
"Are you serious? Did you drink some water? Where is it?"
At this point they are both cracking up. "I feel fine now. I buried it with the rocks and sand."
She hold up her wrists "I only found these in my purse afterwards." NOW she has on the two anti-motion sickness seabands on.
I gazed around at the loose dirt, kitty litter texture across the parking area and it starts to seem kind of funny to me too.
"You buried it? What are you - a CAt!?"
sigh. Ah well, we headed homeward with our fruit bounty (what my friend Molly once pointed out as "we’re eating the sex organs of a tree.)" Sure enough we spread those fruits (and seed) far and wide among family, friends, & colleagues.
living quirks
The strangest things drive one mad when residing with the beloved.
Such as, OMG, I can not believe he broke, broke, 3 Loacker Hazelnut wafers in half!! instead of sliding each one out individually to eat whole as a NORMAL person would. Seriously. This wafer thing bothered me so much that even I had to pause…have I become that obsessive?
(perhaps only about my food!)
Or, his friends all went to a Britney Spears concert yet weren’t registered to vote-how can I live with such a person!?
Losing sight of the fact, that not a one of these grave offenses actually confer an inkling of impact on anyone’s quality of life whatsoever (except in my head).
Meanwhile P has to deal with books overtaking the home, mood swings assuaged only by physical exertion, cheesecake, and yet even more books, & he is getting mighty suspicious about the actual costs of all this… birdseed. 30 lb. bags that disappear swiftly into droves of little beaks.
It’s nesting season, I explain, they’re hungrier right now (emptying the feeder on a daily basis). "We have babies to feed", I add, alluding to the mourning dove nesting amidst our pink hanging blooms and the house sparrows nesting kitty corner on the same balcony.
Oh sure, we all get inklings of this during those roomie years when we all find out the capacity for oddness our friends harbor. But at least one does not share the bed and most foodstuff and actual family members with a roomie.
My old roomie Blake and I would have debated about what constituted legitimate breakfast food. He was a routine kinda guy, cereal or bagel on a daily basis. Generally at the same time of day. I’m a bagel/ribs/eggs/fruits/birthday cake/whatever the hell I want for breakfast kinda person. Living with B also meant that beer became one of the main food groups for daily consumption, and that we listened to an ungodly amount of Dave Matthews band.
My mother had to endure her new MIL’s enthusiasm for cleaning other people’s ears with those tiny wooden instruments. eeek.
Fortunately for me, my MIL lives hundreds of miles away so I am spared her enthusiasm for horror movies…While I can understand the cathartic, roller-coaster like thrill some people derive from such flicks, gore & violence are not contents I choose to willingly place into my psyche.
And she doesn’t have to endure a DIL that would rather slop through mudpits on her elbows, run road races & work in disaster zones than knit baby booties & make Pad Thai.
P wanted a spouse unlike his mum, and I wanted one unlike my Dad.
What we’ve gotten is a heckuva lot of balance, yes, but a lot of inane frustration at the absurdity of the other.
I’ve never seen so many spreadsheets in my life. He’s probably never seen a shoe collection like this in his. I can’t fathom how much sleep this man needs, & he can’t fathom why I am ceaselessly plotting my next journey, as ig a jailbreak, out of town (or USA).
moral of the story…Watch what you ask for in life (marriage!).
