It’s been awhile

This is a bit of a housekeeping blog, but as I’ve been tagged by Kathleen, I will start off with 7 random facts.

Here are the rules:
1.Link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post “The Rules”
3. Post 7 weird or random facts about yourself on your blog.
4. Tag seven people and link to them.
5. Comment on their blogs to let them know they have been “tagged”. 

And the facts are as follows:
[1]  I’ve seen *NSYNC in concert a total of 6 times.  I really like them, and they do great shows.

[2]  I’m afraid of birds; but only when they’re flying above me… for obvious reasons.

[3]  I haven’t had a boyfriend or even a date in a 5 whole years.  Pretty sad.

[4]  The right side of my body seems sub-par to the left.  I’m left-handed.  My right eye has astigmatism, my right ear hears only 60% as well as the other, and my right shoes always scuff up worse.

[5]  I have contemplated breast reduction surgery several times but I can’t bring myself to do it because I don’t want my boobs to be all scarred up like I’ve seen in “after” photos.

[6]  I’m a little afraid of life after college.

[7]  When I was a kid, I used to wish for a robot that could do all my chores.

I’m supposed to tag 7 other people, but I don’t really know anyone in the blog world and have already been tagged by the one person I sorta know.  So… that ends that, I guess. 

Other things going on with me.  Still haven’t gotten a job, but Dad asked me to come and help look after my grandmother while he’s away at work (he has two jobs).  I wanted to help and I know it’s a big deal to my Dad.  I’m going to stick around for as long as possible, but when she starts getting a little closer to the end, I told Dad I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle that.  He said that it’s alright and he doesn’t want me to see her in that state either.

So I’ve been helping with her medications and doing laundry and some other things.  She can get around by herself, she can take her own medicine and everything; she just has a feeding tube right now and can’t do solid foods (I’m not sure if that’s permanent or if the doctors will remove the tube later).  She keeps it low-key and mellow.

Even though I only have 3 units, school seems hectic, I guess because of trying to make sure I get my assignments done and helping with grandma and other stuff.  We (Mom’s house) moved to an apartment and we are still undecided on an ISP because we hate Comcast, so we don’t have internet right now.  And Dad is not really a web kinda guy, I mean, with his two jobs, he doesn’t have a lot of extra time on his hands and it’s just him at his house, so it’s not something he cares to get.  So as you can imagine, accessing the internets can be a bit of a hassle. 

Couple other things before I close out:

—– I had my JET interview a few weeks ago and I should know in 3-4 weeks if I will be heading off to Japan for a year, keep your fingers crossed!

—– My sister is pregnant!  They hadn’t planned on having a baby so soon, but it’s a blessing, nonetheless.  The baby is due in October, just 10 months after the wedding!  Everyone says it’s a “Honeymoon Baby”, I agree.  They want a boy, but she’s not far enough along to find out yet, so we’ll have to wait a bit longer to find that out.So, that’s about it for now.  Don’t want to overload.  I’ll try to do updates, but my internet access is real sparse. 

Come on, January 2008…. for real!?!?!?!?

So, no lie, the day after I post my last blog, Daddy calls me about my grandmother.  She’s been in and out of the hospital since The Wedding and on Monday the doctors finally diagnosed her. She has bone cancer and they’ve given her six months to live. When I hear this… I just have no idea what to think or how to feel.

Now, mind you, The Siblings and I never had a good relationship with my Grandmother.  I mean, she came to town every year and always stayed on the other side of town with my Dad’s sister and her three sons.  She always lavished so much attention (and gifts) upon them.  They spent weeks during the summer at her home in Arkansas.  For us?  We may as well not have existed, which sucked, especially considering the fact that my maternal Grandmother died 3 months before my big brother was born, so we pretty much never got to know her.

Anyway, I digress.  Over the past couple years the relationship has improved… slightly; but not to the point where the thought of her not around shakes me to my core.  I don’t want to sound like I’m disrespecting her, because I’m not.  I love my Grandmother.  The point I’m trying to make is that I feel that there will be some pressure to be more broken up about this news (and the coming passing), than I may show in the end.  When I learned back in September that a woman from my Church that I knew and loved dearly had passed away from Breast Cancer after a couple years of a tough struggle, I was speechless and at the viewing and funeral I cried.  I just don’t know if I will react the same way about my close blood relative.

In any case, I’m there for my Dad.  I’m there for my Grandmother (who has not been told yet, btw.  That will happen this week).  I’m there for my family.  The Sibs and I visited her tonight at my Aunt’s house… (they’re not going to send her back to Arkansas because 4 of her 7 children live here in the Bay Area and she was already out here anyway) She looked like the same grandmother.  We didn’t breathe a word about her diagnosis.  We made conversation and enjoyed the time.

I have absolutely no idea of how hard the coming months will be for her and for my family.

The only thing remotely close that I can relate to is that nine years ago my Great Aunt (Big Sis to my maternal Grandmother) succumbed to ALS after battling it for several years.  She was the only real Grandmother figure I had growing up and I watched her condition slowly from a spunky, independent, fast-talking, 70-something woman to a bed-ridden, nursing cared-for woman who was grieved knowing that she couldn’t even speak to her family members in her last days of life because the disease had prohibited the use of the former singer’s vocal chords.

My last memory of her is Easter Sunday, 1999.  We escorted her to a room big enough to hold 3 generations of extended family and we sang for her until she cried.  We cried as we sang for her and she smiled.  Looking around the room, everyone sort of knew that these would be our last moments with her.  Two weeks later she died and that was the hardest loss I have ever experienced.  I was fourteen.

I will just have to pray peace and strength for my family in the coming months… I don’t know what else to do. 

Super Funky

You ever get in a bit of a funk and you’re not really sure why? You know you just feel like crap and you spend a lot of time trying to mentally sort out all of your emotional rubbish? Yeah… that’s me right now.

Well, I’m not completely at a loss for what may be causing my current state of funk; I mean, 2008 is starting out with a bang, for sure. Talked to Daddy yesterday and turns out he might be splitting from his current wife. Mom is house-hunting so that means it’s time to move. I’m still waiting to hear back about an internship I interviewed for a couple weeks ago. I pretty much have no job at this point. Oh, and some other emotional confusion too. So I guess I was wrong… the source of this funk isn’t so ambiguous.

The whole thing with Dad is not official yet. Don’t get me wrong, my siblings and I absolutely can’t stand his wife. It’s been drama from day one and even though they’ve only been married for, what, 2.5 years(?), I wouldn’t even be able to sum up all the drama in this entry. Let’s just say she’s super rude/disrespectful/immature/jealous. She doesn’t understand that the relationship between Father and Children is supposed to be different than that of Husband and Wife, and for good reasons; but she has always been jealous of our relationship with our Dad. But I’ll tell you one thing, it has taken every single day of the past 12.5 years since my parents split to rebuild our relationship with my Dad and it will surely be a cold day in hell with demons ice skating on the Lake of Fire before some chick comes in thinking she can take that away from us.

And even though we didn’t like her, we never even tried to sabotage the relationship. I mean, had that been our plan, the four of us would have succeeded even before they got married. My siblings and I can naturally be very intimidating, but we’re an unstoppable force when we’re on a mission, so she should consider herself lucky… well, sort of. Her fatal move was last year when she made some sideways crack about us telling my mom her business and then my mom telling other people when that was not even the truth because my mom could care less about her. Big Sis almost jumped over the couch and beat her in the kitchen. Only her Fiancee (now husband) and Brother could hold her back but the wrath that was in her voice was pretty much unabated. Oh, aaaand Big Sis humbled herself and called her after we left and APOLOGIZED to try and make amends and wife-lady would not take that as an opportunity to squash the beef.

So needless to say, the Sibs and I are happy that she will soon be gone, but we are sad that Daddy will now be twice divorced and a bit discouraged.

Then over on the Mom side, for several reasons, we shall soon be moving. We’re staying in the area, just changing homes. Personally, I’ve been urging a move for the past 2 years but people are only just now agreeing with me. >.< But I hate moving. Honest to God, my family has moved about every 3 years since my parents split in ‘95… so this’ll be *counting* the fifth time we’ve moved collectively since the split. And if you include my moving for college, that brings my personal total (only counting residences, not moving in plus moving out) up to 10 times.

I just can’t say it anymore plainly. I hate moving. The boxes, the packing, the organizing, the cleaning (the old and new places), the searching once you’ve moved, the settling in…. urggg.

I contacted the company I interviewed with a little while ago… they were STILL conducting interviews… at this point, I’m just like: Hire ME already! I’m the coolest one who most deserves the position!!!! Hopefully I’ll hear back from them by the end of the week because apparently I was a seasonal employee at Ye Olde Fabric Chain… even though I had been there for more than 6 months… o.O Go figure.

I think I’ve taken all I can stand from the customers anyway… swear, I love crafting and all that jive, but some of the people that come into crafting/fabric stores are straight up JERKS! And I’m talking about the regular Crafty ladies. Probably 40% of them are rude, nitpicky, impatient people. And you’d be AMAZED at how many people steal!!! I’m talking $40-$50 Gingher scissors, beads, notions, they rip the stuff right out of the package and leave it on the floor! They rip the wrapper off the remnants and shove it in their purses. They steal the red-tag stickers, stick them on regular-priced stuff and try to demand the red-tag price. It’s ridiculous.

So anyway… I think I will be starting a Vlog on YouTube soon… I’m trying to wait until I upgrade my computer in a couple weeks because I need a much faster processor to do the editing and other things I’m planning… so I’ll keep people updated… it would be a little different from this blog because I feel I’m much better at telling stories and conveying ideas visually than I am at typing stuff out… it’s a really different style. Visually is always more “*Stina”… so yeah….

Hopefully the rest of the month plays out more mellow…..

In Sickness and in Health

Thursday night Mom and I left around 10pm to drive an hour to SFO to pick up Big Sis and her husband from their honeymoon.  When we were leaving, my brother, who already has a diagnosed heart condition, started complaining of chest pain, so he took some medicine and then Mom and I headed out.  About 2 hours later, 20 minutes away from home, we get a call from Lil Sis saying Brother is splayed out on the floor in complete chest pain.  He can’t move, he’s nauseous, she’s sorta freaking out.

Ambulance is called, we meet them at the house, Brother is inside with the Paramedics.  They’re asking him questions and he’s barely groaning out the responses.  He’s got a pretty high threshold for pain, so seeing this is really starting to get to me, I thought he was having a heart attack. They take him away and at that very moment I am so thankful for VA benefits because he’s not covered by his current job.  Mom goes to the hospital, I stay home with Lil Sis and Big Sis and BiL go to their apartment.  It’s 1:30am and I’m worried - extremely worried.  I was so tired and I felt a little guilty for going to bed, but I knew I couldn’t help him at all, whether asleep or awake.  I didn’t find out until about 6am that it was his appendix.

I breathed the biggest sigh of relief because Brother is only 24.  We’re only 14 months apart and we graduated high school together.  He’s almost like a twin to me.  I was afraid for a moment that he wouldn’t be around anymore.

They removed his appendix, he’s back home today, playing Call of Duty on Xbox 360 and I’m sooooo grateful.  Praise God.

Chock-full of Random-ness Today

Christmas is Tuesday. I have absolutely zero funds but the fam all sorta voted on foregoing the traditional Christmas because The Wedding beat it by 10 days and that was an all-too-realistic financial experience. So I have asked the immediate fam: Momma, Daddy, Big Bro, Lil Sis (Big sis and brand new BiL don’t really get presents for Christmas because they’ve gone to Kauai Hawaii and NYC for the honeymoon and still haven’t opened 99% of their wedding gifts).

I want to make everything with stuff already in my stash, so far I think Im doing pretty well, even though only one person will actually receive on the 25th. Moms will get a reusable heating pad, you know the kind with rice in it? I found a tute aqui. I figured it would be pretty awesome to have at work.

Im knitting a cap for Daddy, he’s the only person who will get his gift day-of because we don’t live together and we’ll be doing Christmas breakfast. It’s always sorta hard trying to figure out what my dad wants besides a giant flat-screen HDTV… Big Bro will also be getting a hat, but we went and picked out some dark heather gray yarn for his because he wants a hat like the style that Common wears a lot, only a knit version.

I mean, you can’t fully see the style of hat in this photo, but Common is my #1 celebrity crush, so who cares because he’s just GORGEOUS!

So anyway… the Lil Sis… I don’t know what she wants yet, but I’ll ask her. She’s usually pretty cool about what she wants. Plus, she just got a Pink DS Lite (I’m only slightly jealous… she let’s me play it) so she’s still stoked about that.

Also, I was thinking of creating a Painting as a gift for another friend of mine, I’ve got a spare canvas that just about the right size… but I’ve got to sketch it out first and then think about it. I think it would be a pretty awesome gift and they’d definitely be stoked about it.

In other news, I had an interview last Friday for an internship at a videogame website that I’ve actually had a profile on for about 1.5 years. It’s paid, it’s in The City

(only 3 blocks from my mom’s job/BART [our subway]), and it’s an industry gig. That would be pretty awesome to score, without even thinking about the possibility of free stuff! They want to start the position in the beginning of the year, so I won’t find out for another week because they’re interviewing several candidates and I was the first one. Sooo…. hopefully they liked me best! [in that photo, btw, I can totally see in the almost bottom left-hand corner the building I had my last internship in; right next door to Second Life offices!]

I guess that’s it for now. I’m going to go watch The Little Mermaid in Spanish and get some work done on Daddy’s hat. Merry Christmas everyone!

Picked up a new crafty book!

It’s the end of the semester and so, book buy-back time. I didn’t have very many books this semester, so I was just expecting to sell back my books and get some lunch with the money they gave me. Before I left the house this morning, though, I grabbed a book I’d never returned from a class I’d taken probably 3 semesters ago.

So on campus, 5 bucks for the first book, $7.50 for the second book and a whopping $28 for the oldy oldy book! I wasn’t expecting that much. With some extra cash I went and checked out what the bookstore had to offer. I picked up LOTR: RotK widescreen version for only $4. Sure, Return of the King is like, 4 years old, but that’s the one DVD of the trilogy that we didn’t have, and it happens to be my fave one.

I also bought a cute little planner for next year, and a book from a Smithsonian show called “Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas” for only $8, it was like, 60% off. It looks really interesting and Dad and I have been trading Black History books lately, which is really cool. Makes for good discussions.

The final thing I got was a more recent release title Subversive Seasmter.

I saw this book earlier in the semester when it was first released but I was flat broke. So I’m totally glad I could pick it up today. Another awesome point is that their Store, Stitch, is located in San Francisco! I go to school in The City! I live here in the Bay Area! I totally want to go there now and check them out.

The projects in the book look so fun(ky) I can’t wait to try them out. After I finish my last paper of the semester tomorrow. I’ll be going to bed now, though. So good night!

She’s not Bridezilla, everyone else is!

Swear; like this whole wedding thing makes me want to elope when I find The One. I’m the Maid of Honor so it’s my duty to help keep the Bride from stressin’ out too much, right? Well, my sister is probably one of the more mellow people of the bunch even though she’s still got mad stress from trying to decide between what she and her fiance want and what other people want.

Mom, who’s is charge of decorating the church and the reception hall, making all the flower arrangements and coordinating almost all of the groom’s family who are here from another country, is also totally buggin out. I live with Mom so I hear her vent. And on top of that, it’s also a touchy subject planning how she and my father will interact throughout the ceremony. They’ve been divorced for 11 years but for a lot of stuff we still take a LOT of caution.

Then today at the Dress Rehearsal there was such drama when one of the bridal party got mad and stormed out during a run-through because they were dissatisfied with their placement. They didn’t want to be on the end, and they didn’t understand why they could not stand on the stage (even though myself and my younger sister, the other MoH, are the only bridesmaids onstage). It was an extremely selfish move and caused undue stress to the future To-Be’s and to Mom as well.

To try and mellow them both out, I kind of had to just tell them to screw it. Screw the tantrum. This person likes throwing hissy fits and having people come back and beg them to change their mind. So screw them for this rude outburst and when they realize what they’ve done, they’ll be sorry. And I’m glad Big Sis/Bride has firmly stated that she and her fiance will not be making any concessions for anyone, they won’t beg, and they will do this their way. Seriously, the ceremony is two days away, they shouldn’t have to change anything or deal with something like this.

I really wanted to say Come on, dude, where’s your head at? Are you for real??!?!? I mean, they’re family and all, but I don’t have a high tolerance level for that type of immaturity… especially if you’re nearing 30… it’s ridiculous.

So tomorrow is the last day before the wedding. Still a lot to do. A lot of stuff can happen. I hope everyone else tries their best to help destress the couple…. and I will start looking at Drive-Thru chapels so that when my day comes, I can avoid the drama.

Word.

The Final(s) Push

I am not looking forward to the next 12 days. I’m into finals and the Sister’s wedding is coming up. I have to do an interview, write a 7-page paper from said interview, write a summary on a museum visit, spend 20 hours on a painting, and do a 10-page research paper. All of this staggered up to the 19th. Then, the wedding is on the 15th and I have to do rehearsals, write a toast, help decorate, and keep my Sister from going insane/bridezilla from all the stress. She’s got stress? Ha!

I know I have to get all this done, but I have absolutely no drive. This is the worst final effort I’ve ever displayed in my entire college career. I think it’s because of the wedding and having to hear sister/mom/groom/everyone stress about the ceremony preparations. My goodness, don’t people know that I have school! Good lord.

Also, part of my lack of motivation comes from me wanting to just get to the part where I can get back to deciding what I do with my time: hanging with friends, playing videogames, CRAFTING! whatever. I know I should get things done, but I just keep getting sooo distracted. And then it doesn’t help when, on top of alllll of this, your thoughts are yet otherwise occupied to the point where everything gets pushed even further back into the “outskirts of my periphery”.

I worry about a lot of stuff and I’m sort of just hanging on until mid-month. It’s like that really corny poster of the kitten with the tag line, “hang in there”.

Yeah, I feel just like that stupid cat, with the sorry expression and all.

When the 20th rolls around, I better get to do what I want and hang out with whomever… ugh… I can’t wait. I sort of hate school right now.

JET Application: Signed, Sealed, Delivered…

I’ve been wanting to apply for the JET programto be an Assistant Language Teacher for at least 4 years now and for the first time I am eligible because I will be (finally) graduating in the Spring. While checking the requirements several weeks ago, I somehow didn’t remember the date the application was due. When I checked last Monday I found that the application would be due today. That gave me seven days to get everything together!

So I scrambled all around trying to get my transcripts from both schools, my letters of recommendation, proof of graduation (sort of like a progress report), a copy of my birth certificate, a statement of purpose, and the application form. I also needed two copies of everything. I emailed the head of my department for one of the letters and ended up having to drive an hour down to San Jose to pay a hold and get my transcripts (which wouldn’t be available until the next day), another hour up the peninsula to San Francisco (to get one of the recommendation letters and progress report), and then yet another hour across San Francisco and back to the East Bay to go home. I did this all before 4:30.

Since my transcripts weren’t ready in San Jose on Thursday, I had to drive all the way back down the next day to pick them up, and that was because the lovely woman at the Registrar’s office put a rush through so when I picked them up, I gave her a Ghirardelli chocolate assortment as thanks for doing me such a huge favor.

Even though I had to drive to San Jose twice this week, it was okay because I got to hang out and catch lunch with my old roommate and also an APhiO friend. It was great because I haven’t seen either one of them in a looong time and I adore and miss San Jose - my friends, the campus, the city. It makes my heart warm. =)

I mailed off the application Saturday and I just checked the UPS website and it was delivered to Washington, D.C., this afternoon at 1:30pm. AWESOME! So now comes the waiting, wich I’ve heard/read can be agonizing. I’ll stay optimistic, though, because this would be a great opportunity… I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in Japan for a year and learn about the culture? So cross your fingers, I’ll keep you posted.

Yes, I call in sick for cramps

Monday, the first day back from Thanksgiving break, I didn’t go to school because I woke up with a bit of a “nervous” stomach and a menstrual cramping episode. I didn’t want to go all the way to campus (over an hour’s journey) just to get there and be reminded why I shouldn’t have gone. But, cramps?!, you say… you stayed home because of cramps?! Uhh, heck yes I did. One of my high school teachers says it takes women back a few steps to avoid responsibilities (work, school, etc.) because of one’s cycle; but she obviously doesn’t suffer crampage like me.

When I start cramping, I swear it’s like G.I. Joe put his Kung Fu Grip on my uterus. I’m afraid to leave the house to go to the movies 2 blocks away for fear that I’ll be struck with an episode and stranded somewhere without my trusty heating pad. And, no, Midol, Tylenol, Geritol (yes, I know, non-sequiter)… nothing works. The only thing that dulls the pain of my fallopian spasms is heat. There used to be these portable “heating pads” that I could get but I think they discontinued them. I was extremely disappointed, to say the least.

Out of the 4 ladies in my immediate family, I am the only one to suffer such pain on a consistent and regular basis. My brother once asked me what they felt like, and here’s how I described it:

Cramps, for me, are what I like to call the “Underwear of Pain”. Any place your underwear covers, that’s where it hurts for me. It’s like someone is giving you an Indian Burn on your insides and you can’t do anything to stop them. And just when you feel like they’ve tired of torturing you and the pain begins to fade away, you’re struck with another succession of waves of pain that force you, against your will, to curl into the fetal position because, somehow, your body thinks that will make everything better… but it doesn’t. And this happens to me 3-4 days a month, every month…

At that, my brother grimaced like he could really feel the pain and I know that no-so-deep-down inside he was thanking God for having made him a man.

Why don’t you just use birth control? I can hear people saying… I have used birth control in the past and I do find it convenient. I am not currently on birth control because, quite honestly, I am in no way sexually active and so I’m not particularly worried about having birth’s controlled and when my prescription expired I just never got around to renewing it. There are other reasons why I haven’t “gotten around to it” in the past 5 years, but that’s a little too personal and I don’t know you like that, Reader.

I meant to blog about something completely different, but hey, this is sort of interesting, too. I actually did a Video piece related to the subject earlier this year. It’s below if you want to watch it. It’s about 5 minutes long, but it’s got some funny in there too. If you do watch it, please rate and comment, that would be greaaaaat. So enjoy!