Moving, Sicknesses, and HappySlip! o.O

November 18, 2011 at 11:32 pm (Bloggy Stuff)
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It’s finally here, and my family is finally almost moved out of our old house and into the new(ish). It’s been crazy, but I love it. I love being around my cousins all the time.

The only problem with living in a 10-person household is that when one person gets sick, everybody gets sick. Case in point: Last Thursday my little cousin Tristan came home with pinkeye in both eyes and mildly sore throat. He got his eye drops and stayed home on Friday (Veterans’ day). The next day, his sister Vanessa said she had a slight sore throat. Sunday, their sister Camryn had a milder case of pinkeye in one eye. Their mother, my Auntie Mel, caught it early and gave her the eye drops right away. Monday night, Vanessa told me she had a headache and a sore throat and she went to sleep early. The next morning, she had a sore throat, a headache, and a fever, so she stayed home. She also lost her voice that day. That night (Tuesday) my little brother Justin came home after Tae Kwon Do practice and he had pinkeye — really severe pinkeye in one of his eyes. Auntie Mel got him some drops, but then Kevin told me that he was having some itching in his left eye. He woke up the next morning — pinkeye, in both eyes! So I ended up going to school by myself, but I had a bit of a tickle in my throat. By the time I went home on Wednesday, the “tickle” had turned into a sore throat and a headache. So I ended up going to sleep early… Everyone’s on the mend now, but it was ridiculous! :\

Which totally reminds me… today I re-watched a HappySlip video about being sick. I remember the first time I watched this particular vid I was actually getting over a sickness myself, so it was extremely relevant. Plus the Vicks stuff totally cracked me up. =P lol.

For anybody who doesn’t know who HappySlip is, HappySlip is a youtuber named Christine Gambito who specializes in vids capitalizing on Filipino humor. Being a Filipino, I totally see a lot of my family in a lot of her vids, and it’s hilarious! I’m pretty sure the first vid I saw of hers was “Chill Pill”, but my favorite… Oh, nevermind, I don’t think I have a favorite. Anyway, her most recent vid is called “Bunts of Junks”. So true… Especially the manila folder stuff. hehe…

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Birthday Bonanza!

August 30, 2010 at 12:12 am (Bloggy Stuff)
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So today was my nineteenth birthday… WHOOPEE! I have officially passed out of the age of childhood in my family. (I guess I was still included with the kids for just about everything this past year.) And today, being a Sunday, I was actually able to hold my birthday party on my birthday for once! Granted, I had to share it with my younger brother, but that’s okay because he’s only eight and our cousin & neice, Luke and Avery, for some reason had their birthday on his actual birthday.

Anyway, since today was my actual birthday, I was woken up later than everyone else in the house, which was nice for me, since I’m a night owl anyway and I like to sleep in. Except that J.T. was like… “GET UP!” and then he whacked my knee… So then we cleaned the house for about an hour. I swear it’s so confusing when my mom’s trying to tell me what to do, and I’m trying to do it, and then she cuts in with another thing she wants me to do, because then I either have to switch what I’m doing (at which point she’ll ask me why I didn’t finish the first task) or I continue on my current task (for which she’ll ask me why I’m not doing whatever it is that she just told me to do).

Anyway, so I did the dusting and windexing. I dusted my piano, which sorely needed it. And we did lots more organizing. And then I took a shower, and I found out that I actually don’t need my stomach-flattening tank top thing any more. (Which is awesome!) And then I had my brother (JT) get showered and dressed and he ended up choosing the exact same color scheme as I did! He even wore jeans that looked similar to mine. After that, I helped with food preparation… I made the deviled eggs, cut the sourdough bread to have with the jalapeño and artichoke  dip we buy from Costco, helped set out the cheese tray, and put out the drink tubs.

It was a great party. We had most of my mom’s side come, and my Tito Jr. and Tita Weddy showed up too. And we watched Ratatouille and a slideshow montage my Uncle Jer made of their trip to Hawaii. (so jealous!) And there were people playing ping-pong and pool in the garage, and I played piano with the kids (mainly Hanna, Cam, Ave and Luke). And Grandpa was there! I was so happy to see him; I haven’t seen him in over a week! (which is a long time considering that he’s living with us part of the time.)

And I got the coolest presents this year! I got a pair of navy-blue converse shoes from Tita Bebing (J.T. got a pair just like it from Auntie Sal and her family, which I found quite amusing.) I also got clothes from Ninang and Angel (which is always good), a bathing suit from Auntie Sal (which I really needed, since I don’t own one and I’m taking swimming this quarter), an ergonomic lap desk for my laptop from Auntie Melanie, Uncle Neil, Olivia, and Sophia (friends of the family), a gift card to Target from Mommy Jos and Uncle Hen, $40 from Uncle Pepito and Auntie Rose (my mommy Jos’s brother and sister-in-law), and $20 from Grandpa.

Also, my Uncle Jer, Auntie Mel, and Ness, Cam, and Tristan got me a ukulele from Hawaii! I was so surprised! I wish there had been a video camera because my reaction was something like… *see the Uke cases and think they’re Uncle Jer’s, because he usually brings his ukuleles to our house anyway, *see Uncle Jer taking uke case and walking toward me* “Hey Meg!” Then, thinking Ooh, jam session time! But he held it out to me and said, “Here.” I looked at him, and as I realized he’d gotten me a ukulele, my eyes widened, I gasped, and gestured to myself, mouthing me? I covered my mouth and just started saying, “Are you serious?” It was SO cool.

And one final surprise… my mom and dad are getting me an Amazon Kindle! I am over the moon! I’ve been wanting one of these for like… three years now! I first found it when they were still around $300 dollars and now, with the release of their generation 3 Kindle, it’s only $139! And it just came out two days ago! So I’m ultra-elated and we ordered the graphite version today and even though I’m on a waiting list, I’m absolutely thrilled! This is, without a doubt, the best birthday I’ve ever had!

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Dreams

August 4, 2010 at 8:46 am (Bloggy Stuff)
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I’m not much of a nighttime dreamer, I never have been. I’m not sure if it’s just me, or if it’s just my mom’s dream issue, but worse. I hardly ever dream at all. (I know people will say that that’s untrue, that people dream every night, and that you just don’t remember your dreams when you wake up.)

My mother says that she dreams a lot, but when she was a kid, she used to have nightmares, so she would pray that she wouldn’t dream and eventually it got so that she’d dream, wake up, and immediately forget about what she had dreamed… For me, it’s different. I wake up nearly every morning not having dreamt (seemingly) at all. It’s not that I don’t remember the dream, it’s that I don’t remember dreaming at all…

So completely unlike my cousin Vanessa, who dreams vividly just about every night and can tell you, with complete details, what each of her dreams were about for about the last month. Yeah… it’s crazy. Sometimes I wish I could do that.

So anyway, what this all leads up to is that when I do dream (that is, remember both having the dream and remember the dream itself) it’s very exciting for me. Usually I can figure out what the dream means, but the dream I had last night is a little confusing to me:

I am rolling (on some sort of rolling chair – not sure if it’s a wheelchair or not) through a semi-dark town/city street. I look to my right and there is a small child, perhaps four years old, who catches my gaze and holds it with his until I finish passing. He is small, with rich brown skin, wispy, curly dark hair, and wide eyes. I don’t actually remember specifically the color of his eyes, because it didn’t register as unusual, so I’m assuming they were chocolate brown as well, since they didn’t catch my attention by being light blue or anything. Behind him was an aging white man with a dark grey beard and a sour expression on his face.

I think nothing of it and go about my usual (unspecified) day, which I don’t remember any of but know occurred, because I remember seeing the same child on my wayback to wherever it was I had come from earlier that day. This time, though, the child runs to me, sits on my lap, and plays some sort of (unspecified) game or has a conversation with me. I don’t remember that part, but I do know that by the time I get to the house I had seen him in front of, I already like this child.

The child and I walk to the front step, which is low-lying. The path we walk on is slightly less than sidewalk-wide, the color of concrete, and surrounded by funny looking plants that I now identify as being similar to Aloe Vera, though there’s no way I can know for sure. I gently nudge the child toward the man, since he seems to know him.

The man scowls at us, but more at the child, and in an angry tone, chides the boy with words that I can’t remember but begin with, “I told you not to…”

The boy does not seem sheepish or scared, but instead says something to the effect of, “You’re not my mama” or “If my mama…”

The man’s face contorts in anger, and he moves his right hand back and slaps the child across the face. I am shocked, and my mouth falls open. The boy turns and half walks, half runs to me, and as I scoop him up, he wraps his arms around my neck, saying to himself, “I’m not crying… I won’t cry…” even as the tears begin to fall.

I stroke his face, whispering, “Shhh… it’s okay.” but then I turn to the man, who seems to feel bad for hitting the boy, and I vaguely remember him saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” after the boy had turned around. I, on the other hand, am furious. I (walk?) toward the man, the boy still in my arms, yelling, “If he weren’t here, I wouldhit you! For striking a child. A CHILD!”

And then the dream ends with me waking up, my face against my furry blanket. I’m not sure what it means, and usually I can interpret dreams as stemming from events in my own life, but this dream is confusing me a little. The only thing I can seem to connect it to is that at the moment, I am working towards an Associate’s Degree in Child Development, and I have learned about child abuse and such, but still… And to feel so protective of thischild, whose name I don’t know and whom I obviously didn’t know in the dream. Perhaps it’s telling me something? I’m not sure.

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Rant: Stupid Drivers, Brothers, and Allergies

June 5, 2010 at 5:44 pm (Bloggy Stuff)
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So today I had class. I went to class, in a mostly good mood. I got to draw with chalk pastels. I drew a fountain on my school’s campus. It turned out pretty well. We shared objects we find aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. I shared a bird’s nest that I found my junior year of high school. Then my dad picked me up.

Turns out we needed to go shopping. We went to the local Costco. We got tomatoes, Caesar salad, French vanilla and hazelnut creamers, half-and-half, chicken thighs, and a beach umbrella, since somebody broke another one of the ones we already have. I ended up lost in the crowd and got separated from Dad and walked around for several minutes before deciding to just go wait at the car, where he was already waiting for me, pissed, of course.

Then we drove home. A block or so before we got home, my Dad was ranting to me about bad drivers. (He saw an Asian lady talking on her cell phone – I don’t know about other parts of the country, but in California, that’s now illegal, and then we got stuck behind this black lady who was driving on the highway at like, 50 miles an hour. Speed limit was like, 65, so of course we were all, “COME ON!” And then, right after my dad had finished his rant about the Asian lady, we were waiting for a light when this one car comes up behind this other car and promptly rear-ends it! He hit the lady’s car so hard it went forward and tapped the back of the pick-up in front of her! Seriously…

And then we got home. And guess what? My mom decided it was a “cleaning day” instead of her usual “play FarmVille all day” day. (Not that she does it all the time, but it’s a little irritating when she’s like, “do your chores” and she’s on FarmVille on her Facebook. (Seriously, she’s on that thing more often than I am… no I am not kidding.)

So she tells me to put away the dishes, which is fine, since that’s my job anyway, but then she tells me to do the dishes, and that got me irritated. Call me petty or childish or immature or whatever, but that is my brother Kevin’s chore. Honestly, it’s not that she’s asking me to work that upsets me, it’s that the specific chore she was having me do causes me to have an allergic reaction. Exposure to water, especially soapy and dirty water, especially the kind with food particles integrated in it, reacts badly with my skin. I have very sensitive skin, plus food allergies, so if, for example, Justin had a PB & J and put the knife in the water with some peanut butter still on it, I would have an allergic reaction.

Besides that, the only reason she told me to do the dishes was because Kevin left some projects of his until the last second and Mom got all stressed and said he had to work on his essay and other stuff while the rest of us cleaned house. That was especially annoying, because all week, he’s been playing “Modern Warfare” or something like that on the PS3. At least he had the decency to say thank you, though, so I’m no longer upset about it.

Speaking of allergies, I must have one of the longest lists ever, not counting that poor kid who’s allergic to everything. I read about him in People or something; felt really bad. Off the top of my head, my allergy list contains: peanuts, macadamia nuts, walnuts, cashews, pecans, oysters, shrimp, avocado, eggplant, and sesame. (No, I am not allergic to all nuts; I can eat almonds, hazelnuts, and pistachios.) It’s incredibly annoying, especially at restaurants. Thai restaurants are the worst – they use peanuts, sesame, and eggplant in just about everything. Usually, I stick to fried rice or Angel Wings, but it’s never a good thing when the family decides to have a party at a Thai place, ’cause then I’m allergic to the catering.

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Psychic Fathers and West Side Story

June 4, 2010 at 8:23 pm (Bloggy Stuff)
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So today is a Friday, and I don’t have school on Fridays, ’cause I arranged my schedule like that. Anyway, my mom called home around noon-ish to ask if my Dad and I wanted to go out to lunch. We did, so we went to pick her up at the school she works at.

Okay, another thing you should know – my dad has like… an AMAZING gut feeling. Seriously, when I was in about seventh grade, he was dropping me off at school and he looked straight at me as I was getting out of the car, and said, “Meg… don’t get sick. I have a feeling… Don’t get sick.” And guess what? That day, I ended up going home after lunch with a 103 degree fever. Please, if you’re worried, don’t panic. I get sick very seldom, and I’ve always gotten high-grade fevers. 101 is when I’m feeling good. I think the hottest I’ve ever known myself to be was around 105-106… and that’s scary. (It was around the time I had an infection that caused the doctors to take out my appendix for no apparent reason.) Another four or five degrees and I would have been losing brain cells or having seizures.

Anyway, so, like I said, my dad was driving to my mom’s school, which is only about 10 – 15 minutes away, and he says, “Korean”. (As in, what type of food my mom will want.) I nodded, knowing that my mom likes Korean. When we go out for lunch with mom, it’s usually one out of the following: Indian, Thai, Chinese, or Korean. And then, lo and behold, we pick up my mom, and she says, “Let’s go to Korean.” I threw my head back and roared, “OH MY GOD! Dad, you are amazing!” And we all shared a good laugh over that.

So we went to the Korean place, and guess who’s there? Miss Violet and Mrs. Burbank, the Director and Headmistress of the school I graduated from (which is also where my mom used to work; it’s the same company, just a different campus). It actually took me a second to register Mrs. Burbank’s name, though I recognized her face immediately. She and Miss Violet both gave me a hug. (Unfortunately, the only thing that my mom seemed to be able to say about me to Mrs. Burbank was that I was dark because we just got back from camping last weekend.)

Anyway, about Mrs. Burbank. She was my brother’s fourth grade teacher, and she was the director for the play I was in in seventh grade: West Side Story. I should mention that it is completely, 100% her fault that I ended up going through a West Side Story “Phase”. I was in seventh grade and we found out that we would be doing “West Side Story” for our Spring Program (we do two shows a year, per grade) and Mrs. Burbank was going to be directing it. I had absolutely no idea what it was, but I gathered from what she was saying that it was a musical. So, I rented it within the week or so and watched it… twice in a row on the first day, and then about once a day for every day following until we had to return it. (I put it on my Christmas list that year and ended up with two copies.)

Then we had to try out for the parts. Honestly, I was much more self-assured and confident in my vocal abilities in the seventh grade, as I was one of the few in my class who seemed to enjoy the programs no matter what and could carry a tune. Of course, I tried out for Maria. And I got it. Mrs. Burbank told me later that she seriously considered giving me Anita because I’m “spunky” and she wanted some fire for Anita, but we needed somebody who would be able to carry the vocals for the lead, so I got Maria. (I was also a bit cocky, I think, because I assumed that I would get the part by default even though she had held tryouts…)

Anyway, I have so many memories about that show; too many – I’ll have to go into more detail later, because this post is already too long. Anyway, today Mrs. Burbank told me that she was in New York recently and watched West Side Story on Broadway (I’m so jealous!) and when she was watching it, she thought of me. Wasn’t that the sweetest thing? It totally made my day! And I had “I Feel Pretty” in my head for a couple of hours after that.

Thank goodness I wasn’t stuck on singing it out loud, like I was in the seventh and eighth grade, because that probably would have driven my dad insane, and that would not have been good, since we practiced driving today. (Yes, I’m eighteen years old and I’ve only been behind the wheel four times.) I remember, in seventh and eighth grade, I could recite and sing the movie almost all the way through, I had it so thoroughly memorized.

Anyway, you’ve probably had enough of this musical for one post, so I’ll save my memories for another day. I’ll be writing soon!

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