Geisha School Dropout

Get Your Hankies!

This reminds me of Tim, my robot with a heart of gold.

Storytime with Isaac #5

The class has started fiction writing, and this is Isaac's first attempt.  He cracks me up, this kid.

"Out Numbered," by Isaac

One day at school 100 and 10 were rivals.  100 bragged to everyone smaller than him.  0 was constantly being teased.  0 usually had liked spending time with 10.  100 was probably the meanest student.  At least ten times a day 100 had gone to detention.

I am hearing him say his favorite words: bully, mean, teasing, and some others you're better off not knowing.  Sheesh.  Even I get teassed by 100.  I'm moving.  Maybe to the Yukon.  Either that or I'll move to another school.

One day 101 came to school.  100 then realized that he was way bigger.  Then he realized that having a bigger number doesn't really matter that much.

THE END

2012 Thus Far

I have been completely MIA since the holidays, and for this I apologize, especially since I posted up this huge confession which was promptly followed-up by an ill-timed promotional post, then another post that had you imagining me in tacky underwear...then poof!  I disappear.  Totally bad form.  Mea culpa!

Here's the "Reader's Digest" version of what we've been up to:

January 1:

Happy New Year!  The kids bowed to us, their aunts, and their grandparents for money.  We ate rice cake and dumpling soup.

January 2:

We got on a boat!  It was a bit surreal looking at your own city through a tourist's eyes.

January 3:

We saw dolphins off the coast of Catalina!

January 4:

¡Viva México!

...and Emi turned 5!

January 5:

Day at sea...and I went so stir-crazy, I hallucinated that our towels turned into sea creatures.

January 6:

We docked early in the morning and walked off the ship.  We grabbed a cab and were home in 15 minutes.  Kinda nice living in a port city!  I then headed over to my parents' house to pick up Oscar.  Oh goodness.  I don't think I properly introduced Oscar to you all!

This is Oscar.  Hello, world!

January 7:

Mostly spent the day gathering vacation photos and feeling like I was still on a boat whenever I sat down.

January 8:

Started getting ready for the week ahead.  I made the following resolutions:

1. Get back on the weight-loss wagon.
2. Start cooking dinners at home again.
3. Regain my composure; I've been such a worry wart lately!

January 9:

Back to school!  Isaac joined a basketball league, and we had our first practice today.  I already broke resolution #3 because now I wonder if something is just clinically wrong with him...he thought it would be funny, or charming, or something, to pretend to kiss his obviously-uncomfortable teammate...in front of his uber-sports-fan dad.  Wince.  On the drive home, I reminded him for seriously the ten-thousandth time that kissing, touching, peeing and pooing, and private parts are all off-limits for him in terms of jokes and/or gestures, since he obviously cannot handle all the connotations involved.  He agreed, but seriously, he does something like this everyday, and I am getting very worried.

 AAAAAAAUGH!!!!!  Broke resolution #3 again!

Ugh, this might be the year I get my first grey hair; I cannot deal with this stuff gracefully.  I need a hug.  And some advice.  HALP.  ME.  PLEASE.

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Anyway!  Now you're all caught up.  We are, as always, a lively-yet-potentially-explosive mess. 

This Year's Holiday Card

 Happy New Year!!!

We hope you and your loved ones have a happy and healthy 2012!

Happy New Year!

View the entire collection of cards.

 

Letters to Santa 2011

Dear Santa,

I hope I'm on the good list this year because I'm really looking forward to Christmas and I try hard to be good all year long.  For example, I try hard in school, I help do chores, particepate what my teacher, Mr. K says, and feed my dog every day.  Santa, do you deliver presents to half of the world 1 night and the other the next?  OK, now I'll tell you my Christmas list.  It's a nerf gun, a helicopter, and a angry bird plush toy.  But, most of all, just snow.

Love your friend, 

Isaac

LOVE EMILY

PLEASE I LOVE YOU SANTA

SANTA I HOPE I GAT A BARBIE SANTA

EMI

(picture of Barbie doll with a dog, and some Angry Birds on the bottom)

Merry Christmas!

How are your festivities going?  Ours have been a lot of fun, if not a bit, er, demeaning to certain blogging members of the family, ahem.  

Yesterday I found myself squatting over a bathtub at my mom's place, wearing only a shirt and  underwear, in front of my entire family, who were relentlessly laughing at me.  If I had known that my undies would have been subject to public viewing, I would have chosen a different pair that morning.  This one had a large maneki neko emblazoned on the crotch, with Chinese take-out font proclaiming the reader just might "GET LUCKY."  

Of course it's totally ironic and it was on sale at Torrid years ago for two bucks, but that didn't matter as I heard one, two, three snapshots taken as I scrubbed foamy poop remnants off of an increasingly distressed and repentant Maggie.  Why she chose that day to roll around in cat shit, I will never know.  But now we all have this Christmas memory that will never fade, thanks to Tim's digital camera.  Of course I'm not going to post one of his pics, but here is a pic of the underwear floating in whitespace: 

Go ahead and rinse out your eyes.  I'll wait.

Besides mortification, we served up ham, kimchi fried rice, mashed potatoes and turnips, green bean casserole, corn casserole, and crudite with bagna cauda for Christmas Eve dinner.  My sister and I tormented and squabbled with each other while cooking, which made my mom laugh.  Oscar and Maggie loved getting to visit Halmuni and Harabuji's house, lapping up morsels that dropped to the floor accidentally or not-so-accidentally.  A lovely, simple Christmas.  

I wish you and your loved ones a wonderful holiday weekend!

Sponsored: Natural Presents for EVERYONE - including Myself!

Thanks to Walgreens for underwriting this post. I was paid as a member of the Clever Girls Collective, but the content is all mine. Visit http://www.walgreens.com/beauty.

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I am a firm believer in natural and organic food and products, but as a mom I just can't bear to spend a ton of extra money trying to create an non-toxic household.  Luckily, the market for these kinds of products has grown to the point where you don't have to go to exclusive stores or pay a high premium anymore.  In fact, here are some examples of healthy, environmental, and reasonably-priced gifts you can find in your neighborhood drugstore.

For the Kids

I believe it is especially important to provide kids and babies with natural products as much as possible, but often the steeper price tags make us moms a little hesitant to buy organic or all-natural stuff on a day-to-day basis.  However, that's also the exact reason why they make great holiday gifts, though!

Here is an example of a bath and body set that is sulfate-free, isn't tested on animals, and has gentle vegan ingredients.   I've always thought grapefruit is such a great scent for kids; it's fresh- and clean-smelling, and matches their sunny dispositions.

 

 

 

 

For Men

This category is super-easy.  There is a brand called Every Man Jack that specializes in men's products, and their stuff is vegan and sulfate-free.  Best of all, they work really well and they smell great too (although they do have unscented versions of almost all their products for the sensitive guys out there).  Every Man Jack makes it easy to introduce the man in your life to the cleansing/toning/moisturizing/sunblock regimen he really should have been doing for years now without overwhelming him.  Grab a few skin, hair, and shaving products, arrange them in a shower caddy, and voila, you will have a cleaner, handsomer man!

 

 

For the Ladies, Including Moi

My friend got me some Out of Africa products for my birthday last month, and I am a total shea butter fanatic now.  It turns out that shea butter is absorbed into the skin much faster and keeps your skin moisturized for so much longer than normal lotions, and my skin looks so much healthier now, especially my hands.   I just figured that the little crackles and crosshatch patterns were a result of aging; turns out my skin was just dry!  No Parabens, Sulfates, Petrolatums or Phthalates; Cruelty-free and Eco-Friendly.  Try it and see if your skin will lap it up like mine does.  

 

 

While we're on the subject of hands, another recent discovery is non-toxic nail polish.  I had no idea it existed until I saw this Keeki Holiday Nail Set online.  I am aching to try it out!  Manicures and pedicures are two of my favorite ways to unwind and pamper myself, but I always feel uneasy smelling all the chemicals and wondering what they are doing to my nails.  My curiosity is piqued.

 

 

 

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Merry Christmas and happy shopping!  If you have encountered any other great finds, please let me know!

Houston, We Have a Problem...and a Confession

(My response this short article on self-harm and violence in the Korean American community.)

I know this seems like a big bummer to post this during the holiday season, but 'tis also the season for a spike in suicides, suicide attempts, and domestic violence.

Does this ring a bell for you at all?  It definitely did for me:

Grace Yoon, executive director of the Korean American Family Service Center in New York, told The Huffington Post that Koreans come to America with high hopes of acquiring wealth and providing a good education for their children. When their expectations are not met, some feel like they have let their families down. Yoon commented that the problem has gotten worse since the recession, "especially with Korean fathers and heads of households whose small businesses are not doing well."

The article goes on to say that the intergenerational language barrier as well as the cultural taboo against seeking mental health services may contribute to the higher-than-average suicide rate in Korean Americans.

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If this helps anyone at all, I'll just put myself out there as someone who did try to kill herself when she was in the throes of what she now recognizes as a major depressive episode.  

I was 21, feeling exhausted and beaten down, not doing well in school, but instead of seeking help, I just ignored my health and soldiered on, terrified of delaying my graduation by yet another quarter or year.  It got to the point where I stopped talking to my friends and stopped checking in with my parents, unable to keep up the lies when I claimed I was okay.  As I got more and more insular, my whole world consisted of my classes and my inability to attend them, my lack of focus, my inevitable failure.  So a few days before my first finals, hating myself for letting my parents down, they who worked so hard and sacrificed so much so that I could go to a top-notch school, and I couldn't even repay them with simply succeeding, I tried to take my own life.  I honestly thought I was doing them a favor, relieving a burden.

I was so, so lucky that my attempt was feeble at best, and my roommate was in the apartment.

After that, I was hospitalized for a week.  For some reason, I had this stereotype against psychiatry and didn't consider it a fully-valid field of medicine.  I could not have been more wrong.  Thanks to the medication, counseling, and support I received then and afterwards, I finally graduated from university.  My grade point average was barely enough to scrape past, and my department might or might not have overlooked a single missing requirement, but I did it.  And my life instantly became easier once I stepped foot outside that damn campus and moved on with my life.

Did I at 21 have even the tiniest correct inkling about how life after college would be like?  Absolutely not!  My instincts and intuition that I relied on so heavily turned out to be completely off; I think it was because I was completely biased to see only the negative.  That's what depression does; it skews your outlook on everything to just remember the negative and completely ignore the positive, and that small shift in perspective is what makes depression so dangerous.  It was actually quite a relief to discover that my "lenses" were off and needed readjusting.  

The turning point for me was my dad tearfully telling me that he would rather have a non-college-graduate daughter than no daughter at all.  That he would have let me crash at home for as long as I needed in order to get back on my feet again.  And that he was truly sorry that it had to come to this for him to tell me that, that this was completely uncharted territory for him, that we would get through this together.  My mom was too overcome with emotion to speak to me then, but as time went on, I came to realize that she felt the same way.  And believe me when I tell you that my parents made the Tiger Mom look like a kitten; that I was pushed very hard all my childhood; and if you had asked me before all this if I truly believed they loved me, I would have a hearty laugh at the mere notion.

But it turned out that my Korean parents, as stoic and strict and cruel and physically punitive as they were, were still parents.  And now they are very demonstrative, nurturing, giving, loving grandparents.  

And now, daily I think to myself, "I'm so relieved I'm not dead.  All the fun I would have missed out on!"

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If you at any point feel as hopeless as I did that summer, please know that you aren't "crazy," that you are struggling alongside countless others, that there are other solutions besides death, that people love you and are rooting for you, that honest-to-goodness there is light at the end of the tunnel.  Or at the very least, there are enough points of light inside the tunnel to make it worth sticking around to observe.  DO NOT MISS OUT ON THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Call a friend and tell them you need help, call 1-800-273-8255, go to the emergency room, connect with people online, just don't leave yourself alone with the thoughts you are thinking, the same way you would try to save your friend who is trapped in a house with someone who is trying to kill them.

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If you got this far, thanks so much for reading.  This was difficult to write.

Cross-posted on Kimchi Mamas

Storytime with Isaac #4

Isaac's writing sample this week was 5 pages long, and it chronicled the apparently epic bowling night we had a few weeks ago.  My favorite sentence: "'Giggle, giggle,' I whisper to myself."  How creepy is that?

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A Trip to Cal Bowl

One lovely, beautiful evening I was ready to go to a bowling stadium called Cal Bowl!  I felt as if I was an angel in heaven.  It was about 5:46 p.m. when we left home and 5:56 p.m. when we got there.  They're was at least sixty-seven bowling alleys in the bowling stadium.  Inside my cranium I thought that either I'm just imagining things or I'm seeing things again.  I went with my lovable, lovely Mom and my noisy, whiny, and snory sister named Emily which is a scaredy-cat!  "Giggle, giggle," I whisper to myself.

The bowling stadium looked shiny, neat, unbreakable, and fashonable.  I started to look around.  I'm starting to like it here!  Then Mom said that friends were coming to bowl with us!  I was almost going to faint!  I was obviously jumping up and down with exitment right that second Mom told me that piece of "information."  

It was almost 6:15 p.m. which is about dinner-time for us.  I was almost famished.  There were about 4 restaurants.  I picked the first one of all 4 restaurants.  They didn't have names on them.  Inside, there was a TV, 24 chairs, 12 tables, and the manager.  I ordered shrimp and mac-n-cheese, Mom ordered fish and a salad with ranch dressing, and Emily ordered...Well, I forgot.

We waited otuside the restaurant for food in the bowling alley.  We waited for about 10 mins.  It felt like it was an immence amount of time!  "Yawwwn," I yawn to myself.  Now I'm famished for sure!  I was also thirsty.  I felt as if I was in a drowt.  Finally, we got our dinner.  We all ate on a bench next to the loud, noisy bowling alleys.  

After we're done, all our friends arrived.  First was the dad, then the child and Mom.  I was a little shy and nervous, but I got used to it.  "Blah blah blah," they say to each other.  We were going to get our bowling shoes.  We had to take off one of our own shoes.  Then we got to our bowling lane.  Our lane number was 65.   We all typed in our names.  I thought the pins would be battered.

Anyways, Moms friends dad bowled first.  He was an excellent, fantastic, unbievable pro at bowling.  He got a stupendous strike!  We were amazingly still for a minute.  Then an aplause broke the silence.  So it went on.  Mommy bought us chips with melted, creamy, delicious cheese.  

My score at the end was 124, Moms was 65, moms friend was 221, and Emi's score was 42.  Finally, we said goodbye to our friends and went home.  It was a stupendous outting.

Finding my Inner Crafter

Emi's teacher asked each family to create a Snow Friend to contribute to the classroom's winter decorations.  Instructions and expectations were frighteningly open-ended for this software programmer:

You can make it with bottles, cans, paper, white trash bags filled with cut up newspaper, paper plates (remember to make a stand of some sort please, boxes, anything. (The only exception is the use of food products…….bugs, etc) You can use paper, felt, wiggle eyes, pom poms, yarn, jewelry, bows, ties, ANY accessory. Have fun, do it together, make sure your child really gets involved.

My eyes crossed at the supply list.  So, basically we need to create something out of anything and everything on the planet?  I need a real specifications document!  Who signed off on this thing?

So, panic-ridden, I actually dreamed about this Snow Friend for days before making my first foray to the craft store.  One night, I imagined a Snow Friend made not out of snow, but balls of yarn, so I googled "Yarn Ball Snowman" and found "Happy Homemaker Me," a crafty genius mama who does every domestic thing I do not.  However, I swear she has an engineer's mind, because her post detailing her yarn ball snowman project was so well-organized and intuitive, she made a crafter out of me.

Top three lessons learned from this:

1. Michael's is more effective than Target in separating me from my money.  All I wanted to do was buy some styrofoam balls and some yarn, but I came out with over $50 worth of sewing supplies, ornaments, cardmaking materials, a dark chocolate Snickers bar, and a dozen wild ideas about how I'm going to quit my job and start scrapbooking, wreath-making, and quilting.  HALP ME.

2. Apparently, if I was a smart consumer, I would have saved 50% with one of Michael's myriad of coupons.  Ugh, forgive me Father, for I hath paid retail price.

3. All hail the mighty hot glue gun!   A really good adhesive can change worlds!  Seriously, somewhere between the trigger and the nozzle lies the secret to world peace, plus the searing pain you feel when you accidentally get some on your fingers satisfies my periodic yen for S&M.  Hurts so good, baby!

And here are the results of about 4 hours of labor:

Hat sewn by yours truly; arms courtesy of our recently-pruned pomegranate tree; eyes made from fireplace remnants; embellishments, gift boxes, and buttons curated by Emi.  Just look at the smile on her face!  I'm hooked.