OakMonster's Den

Holy CRAP! It’s all ready been a week?!

My god. Am I a bad blogger!

But I promise to have something much more entertaining than my weekly food journal in a day or two.

For now, on to Meatless Tuesday.

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Breakfast:

• Open faced “grilled cheese” sandwich: one slice of 7-grain bread, buttered, topped with slices of one whole vine-ripen tomato, sprinkled with Nature’s Seasons seasoning blend, and a few slices of snack-sized cheddar cheese, toasted in the toaster oven until the cheese is melted.
• A mug of full-leaf oolong tea.
• Mid-morning snack: 2 whole grain crackers (they’re like 2.5 inch across!) from Fresh & Easy with generous schmear of whipped cream cheese, my mid-morning snack of choice these days.

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Lunch:

• A bowl of vegetable chili based on the recipe in Food & Wine magazine (which I will blog about later).  In that: heirloom carrots, daikon, red bell peppers, kidney beans, hominy, onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, and generous shakes of Chipotle Tobasco.  And a piece of 7-grain toast.
• Late dessert/afternoon snack: a Godiva dark chocolate truffle.

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Dinner:

• Because it was a buy one get another one for $2, I got 2 rustica pizzas from Z Pizza: Moroccan (egg plants, pine nuts, feta, basil pesto, caramelized onion) and Mediterranean (artichoke hearts, feta, roasted red peppers, greek olives, pili pili oil).  I ate a few squares out of each.
• A glass of organic peach oolong iced tea.

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Satisfaction level: Meat? What meat?  Nope.  Didn’t miss it one bit.  And I was full all day.

Thoughts: It’s getting easier and easier each week, I have to tell you.  I even didn’t miss the meat too much today.  But I did have an egg for breakfast.  I did crave some proteins for dinner but I didn’t go for my usual burger or ribs, but salmon.  A little weird, I know.  I’m sure I’m going to want me a juicy burger in a few days.

I’m also more conscious now of what I’d eat on a Meatless Tuesday and Brandon has been helpful in keeping me in check on that too.  He’d try to help me think of places I could get something meatless to eat at.

Now, I’ve been thinking about it today that since I’m doing this a Buddhist reason, perhaps I should also not do alcohol on Tuesdays as well to make the whole religious day out of it.  After all, abstaining from alcohol is one of the Five Precepts a good Buddhist should follow.

By not eating meat/eggs on Tuesday, and having not kill anybody, abstaining from taking life is checked off the list.  Abstaining from alcohol? One day a week, I can do that.  Abstaining from sexual misconduct is everyday…although I wonder if lusting after  Taylor Lautner and/or Sam Worthington or dreaming about Jason Mraz counts.  Abstaining from taking what is not given, no klepto here so check.  And finally, abstaining from false speech aka lying. Well, that might be a little hard to swing in a corporate world, but we’ll do our best, won’t we?

Alright. It’s decided. Tuesdays will be meatless AND dry.

Oh boy.

Well crap. I’ve been so busy that this blog is slowly becoming all about my Meatless Tuesday.  Sorry guys!

Just to catch you up, last Wednesday was our 8th wedding anniversary.  On our way to our tradition dinner at Benihana through the infamous SoCal rainstorm, we were rear-ended.

As we crested over the 405 close to Fairview exit, we got out of the carpool lane to get to the 73.  Suddenly in front of us, a black sedan was sideway on the #1 lane.  Its visibly damaged trunk was partly in the carpool lane and the hood in #2 lane.  Unable to swerve around, Brandon slammed the brakes.  We stopped many cars length from the black sedan.  Far enough distance to be safe but yet close enough to see the people in the car trying to get out of their vehicle.

See?  Driving at speed limit, leaving plenty of room in front of you in a torrential rain actually works. Unfortunately, the guy behind us didn’t follow the same rule.

All we could see out the rear view mirror was a smaller car than our Santa Fe disappearing behind us.  And *CRUNCH*.  We bounced around in our seats.  Not too badly, but enough to know we would be in pain the next day.

Some folks had questioned me why we moved from the crash site.  Well, among the many unwise reasons to get out of our vehicle or stay stalled in this lane–oh, I don’t know.  It’s dark.  It’s rainy. We are in the fast lanes with fast cars whizzed recklessly by each side of us? Um. No. We were not sitting out here to cause MORE accidents.

So we started to pull over to the shoulder.  The car that hit us started to follow.  Oh, goodie.  However, by the time we got to the shoulder, there was nobody behind us.

That motherfucker was GONE.

We called 911 and waited for the CHP to show up.  We couldn’t see what became of that black sedan either.

The tow truck showed up first and he told us that he was here for the black sedan that was reported by several people to be blocking the #1 lane.  But there was nobody out there except us, he said.

Soon after that, CHP pulled up and got us off the freeway to file report and talk about the incident.

In short, somebody hit the black sedan and left the scene.  The black sedan, having caused our accident, left the scene.  The guy who crashed into us also left the scene.  If it wasn’t for decent people calling that black sedan in to 911, it would’ve sounded like we made the whole thing up.   I am forever grateful to those good Samaritans who called that in, by the way.

Back to us, with fading adrenaline rush, Brandon and I continued onto Benihana to make the best out of the rest of the evening.  We popped some ibuprofen and went in to enjoy our dinner.  Our necks were tensed but we didn’t quite feel the impact yet.  I tried to dull it with a sample flight of sake…which didn’t really work.

The kicker of it all is that we had just finished fixing up the Santa Fe from Brandon’s day-before-Thanksgiving rear-ending.  (That one was paid for fully by the lady who hit him.)

AND we now found out our insurance apparently only cover physical injury from a hit-and-run/uninsured motorists but NOT the damage to the car.

Then again, this is now a week after the incident, my lower back still is  VERY tensed.  Brandon has been doing well so far but, true to what our doctor told us, sometime the muscles don’t react to the impact until many days later, now the Mister also has the problem.

Now, to top off the cake that was yesterday in the Kingdom of Crazy (aka the office), my back was so tensed I had to go get a massage.  The journey home on the bus took FOREVER as the jackasses, trying to creep up to the congested freeway entrances, blocked intersections all over Downtown LA.  Seriously, if you set LAPD out to ticket all of those bastards blocking traffic, endangering pedestrians as well as impeding traffic, City of LA would totally pull out of the financial shithole they’re in.  But I digress.

The massage part of Meatless Tuesday was nice, but not so much the rest of the day.

It all started at breakfast…

Breakfast

• Half of the Honey Nut Cheerios I originally intended to eat.  I tripped and spilled most of the bowl full of cereal and milk onto my cubicle floor.  *sigh*
• Snack: a slice of lemon poppy seed cake someone brought in.

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Lunch

• Veggie burger at Rowdy Red with only half of the buns.  A bit of the sweet potato fries with ranch dressing. It was really tasty and I personally liked it.  However my guts didn’t want any of that.

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Dinner

• 2 slices of Pizza Hut Veggie Lover pizza.
• A general scoop of Ben & Jerry’s Neopolitan Dynamite.

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Satisfaction Level: I WANT A FUCKING MEATY CHEESEBURGER NOW level.  I was hungry all day.  And cranky because of that.  Well, the botched attempt at breakfast got me nice and hungry through lunch.  I have to give the veggie burger credit for being thoroughly satisfying.  But then it acted up, leaving me miserable and quite literally drained for the rest of the afternoon.  I was so busy I didn’t get to snack before the evening massage either.

Thoughts: Yesterday just sucked in general. *sigh*

Breakfast

• A small bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and milk.
• Mid morning snack – a few bites out of the 2-lb. tub of Fresh & Easy low fat strawberry yogurt.

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Lunch

• Homemade mac and cheese, half of Barefoot Contessa’s recipe.  Essentially shells, gruyere, and cheddar with a pinch of nutmeg. I also infused the milk with thyme and garlic.

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Dinner

• Brandon made us Top Ramen…
• Dessert: Ben & Jerry’s Neapolitan Dynamite. Lots of it.

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Satisfaction Level: Satisfied.  Didn’t miss meat once!

Guilt Level: Very high for the lack of veggies when they could totally be had.  Oh, and the ice cream gorge.

Thoughts

I took a mental day off on Tuesday (keyword there is MENTAL) and had an ortho appointment in the morning.  I pretty much stayed in all day except for when I ran the books out to mail for Operations Paperback. I mean, I could have gone to the store and get some fresh ingredients to make ratatouille as inspired by the previous night’s Heroes episode.  But I didn’t.

And of course, the blues got me diving into the arms of Ben & Jerry.  I usually enjoyed a couple of bites for dessert anyway.  However, I went to town with that.  Then again, I did avoid the wine which was my original idea for dessert.  One shouldn’t consume a depressant when depressed, a lesson I learned the hard way after my mom died.

That brought us to the blues.

A friend has been waiting for her grandmother to pass away for a few weeks.  This weekend was it.  Having had talked about the experience with the friend all week, it was like reliving the days with my mom again.

Obviously, once I got to work and found out the friend’s grandmother had passed away, feelings beyond my control were set in motion.  I was sad for my friend’s loss.  I was sad for my own loss.  Which brought me to miss my family, my friends, and overall being home.  I was sad for things I don’t have in my life, an interesting form of envy.  You get the picture.

I hid behind my pile of work all day as an excuse to not be social.  Thank god for that because I would’ve started crying.

The next morning, I cried in the shower. For not much of a reason but all of the above.  I knew I couldn’t go to work like that.

Grief is a VERY odd thing.  I mean, soon after my mom’s death?  I get it.  The random sadness and the crying.  2 years after and I’m still affected by some stranger’s death?  That I don’t understand.

Then again, I *am* doing this veggie Tuesday thing in honor of my mom.  So, I guess in someway it’s all related.

I told you about my multi-talented friend Note, the co-owner of Kinnaree Gourmet Thai and tarot card reader extraordinaire.  The latter, at least our group of friends think she is anyway.

I promised Note that I would blog about my month-to-month prediction, so that as time ticks on, we can come back to see how accurate she really is.

Before we get to that, what she said about my overall future gets me giggling.

She said that although I am a team player, I work better alone. Same thing with my social life, great with friends and going out but rather be at home.  She said that I will do well in an international environment. And that if I was to change job, I will find success in working on my own with international connections.

Gee. Doesn’t that sound like I should persue blogging and writing full time? LOL.

She also pointed out that my generosity and willingness to help people will get me in trouble.  Yeah, well, that was proven last year when I loaned money to childhood friend who actually was scamming off everyone she knew. Her poor mom was following her trail paying off the debt, including mine. But I digress.

Also I have to watch my dedication to work. Note pointed out that my doing well at work often means I’m so consumed by it and neglecting the household. Again, that’s true. I lost myself in whatever it is I’m involved in and forget to take care of my personal life.  Brandon knows this well from 2 years of Thrill the World back to back with my Big Gala.

Now, the 12-month prediction.

December: There will be secrets involved either at work or at home. Somebody has a secret and that will complicate things.

January: Watch out for some work harmony issue. That schpiel about me being too generous has something to do with that.

February: Great partnership at work and at home.

March: Other people will have bad news that I would take it upon myself to worry about.  It’s not my bad news but I’ll be bothered by it quite the same way.

April: The lady doth daydream too much. LOL. Something about me not being able to concentrate on the present, instead dreaming about things that could be.

May-June: There will be some obstables I must get over in these two months. Everything will be a struggle but I will win in the end.

July: Disappointment, she said.  That was the only word she gave me for July.

August: Temper rises and there will be some “third hand” interferences in my life. Like someone will try to mess things up for me.

September: I will “lead the army to victory” at work.

October-November: Again, obstacles. This time I will get tangled up in things. I will feel stuck. (Gee…during that time of year, could Thrill the World be something I get tied up on??)

There. You now also have the map to my future year. Stick around to see what may come true!

As for now, Note didn’t mention in her cards but I’m enjoying the time at home.  I had lunch with my family and the Aunties today.  We stuffed ourselves silly with a seafood feast, had great conversations, and remembered mom while at it.  Her friends miss her dearly and I once again serve as the proxy for my mom in hanging out with her friends.

Tuesday is Lalai Sap with the Aunties, movie in the afternoon with a friend, and dinner with Gnarly Kitty.  Wednesday is a day-trip to Aunty Or’s house in Khao Yai now that it’s finished and completed with the backyard orchard, corn field and mini rice paddy.  Thursday looks like a lunch  and shopping date with sister in law and dad. Friday is exclusively all Gang of 4 and a night out with Tong per our tradition. Saturday, last lunch with the family and off to California I go.

International lone wolf, I am!

Sawaddee from the Big Mango, y’all!  A nice, crisp, 75F “winter” Bangkok, no less.  I am enjoying the cool morning here.

I arrived at dawn yesterday and what a day it was!  My brother and sister-in-law picked me up in his brand new BMW X5.  We had breakfast and I was left to myself all morning.  I unpacked, played some piano, and took a crack at the Nikki Heat novel before succumbing to sleep after lunch.

My friend Note called to wake me up and off I went to her condo for a 4:30 p.m. pool party that didn’t happen. LOL.  Another friend showed up and we just hung out waiting for other people.

Meanwhile, in addition to her Kinnaree restaurant, Note has developed a new talent for tarot card reading.  I experienced her talent first hand last night which I will post later. Yes, it deserves its own entry!  Let’s just say that my general card is a Star. So is Lily’s.  It’ll be a good year next year.

The gang later assembled at Kinnaree Gourmet Thai on the back patio, away from general population.  3 other friends showed up for dinner. A few of us partook in a bottle of prosecco.  One of the friends brought home made cupcake and Note was off to assemble an “Earthquake” platter.

Those who are familiar with Swenson’s Ice Cream chain would know that an Earthquake is a big bowl of several scoops of ice cream.  At the request of our gang, Note emerged with a platter of almost every variety of ice cream she had at the restaurant.

I had a plate of half eaten cupcake in my hand as I reached over to get a scoop from the platter.  And SPLAT! The cake landed onto the ice cream.

“Oh my god! 2012 on a plate, you guys! Cupcake meteor!”

We laughed our heads off then.  And of course, I would repeat the same thing a little while later.  After I stopped laughing, I downed the damn cupcake to prevent future disaster.

We then took the party back to Note’s condo where we hung around as two more people get their fortune told, provided commentaries and real estate advise as we went.  All with the background of this cheesy modeling show Thailand has on, sponsored by a “talent” school, teaching modeling, stage presence, acting, and singing type deal. The models were quite horrible less this one girl who can actually act.  There was one hot boy on there that overacts worse than Henry Rollins on Sons of Anarchy.  I thought he was hot until I saw him work the runway. Smarmy and over abundance of narcissism killed it for me. But I totally digress there.

The next thing we knew, the girls’ phones started ringing. It was close to midnight and their moms were wondering where they were at. We knew we all had to go home.

My dad and brother just got back from a business trip this morning. I got to eat breakfast with them, now both are back in bed sleeping off their tiring trip.  I am going off to hang out with Lily and Joy and her kids at Royal Bangkok Sports Club for a swim and lunch.

The plan so far:

Today: Sports Club. Dinner with my bro and his girlfriend. Possible trip to Night Bazaar with my sister-in-law and the girlfriend.

Monday: Lunch with the family and Aunties.

Tuesday: Shopping at Lalai Sap Alley with Lily and the Aunties. Catching a Thai new rom-com hit, almost out of the run, with 2 MD friends later that evening.

Wednesday: The Aunties are taking me to Khao Yai. Aunty Or finally finished her home and they want me to see it.

Friday: Shopping with my gang. Dinner with family.

It’s going to be a busy but relaxing week!

Oddly enough, one should be nice and high after a major life triumph like your first backpacking trip.

Instead, I dropped off the side of Mount San Jacinto into the blues.

Elated, I shot out an email to my family soon after I blogged about it here.

It’s like dropping a pepple into a bottomless well.

Except for a chirp from my sister-in-law, nothing.

Well, heck, at least I expect to hear a “Well, you should’ve been working out so you don’t drag everyone behind”, but I didn’t even get that.

In a way, I did know that I won’t hear anything.  I did expect to hear nothing.   And somehow, knowing that I would probably didn’t get any reply from anyone, it still affected me.

It took me all week to get a hold of that feeling.  That I was sad because my family didn’t seem to share in my joy and triumph.  That I was sad because I had been disillusioned by a sense of closeness.  Facebook can give you that, I guess.

I didn’t think that whole “you need no approval from anyone but yourself” would apply to family members too.

But now I know.

I can breathe easy now.  And continue doing my thing.  Oh all the things my family wouldn’t have approved of otherwise. Frankly, some are still embarrassed with my participation with Thrill the World.  And probably will be again.

I guess when the bar is set so low, that I would continue doing things that would embarrass and disappoint my family, I shouldn’t worry any more.

Huh. That’s right, isn’t it?

I did tons of things I am proud of even if no one else is.

And that is enough.

Friends, get ready for another long and slow season on the OakMonster blog.

Thrill the World is here. And in full force.  (Oh hey, register with our LA team here.)

I’m involved in many different levels this time, a lot more than I signed up for this year.  Well, you know, MJ went and died on us. That brought a lot more to the original “let’s take it easy this year” plan.

I met with Amanda and Mahdroo and our new group of helpers last Wednesday.  This year is going to be awesome!

Friday was the second anniversary of my mom’s passing.  It gets a bit easier each year, but I still teared up a little when I tell a stranger about her death.  (Weird, huh?)  This year, I took Friday off to go to the temple with my aunt and cousin.  That evening, the cousin and uncle came over for dinner I cooked in my mom’s memory.  Some of her favorite dishes: Caesar salad (I cheated and used bottled dressing–mom LOVED table-side service), lasagna, and crepe suzette.

Mom’s favorite part of crepe suzette was the flambe’ing of the orange liquer.  I tried to do it this time with my cousin ready with his iPhone camera and Brandon with a fire extinguisher.

I didn’t know how to use the fireplace lighter, apparently. Mom probably was afraid I’d burn my apartment down or something.  LOL.

Saturday came with a morning full of errands and off to a barbecue at Nhien and Jonathan’s where I played a sous chef and general helper.  Poor Brandon was left to socialize for himself as I was busy assisting the hosts.

With all the busy-ness, I was supposed to start on the new time management plan this morning.

The problem I’m having is that I stayed up way to late to blog and work on Thrill the World stuff that I would crawl into bed around 11 p.m., long past our bed time.  Brandon would be long asleep by this point.  Of course, being a TV junky that I am, between after dinner and time I got to blog usually is occupied by going through the DVR etc.

Meanwhile, piles of paperworks colonized my desk.  Ask me to get a receipt from last week for a return and I will yell at you to leave me the fuck alone.  It’s that bad.

One morning, I was up at the first alarm and had at least 20 minutes before I have to be out the door that morning.  I did my Thrill the World duties and started on a blog.

It dawned on me that if the evening is to be left for family time, then the morning would be perfect to work on my hobby stuff!  So, instead of waking up at 5:40 a.m. (non hair-washing day), why don’t I just get up at 5:15 and get 25 minutes extra time in?

Well, I told myself that when I wanted to wake up to work out daily.  That just didn’t happen.

However, working on Thrill the World, my blogs, and other household stuff?  These are the things I REALLY do want to work on…unlike a work out which was something I really don’t want to do.

So this morning, I was supposed to be up at 5:15.

Didn’t happened.

Because last night, I was up until 11 p.m. scraping off any possible piths from the peels of 25 lemons to make a batch of Limoncello.  Yes, I am making my own.  (Blog coming soon).

We call can thank Justin and Olaina for having brought me an authentic Italian Limoncello.  Now that I had it, the commercial stuff tastes like crap.

My coworker Rob obliged in bringing me a bag full of his spray-free backyard lemons earlier in the week.  I finally started in on the lemons on Sunday around 4:30, took a break at 6:30 to make dinner, and came back to it around 8 p.m.  I finished at 11 p.m.

My right arm and hand still hurt from that and I’m one day late on my new time management plan.

The thing about it is, I REALLY want this plan to work.  I feel so guilty with all that I have been neglecting. The piano and the guitar have been sitting lonely for months.  There are many things I would love to do but never got around to because I seem to keep running out of time.

No more.

I’m determined to fix that.  There is no magical time turner for me to use: just discipline.  I definiely have been slacking in that department but with all that I WANT to do and NEED to get done, I can no loger afford it.

I can do this. I know I can do this.

Right?

I posted a long time ago about the pain of being a Jane of All Trades. The trades I keep collecting have a collective weight that threaten to crush me.  Just take a look at the list.

Current Hobbies

Playing piano, guitar (need to do more of that) and singing. Cooking. Photography. Photography of stuff I cooked.  Blogging.  Tweeting.  USC Football fanatic.  Pop culture fiend. TV junkie.  Movie and entertainment news addict.  Supporting the troops with being an Operation Paperback volunteer and gathering funds to do my own Operation Jingle All the Way annually.  Thrill the World Los Angeles.

Developing Hobbies

Camping and backpacking. Speaking Italian. Making websites with Drupal.

Ex-Hobbies I wish I had more time to get back to

Making art. (I’m/was pretty good with collages and paper mache.) Scrapbooking aka paste stuff on paper, punch holes, put in binders. I still keep my keepsakes in a basket but haven’t put them in binders in years.

Ex-Developing Hobbies which I would pick up in a heartbeat if I have more time

Sewing. Designing t-shirts. Frisbee golf. Roller skates–this one is abandoned because no one would go with me. Playing video game.

Someday…

Making videos. Computer illustration–I really want to do designs like Threadless people.  Writing a memoir. Culinary school?

I asked my dad once when he would retire.  He said that he couldn’t possibly do that.  What would he do if he doesn’t work?  Dad’s hobby is being a news junky.  And shopping, but then he shops for clothes he’d wear to work.  He has no grand kids to raise (again, hinting at me on that one).  So, what would he do with the time?

And then there’s me with all of my hobbies I could barely keep up with.

I mean, if I win a lottery tomorrow, I am all set to retire and explore all of my interests.

Seriously, I love all of my hobbies so much I could be doing them all the time and not bitch about it.

Then again, Brandon did bring up a good point. Say, like cooking.  I do like to cook, but would I still like it if it becomes a career?  (Hey, P’ House – can you answer me that since you’re a chef?)  That was the reason why I’m still working full time and taking cooking classes on the side instead of being in a culinary school.

But now that I have so many interests and hobbies, the worlds are colliding.

For example, Brandon and I want to go camping on the weekend this summer, as in taking a Friday/Monday off to have 2 nights and 3 days excursion.  Or at least leave a little early on Friday and get 2 nights in somewhere.

How about this weekend? Nope. Got a tweet up on Friday.  Next?  Nope. Will be at DrupalCamp LA.  After that? Nope. Got a house party on Friday.  How about after that? Nope. Actually is double-booked for a barbecue on Saturday. Etc.

And next thing you know, September will be here, and I will start my Italian lessons on Saturday mornings. And of course, USC football. And then Thrill the World. And then the Big Gala I put on at work.

And with all the busy days and weekends, I am not in the kitchen as much as I would like to, nor am I playing the piano twice a week according to my goal.

Cut the television, someone suggest.  But how could I? It *is* another hobby of mine which I’m trying to consolidate into a few nights a week and Saturday/Sunday morning routine to maximize time usage.

It was also suggested that I wake up earlier on the weekends to get more hours in the day. The Winston Chruchill’s polyphasic sleep schedule sounds like a plan.  Unfortunately, my work would frown upon me napping for 2 hours in the middle of the afternoon.  Heh.

See what I mean about being nowhere AND everywhere?

If money grows on trees, that would be nice.  But I’d rather have a Time-Turner from Harry Potter books.

I was putting the laundry in the washer yesterday, an automatic motion I usually don’t think about much any more.

Coins in.  Water runs for a few seconds.  Add soap. Let water run some more.  Add laundry.

A thought popped into my head.

“When was that first time you used the washing machine?”

I grew up in Thailand in a household full of service staff. In the 3-attached home complex, 3 families, each with its own maid, shared a cook,  a groundskeeper, a laundry lady, and a driver.

Pretty much everything has always been done for me.  The cooking. The cleaning. The laundry.

Until I came to the U.S. for high school, I have never used a washing machine before.  Sure, I have washed a few pieces of clothing before then at summer camps, but that was all by hand. Even when traveling abroad on my own, the adults were doing the laundry be it my chaperon to the international camp or the many host families I lived with.

Besides, with the maids doing all the work in Thailand, not a lot of people use washing machines back then.  It wasn’t like someone could teach me back home the way the cook showed me how to make basic Thai food. (Kicking myself now that I didn’t take interests in cooking back then. But that’s another post for another time.)

It was my aunt here in Garden Grove who taught me how to use the washer and dryer while I was staying with her during the transition into my high school host family’s home.

That was also where I learn the “water then soap then water” trick to not get clumpy detergent powder or concentrated amount of liquid detergent in your clothes.

A flashback so vivid it stopped me in my track.

How far I have come since 1993!

Next month, I would have been in America longer than I have been in Thailand.

Next month completes my 16th year in the U.S., then I’m on to 17th.  (Yeah, I just gave away my age. So?)

For that one moment in the laundry room, I did have half of my life flashed before my eyes.

I remembered my mom reading to me my fortune she got from a psychic back when I was in 7th or 8th grade.  It was predicted that I would study abroad like my brothers, but unlike them, I would live abroad and “leave [mom] behind”.

I laughed.  No way I would ever do that, I told her.

I stood my ground that I would be studying at Thammasat University, the anti-Chulalongkorn was where I wanted to be.  I would not be going abroad because that would be snooty and pretentious and I wasn’t about to leave my friends.  And even if I’d study abroad, I would come back here because my brain wasn’t going to drain out of my beloved motherland, and because I would never leave my mom.

Well, obviously the trend-bucking, anti-establishment, friends-loving, patriotic me died somewhere during my first visit to the U.S. in March 1993.

After 2 months of having tasted the freedom of American life, I didn’t quite want to go back.

Fortune teller was right about all of it.  I think my mom kind of knew after my summer in the U.K. in 1992 that this bird wouldn’t stay in the cage for long.

I wasn’t sure if she expected that I would really leave her behind.  I never thought I wouldn’t be there when she passed away.

So yes, I did leave her behind in that sense.

August 1993.

Everything changed then.

August used to be just another month with except for Thai Mother’s Day on the 12th, and meant the end of summer and beginning of school.

Now, August is the anniversary of my life in the U.S. and the anniversary of my mom’s passing.

16 and 2 years respectively.

What a journey so far.

My brain refuses to shut off.

I am simultaneously working on plotting the route to the Port of Long Beach boat tour tomorrow, then what to take to the Long Beach Tweet Up potluck tomorrow night.

Then planning a baby shower for my coworker next Saturday.

Then updating my LinkedIn status and checking in on the long-abandoned MySpace.

Then connecting my family with my beloved cousin who hasn’t been back to Thailand from New Zealand in YEARS.

And I’m thinking about the Italian lessons I will be taking September and if I should start prepping for that with a dictionary or something.

I also wanted to play the piano but it’s way too late now.

Brandon has a sinus infection so bad his head hurt but he didn’t go see the doctor today on his day off. And his back has been bothering him. What is it with men and not seeing a doctor?

I am so tired I can’t think straight but my brains still want to think even if it’s all jumbled up.

Bad brain.