“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.”-Sylvia Plath

Lily, Jamie, and I try to see each other at least once a month for dinner. A while back, I bought a Groupon for a restaurant none of us have been to, which allowed me to join them for dinner without shelling out additional bucks! I say I have about a month more before I’m comfortable financially again without dipping into savings. What’s a little significant for us and this blog is that I think Lily gets to finally make a debut on one of my blogs. I often food blog our dinners but Lily is always the missing face. For the first time in 4 years, she’s allowed me to take ONE picture of her. I thought I’d get more mileage from this photo if I double blog it. Here and whenever I get to writing up the restaurant review.

Lily, Jamie, Me

Jamie is never camera shy with me.

I try to start everyday with 3 stream of consciousness pages written in my journal as per The Artist Way (affiliate link). I’m on my 5th week and I did very poorly this week. I kept going to bed too late and last night I stayed up to canoodle with the boyfriend and watch Jersey Shore. Alan’s in the middle of a move into a house with four new roommates so I’ve been giving him some space to take care of stuff and get to know his roomies. I’ve missed him! So spending time with him trumped going to bed early which trumped writing my pages.

This week’s writing prompt was “punishment.” Kind of timely because before we drew it, I had just have a conversation with coworkers about the kinds of punishments we endured as children from our parents. My parents spanked my younger brother and me. Younger brother got spanked pretty often whereas I rarely got the wooden spoon from mom. The only memorable spanking I had was on my open palms with a metal ruler and it was 20 licks. I missed every single word on my first spelling test. I almost spelled “delayed” right but I spelled it like so, “de-layed.” The next year, I won the spelling bee.

Aside from spankings, Asian parents can be pretty brutally creative with their punishments. Alan said his parents made him stand with his arms raised. This reminded me that on occasion I had to do the same thing! Another popular one is kneeling. Not lazy kneeling where you have your legs tucked comfortably underneath your butt, but as if you’re praying on a kneeler in a Catholic church. They’ve also had us stand with our noses pressed against the wall.

Next time I’m in Houston I want to borrow (or steal?) my mom’s sewing machine and jump into sewing and thrifting. This blog is my inspiration. Momma has stopped sewing anyway unless I bring her home clothes to alter or straps to reattach.

I’m always engaged in some kind of self improvement project or dabbling in a new skill. On my horizon right now is to educate myself and gain experience in investing. I’ve already saved up my year’s worth of expenses in an emergency fund, I have no consumer debt. So my new goal is to pay off my $24,000 student loan in 5 years and instead of padding up my emergency fund, I will start an investing fund. I realize this has been one of Neville’s advice to me for a while but I was overwhelmed with my lack of knowledge and kept putting it off. I will dedicate 5 hours a week to read and learn. I got my 5 hours out of the way this week when I read and finished Rich Dad’s Cash Flow Quadrant (affiliate link).

See, my phone is pretty simple. I get a lot of compliments on it because it’s skinny and tiny and sleek looking. I picked it out as my first birthday gift from Alan because it was purple and because it was simple. I just wanted a telephone number pad. Dinky camera is nice. It also has a radio and mp3 player I never use. It is not a smart phone and it does not do geotagging. So when Facebook released Places where you can geotag your locations, I almost didn’t bother disabling it. I disabled it on the off chance that a friend would tag my location and an apartment burglar would know I’m not home. Unlikely, but that’s why I took the time to disable Places.

Last week, it actually ended up being unexpected blessing. I lost a coin flip with a group mostly guy friends and I found myself in a strip club. Not really a big deal but unbeknownst to me, a friend attempted to tag me. My facebook friends and work friends would have had a chance to see on their newsfeed that on a work night at 2am, I was at strip club. Not very kosher, yes? I recommend disabling.

Brenda if you’re reading this and haven’t yet received my letter, don’t read take No. 7.

I’ve been getting a little soft around my belly. I’m not complaining. I know if I get big, it’s A. my own doing and B. been a long time coming. I hate working out. I used to have a 3-5 times a week work out buddy that made working out tolerable. If you throw in socializing and someone to share the misery with, I’m all about it! Yesterday, I stuffed my face at a churrascaria and a few hours later, had a midnight phone date with my college roommate while I ate warm chocolate chip cookies. Chocolate chip cookies at midnight.

I need to put on my big girl pants and start working out regularly again. Even if I have to do it without a buddy. (The horror!)

That midnight phone date was wonderful. With the majority of my closest friends being long distance, I try to schedule at least quarterly phone dates with them. It rejuvenates me to catch up with a friend who lives in a different city. Grounds me. I love that we’re off busy in our own life and daily routines, and yet they can recognize that I’m still essentially the same person they met 10 years ago and I can see they too are essentially the same. So comforting to know that despite time, growing pains, life’s dramas, we are basically still who we are. That’s some good shit.

Facebook has been suggesting friends I might know on the sidebar when I log in. Under the name of suggested possible friend is a tally of how many mutual friends we have. It tickles me when they suggest people with greater than 10 mutual acquaintances/friends. Right now I have Erica and Stephanie suggested to me and we have 23 and 20 mutual acquaintances. 23 and 20! I wonder if I ever rubbed elbows with some of these people and not know it. I love stumbling /finding these kind of coincidences on my own without the help of Facebook.

For instance, I once had a class buddy in college in my Medical Terminology class. We sat next to each other for almost a full semester before somehow figuring out that we literally sat by each other at a dinner party 2 years prior. Then there’s the story of Cindy. We didn’t meet til 2005. It wasn’t til maybe a year or two ago when it clicked that she was the lucky bitch who sat way on the other side of the auditorium of a class who got flowers delivered to her on Valentine’s day in 2002 while class was going on. Within in the last couple of years, I had a flashback to a time when we hadn’t even met, of her surprised face and flowers being delivered to her. Oi. Crazy!

Doesn’t it make you wonder how many times the people in your life have crossed paths with you before establishing significant presences? Do you have any relevant stories to share?

Blows my mind.

Another thing that blows my mind is this flower about to bloom in Houston. It’s called a corpse flower and only 28 have been known to bloom in the United States. Houston is about to give way to the 29th bloom. From my understanding, it stands at 10 ft tall, is in bloom for 12 hours? and finally, it smells like rotting flesh! If I didn’t have plans in Austin, I’d totally make a drive down to Houston and drag a Houston friend to go see it with me. Cindy? Kim? Go anyway? Here’s the link.

You need a phone. Google gives you an option to be anonymous. So go ahead. It’s safe. Tell me a joke.

Also, if you’re reading in a reader you won’t see the widget. :)

Life is good. I am happy.

I sent a letter out to France this week. Brenda‘ s off traveling Europe and I’m in Texas envious. It’s been over ten years since I’ve been overseas. Here’s a cellphone picture of the quote I scribbled on the back of the envelope.

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I was surfing around reading MLK quotations to honor his day. I figured reflecting about what he’s done for us was the least I could do out of gratitude for my day off. (I still have my night time job though, so bugger that.) I found this quotation that struck me on a more personal note. The quote suggests that love is the power to transform your enemies into friends. I’m willing to wager that everyone has heard the biblical adage, “Love thy enemies.” I’m also willing to bet that most of us let it go through one ear and the other. I’ve never myself, reflected on the idea of loving my enemies.

Then I read, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.”

I could count the number of people I have beef with on one hand. As I think about them individually, I cannot say I ever want to be friends with any of them. I have eventually in all cases let go of my desire for retaliation or aggression. I’ve even managed friendly waves from afar. But friendship? I just cannot imagine sitting down for coffee or sharing a donut. At best, I may donate a pint of blood or two if they’re dying but only as a last resort.

For now, due to feasibility and lack of desire, I think I’ll carry on carrying on without them in my corner. But the thought of being a friend to those I’m not fond of did strike a chord.

I’m curious. If you stretch your mind a little, can you imagine yourself being friends with your enemies?