in a bad shape

The night before last, I think I only fell asleep at 3am, dunno why. As a result, was very tired yesterday and could hardly write.

Last night was worse. I was up until 5am, and got up at 8am. I do know why I couldn't sleep but I'm not in the right frame of mind to say why (and esp not on a blog!). Suffice it to say that I called friend Naomiobi in the middle of the night and blubbered at her for a bit before I could even begin to explain the story. I felt better after that, but I still couldn't completely let go.

Woke up this morning and felt the same way, but I am taking steps to try and get over this. It's not easy, and I wish I didn't have this on my mind when I'm trying to finish this draft that's due on Monday.

distractions

I guess I forgot to mention that I've been working furiously on the dissertation chapter that's due this upcoming Monday. I've had ugly moments of being close to tears, and then moments of sheer joy--usually if I meet my page quota for the day--and in between the rolls and rises of dissertation writing, I'm learning to enjoy cooking. Miracle of miracles.

Hey, when I have to choose between making a meal and writing the next sentence, making the meal is way more fun!! Right now, I'm testing out my friend's bread-machine (the friend who sublet-ed her room to me) but unfortunately, because I didn't press the pan down into the machine, the thing sat there for a whole hour before I unplugged the machine and tried to figure out why nothing seemed to be happening. Now my oatmeal bread won't be done until 1am, at which point I hope to be very fast asleep.

smells of home

tried to make belacan fried rice last weekend at a malaysian couple's home last weekend (to celebrate their baby's full-moon, i.e. he was born exactly a month ago), and when we smelled the belacan cooking, we all felt like we were at home.

the smell of belacan = the smell of home.

p.s - the rice for the fried rice wasn't that great, and i forgot to account for the ground meat that we were adding to the rice, so i didn't have enough belacan or shallots in the paste.

mulberries

I've been getting annoyed about parking my car in the backyard. Of course, I love having off-street parking because my summer sublet is on one of the busy streets of Ithaca, and on a pretty steep hill, no less. BUT, after I got back from Maine, I had my car washed and the morning after, my car was covered in bird poop and dark purple berry splats.

However, once I got over my annoyance, I realized that the berry splats came from the mulberries dropping by the hundreds from the mulberry tree in our backyard! So my roommate and I went out with bowls and harvested a whole lot. She took these three pictures.

Unfortunately for me as I found out, mulberries give me the runs. Well, at least these ones did. So no more mulberries for me. It's a pity because they're apparently very good for immune systems. And we all know just how often I catch colds.

I also need a haircut desperately but I'm too cheap to spring for one just yet. I'll wait until either the Fall semester. Or, maybe when I get a job interview (haha, yeah right). I guess it doesn't matter too much since I'm trying to grow it out. Short hair is nice except for the fact that I have to get it cut every month.

(I've decided that I can't do much with my round face.)

more disgust

A Hindu woman has been incarcerated by the Islamic authorities in Malaysia because they claim her as Muslim. Saw this on Sivin's blog. Horrifying.

worth a try

Had a long conversation with R tonight. R is a professor at Cornell in policy analysis, and she's one of the profs who run the Christian women faculty/grad/staff reading group at Cornell that I've been going to for the past 3 years or so.

She confronted me about certain things I do and the way I behave, in a very gentle way, and some of it is still a little surprising (and thus a little difficult to accept) but I really am going to consider a few things that I did not realize about myself:

1. People do not need to be perfect for me to love them.

2. I am very quick to judge people and write them off, i. e. I decide that I don't trust them (because they're going to hurt me or they're out to take or demand things/time) or that they're not worth getting to know (because I'm just too tired and besides, they are so self-involved anyway).

3. I need to communicate with people when they hurt me or cross my boundaries instead of keeping it all in and letting resentment build. When I am hurt or resentful, I often ignore the people who I see as responsible and shut them out of any real intimate relationship.

4. When I do confront people about their hurtful actions, I need to do so gently and listen to what the other person has to say. And I need to tell them about how hurt I feel because if I don't, all they're going to see is the hard-ass, aggressive side of me.

5. I also need to affirm them and tell them that they matter to me.

6. I need to touch them gently--I told R that I can try to pat them a couple of times on the shoulder and that's it--and again, affirm that I do care for them and that I am interested in being in relationship with them.

Needless to say, all this is terrifying and overwhelming, so R said I can experiment with three practice people (and she's one of them) who will be "safe" to try this on first.

Well, I'm willing to give it a shot . . . I mean, I'm not exactly happy with the way my life is right now and I don't exactly have better ideas for how to fix it. :p

return of the elder brother

I'm really struggling not to be the elder brother right now. If you don't understand what that means, that's fine. It basically just means I don't really like who I am right now. :)

Maybe I'll explain myself in a later post.

facebook

Anwar Ibrahim is on facebook!!!!! I can't believe it.

Short posts

Maybe if I put up short posts from time to time, I'll be able to get more thoughts out. If I forced myself to sit down and write everything down, I'll never do it for being so overwhelmed.

Every time I go back to Bates, I'm a better person. I like who I am when I'm there. And this last trip back reminded me of who I used to be, or who I can be, or who I'd like to be--I haven't figured out which.

But here are a couple of things on my mind (maybe this won't be a short post after all!):

#1 : I don't care as much anymore. I don't want to know, I don't want to think, I don't want to feel, I don't want to do anything. I never used to be this way. I think I used to be engaged, incensed, informed, and active. Now, I just want a quiet life that seems to be made up of my dull, mundane, daily life, with some contact with a few people I just happen to care about. The world can be horrible (and it is), but as long as I don't know about it, that's okay.

This is worrying.

#2 : I'm forgetting what it means to care for people and how to be a good friend. Going back to B_tes reminded me that one of my strengths is listening. Listening is both a gift to myself, and to the person with whom I am in conversation. I learn a lot of cool stuff when I take the time to listen to people talk. If I don't make time to allow people to talk, I won't learn as much. And these days, I run away from people, I won't make time to listen, and really, I just don't care anymore.

This, too, is worrying.

How did I get to where I am?

funny story about zen gardens

Sand zen gardens are helpful for meditation and relaxation, and I've actually seen a couple of these miniature ones in offices. They're great to play with and look really cool on display.

This story isn't about a funny thing that happened to me while I was at B_tes, it's a funny story that I heard from Ron and Maggie when I was staying with them while I was at B_tes. Maggie is a professor in the Economics Dept, and she was one of the two profs who took a group of us to study in China for a semester (that's how I know her), and Ron is her husband who works in the computing dept at B_tes. They have a nice house very near the college campus and they have a beautiful backyard behind their house. But it takes a lot of work to keep this beautiful backyard looking nice: mowing, raking, picking up whatever that falls on the ground, etc.

Anyway, we were sitting in the living room, and someone starts a talking about the miniature sand Zen garden on their coffee table. Ron then tells this story about a conversation he had with Maggie about sand Zen gardens:

Ron says really wistfully, "You know, maybe we could turn our lawn into a giant Zen garden, so that we wouldn't have to weed or mow or rake leaves . . . " [see again beautiful picture at top of an elegant zen garden--I couldn't figure out how to insert it in the middle of the post]

And Maggie goes, "Are you CRAZY?!! We'd have every neighborhood cat in our backyard!!!"

It doesn't sound as funny here, but when Ron told the story, I cracked up and couldn't stop cackling for the life of me!! I was even giggling about it when I was driving back to Ithaca. It makes me laugh even now.

If you don't get it, you probably don't remember that cats LOVE sand, and that they especially LOVE to SHIT in sand. If they did turn their backyard into a sand zen garden, they could rake patterns in the sand around the little lumps of cat excrement. At least they wouldn't have to mow.

back from b_tes

Got back from Maine yesterday evening, and am tired out from traveling and TALKING, TALKING, TALKING the entire weekend!

Much news, and I'm really determined this time to write about what I've thought and felt for the past few days. I had a wonderful time.

So COLD

Temperatures dropped drastically over the last day or so. I broke out my hot water bottle today. Tomorrow should be better, but tonight . . . we're going back down into winter-like temps! Maybe summer will never truly be here this year.

random pictures

These are a few pictures of members of the Maxson family! I don't have a group picture of them, so here are random pictures of (from the top): Joel and Naomi; Nathan holding the Millers's cat; Kiny and Lloyd (the parents); and finally, Kirsty. The rest of the kids are Daniel, John, Joshua, Hannah, and Seth.

I'm going to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 tonight with Kate and Jade! I also want to see Ocean's Thirteen when it comes out.

lessons I need to keep re-learning

I spent the week before I could move into my summer sublet staying at my friend Heather's home. I didn't know her husband, Chris, before that but we became friends after the week. We had a few good conversations, and we talked a lot about cars too because I was thinking of getting one.

Two things that struck me from our conversations:

1. A car is not an investment. Few people, if any, ever make money from owning a car. Buying a car is like digging a hole in the ground and then pouring your money into it.

2. People are more important than money. I have to remind myself of this one because I get so anxious about money.

I have to re-examine my relationship to money because even though I'm not the type of person who has to make tons and tons of money, I am the type of person who is certain that she will never make a ton of money during her lifetime. Consequently, I have to be frugal and careful with what I do have. This in and of itself is not bad, but at the same time, sometimes I can make life difficult for myself. I'm try not to make life difficult for others if I don't have money (which sometimes manifests itself as a fierce--and not always necessary--independence).

I don't know. I suppose I will always be negotiating this. I love my new (used) car, and I bought a more pricey one because I don't want to have to keep sending the car to the mechanic's. But at the same time, I think I will always feel a tinge of guilt for owning such a lovely car.

And I will continue to remind myself that blessings are meant to be shared, and I will give rides to others as often as I can. But the problem with giving rides usually isn't the financial cost, it's the time it takes to drive people here or there to run their errands!

But I'll deal with this when I need to. :)