My Weblog

I Wanted To Be Nora, Not A Pirate!

For Halloween this year I really wanted my husband and I to go as Nick and Nora, the crime-fighting, martini-swilling duo from the Thin Man.

Instead, I think that I'm going to have to go as a pirate. Not because I have some type of affinity for pirates, but rather because I have some type of allergy to my new hobby that has rendered my right eye completely useless. I woke up this morning to find that my eyelid had swollen to nearly three times it's normal size. My eyeball looks like someone colored it in with a red marker and I apparently have something (perhaps a dried lavender flower???) in there or the surface is scratched. Either way, I can't stop blinking and the pain and itchiness is driving me insane! And, I have a lot of research to do today that I cannot put off any longer. So I am forced to read through endless stacks of paper with only one eye. Argghhh! (I'm even starting to sound like a pirate!)

On a good note, my hobby has turned out to be quite fun! This weekend, Bruno and I drove to a gazillion stores looking for all of the ingredients to make my soap. I prepared the first batch of 6 last night and they look lovely! After they had cured in the mold I had to store them in the closet to harden (for a week or more). Every couple of hours Bruno kept checking on them. It was so cute! I think that he was just in complete shock at the fact that I was in the kitchen doing something other than dishes. I'm no great chef and my kitchen skills are somewhat limited (to the aforementioned dishes and boiling water). So this is a major acheivement for me. I think that Bruno was encouraged.

So last night I made a batch of French Clay soap and also a batch of lavender water. They should both be done in about a week. Tonight I am going to make a batch of soap that prevents insects from biting you. It smells really good and will make a great gift for all of my friends who love to camp. In total, I plan on making about a hundred bars and about 12 batches of scented water. I'm also going to make a dozen or so batches of lotion and then finish the gifts off with custom made tea for each person. I love this project so much! I'm dying to get to the part where I can package everything. Truth be told, that is my favorite part! I'm going to design a logo for my products and have it printed on labels with the ingredients for each product. I hope that everyone enjoys their homemade gifts! I will take pictures of each product as I make it and post them up here. I'm really proud of them!

On a sad note, Bruno's grandmother passed away on Saturday. She was quite old, almost 100, but it is a difficult loss none-the-less. His grandmother was the patriarch of the family and this is a tough blow for a lot of people. I only met her once, right before Bruno and I got married. She was already quite frail at the time, but that didn't stop her from grilling me on my upbringing. I was sweating bullets! But, I passed with flying colors.

Bruno has an interesting family that is both Phillipino and Catholic. There is a lot of superstition and belief in spirits in his family. A few months ago I had a dream that his grandmother had come to me and told me that it was almost her time to go. I was weirded out by it but brushed it off because clearly she was going to die soon. She was 98 years old. But Bruno didn't brush it off so easily and felt that there could be something to my dream. So, Saturday night I had another dream that she had come to me. In this dream, Bruno and I were sitting on a couch with his grandmother and she was telling me about Bruno's childhood. The dream was so vivid. I woke up afterwards and had such a strange feeling. I told Bruno about it the next day but couldn't remember too many of the details. She did tell me about a blanket that Bruno had when he was toddler- one that I had never heard about before....

I don't discount this kind of stuff, but I don't necessarily look for it either. Who's to say if it was only a dream or something more. I'm tempted to call Bruno's brother's wife and ask her if she had a similar dream. After all, if grandma came to me, wouldn't she also go to her, too???

Move Over Martha Stewart!

It's the weekend! Yippee Skippy! Bruno will be home for the next couple of days, but working on his thesis so I can't bug him too much. He has recruited me to help him with an art project that I've been forbidden to discuss (Artists! You can't live with them, you can't talk about their work online...) but I am really excited about it! Just a hint: It involves using a sewing machine. I can't wait to jump in because he bought me a sewing machine for my birthday and I have yet to take it out of the box. I really want to use it, but I'm afraid of it. What a dork, huh?

So, on another creative note, I have an idea for Christmas presents that I want to give this year. When I have the time I like to make gifts for people. Not because I'm cheap (even thought I am) but because I like to do creative stuff. Last year Bruno was in Italy for four months and so I passed the time knitting scarfs for everyone I knew. They actually went over quite well. I think... I moved out of the state 2 days after Christmas so I can't say for sure. Perhaps after I left all of my friends and family got together for a "Good Riddance" scarf burning celebration. I'll have to ask about that when I go home in a few months...

Back to my idea... I want to make spa baskets for all of my female friends and family. My plan is to make my own soap (and maybe massage oil) and then stock the baskets with fun spa accesories. I have this Japanese loofah cloth that I got at a local asian market and it is heavenly! When you use it your skin feels like it is waking up for the very first time! I'll buy a ton of those and put them in all of the baskets. Throw in some raffia (sp?) and viola! A gift worthy of the Queen herself. Or another excuse for a fire party.

So, all of you creative readers out there (I'm not sure that I have any readers actually...), do you have any ideas for my baskets? I really want to have an aromatherapy theme and would love any input that you might have. So put on your creative hats and go to town! Also, I don't know how to make soap (I'll be researching that soon...) so if you have a recipe that you're just dying to share, please do so! I might even send you a basket for all of your help!

It's A Dog's Life

There is a dog across the street from my house that barks just like my old dog (whom I loved like a child). When the dog across the street barks, it both warms and breaks my heart simultaneously.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland

Last night I stayed up into the wee hours reading "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World", another book by Haruki Murakami. I finished this one a lot quicker than "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" but it wasn't nearly as long or as dense. It was, none-the-less, amazing! I recently read a review on someone's blog about Murakami's work and she said that his writing broke her heart because she knew that she could never write as beautifully as him. That sums up my feelings in a nutshell.

My husband was the one who first told me about Murakami's books. He thought that I would like him because my writing style is similar to his. For whatever reason I put off reading anything by him for a long time. When I finally did get around to picking up one of his books, I was floored! Yes, my writing style is sort of like his, but his way with words is nothing short of poetic. He paints a picture that is at once both gentle and powerful. His words float on an ocean, tumbling up and down, ebbing and flowing as if guided by the moons gravitational pull. Every word is meticulously placed, like a puzzle piece, and the end result is an accomplished masterpiece.

The first of his books that I read was "Sputnik Sweetheart". It took me two days to finish and when I finally put it down I curled up in my husbands lap and cried. Why did I cry? The story was heartbreaking and bursting at the seams with unfulfilled longing. It's an unending search for the one thing that these characters couldn't have. But at the same time, the characters were woven with such a gentle pen that you wanted to wrap your arms around them and protect them from the cold and uncaring world. Murakami told the tale of these characters so beautifully that I felt he was writing about me. Of course he wasn't, and my life's story is nothing like the story of Sputnik Sweetheart, but the way that he was able to get to the very core of the character's souls left me feeling naked and vulnerable. Would you believe though, that I loved the story? Sometimes naked and vulnerable is not a bad place to be. It's not comfortable, but it could be on the doormat to change. Something big can come out of that glaring spotlight. I think that I cried at the end because I knew that I was on the cusp of something big and the immense pressure to stand up to it was terrifying.

I didn't pick up another Murakami book for 3 more months. My husband kept prodding me but I pushed it off. I didn't want to feel that way again. I hadn't stood up to the pressure. I had backed down and I didn't want to be reminded of that again. I will be the first to admit that I don't like sad movies and I don't want to read a book that makes me cry. I have had a life filled with immense pain and I don't want to revisit that pain in my leisure time. But the other side of that coin is that I'm a writer, and I won't be able to write anything meaningful unless I tap into the very pain that I run from. I know that. I've known if for a long time. Whenever I talk to Bruno about it, I end up in tears. Not because he pushes me to face it, but because just talking about having to face it scares me. I've never been more afraid of anything in my entire life.

Doing The Happy Dance

Happy Day! Happy Day! I feel as if a huge weight has been lifted off of me today. I haven't been working for the past couple of weeks due to an unexpected lull in my schedule and it has been great! I've had so much work over the past 3 months that I've felt as if I was drowning. The two weeks off was so needed, but now I'm ready to dive back in. It's strange how I complain about having too much work but when I'm taking time off I feel like I'm being bad. Well, no worry because the work now resumes. Oddly, that makes me happy...

Other things that make me happy today:

1. I booked our airline tickets for our holiday trip to California. I have been so stressed out about this because of the major dent that it would make in our savings account. I started looking for flights two months ago, back when the prices were really low ($200 a ticket) but for some stupid reason I didn't buy them. So now, the ticket prices have more than doubled and we had to book them before the price went even higher. The past week I have been online searching every known travel site in the hopes of finding a deal- any deal. Last night it became apparent that we were just going to have to break down and spend nearly a grand for our tickets. It was a sad evening in our home. But, lo and behold! What arrived in my email today? A major discounted airfare alert!!!! Yippppeeeee! I was able to book our tickets at a price that didn't result in the demise of our savings account!!!! Bruno doesn't know yet, but he will be ecstatic when I tell him!!!

2. I turned down a job offer from a prospective client today. It would have been a great opportunity but I just didn't want it. I don't have the time that the project would require nor the desire to work on such a project. I've been going back and forth agonizing over the job for weeks now and finally just decided to say no. And what a huge relief that turned out to be! But once I made the decision, I had to break it to the client. I have been so scared to do this (why? Are they going to yell at me or ground me???) but I forced myself to make the call this morning. Guess what? It was no big deal. They were disappointed but that was it. So I am now off the hook!!! Another Yipppppeeeee!

3. One of my clients has a contact person that I hate dealing with and today they were fired!!! (Gigi does a happy dance!) This person has backstabbed me on more than one occasion while pretending to be my biggest supporter to my face. He changes everything that I write and gives me input on every move I make. He would send me long faxes detailing the "problems" with projects that I have turned in, explaining the right way and wrong way to do things. Of course, my way was always the wrong way. This person has treated me so poorly that my husband would like to kick his butt, and Bruno is non-violent by nature. I am so happy that he is now gone. There is justice in this world!

4. I picked up a new project that I have wanted for a while. It involves more designing than I do in most of my work and I am really excited to be able to flex my creativity! I love it when my work is fun!

I think that about sums up my happy day. Sometimes the stars are aligned in such a way that the heavens just smile down on me. I can't explain it. I won't even try to understand it. I'll just focus on savoring it while it lasts....

"Math is Hard"- Malibu Stacy & Me

I have wasted my day on the internet and it actually turned out to be a good thing! I wanted to look up information on ovulation, on the off chance that I have been off with my own calculations. And guess what??? I have been!!! I've been calculating it all wrong for the past 5 months. Now, while this does make me angry (for a split second) that I wasted 5 frickin' months because my math skills are not up to par, it also means that it might be the only thing that is wrong with me. I may not be barren! I might just be a moron!

I found an ovulation calculator on one of the gazillion baby making websites (not to be confused with a porn site) and plugged in all of my pertinant information for the past 5 months. After crunching some serious numbers I found out that Bruno and I have been stopping too soon each month. Can you imagine? Perhaps, if we can't even handle the simple math involved in The Baby Game, we shouldn't be trusted with an actual baby. Nah! I'm a smart gal most of the time and Bruno just made Dean's List, so I won't be too hard on us. Actually, I can't be hard on Bruno at all. He trusted me to do the math. That will teach him to trust me with something so important! Doesn't he remember what happened when I did the laundry???

I'm going to run outside and jump over the moon now.

Let Me Tell You About My Uterus

So, here we are on the first day of round 6 of The Baby Game. G-d this is hard to jump back into. You know what's funny... My husband and I had "relations" a few nights ago for PURE PLEASURE. There was no chance that it would result in a pregnancy. We didn't do it because the calendar told us to. I didn't lay with my legs straight in the air afterwards. We did it simply because we wanted to. Period. End of story. And, it was great! After 5 months of scheduled relations, it was fabulous to love my husband simply because I love my husband. What a concept, eh?

I don't know when I turned into the kind of person who discusses my sex life in public. I've never been the girl who sits around with her friends and discusses technique. I don't want to hear about your sex life and I'm pretty certain that you don't want to hear about mine. I certainly don't want to invite you into our bedroom for a look-see. But somewhere within the last 5 months, I did just that. I guess that my definition of "personal" has changed a bit recently. When you make it known that you are trying to start a family, it's as if you are announcing to the world that you are having a lot of frickin' sex. And how strange is that? For years I lived with the feeling, probably due to my catholic upbringing, that sex out of marriage is bad. That didn't stop me, by any means, but I did experience a fair amount of guilt for being the tramp that I was (hee hee). Now that I'm married, the stigma has been lifted and I am free to make love until the wee hours of the morning and all guilt free! And to top it off, I can even discuss it with my mother. I'm frightened by this new form of intimacy that has developed between me and the rest of the world. The one where words like "period", "ovulation" and "sperm count" are now as common in regular discussion as "bitchin' concert", "screw the IRS" and "my boss is a douche bag". When did this happen? When did I begin telling strangers that my ovaries must be lazy? That my uterus is an a-hole? When??

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

My last two posts were quite heavy, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to go there with this blog. But ultimately, those thoughts and feelings are a part of my life and I don't want to hold back. I will not, however, dwell on such thoughts either. I'm trying a new concept out: Feel my emotions when they come along and then let them go when they've been thoroughly exhausted. It's kind of a Buddhist thing and a major shift from my Catholic upbringing. The Catholic thing didn't work out for me too well, so this is a new attempt at understanding the ways of the world. I'll let you know how it works out for me.

This weekend was very nice. Bruno and I were going to go do a bunch of fun things but rain was predicted so we opted to just run errands and then nest at home. It was great. Bruno made soup Saturday night and we opened up a bottle of wine. During our errands we had picked up one of those game consoles (not electronic- wood) that has chess, checkers, Chinese checkers and about a billion and one other games. We popped in a Modern Jazz Quartet CD and played Chinese Checkers all night. It was the perfect night!

After Bruno was all tuckered out and went to bed, I stayed up until 4 in the morning finishing off the book that I was reading. I couldn't put it down! If you enjoy reading, I highly recommend Haruki Murakami's books. I have only read two: Sputnik Sweetheart & The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. I'm working on The Elephant Vanishes which is a series of short stories and Norwegian Wood just arrived in the mail today. Murakami is the most amazing writer and inspires me in so many ways. He is a Japanese writer who is influenced by both the pulp detective stories of the 40's and the beat writers of the 60's. His work is unlike anything that I have ever read and I'm certain that it will be studied in Universities for years to come.

I started The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles last week and it took me 5 days to finish it because it was so long (over 600 pages). Usually I can just plow through a book like that in a day or two, but his writing is so beautiful and complex that it requires that you take more time to digest it. The story is the weirdest story that I've ever read. It's about a married 30-year-old guy who quits his job at a law firm for no good reason other than he's bored with it. He becomes a house-husband of sorts and busies himself with the chores and cooking. The book opens on a weekday morning. The guy is cooking spaghetti and the phone rings. It's a woman who claims to know him (but she won't tell him who she is) and asks for just 10 minutes of his time. After only a few minutes she breaks into phone sex and he hangs up. The phone rings again and this time its his wife. She wants him to go out and look for their missing cat, Norboro Wataya. He doesn't find the cat. When he gets home the phone rings again. It's a psychic named Malta Kano and she has information about his missing cat and invites him to meet her for tea. When he goes, Malta gives him all sorts of cryptic information but tells him nothing about where his cat is. For the next 100 pages or so the main character searches for the cat until his wife goes missing too. He works with the psychic and her sister, Creta Kano who is a prostitute of the mind, to find his wife.

The book is an epic, to be sure. It goes back and forth between present day Japan and WWII. The WWII stories were the most fascinating to me. I was surprised by this because I'm not a big fan of war fiction, but this was so different. I also don't know much about WWII from the Japanese perspective, so I was intrigued by that aspect.

I can't urge everyone I know enough to run out a read this book! It was AMAZING!

Just Trust Me

I wrote the previous post last night, but held off publishing it until just now. I didn't want to put such intimate thoughts online without first sharing them with my husband. It didn't seem fair. And honestly, I wasn't sure if I wanted to put those thoughts out there. I don't talk about my father too often. It's not something that I share with everyone I meet. At the same time though, it's not a big secret either. I can't give it that much power or it will take over my life again. I'm in control now and that's important for me.

Last night when Bruno got home we had dinner and talked about his day. It was like we were dancing around the big elephant in the middle of the room while pretending that it wasn't there. He knew it. I knew it. I think that it was a desperate attempt to keep the elephant from trampling us.

When we were done with dinner we went to the bedroom to watch a movie. Bruno was already settled in bed when I finally broke down. I stood at the end of the bed and cried. I told him everything that I said in my previous post. I admitted my fear of showing sadness because I didn't want everyone to assume the worst. I talked about the immense effort that it took to always be happy, especially when I'm not. I must have repeated the words, "I'm sad" a million times and each time I said them it was as if a huge weight was being further lifted off of me. It was empowering to admit that I am sad. And do you know what Bruno's response was? That it was ok for me to be sad. No one has ever said that to me before. I couldn't believe it. I told him that I wish that someone would have told me that before.

Life is full of great ironies, and one of them is the fact that Bruno dated a girl for years whose father had taken his own life. He's been through this before. That shocks me, even as I write this. I've known about her and her father, but I still find it amazing. Last night he told me that she felt the same way that I do. That everyone watched her like a hawk, looking for signs that she was suicidal. She would write poems about her sadness and the school psychologist would be called in. All of her artwork was scrutinized like a Rorschach blot. She couldn't make a move without someone interpreting it one way or another. Bruno explained to me that at the core of all of this was a lack of trust. No one trusted her to not repeat the mistake that her father had made. And that wasn't fair. He trusted her and he trusts me.

Trust is a hard concept for me. I understand why my family doesn't have stock in that kind of trust. I don't. I still wait for the phone to ring with news of another loss. My father wasn't the first suicide in my life. I lost a brother in the same manner 10 years earlier. I lost a friend to suicide a year before my brother's death. I'm hard pressed to come up with a natural death in my family. So I understand the lack of trust. We didn't have a clue that any of those people would take their own lives. In hindsight, we can now see some clues, but not many. So now it has become important for us to search for those clues. It's like we must stop all pain or else we will be responsible for the outcome. But Bruno trusts me. I can't put into words what that trust means to me.

I'm going to be sad today and that's ok. And, oddly enough, the fact that I'm allowing myself to be sad makes me feel happy. I'll never understand life, that's for sure.

On another topic, Bruno and I talked about how we were at the end of the line in the Baby Game and we decided to just continue trying. We're not going to stop here. We're going to keep going. That makes me happy. So see? There is hope. I have it. Bruno has it. And Bruno trusts me. What could be better than that?

The Naked Truth

Wow. I feel so incredibly low right now. I've said this before, but having to deal with a failed attempt at conception while being smothered by hormones is a cruel, cruel trick of mother nature. I want to scream. I want to cry. But none of those things are coming to me. Instead, I feel rather numb. And full of questions... Like why?

I decided to go get a bottle of wine and hang out with my landlord/gal pal. I knew that it would take my mind off of things. I chose to walk to the store (because my husband has our only car- not much of a choice, huh?) and on my way there I thought about what exactly is going on here. I'm not pregnant. I haven't gotten pregnant. Why? Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with Bruno? Am I not meant to be a mother?

And while I walked I thought back to the most difficult experience in my life: my father's death. When he died, it was the most horrific event of my life. We were estranged and I hadn't spoken to him in a couple of years. I loved him, but he didn't make any effort to be in my life. Birthdays and holidays went by without a note or a call from him. I would go see him and he would always promise to call me for lunch, but he never did. This was especially hard for me because he raised me. When my parents got a divorce, I chose to live with him. I love my mom, but I thought that my dad would provide the more stable household and what I really needed was stability. A pretty adult decision from an 8 year old, huh? Anyways, you would think that since he played such a major role in my life growing up that he would have stayed in contact. But no, he didn't. So when he died, no one even called me to tell me. Not until one of my cousins got so angry about the situation that she took matters into her own hands. She called the police to track me down. And they did. And they told me to call home. But I didn't know where home was... I eventually called my aunt and found out the news. Dad was dead. "How?" I asked. "He took his own life, Gigi."

Those words changed my life as I knew it. That happened almost 4 years ago to this day. Everything that I thought that I knew had been thrown out the window. It was different and cold and incomprehensible. My life was no longer my own. How could it be when outside forces, one's that I had written off, could still make such an impact on my existence?

It took me a very long time to recover from what he did. I never found out why. No note. No hint. Nothing. For a very long time my life was in a holding pattern. I didn't leave my house. I didn't talk to friends. I did nothing, felt nothing and cared about nothing... My perceptions were skewed. I thought that I had a scarlet letter on my chest. A big O for orphan. A big S for suicide. I was certain that anyone who met my glance could see it in my eyes, could see down to the very depth of my soul and feel the pain that had settled in to reside. I felt used, discarded and unwanted. Like day old bread or an old mattress that you leave on the curb for the trash men to take away.

It was several years (I know- it shouldn't have taken so long) for me to pull myself out of the miasma of anger and pain. I am proud that I did. I'm proud that I chose to live, because I did- finally. But when I came out on the other end, I knew that I had done something insurmountable. The strength that I summonsed from a place that I didn't know I had was unparalleled in my life as I knew it. But I did it. I comforted myself with the fact that nothing this horrible could ever happen again. Life could still throw arrows at me, but nothing like this. I took solace in those thoughts. I allowed them to blanket me and protect me from my fear of re-emerging into the world.

During my lowest moments I wondered about what else the world would throw at me. I wondered at what kind of pain was in my future and whether or not I could handle it. I didn't know and that faceless uncertain beast scared me to my very core. I feared that I would lose my family and my friends. I now understood the true fragility of life and how, at any given moment, it could be taken from you. I understood loss. I knew it well. We were on a first name basis.

So back to today. When I was walking down the street I thought back to those days when I wondered what other kind of pain I would experience in my life. What else was in store for me? After all, up until the day that my father died, I had walked around with the blessed ignorance that comes with lack of premonition. I had enjoyed my life leading up to that fateful moment. I had lived, because I had no idea of what lay just around the corner.

I wonder if the days in between my re-emergence from the hell of my dad's death and the experience of trying to have a child were those same kinds of blissfully ignorant type days. I wonder if I should have savored every hour, minute, second of the unknown while it was still a safe and happy unknown. And I wonder if today is the day that everything changes. If today is the day when the sadness comes back.

I don't want to go back to that place and I'm stronger now, because of what I've been through, to allow that to happen again. I won't. But it's hard. And I'm sad. And that cannot be denied. What if I can't have children? What if it's not meant to be? What then?

I watched a movie the other day that had a surprising resonance with me. In "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" there is a character whose mother commits suicide. The girl is the most upbeat and carefree of the 4 main characters. She's strong. She's confidant. She knows who she is and what she wants. This is all after the extreme loss that she has experienced. In the end, however, it comes out that she is afraid of showing the pain inside of her because she is afraid that people will think that she is as messed up as her mother. It has become very important for her to hide her true emotions so that no one thinks that she will take her own life as her mother did.

As I watched this movie, I cried like a baby. I couldn't believe that in this teen flick, here was someone who I could relate with. Here was the eternal optimist that was terrified of showing her weakness. It was so important for her to prove that she wasn't going to become depressed and kill herself. And it was me. Because I, too, feel like I am under a microscope... Just waiting for someone to detect an ounce of pain within me. Waiting for my family to sense my sadness and have me committed. I couldn't let my family down like my dad did. And I couldn't give my family a scare either. So that means that I have to always be happy- whether I am or am not.

So I'm afraid to admit my sadness because of the amazing repercussions that it could have. I don't want my mom to lose sleep and worry that I will take my life. I don't want my husband to be afraid of my pain. I don't want to be afraid of my pain.

Not all pain ends in death.