She'll never admit that she's wrong.

Tonight, while wallowing in my self-pity that I have begun to think of as an art form in the past two months, I finally had the last straw. I keep saying that every single bad or shitty thing that has happened to me in the past two months is the last straw - but this one, well, this one was the very very very very last straw.

Financially I am just way in over my head. Where I thought I was ahead, I am now significantly behind all due to an unfortunate mishap with the scheduling of my payment with the auto insurance company (As Chris Rock would say... my "in-case-shit-happens" policy).

For God knows how long, my mother has been OCD about lists. And before you try to read that sentence again, don't. It's not worth wasting your time. You read it right: lists. She loves lists. No, no, let me scratch that. She ADORES and IDOLIZES and maybe if one day a magical wizard turned a List into a man she would probably marry that List and run away and adopt babies to supplement his lack of love for her.

It's become this sickening obsession for her and when I was younger, I used to think that it meant she was organized and that I, by being one who did not keep a list, was severely unorganized. However, twenty-three years of living as a terminally SANE human being and a few years of puberty and a month of homelessness has helped lead me to the conclusion that the lists do not help her at all. In fact, I have come to the clear diagnosis that the list itself is a manifestation of her insecurities and her lack of being able to control and handle even the smallest minute detail of her life. So to make up for the discrepency of say........not being able to function like a normal human being like the rest of the world, my mother writes a list. Every day.

AND THEN PROMPTLY LOSES IT AND SPENDS THE REST OF HER DAY SEARCHING FOR THE LIST BECAUSE WITHOUT IT, GOD FORBID SHE BE ABLE TO FUNCTION.

Now in her defense, this does not happen every day. The great event of "losing-the-list" is one that happens often, but not every single day. But she does write one.

So of course, when I first lost my job and realized I was going to be way in over my head if I didn't find a job to supplement my income fast, you could guess what advice my mother had for me.

Mom: "Hi dear. How are you?"

Me: "Lousy. I just lost my job... I have bills to pay this month... I just filed for unemployment but I am not going to hear from them for another two weeks or so and shit is already starting to become due. I don't know what I am going to do."

Mom: "I know what you need to do. It'll solve all your problems." (said very matter of factly)

Me: "Do you know of anyone who might have a job opening? Or do you know anyone I can send my resume to?"

Mom: "No, of course not. You'll have to find that on your own. I am talking about writing a list. A list dear. A list of all your debt. Once you see it all laid out on paper, it'll all become clear."

Me: "Mom, do you realize you're asking me to slit my wrists?"

Mom: "What was that?"

Me: "Nothing. I am not going to write a list. Not now, not ever."


But tonight, Jesus, maybe the stress got to me, but for whatever reason - she was standing over me in the kitchen and I am sitting there with tears starting to form behind my eyes and she kept talking about this damned list writing --- so I did it. I wrote a damn list.

-=Me writing numbers and scribbling calculations on a page then handing it to her=-

"There, Mom. There it is. In black and white. What do you have to say? What happens now? What does the list do now?"

-=My mother stares blankly at the page. Blinks again and takes on an empty look.=-

Mom: "Wow. Didn't know it was this bad. Don't know what to tell you. But don't you feel better now that you wrote it all down?"

Just in case people would like the Cliff Notes version of this story: NO, I DID NOT FEEL ANY STINKIN' BETTER!! I felt crappier actually because I now had numbers and figures that are higher than the year I was born staring me in the face. So much for lists.

Another past post for your reading enjoyment...

This post was actually untitled. I am sure that I could have come up with a snazzy title myself, but at the moment, I'll save the brain-matter it takes to come up with a title for better use in helping study for my Chemistry quiz later on tonight.

I think once reading through this post - you can tell I was composting...just writing shit on a page to get out some kind of underlined frustration. I wrote a lot of these about work and the environment I found myself in every single day. It was ridiculously disturbing to watch these people gravel and pant to anyone who held a title higher than their own. And yet, I know this is the basic foundation of any corporate office, unfortunately.

Without further ado...

I am pretty sure, at least almost precisely sure, after working three or
four years in the banking industry that it is swarmed with men in expensive
suits that have ball-less balls. Yes, that's right, you heard me. Ball-less balls.



How are these different than having no balls at all? Well, for that fact
alone, you see. Without knowing from firsthand experience (as much as I am now
self-proclaiming to be a "balls" expert) I am almost certain that all the men
here have their balls in tact. I don't go out of my way to ask them of this
fact, I merely just assume because they play their manly appearance in quite an
impressively convincing way. So these men have balls, yet they are ball-less. Follow me yet?



Take yesterday for example. Since I began working for the mortgage industry
almost three or four years ago now, I have been surrounded by bankers and
"mortgage lenders" (aka the less glorifying name of Loan Officer. Apparently
"Mortgage Lender" looks that much better on a business card in
neat and tiny professional font.) who are men. It is a very male-dominated
business. I think for every four loan officers, there is a woman counterpart.
That's the ratio to my untrained eye.



Regardless, these men walk around all day in their three-piece suits,
especially where I currently work, and their pure silk ties, and their
Nordstrom-bought shoes. They walk the hallways of the building, sometimes
perusing the cubicles as if to say "I am Loan Officer, Here me ROAR!". But more
often than not, they are found giving in to small demands and eagerly tempted by
hierarchy power that impresses them with free memberships to country clubs, or
the day off to mingle on some rich bastard's yacht.

Who knew having
ball-less balls paid off so well?

Backtracking my way across the Arirang again

Yesterday I realized after posting my excitement about Obama-rama that I have a ton of unfinished, unedited, unposted posts just sitting in my post log archive. And once going through some of them, I can't even imagine why I didn't post them in the first place.

I guess the answer to that question leads to the blog post that I am undeniably stalling to write to you: what in the hell I have been up to for the past 5 months of my life. Don't worry, like any other over-analytical person I know, in due time, my friends, my super power of over-analyzing every intricate detail of my life will rear its ugly head and when it does, rest assure this blog will be the first to endure what it has to offer.

However, in the meantime, I kinda want to share these posts with you. They are intimate, of course - and I think that this absence has allowed me to step back and regroup my thoughts about why I started blogging in the first place. Why did I hide these originally? What is so ghastly un-PC about them or embarrassing that I haven't already exposed about myself? So here ya go...starting with this post I had entitled:

So maybe it's TMI but I'm utilizing this blog as my emotional pillow...

Not that I share this kind of info with my friends or rather, the blogger world (I usually tend to just pick random passer-bys and gush out all my inner most personal details about my life instead. Joking, of course. Or not.) but I haven't had a (.)(<--this will signify what I am talking about since for some reason the word "menstruation" sounds ugly, and makes it sound like I have had some disease) in five months. I figure that you have all seen me through my trying times of hair-loss, so why all the symantics? Anyway, I haven't had it in five months. Until Sunday. It was as if my uterus finally got the memo sent from my white blood cells months ago because the memo had been sent by USPS(and we all know how ridiculously slow they can be) and somehow got lost and tossed on Nerve-Ending #2879's desk before he realized that oh shit, this had to be sent to the Uterus months ago now...better late than never, and he promptly placed the memo back on its way. The memo said:

Dear Uter-i: (that's White Blood Cells' nickname for my Uterus.
Because they are tight pals and have been ever since that one time they hung out at the club and went home smashed together.)

We are sorry we over-reacted, and kicked Hair Follicles' ass in.
We just didn't like how they were getting all the attention...all those appointments to the colorists and stylists. When was that no good bitch of a body-owner going to start taking care of us? She really thought just drinking orange juice and taking vitamins was going to appease her WBCs? Dumb bitch. She had another thing comin', obviously.

So please don't take this personally. The attack really wasn't against you or Hair Follicles. We just didn't know what else to do but get radical on her ass in order to start taking better action towards her health. And we're not talkin' just physical. I don't have to tell you how kooky she is. We see how you like to pull those quirky crazy strings come your time of the month to shine. Kudos to you.

Hope no hard feelings, Uterii.

Yo homies,

The WBCs

Feeling American

Last night, America showed we are ready for change, and do believe that in America, all things are possible, and you can be anyone, and accomplish anything you set your heart on.

Kimchi Weekend #2 2008 (In order to fulfill my curiousity in how men go to the bathroom)

Okay, so the hose is nowhere near my crotch...but somewhere in my deranged, off-center thought process, I could envision while standing there for about 30-45 minutes holding that hose in my hand in a slightly downward position that this would be, in fact, the closest thing to being a man standing at a urinal. That is, if that said man were 300 lbs and had a bladder the size of the Lochness monster. Ahh, a girl can wonder, can't she?

The past weekend marked the 2nd "Kimchi Weekend" at Laura unni's house and proved to be just as fun, and even more rewarding than the first time I went. There is definitely something to be said about cooking collectively that brings a group of people together in an amazing and surreal way. It seems so subtle and sort of ridiculous - the idea of standing in a kitchen together, slaving over the stove, peeling and cutting vegetables, filling big tubs of cabbage up with water - but I have never felt more connected with four women in my entire life, almost as close as the first time that I ever learned how to cook any Korean dish in a Korean kitchen.

See all those bottle tops there? Awww yeah, you're not seeing things - that is all alcohol, baby. Let's just say the first night was our attempt at making mandu that ended in four or five drinks later, a girl pow-wow outside on the porch curled up together chattering until 6 AM and absolutely no mandu made at all.

Every time I go to Laura's house, I feel like I get closer to a part of myself that I had never exposed before. Sometimes a part of myself that I didn't even know existed. It's a comforting and blessed thing to be able to have a place to go with nothing holding you back from being completely yourself and to be surrounded by people who only encourage and facilitate your inner soul to grow and emerge as a stronger person.

As horribly stereotypical as this is going to sound, I felt like I was in a scene of the Joy Luck Club. Or Soul Food. Or The Ice Storm. Five women in a kitchen until 5 AM, talking of life, love, loss, pain, perseverance, courage, bravery and being scared shitless sometimes. It was like the scene of a movie where you know this is the pivotal point, this is where the epitome of the movie is coming from. This wholly collective togetherness that is encasing around these five individuals.

I was left with a lot of wonderful, somewhat scary, and yet poignant thoughts to ponder when leaving Laura's house. And I also took away with me some amazing new friendships.

If I take my heart's advice, you can be sure, I'm still unsteady...

This past weekend's events have become an entire blur with only bits and pieces electrifying through the nerves in my brain to communicate that yes, you did do things this weekend.

For starters on Friday, I was reunited, if only for one night, with my friend Y, who was on her way to Staten Island where she will reside indefinitely (hopefully, for her sake). It was a nice reunion, filled with a night of endless driving, (If anyone were to ever ask me how to get anywhere in the state of Virginia, please do not be offended when I laugh maniacally in your face. Short Code: Virginia's roads are definitely not for lovers, and more explicitly, not for me) girl-talk until the wee hours, several hours of partying and dancing to the sounds of Noel Sanger (who I coincidentally had an impromptu "heart-to-heart" talk with at the end of the night that was pretty cool) and then a very near-crazy 58-mile drive home for myself, alone.

I spent most of the beautiful weather on Saturday inside the confines of my room. Not because I was broke or because there were no plans (And here is where I input yet another apology to K.Hyon for missing out on hanging out in the rays of daylight!), but because my partied-out, old-fart ass was complacently passed out in the thrawls of slumber for several hours - hours only intermittently disturbed by my addiction to YouTube videos and watching reruns of Clean House on the Style Network (Don't deny the powers of Ms. Niecy...seriously).

I was abruptly pulled from this spell by numerous phone calls, one of which was Darren (aka Bathroom Boy) which went as follows:

Me: (sleepily) He...hello?

Bathroom Boy: Dude, what happened to you last night? What are you doing?

Me: (pulling a potato chip out of the bag lying in front of me on top of my comforter) Nothing, I was just lying around, catching up on sleep from last night. And what do you mean what happened to me last night? I was at Snatch. Where were you?

Bathroom Boy: I looked for you - everywhere.
(Note: I hardly believe that he looked EVERYWHERE. Because if he had, in fact, looked EVERYWHERE then he would have inevitably found ME.)

Last night was Christian's birthday, and I stopped by to say hi before heading to Buzz.

Me: Ohh...was that you? I saw some tall black dude with glasses on walking out the door but I figured you'd be at Buzz, so I knew it wouldn't be you.

Bathroom Boy: Well it was, and you missed out. Anyway, so I'll see you tonight.
(Note: That was not a question.)

Me: Wait - what do you mean? See me tonight? Who said I was going anywhere?

Bathroom Boy: No one did. But you're on the guestlist, and it's free before 11...so be there.

Me: Wow, that's very direct and bossy of you. What if I don't want to go?

Bathroom Boy: You don't have to want to go - but you must be there.

Me: Peer pressure, much?

Bathroom Boy: Peer pressure all the way. See you tonight. [Click.]

Five hours later, a trip to downtown Baltimore's Sutton Place to pick up three tag-a-longs and off on 295 I went. I wrangled up enough energy to drive myself to DC, yet again and parked the car.

Ten minutes later, after meeting J.Lo and Ciconte and Dane at the door - we were inside, and down to the main room.

Several hours of dancing, partying, laughing and [will insert another story at a later date here], I was ready to go home, and so were my tag-a-longs. However, my friends had a different plan in mind and within 20 minutes of coersive speech on their part - I found myself in the car, with R and the tag-a-longs driving back to Baltimore to do a drop-off and head my ass as well as R's back to Virginia for a further partying fiasco.

In the end, this weekend was altogether fun, and I am ultimately proud of myself for the way that I held myself this weekend, with all things considered.

This weekend is going to bring lots more pictures, I promise - as I take on the road again towards Pennsylvania to stay with L unni and the Korean sistas for our now monthly "Kimchi Weekend". I can't wait. It'll be really relaxing, and peaceful to just be around people who completely and utterly get you. Plus, throwing a few martinis and a shitload of delicious kimchi and mandu in the mix doesn't hurt either.

What I imagine the sound of my heart pounding in a bed of silence looks like...

This is about the time that my heart exploded in my chest, and then I realized that the fast breeze blowing through the strands of my hair was actually the air being broken by my airbourne vehicle:

This is probably what the police report and insurance claim reads because this was all I could manage to muster five hours after the accident:

"4:12 am. Was leaving DC and following the direction of my GPS system, took the tunnel leading towards the 295 SE/SW entrance but went into the wrong tunnel heading towards RFK lot. Entered into complete and utter darkness with no lights, no signs. Tried to adjust to the darkeness and just when I realized the pavement swurved to the left, I tried to turn left but had already hit the tree with my right side and turned upside down, did a 360 degree turn in the air befofe flipping back over and doing a 80 degree swurve to a stop."

The only reason how I know exactly what direction my car flipped, okay, there are two:

1. The fact that as my car impacted on the tree I felt my entire insides lift up from my stomach to my lungs, compressing together like a Slinky being turned upside down. What I didn't fully realize immediately? That I was upside down. And I caught a millisecond glimpse out the cracked glass of the passenger window enough to see the pavement at eye level, and the tunnel glowing through the darkness at me. That's when I closed my eyes to prepare for nothing, something and everything - all at the same time.

2. My Guardian Angel: In the form of a 6"5-6"7 thin-framed man in a red Honda hatch. An image that will stick with me for the rest of my life as a reminder that the smallest instantaneous moments can quite possibly bring you the most purest form of joy that you'll ever feel in a lifetime.

Hours before I would see the "light of life" and my car was left demolished, I had spent the entire day just trudging through work. It was just another day among the many where I kept wandering the maze of cubicles wondering why I still, without fail, park in the same spot, walk through the same building and sit in front of the same screen every single day and endure the bezerk behavior of certain people who have made it a career in having no basic social skills.

By the time 5 o'clock chimed in, I was ready to leave the smothering feel of work and escape to a place I knew I could just let go: in the presence of friends, dancing and just releasing all that anger and stress out.

Several hours later, Christauff and I were doing our regular Friday night ritual of walking each other to our cars safely. We had the miracle of parking on the same street as each other (a rarity to anyone who has ever tried to park to go to a club in DC) and I got into my car and watched as he walked across the street to his. I went to program my GPS to head home, and started to pull out of my spot.

There were a lot of little miracles that night. Little bits of instances that in retrospect, I will be grateful for, for the rest of my life. The fact that I had decided to go to Ultrabar where seven people I knew were going to be there, the fact that Christauff and I always walked to our cars together after the night was through, the fact that Christauff forgot that I had a GPS in my car and had seen me headed in a different direction than he thought would be the regular way for me to get home and just figured I was lost, the fact that he then, as a great friend with concern, decided to follow behind me to make sure I was headed in the right direction - and that he kept following me until he was 3/4 mile away in his car as he watched my car propel itself through the air.

I even feel blessed that I had had such a crummy week prior. I had pictures of my brother's bedsores running around in my head, constant thoughts of my brother's legs being amputated, depressed over my job and my inability to deal with overt micromanagement, frustrated with the outcome of my future - where was I headed with my life? how was I going to get there?, hurt from the loss of a friend and caught in a whirlwind of complete and utter confusion with life in general.

But in that millisecond glimpse of the world upside down, and in the next instant when I closed my eyes and prepared for what I feared to be the end, I found myself shaking away that fear, gripping the steering wheel with both hands tightly, keeping my eyes shut tight as my heart pounded in my throat, my ears, the pit of my stomach - I just let go of every single stress and hurt that I had been consumed with before - and relaxed my body and just breathed.

When I opened my eyes, glass was everywhere, and my hands were bleeding and so was a small patch on my chest where the airbag had hit. Smoke was all around me, and I turned my head ever so slightly to try and make sense of what my eyes were seeing through the cracked and broken glass window of my driver's door: Christauff, his red Honda hatch, and him running from his car, across the pavement, to open my car door.

I walked out of the accident truly unscathed. No broken bones, no massive amounts of blood. As I lay in the guestroom of Christauff's and his girlfriend's condo that morning, I kept counting the solid breaths of air that I sucked into my lungs.

"Someone wants you around, Em," Christauff had kept saying as we drove to his condo.

This is my second chance at life. This is my chance to keep living it without regret and to realize the true value of what I have surrounding me. I was given a second chance at this journey and I am not going to waste it worrying about things that I cannot change.