Starting things is not hard, finishing is. I have a ton of things I would like to do, I start them, but the follow through is unglamorous and boring. However, I do hope that the rule of 21 takes over and things become a little bit easier. Like training for marathon and reading more Chinese. Or maybe I'm just super tired today and my lack of energy is dragging my mood down.
Anyway, two items:
1. This is hilarious. A list of recommended science fiction/fantasy books as voted for by NPR listeners.
2. Read that Kindle is coming out with Kindle Fire (features? Who cares?). Is anyone else bothered by where Amazon is going with the name of this piece of technology that's supposed to be the next step in publishing? I am. Kindle, as defined by their screen saver (don't make me go through all the dead authors to define it), I can nervously chuckle and let pass. But Kindle Fire? Fahrenheit 451 anyone? Color me disturbed.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
This post is probably TMI
If you ever want to explore the limit and shape of your uterus, stick something in there. (Disclaimer: don't do it without your doctor.)
And this is how internal organs are supposed to work: you are not supposed to notice them at all.
Today, I got my Mirena IUD. Used misoprostol 7 hours before and took 600mg of ibuprofen about 2 hours before my appointment.
Procedure: speculum (not bad), cervical dilator (pinch! and pain. I felt blood rushing somewhere. Felt like fainting), iodine swabs (cool. Kills those germs iodine!). Some kind of measurement of the uterus (when is the cervical dilator coming off? That shit is uncomfortable). IUD insertion. That was when I felt something pushing against the top and sides of the uterus.
I shook afterward. The literature and NP warned me about cramps, but my menstrual cramps never felt this strong. It's more than discomfort. It's pain. If the uterus had a voice, I'm sure it was screaming, "Get this shit out of me now you bastard!"
I cried. Couldn't help it. Tears just rolled down my face. I thought of yoga. I thought of breathing. My shaking stopped. For awhile at least. Enough to get dressed and walk out of there.
Got to the parking lot. Had to sit down and put my head between my knees at one point because I felt my peripheral vision going. That happened a few times between the hospital and home. I thought of cops and being pulled over because I didn't put my seatbelt on. If they dared to do that, I'd yell at them. Or maybe I'll just make my point by throwing up on them.
Home. Curled up in my blanket and tried to ignore my silently screaming uterus. I questioned whether this was worth it. How I am such chickenshit that I'd rather die than continue experiencing this. Balm of sleep.
Hours later, cramps now dulled to less than normal. I can even roll out of bed and sit up without a blanket around me.
In other news, languages. I know Mandarin, English, Shanghainese, a little bit of French, Spanish, and Japanese. I've decided that since I'm going back to China, I'll need to brush up on my Chinese. Found a Chinese bookstore at the back of 99 Ranch, full of educational materials. Apparently they've been there for six years. The prices are great. I picked out a fourth grade Chinese book that kids would use in school as well as a book with Chinese idioms and their stories for $11. The latter suits my needs quite well. I can learn idioms, the original classical Chinese source, modern Chinese translation as well as English translation. My goal is to be able to reader better and faster in Chinese, close to my reading speed in English. And I found an awesome Chinese-English dictionary. It allows you to look up characters by writing, pinyin, and shows you keystrokes as well. Maybe now I can go back to my Fifty-two weeks of Zhuangzi.
And this is how internal organs are supposed to work: you are not supposed to notice them at all.
Today, I got my Mirena IUD. Used misoprostol 7 hours before and took 600mg of ibuprofen about 2 hours before my appointment.
Procedure: speculum (not bad), cervical dilator (pinch! and pain. I felt blood rushing somewhere. Felt like fainting), iodine swabs (cool. Kills those germs iodine!). Some kind of measurement of the uterus (when is the cervical dilator coming off? That shit is uncomfortable). IUD insertion. That was when I felt something pushing against the top and sides of the uterus.
I shook afterward. The literature and NP warned me about cramps, but my menstrual cramps never felt this strong. It's more than discomfort. It's pain. If the uterus had a voice, I'm sure it was screaming, "Get this shit out of me now you bastard!"
I cried. Couldn't help it. Tears just rolled down my face. I thought of yoga. I thought of breathing. My shaking stopped. For awhile at least. Enough to get dressed and walk out of there.
Got to the parking lot. Had to sit down and put my head between my knees at one point because I felt my peripheral vision going. That happened a few times between the hospital and home. I thought of cops and being pulled over because I didn't put my seatbelt on. If they dared to do that, I'd yell at them. Or maybe I'll just make my point by throwing up on them.
Home. Curled up in my blanket and tried to ignore my silently screaming uterus. I questioned whether this was worth it. How I am such chickenshit that I'd rather die than continue experiencing this. Balm of sleep.
Hours later, cramps now dulled to less than normal. I can even roll out of bed and sit up without a blanket around me.
In other news, languages. I know Mandarin, English, Shanghainese, a little bit of French, Spanish, and Japanese. I've decided that since I'm going back to China, I'll need to brush up on my Chinese. Found a Chinese bookstore at the back of 99 Ranch, full of educational materials. Apparently they've been there for six years. The prices are great. I picked out a fourth grade Chinese book that kids would use in school as well as a book with Chinese idioms and their stories for $11. The latter suits my needs quite well. I can learn idioms, the original classical Chinese source, modern Chinese translation as well as English translation. My goal is to be able to reader better and faster in Chinese, close to my reading speed in English. And I found an awesome Chinese-English dictionary. It allows you to look up characters by writing, pinyin, and shows you keystrokes as well. Maybe now I can go back to my Fifty-two weeks of Zhuangzi.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
The epic saga of trying to mail my cousin her f'ing wedding present
Characters: on my dad's side, let's randomly assign my grandmother's generation as the P generation. My father's generation as F1 generation and my generation as F2. In the P generation, my grandmother married three times. Her first husband died of something when my dad was still young. She had three kids with him: my dad, my uncle, and my aunt. She then married an abusive man and had one son with him. Divorced him and married another one who died just this year. F1: my father, my uncle, my aunt, and the half-brother. F2 (this is going to be easy because of the one-child policy) from oldest to youngest: My uncle's daughter, Xiaxia, my aunt's daughter, Weiwei, yours truly, and the daughter from the half-brother (I don't even know her name).
Xiaxia recently got married in May. Due to some craziness in my life, I didn't get her wedding present to her in time. No matter, I am bad at giving people presents anyway, I buy them, but don't give them. Anyway, so I finally got her her present, a pair of Kris bears from Swarovski.
Super cute (right?), fitting, name-brand, which Xiaxia values, and decently within my budget. Got her a pretty card from Papyrus. All I need is an address. Anyone would think the hard part is over right? If it was that easy, this post would not exist.
I email Weiwei because she's the only one whom I remotely keep in touch with. By keeping in touch with, I mean that I write her emails maybe twice every 2-3 years. Honestly I don't even like her that much because she was pretty mean to me when I was little. I only communicate with her because she is the only one familiar with English. Tangent. Back to saga. I ask Weiwei for Xiaxia's physical address. She replies saying that it's better if I directly communicate with my oldest cousin, giving me the phone number and mentioning that she passed on my message and gave Xiaxia my email.
Thinking she might not have understood what physical address meant, I wrote another email to her around a month later (because I really couldn't think of anything else to write, that's a whole other story), elaborating and rephrasing my original request. This time, no reply from Weiwei, but the next day I get an email from Xiaxia in Chinese. Roughly translated: "I heard that you want to send me something, you don't really need to. I'll be happy with an electronic post card or an email. Hug hug kiss kiss. Best! blah blah..." The cuteness, whether genuine or disingenuous kills me. Makes me want to strangle a kitten.
Ok. I already bought the fucking present. What the fuck does it mean I don't need to send it?
Went home to LA to enlist the help of the parents, who promptly im's Weiwei. Facepalm. Who replies that no one short of Xiaxia's parents and Xiaxia apparently knows where she lives. Wtf. I just want to point out that this is fairly unusual because my aunt and uncle are pretty close. Plus, there's my grandma. None of whom knows the address. Meaning that since Xiaxia got married in May, no one has visited? Very strange.
Then from my mother, I learned that Xiaxia is mad at grandma because she had asked grandma to give her the apartment that grandma was living in (there is another apartment that grandma can live in). Grandma said no, because she wants to pass it on to John, since he's the only grandson. Xiaxia is unhappy about it and hasn't called/talked to grandma since the wedding. *insert exasperated swearing*
As it stands, I am fairly tempted to write our eldest that I don't give a shit about her physical address. Just give me any fucking address where she will be able to pick up her damn wedding present. I'd like to wash my hands of the whole thing already.
(Final note of clarification: I am not angry, though I might sound like it. Just amused as the ridiculousness of the whole situation. I'm sure cultural differences have something to do with it. This became a running joke between my brother and me the entire weekend.)
Xiaxia recently got married in May. Due to some craziness in my life, I didn't get her wedding present to her in time. No matter, I am bad at giving people presents anyway, I buy them, but don't give them. Anyway, so I finally got her her present, a pair of Kris bears from Swarovski.
Super cute (right?), fitting, name-brand, which Xiaxia values, and decently within my budget. Got her a pretty card from Papyrus. All I need is an address. Anyone would think the hard part is over right? If it was that easy, this post would not exist.
I email Weiwei because she's the only one whom I remotely keep in touch with. By keeping in touch with, I mean that I write her emails maybe twice every 2-3 years. Honestly I don't even like her that much because she was pretty mean to me when I was little. I only communicate with her because she is the only one familiar with English. Tangent. Back to saga. I ask Weiwei for Xiaxia's physical address. She replies saying that it's better if I directly communicate with my oldest cousin, giving me the phone number and mentioning that she passed on my message and gave Xiaxia my email.
Thinking she might not have understood what physical address meant, I wrote another email to her around a month later (because I really couldn't think of anything else to write, that's a whole other story), elaborating and rephrasing my original request. This time, no reply from Weiwei, but the next day I get an email from Xiaxia in Chinese. Roughly translated: "I heard that you want to send me something, you don't really need to. I'll be happy with an electronic post card or an email. Hug hug kiss kiss. Best! blah blah..." The cuteness, whether genuine or disingenuous kills me. Makes me want to strangle a kitten.
Ok. I already bought the fucking present. What the fuck does it mean I don't need to send it?
Went home to LA to enlist the help of the parents, who promptly im's Weiwei. Facepalm. Who replies that no one short of Xiaxia's parents and Xiaxia apparently knows where she lives. Wtf. I just want to point out that this is fairly unusual because my aunt and uncle are pretty close. Plus, there's my grandma. None of whom knows the address. Meaning that since Xiaxia got married in May, no one has visited? Very strange.
Then from my mother, I learned that Xiaxia is mad at grandma because she had asked grandma to give her the apartment that grandma was living in (there is another apartment that grandma can live in). Grandma said no, because she wants to pass it on to John, since he's the only grandson. Xiaxia is unhappy about it and hasn't called/talked to grandma since the wedding. *insert exasperated swearing*
As it stands, I am fairly tempted to write our eldest that I don't give a shit about her physical address. Just give me any fucking address where she will be able to pick up her damn wedding present. I'd like to wash my hands of the whole thing already.
(Final note of clarification: I am not angry, though I might sound like it. Just amused as the ridiculousness of the whole situation. I'm sure cultural differences have something to do with it. This became a running joke between my brother and me the entire weekend.)
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