Getting Lost

Rock bottom is pretty sharp and painful.  As my bank accounts slowly reach dangerously low levels, my anxiety is getting higher.

Now, I'm nervous that it's starting to affect my job search endeavors.

Last Monday, I had an interview in a suburb of Boston, one that I would need a car to get to.  I ended up asking a friend first if he could just drive me, but he offered that I take the car myself.  Naturally, since I couldn't afford a Zipcar at the moment, I took the opportunity.

I put in $20 worth of gas the night before since the level was quite low.  In the morning, as I was working out, I saw that a tow truck pulled up on the block where I parked the car.  Just as I sprinted down the hill, I managed to get a $40 ticket.  At that point, I might as well have gotten a Zipcar.

Later that morning, I was ready to go to the job interview.  I plugged in my GPS and went on my merry way.  Unfortunately, when I got there, I found myself in front of a residence.  This didn't seem right.

I tried calling the women who was interviewing me, but she wouldn't pick up.  I realized I was in a neighboring town, so I checked my email and the woman said it was by "Cochichuit" street.  My GoogleMaps couldn't find that street.  After Googling it instead, I found it.  It was "Cochituate Rd."

As I proceeded in that direction, I was already fairly late.  I had left several messages, and the woman still had not picked up or called back.

I circled in a mall area, in another business' parking lot, and almost got back on the highway before finally finding the building.  As I pulled into the lot, the woman finally called me and wondered where I was.  I told her that I had tried calling and left multiple messages, but that I had gotten lost.

Not as dire...but just as disappointing...
and still keeping hope alive...

At this point, I was already 25 minutes late.  But I told her that I'd still like to go through the interview.

Goodness, if I was the person trying to hire someone, there's no way that I would hire the late person unless they were extremely amazing.  I felt like a hot mess.

Suffice it to say, I did not get the job.  Part of me is irritated since I had asked for directions from her and didn't get them until I was on the road.  Though, it really worked out for the best since I would have to make it to the office every day and go further west into Central Massachusetts to do some of my work.

Honestly, I feel like it just proved to me to stick within areas that I could easily reach via public transportation or even bicycling.

But it really made me think about all the jobs I've applied to.  Some I knew I was qualified for, some I knew I was over qualified for, some were definitely a reach.  But some were a reach because I knew it would be difficult for me to get there.

Still, I had to apply.  I definitely haven't been able to do 15 jobs a week since the first time.  But I'm still pushing through.  Hopefully, there will not be anymore getting lost.

Oh, Ya...I'm 29!

I am so super excited to be 29!!!

It means that my Saturn's Return is almost over, and newer and better things start to happen.  Though, I'd have to say it's still been pretty rough on me.

But I hear time and time again that turning 30 is pretty amazing.  This isn't to say that things still aren't difficult or challenging.  Apparently, however, it seems like one's attitudes about a lot of things just start to change.

Many of my peers are setting up their list of things to do before they turn 30, like traveling somewhere or building something or doing something crazy.

I have only 1 goal in mind.

I want to reach my Goal Weight of 145lbs.

Why 145lbs?  According to the CDC's BMI charts, that is the weight that would put me in the "normal" weight range based on my height.  It's right at the edge of being "normal" and "overweight".

Right now, as you'll see on my "Shedding Scales" page, I'm in the "obese" category, which both frustrates and scares me.

I feel like I've come a long away in the way my body looks, having built some more muscle.  And yet, the scale isn't budging too far.

Mermaid Parade's through the years...

But now, I'm determined.  I'm making some headway by really cutting down on my meal sizes and committing to bootcamp this month.

I've got a bit more than 60lbs left and less than a year.  I KNOW I can do this.

60lbs to 30!

Simple Pleasures Sunday - Innocence

So, I'm still a bit traumatized from watching Yoni and Mencken play with the dead mouse.

I'd have to say that there was this beautiful innocence about them prior to the mouse debacle.  They were my babies.  My vicious babies.

It's been difficult for me to want to pick them up.  There's a part of me that wants to bathe them, though I'm sure they've cleaned themselves thoroughly by now.  Of course, I haven't actually stopped touching them.

I just happen to get flashes of the burned images of them playing with the dead mouse as I'm looking at them.

I know it sounds like I'm overreacting.  But it was definitely a stomach-turning sort of experience.

There's something to be said about "ignorance is bliss."  I'm sure I'll get over it eventually. 

They're still my babies.   They're just not as innocent as they were when it was just a jingly ball.

Nature In My Living Room: Kittehs Catch Their First Mouse

I'm about to recall the gruesome death of this poor mouse and then some.  Read at your own risk.

Consider yourself warned.

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At 1 in the morning, I hear Yoni growling and making a noise I had never heard before.  I looked into the hallway to see Mencken in our bedroom doorway and Yoni with her dilated glowing eyes.  It looked like she was heaving.

Out of concern, I thought that perhaps she had vomited or something.  As I proceeded to turn all the lights on, she runs into the living room.  I don't see any vomit anywhere, so I figured she is probably about to puke.

Then I realized she had something in her mouth.  At first, it looked like a leaf.  But then I realized that she had a MOUSE!!!

I immediately work up the boyfriend.  He wanted to make sure that we give a lot of praise to the kitties for catching it.  But Yoni wasn't done with it yet.  In fact, it was still quite alive, if moving slower.

She would growl when Mencken would get close to her, and yet she would drop it and push it about.

This went on for the rest of the night.

At one point, the mouse got away.  I thought I saw it scurry under our front door, but Mencken knew better.  After a bit of digging in our shoe area, he recovered the injured mouse and brought it straight to Yoni.  He, having always been an indoor cat, had never done anything like this and wasn't sure what to do with it.

At another point, they make their way into the bedroom.  It was almost 3 in the morning at this point, and I had to wake up in an hour and a half to get ready for bootcamp.  But I couldn't NOT pay attention to Yoni's growls.  She ended up under the bed at some point.  I was NOT going to be okay with a mouse carcass under our bed!

Here's why:
About 2 years ago, before our kitties were even in this world, we had quite a problem with mice.  They were attacking anything they could, regardless of being sealed in a plastic bag.  I could hear them in our walls, and scurrying about in the middle of the night.  It was horrifying. 

We started putting out traps and putting everything in our fridge.  We cleaned and we even put out some traps with poison in them.

One random Summer day, I noticed these HUGE flies flying around our living room window.  They were HUGE, I tell you.  Huge and slow.  Thus, they were relatively easy to kill.  However, they just kept showing up.  At first, I would see them flying over to the opposite wall, but they were mainly in the window.

I closed our windows and asked our Super to come look.  He couldn't figure it out either, and he hadn't gotten any other complaints from other tenants.

I noticed that the flies had these weird white lines on their thorax.  Naturally, I Googled it.  What I discovered was horrifying.  They were called "flesh flies."  Go ahead, go to the Wikipedia page and learn about them.  I'll wait....

Gross, right??!?!?

Since they were mainly in our window, I figured something must have died right outside it though we couldn't smell anything.

We must have killed over 20 of them.  Yes, I was counting.  It just made it more disgusting.

About a month later, I was cleaning around a pile of clothes and pillows that we were planning to dispose of.  As I lifted a pillow, I spotted a dead mouse!!! It must have been crushed underneath the clothes and pillows.

Suddenly, the stench of dead mouse and the memory of the flesh flies came flooding back.  It was horrifying, and the smell was not going away.

At that point, the boyfriend was picked up by a friend to take him to a birthday lunch.  And I was left with the smell.  I ended up leaving the house with the windows open (though I remember it was a torrential-rainy day), and went to the movie theater.

So, you can see why I was not about to let the cats just leave a dead mouse somewhere for us to find it later.

And I sure as hell wasn't going to take a live mouse and dispose of it myself!  I had already done that a couple of years before the dead mouse/flesh fly episode, when I was living with 2 roommates.

The mouse was stuck on a glue trap, and the most humane way I could think of disposing of it was to kill it quickly.  So, we took it on the glue trap outside in a plastic bag and grabbed a shovel.  My two roommates couldn't do it.  And since I insisted on the quick death, I had to do it.  It took a lot of thinking and yelling, and I'm sure the neighbors were about to call 911 on us.

I was so traumatized by that that I had to talk about it with my work supervisor.  And you better believe that I was re-traumatized by the flesh flies and shared that with my work supervisor as well.

But let me get back to today.
Eventually, the growling stopped and we heard Yoni munching on her cat food.  We assumed that Mencken ate it.

I went to bootcamp and returned to a knocked out boyfriend and kittehs.

But as I was getting ready for a phone interview and the boyfriend was getting ready to leave for school, I spotted the mouse again!  It was barely moving, so I pointed Yoni in its direction.

She took it under or kitchen counter table, and when she reemerged the mouse's body looked truly lifeless.  That's when Yoni started playing with it.  She would toss it in the air and push it about on the floor.

Mencken gets a hold of the mouse

Eventually, Mencken got a hold of it, probably thinking about how fun it looked.  But when he tossed it in the air, it would really catch air.  I was shrieking in my corner behind a blanket, scared that it would get launched in my direction.

But I had to do something.  I couldn't be shrieking during my phone interview!  After asking friends on Facebook, I came up with a plan.

We have way too many tongs, so I grabbed the crappiest one with a stray sock that ended up in our laundry (but wasn't either of ours) and a plastic bag.  After throwing away the bag complete with sock and mouse in our basement, I Wet-Swiffered the hell out of our floors.

I'll be honest.  I think pet mice and pet rats are cute.  They're a lot cleaner, though they still pee and poo everywhere.  But when it's a strange creature invading your home, it becomes a different story.

There was something both frightening and intriguing about the kittehs doing what nature intended them to do.  I couldn't take my eyes away for fear that I would lose track of the mouse, and yet I can't even eat without getting a bit nauseous.

There's a part of me that wants to bathe the kittehs clean, but I know that they do that on their own.  So, I'll just keep washing my own hands throughout the day.  I also made sure to praise them and give them some treats for their good-job-done.  Perhaps we'll feed them some tuna tonight.

If only David Attenborough was narrating, though I don't think that even his calming voice will prevent me from being traumatized from this for a while.

Travels: (Flying Away From) The Dock Of the Bay

Saturday, April 23rd (The Night)
After my sister's show at the Pilipino Cultural Night at SF State, we were all starving!  I don't know what these Filipinos were thinking when they put together this 4-hour non-sequitur, especially considering that many in the audience were family members.  But my sister was awesome in the cultural dances.

We ended the evening at a greasy Thai restaurant near my sister's place called King of Thai Noodle.  It was kind of perfect for my exhausted sister and parents.

It was the first time in a long time that we as a complete family had dinner together.

siblings

This was my final night of sleep in San Francisco, and it felt nice to have spent it with my family.

Sunday, April 24th
I woke up a bit saddened by my final day, but excited to still be in the California warmth.  My parents and brother were driving back down to Southern California later that afternoon, so they wanted to have breakfast together.

We ended up at the Millbrae Pancake House, which has been in the area for over 50 years.  My dad, who is ever the joker, told our waitress that we had driving up from L.A. just to visit the restaurant.  The woman was totally taken aback and was honestly flattered that we had done so.  I didn't have the heart to tell her he was joking.

Being that it was Easter Sunday, there were a lot of families coming for breakfast in their Sunday best.  And then, there was this family.

I really have no words, actually...

After breakfast, we said goodbye to my sister and her boyfriend, and we went back into San Francisco to get pastries to bring back with us on our travels.  I didn't get any cake on my birthday, I realized.  So, I asked if we could get ube cake for me to take back to Boston.

My parents dropped me off at my sister's apartment, and we said our final farewells before they took the long drive back south.  It does make me sad that I don't get to see them as often as I'd like to.

I'm hoping to be able to visit Los Angeles and California again in July.

I had two more folks to see before I left, though.

I was excited to see a belly dancer friend of mine and her two adorable boys.  I met up with them in the Castro area, and we chatted about the dance teachers in San Francisco.  I ended up back at their beautiful home and then at another park to watch the little ones participate in some Easter Egg Hunting action.

I was really looking forward to hanging out with this friend and her family mainly because of all the hilarious things her kids say and do that she posts on Facebook.  Usually, at least with parents who are a bit more obnoxious, I can't really handle the saccharine.  But her two boys are just hilarious and she not an obnoxious parent.

It also made me think a lot about how neat it must be to raise your kids in such a free-flowing neighborhood.  While I'm sure the Castro is full of unfriendly people, I feel like it really instills young children with the idea of acceptance and open-mindedness.  I mean, granted some of the Castro events are a bit less child-friendly, but they're mainly behind closed doors.

After the Easter Egg Hunt, it was time for me to do my final preparations before flying back.  After a quick shower, I packed my belongings and called my sister to say goodbye and thank you.

As I had started my whirlwind of catch-up with friends with someone I knew from Boston, I also ended my catch-up with another dear friend from Boston.  It was perfect, really, since she needed to go to the airport to pick up a friend around the same time that I needed to be at the airport.

She took me to Emmy's Spaghetti Shack, in the Bernal Heights area.  It's a really cute little hole in the wall, and you wouldn't even realize what it was if you just casually passed by it.  My friend recommended the spaghetti with meatballs, since it would help me to get sleepy on my red-eye flight.  The "big meatballs" are no joke.  They're BIG!  The meal and drinks were delicious.

My friend and I were interns in the same place, and she's been one of the few people from San Francisco who I've seen the most.  She's such a super positive and bright and funny person, and it felt good to talk with her about all the troubles I've had in finding a job.  But I left feeling more encouraged.

**********

As I walked through the San Francisco International Airport (Terminal 2) to my gate, I started feeling anxious again.  It was like I was leaving home again, and yet I was excited to go back to the boyfriend and the kittehs.

I really consider myself extremely lucky to have a home base on both sides of the country.  Though it's been a difficult year, I love my life and the people in it in Boston.  But if it came down to it, and it felt like the right time to move I would definitely consider making a move to San Francisco, even for a little while.  Not because it's any lovelier than Boston or Los Angeles (though there is the California sun to consider).  But because I know that I have so many people who I love in that City by the Bay.

Yet, when I landed in Boston, hopping on the Blue Line to the Green Line back home, I'm found myself so happy to be home.

Oh, and my ube cake made it safe and sound through security and a 5 and a half hour flight right into my fridge and my extremely happy belly.