| I think that there’s something about me that some people may not know. I’m a hopelessly sappy, emotional, romantic person. I cry, more than I care to admit. I’m going to tear up writing this, I can guarantee that. Don’t tell anyone! ;)
There are a couple of things that I feel deep inside that are important to me, to what makes me who I am and defines what I like to see in the people I surround myself with. I thought it was about time I shared that with you...
First of all, some events have shaped my views of the world.
The death of a classmate in the first grade
Back before people knew that children had feelings, back before grief counselors or any such things, I had a classmate in the first grade who died. She was riding a bicycle and got struck by a drunk driver. I understood death, I had had older relatives die before that, and had gone to funerals... but it was the first time that I had had someone near me die that was so young... Before that, death was something that happened to adults, and all of the sudden, at the age of six, it could have been me.
Unfortunately, that was something that I had to deal with on my own, because the school made no effort to ease that burden on us.
I remember looking into Amy’s casket and thinking “she would never have worn that.” Amy was a tomboy, and she was buried in a light blue satin dress. I wrote my first will in the first grade.
I wore a lot of black and white. I struggled with the purpose of our short time on this world at an age I wouldn’t wish upon any other child.
What I learned from Amy’s death: Any day on this world could be our last. It doesn’t matter, ultimately, who we are or what we do, we have to accept the possibility of leaving this life at any moment.
September 11th, 2001
I was at the park with my current boyfriend at the time, in Gloucestershire, England. We had been talking about my return trip, scheduled for the following Saturday, and he kept jokingly telling me that I was going to stay.
We were walking around the park, bicycles in tow, when he got a phone call... When he got off the phone, he told me that I may not be able to go home, and I thought he was just joking with me again. He said we should head back.
Then he got a text message on the way home, saying “turn on the television.”
When we got back to his house, we turned on the television to see fire, smoke, and destruction, along with a plane hitting one of the Twin Towers over and over again on a loop. Although I’ve never been to New York and don’t know anyone who was there, I cried... I think most Americans did.
On a side note, this is when I’m going to take the time to tell you not to fly British Airways. I called them a day or two before my flight, and they still didn’t know if planes would be allowed off the ground by Saturday. Although their website said they’d re-schedule people who were supposed to fly that week, they charged me $150 to change my return ticket. They didn’t tell me this on the phone, just sprung it on me at the check in counter. Do not support BA, they took advantage of poor travellers stuck outside of their countries of origin. I have never flown BA since then.
This is what I learned from 9/11: Never miss a chance to profess your feelings for people you love. The absolute worst stories I heard about 9/11 were those who lost a loved one and never got to say “I love you.” I don’t want someone I know to have “take out the trash” be the last words I say to them! Or even much worse, having a fight on your way out the door to work.
You never know what’s going to happen, you never know when you leave someone’s side if that person will ever come back to you... Be it a spouse, family member, or friend, you don’t know... That’s why it’s important to me that before driving away, before hanging up the phone, before ending an IM conversation, I will end the conversation on a good note. I try to never be shy to say “I love you,” because I don’t know if I’ll get the chance again.
The death of a co-worker
I don’t want to go into too much detail, because this isn’t my family, so it’s not my story to tell. However, I will share what I learned... I realized that I had never told her how much I admired her work, how glad I was that she did the things she did. I always made an effort after that to tell my co-workers (especially those who were subordinate to me) and friends thank you, and let them know how much I appreciate the things they do. Sure, I had already learned to say “I love you,” but even people you don’t love need affirmation too.
The death of my great-niece Alexis
My sister Martha is 15 years older than me, so I was only 7 when she had her first child Cyndi. Cyndi, in turn, was 15 when she had Alexis. I felt like I helped raise Cyndi and her sister and brother, and the baby was an extension of her... I was there when she told her dad she was pregnant, I watched her get all huge, and I watched the baby grow... Then two months later, she was gone. Lexie was born on January 13, 2005 and died of SIDS on March 13, 2005. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t enjoy life... A part of our family was gone, a part of me was gone with it...
The day before the funeral, my friend Jenny Bell, my fiance (now husband) Charles, my sister Irma, and myself spent together at Irma’s house making salads and painting little stars pink and little hearts white... It was the best thing we could be doing, spending that time together. I wish the rest of the family had decided to participate. My friend David then helped us by setting up the auditorium across the street from work for dinner while we were at the funeral, along with some of the lifeguards. I’ll forever love and appreciate Jenny, David, and my friends from work for what they did for our family during our time of need. (And Charles, of course! Now he’s part of our family, so of course I’ll always love and appreciate him, not only for this but for a lot of things!)
What I learned from this experience: Sometimes it takes a village... Charles, Jenny, and David supported Irma and me, but what they were really doing was supporting our whole family. By keeping us sane, and perhaps even strong on our good days, they enabled us to help everyone else... Thank you. I also learned that sometimes it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, but who you’re doing it with. Something as mundane as preparing salads can be so soothing and powerful with the right people...
This is long enough already, so I’ll tell you about what I like in my friends some other time. Moral of the story is: Don’t hold things inside, tell it like it is. If you appreciate or love someone, let them know.
By the way, I define love as the deepest and most sincere respect, admiration, and concern for a person that someone is capable of having. (Then of course, there’s the kind of love I have for my husband, that’s a step above that!) I have many acquaintances, but those friends whom I love, I consider family. You should know who you are. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| There are very few people I still speak to today that I've known longer than my friend Andy. He and I met back in the day on a mud, and he is an exceptional person! Throughout many years, he's always been a great friend.
I had planned to go to Minnesota to meet him in person for his college graduation, but I wasn't able to make the trip in the end. However, he and a friend of his (my new friend Matt) came to California this week and dropped by yesterday to meet me and my husband Charles. So of course, I took them to Disneyland!
I had a great time, and they say they did too! =) I hope the rest of their trip goes very well, and that it won't be the only time we meet!
Pictures are at the usual place. Not as many of them as I normally take on Disneyland trips, but enough to remember the day by! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So, my camera would have me believe that I went to Disneyland yesterday with Julio, Kassie, and Albert. However, the car would have me believe otherwise.
I suppooooosedly filled up the tank with gas in El Monte.
Drove 25.7 miles to Disneyland.
Drove Kassie home to El Monte. (27.5 miles)
Drove Albert to Circle K to be picked up by his mom. (1.6 miles)
Drove Julio to my mom's house where he had his car. (0.6 miles)
Drove home to North Hollywood. (30 miles)
Drove to school this morning. (3.9 miles)
Then back home (3.9 miles)
Drove to the doctor's office. (5.8 miles)
And back... (5.8 miles)
104 miles that my camera would have me believe I've driven since I filled up the tank yesterday, and I have this much gas:
Something's not adding up here!
If you want to examine the photographic "evidence" for yourself, click here. (On a side note, I have 1,197 pictures in my Yahoo pictures site now, go me! You can download the pictures full size or even have them sent to your house or to be picked up at your local Target!) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Not old as in old, you know, but people I've known for nearly a decade. =)
I stayed at my mom's house on Wednesday night so we could get an earlier start out of El Monte. I picked up Stephanie, Billy, and Billy's brother Albert and we drove down to Disneyland. on Thursday morning We got there shortly before opening, and there wasn't any line for the first three of four things we went on. It was great. =) We actually saw almost everything we wanted to see!
On Sunday, I'm taking Julio and Kassie (who had to work on Thursday) and probably Albert again. Charles and I went both Saturday and Sunday last weekend (but not all day). I may have to keep a close eye on my magicalness consumption, four visits in two weeks may be dangerous! =P
Pictures at the usual place- here. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I spent a good portion of yesterday with my friends I've known since high school. It was a lot of fun, good times. Now I must hunt down the person with the camera so I can show you!
I slept at mom's house because it was quite late when we were done (honestly, I would have done it even if it were still early, cuz I had business with mom). I did some genealogy research at her house, finding documentation to things I "mostly" knew already. (Meaning I knew most of it, and mostly knew all of it, but it's not official unless it's in writing anyway!) I burned CDs with pictures for her and each of my sisters, so they can make prints at WalMart/Target/etc. We watched a slideshow on my laptop, they loved it. Dad even asked how much the laptop cost, I think he may have been thinking of entering the computer age, but he probably won't. That's okay. =)
Future project: We have dvd burning capabilities, my parents have no computer capabilities. 2+2="I need to learn how to make dvd slideshows." (Sisters have computers. However, one sister's computer is a Win98 machine whose hardware has past its prime, and the other's is a computer that once surpassed the machine that's now our server but is now laden with spyware and useless programs.)
Dad was getting bored of other people's children on the computer slideshow, so our photo dvds have to have menus so he can navigate to what he wants to see or he needs to be able to click through them quickly. "Chapters" of related pictures on a timed cycle could work well. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| My husband and I went out on Sunday with some old friends of mine from high school. Julio I had seen from time to time in town, but Bill and Stephanie I hadn't seen since graduation in 2001. Almost 5 years!
Everyone is doing well, and Bill and Stephanie are now a couple, which I think is awesome. They're all good people, among the best I know. I'm really, really happy that we got together. Personally, I think MySpace did us a great service there getting me back in touch with Julio, who I didn't have an email address for. Bill and Steph it's my own fault I didn't contact them more often. (That and Bill moved away, but he's back now!)
I love you guys. Charles likes you too! :)
Julio, Charles, and I went to the Queen Mary. It's a long story, having to do with daylight savings time, and the Long Beach Grand Prix, and parking lots... but let's just say we had no idea that we were going to go to the Queen Mary until we found ourselves in the Queen Mary parking lot. We had changed our plans from Catalina, to Sea World, to the Aquarium of the Pacific, and in trying to get there we couldn't park anywhere near it because of the Grand Prix. The Cirque du Soleil (which I love) was in the QM parking lot as well, but the only seats available for that day were in the $80/seat section (the most expensive of three brackets) so we didn't do that.
We went on the Ghosts and Legends Tour, the one we missed last time. Then we went up on the ship for a while, Julio had never been. Then we drove back to El Monte to meet up with the others. We went to the mall, but it was closing practically as soon as we got there so we watched a movie.
A couple of pictures from the Queen Mary. I kind of regret not having someone take a picture of all of us together, but that just means we'll have to all get together again. =) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So yeah, after coming back from the cemetery, I spent some time at sister's house. Talked to her about some stuff, then went to get a card and gift for the wedding. (I'll admit, I buy presents the same day, not just in this case but in general.) I went back to mom's house to get dressed and made up, then I was on my way.
The wedding was a traditional hispanic wedding, with the laso and arras, done mostly in Spanish. Everything was beautiful! The only bad thing was the children playing with fire! (They had taken a bunch of balloons off the wall, and were using a candle to separate them so they could pass them around.)
I have to say, Henoc and Angelica both looked stunning, and very happy. I was really proud of Henoc, like I would be if he were my brother. I do feel that way about him and David sometimes. =)
I was happy (a little surprised) that Angelica remembered me, we've only met at a handful of parties and when she's come by the pool. They both thanked me for coming down for the wedding, and I told them honestly that I wouldn't have missed it. Such a huge part of their lives, when Henoc and the work we do together has been such a huge part of mine... I honestly did ask for the day off work for the wedding, before I knew that my family wanted to get together that day.
I've worked with Henoc since 1999, and known him at least a year or two before that when I was a junior guard. Turns out we're all growing up. Our supervisor got married in April 2005, I got married in October, one of our senior guards announced she was pregnant (she's been married a few years) some time in fall, our other senior guard got married in December, another pool manager (who's on payroll but hasn't worked for a while because she got a real job) got engaged in December, then Henoc got married January 13th, 2006.
You know, this is the first of a couple of stages... first you look around and see that all of your friends are getting married, then they're all having kids. (Add in all of your friends graduating college and/or getting divorced, the events and what order they're in depends on who your friend are really.)
I have pictures of our honeymoon, the work Christmas party, and Henoc's wedding all on a disposable camera that's got like two more pictures on it. As soon as I finish it, I'll post pictures on my Yahoo pictures page. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| My husband's at home now, working on getting the desktop computers online. He was also going to make my computer "usable." I told him that it's perfectly usable under Windows, I just need him to get me online. He says that's not good enough, though, he wants me to use Linux. That's fine, once I'm online I can install stuff myself. The one thing I don't think I can figure out myself is the audio. It keeps telling me "no volume control element found" or something like that. The Linux community would benefit greatly from packing things out of the box- a system that auto-installs things like Gaim, OpenOffice, CD/DVD player, etc. I'd happily test for such a thing, I think I'm about an average user. Well... I suppose that's debatable.
I'm comfortable in Linux, Windows, Mac... Now, I think that Macs dislike me, they've all given me issues except for OS X. I've dabbled in game design, text games, photo-editing (I grew up and got trained in old-school film photography, still trying to translate that to digital imagery) and so on.
Speaking of which... I'm still looking forward to the day when I can partake of my hobbies more regularly. But not swimming. No, I've gotten to that point where I'm high enough up the chain of command that I can't swim at my own pool. I still like to swim, but I can't enjoy it at the place that I work, because someone needs me to do something. So instead I'll work on my other hobbies, like cross-stitching (it's been over a year since I picked up a needle), photography (my husband just bought me a new digital camera, it rocks), reading (the last book I read for fun was LotR, which took me like 2 years to get halfway through the second book...). We'll see, right? I have all my cross stitching stuff in a sealed box in the garage, that's where I'd like to start first.
I've heard from people in the past week or two (or found them on MySpace) that I haven't seen or heard form in a while, which is really nice. I miss my friends, hope to get back in touch with you in the new year. :)
Back with more in a few days probably. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Oh, I forgot to mention, in another feat of un-paralleled giving in to peer pressure, I've also now created a MySpace. I don't want the people at my new job to know it yet though. As I said on MySpace, I can do this now only because I don't work for the old place anymore. I want to hear no evil and see no evil about my employees! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | friends | | Current Music: | car commercial tune | | Subject: | Go me | | Time: | 08:40 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonmama/sillysuns/creative.gif) accomplished |
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| | I've finally been overcome by peer pressure and started a blog. I've considered it many times in the past, and have in fact been told that I should do so because of my entertaining life. I've always replied with "but I can't say things like that, I'd get fired!" But we'll see what we can get away with, yes? | | comments: Leave a comment |
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