renegadeRICEcracker

merry christmas

i'm down at my sister's for christmas. her in-laws came in over the weekend and left today, and my dad and ayee came in last night and leave thursday. my uncle's family came to join us for christmas dinner this evening. it has been a very emotional time -- holidays certainly are hard without my mom, but having little kids around for christmas livens things up a lot, and we have had some good times (for example, every single person around for the holidays played dance dance revolution with us, including the grandparents). and rather than write anything complicated about how i've been feeling, i'm just going to post some pictures, mostly of my nephews. merry christmas, everyone.

music city!

i am in nashville. my friend has a meeting with some high school students (she is heading up a really cool discrimination awareness project), so i am hanging out in her office before we go to a hockey game.

i got in last night and my friend made mini grilled cheese sandwich appetizers, an amazing salad, amberfish with tomatoes and beans and a red velvet cake. also she made a blended raspberry thing to mix with champagne, and we sampled salt-caramel ice cream she'd made the night before. delicious. then we played guitar hero, which i had never played before. maybe i have entered a new game-playing period of my life, but i immediately became obsessed with it and played it for 3 hours after they went to bed (also, i was jetlagged). today we went to best buy and ended up playing their rock band demo for a little bit. woo.

so, i'm doing okay. i still have an uncomfortable amount of anxiety in my stomach (i had to cry some anxiety out yesterday, and then felt a little better), but am doing what i can to ignore it and push through. i'm generally okay when there is something around to do (even if it's just watching tv or video games). i will be glad when the holidays are over. in the meantime i am enjoying seeing my friend, who moved away at the beginning of the year.

ugh. my dad just called me and told me how my uncle passed away. apparently after being at a facility that had very poor care, they moved him to another place, and on the first night they accidentally gave him 10x his morphine, and he went in his sleep. that is awful. my poor uncle... and aunt... and cousins... and now they are scrambling trying to put a service together. this is so hard, i feel bad that they have to go through this.

anyway. maybe a cheerier post next time.

Goodbye Gu-Zhang

My dad called me last night to tell me that one of my uncles passed away last night. He had been sick for a while, and learned a couple weeks ago that he had been designated for hospice care. We don't have any more details than that.

My uncle had three sons, all married with children -- one is in his late 30s, and the other two are twins in their early 40s. I am closer to one of the twins (relatively -- I still only see him once every few years), and I just e-mailed him. I feel like that might be a little distant, but I also remember being overwhelmed by everyone calling when my mom died and feeling like I had to talk to them when I didn't have the energy, and want to leave him space. I would like to send food (though we may just go with the Chinese tradition of sending money), but maybe I will wait a little bit.

I feel a little bad because I think I'm still a little too in my head to be able to be fully supportive to my cousins -- though I'm not that close to them so I don't think they're really expecting anything from me. I think some defensive part of me doesn't want to get too close because I'm still adjusting and grieving for my mom.

It's starting to feel like the ominous beginning of a new stage for our family. One uncle last year, my mom and another uncle this year... my mom was unusually young, but my dad's family is substantially older than her and I am not looking forward to more funerals.

For the first time in my life I wish I were young again. Not that I miss high school or anything, that was awful, but I wish that I were young enough again to not even remotely be thinking about the limited time I have left with my family. Of course, my mother's untimely illness accelerated these feelings, but the fact that my dad is getting up there and has had a lot of heart problems compounds my worries. I have lost that "it couldn't happen to me" bubble and am now constantly paranoid about anything happening to anyone in my family.

Lovely Saturday morning thoughts. I am going to do some laundry so that I can get packed. Cheers.

it's a revolution!

when we were in arizona for thanksgiving, at some point we took the boys to a peter piper pizza and ann and i played dance dance revolution. i love dance dance revolution. i had only played it a handful of times, but i always like it. i embrace the dorky fun of the dance pad. shortly thereafter i discovered that there is now a dance dance revolution for the wii! i went out and bought it on tuesday and have been completely obsessed with it ever since. it's a little frustrating, though, i can't figure out how it calculates the scoring so sometimes in a battle mode i'll get more "perfect" and "great" steps and a better combo score than the computer challenger but still have a lower score. it made me really angry last night at 3 in the morning. anyway.

i was glad that i bought it because i've been really down and anxious-feeling lately (all grief-related, i'm sure), and this is something that actually takes my mind off things a little bit. what can i say, i'm a sucker for cheesy dance music and cute japanese animation. also, i'm sure the jumping around for 3 hours is better than watching tv or surfing the web for 3 hours.

that's all on this front. i'm excited to be leaving in a few days to go on a little circuit visiting friends. a little break from things will be good.

okay. i'm off to make dinner before ayumi and brian get here for DDR madness. bye!