Stress, Street Fighter, and Being Too Girly

So, the house is a complete disaster.

Everything we own is pulled away from the windows, into piles, shoved into cabinets and drawers, and covered in plaster dust. Anyone who knows me can attest that I am a generally messy person, but even I have my limits. This is too much for me. The very thought of cleaning is daunting. Seriously, I think it’s giving me acid reflux.

Why the state of disarray you ask? Well, Bryan’s parents got offered money from the city of Long Beach to redo all the windows. They put in new windows to replace the old ones and the city gives them 2000 bucks. Its a pretty sweet deal really, except that they had the entire summer to do it, and waited until I started my job to actually get it done.

I’m not complaining–no, that’s a downright lie. I am complaining.

I was just starting to get my shit together, beginning the organization and unpacking process, getting into my job, when WHAM! new windows. New mess, new disorder, newer stress to go on top of all of the other new stresses. I can honestly say I am not handling this well.

Bryan seems to, well, be Bryan. He quietly puts up with the mess, never complains, and makes no move to clean up at all. Really, I think I am stressing him out more than anything else. I throw things, make loud noises, swear at tables and stacks of papers, kick pillows and clothes out of my path, and generally rampage around the house.

Bryan’s outlet is street fighter. He strips to his skivvies (to avoid over-heating), sits on the floor in the living room surrounded by chairs, curtains, backpacks and pillows, pulls out his arcade stick and beats up cartoon villains. Then it’s his turn to swear, bang things, make loud noises, and vent his frustration. Usually he starts shouting about how stupid the internet is, or the tv, or the game controller, or the other player, or how uncomfortable his boxers make him, or one of a hundred other things. Of course, his street fighter playing stresses me out more, and being a girl, all I really want is to sit down and talk about it. Nothing could be more horrifying than talking, especially about feelings.

How girly of me.

…And eat it too.

Today was a stay at home day. A do nothing day. Sit around in your pjs and veg out day. It was wonderful, boring, relaxing, boring, and restorative. You may notice I put “boring” into the last sentence more than once, and well, it was because I was pretty bored.

When I’m bored, I am unpleasant to be around. Usually it begins with me sitting quietly by myself on the couch or in my desk chair staring into space. I start to yawn. Sometimes I lean my head back, stare at the ceiling and sigh. Then I sigh louder. Sometimes I put my head in my hands or directly on my desk. I sigh some more. After a few minutes of this, I start to frown for no reason. My forehead creases, my brows come down and my lips purse. I look angry, like really angry. Worst thing you can do is ask me what’s wrong. That just gives the bored anger some direction. I will snap at you, complain about being hot or cold or uncomfortable, whine a whole bunch, carry on and at last proclaim, “I’m SO BORED!!” Basically, I turn into a four year old. My voice see-saws from high pitched to normal and back again, I grit my teeth, ball my fists and pick fights. I do not handle boredom well, and unfortunately, by this point, no activity sounds good. I am fully entrenched in my angry, bored state, and I will defend it with weapons blazing. A four year old with a twenty four year old’s tongue. I will lash out, turn down, and insult any suggestion you may make. It’s pretty terrible. Poor Bryan. He had me to deal with today.

Eventually, I get annoyed with myself and decide to take on some task or project that doesn’t involve getting out of my pjs or leaving the house.

Today’s project was to bake a cake. Lately, my forays into the world of baking have been interesting at best. Since most of my stuff is still packed up in boxes out in the garage, it has been difficult to cook anything but the simplest of recipes. Since I don’t have money for non-essential groceries, I have had to make do with whatever’s in the kitchen. The last time I baked, I made “Chocolate Chip” cookies with no chocolate chips, white sugar, or eggs. I had no idea where my measuring cups, mixer, spatula, or wooden spoons were. Luckily, Bryan’s dad brought us a ton of Godiva Orange Chocolate bars that I beat into submission (hit them with a pan really hard to break them into pieces–cathartic if not successful), and I had some raw sugar from my coffee stash. Instead of eggs, I mixed some ground up flax seeds with warm water to create a gooey paste. I eyeballed my measurements, added water when I thought the dough was too dry, and mixed everything with a fork. The cookies turned out all right. Well, edible.

This time I was pretty sure I had [most] the ingredients. I knew I had white sugar and eggs, flour, baking powder, butter and…no milk. I wasn’t about to go to the store, so this was going to be either the driest cake ever, or I was going to have to come up with something. Rummaging around under the stove, on my hands and knees, I found a can of lychees. I dusted it off, opened it up and thought, “Perfect.” I was going to make Lychee Cake.

But first, I wanted to find my blender. I’d been thinking about making smoothies ever since I found my flax seeds while making cookies, but had been missing some essential parts.

The next ten minutes were spent in the garage, rooting around in boxes, looking for my blender. The motor of the blender was in the cupboard in the kitchen, but my packing genius decided to put the blade, pitcher and base in separate boxes. Despite all the dust, creepy little spiders, and cursing, I managed to not only find my blender parts, but my hand mixer, measuring cups and spoons as well! I felt this to be a very good omen. The  lychee cake was sure to be a success.

Of course my recipe books were still packed, and most of the cake recipes online demanded ingredients, like milk, or shortening, or more eggs than I had, so I was left to create my own cake recipe.

The Cake:

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 cup butter (mine had salt in it so I didn’t add any salt)

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

1-2 tsp vanilla (I actually don’t remember how much I put in, because I initially forgot it, and had to add it at the very last second)

1 can of lychee, drained and chopped into tiny pieces

1/3 cup of lychee can juice

I mixed the butter, sugar, lychee juice and eggs first until they were nice and creamy. In a separate bowl, I mixed the flour and baking powder. All the recipes I looked at said “sift flour and baking powder” but I had no means to do this, so mix it was. I dumped my pieces of lychee into the flour. I read somewhere that if you put your fruit or whatever in the flour first, it will prevent the pieces from sinking to the bottom of the batter. Then I added the flour mixture to the eggy, buttery, sugar mixture and mixed that up with a fork. I recommend using a wooden spoon. I tasted the batter, felt it was missing something, turned, fork in hand, and knocked my vanilla onto the floor where the cap came of and vanilla went everywhere. After cleaning up my aromatic mess, I pushed around my spices in the cupboard and found my secondary bottle of vanilla, added some of it to my batter and mixed again before pouring it into some round 8″ cake pans I had greased and floured earlier. Stuck them in a 350 degree oven to bake for about a half hour, and then realized I didn’t have any frosting.

I frantically searched my cupboards for confectioners sugar, all the while knowing I had none. No milk, no powdered sugar…The cakes were bubbling away in the oven already, and I was at a loss. I thought about the lychee juice. That would work instead of milk, and make the cake taste that much more lychee-y. But what about the sugar? Then I remembered my step-mom’s advice. When we were baking in Indonesia, she said, “If you ever find you don’t have confectioners sugar, just put it in the blender.”

The Frosting:

1 cup butter

4 cups sugar, blended in the blender until the noise makes you crazy, or it turns to powder. Whichever happens first

1 tsp vanilla

4 tbsp lychee juice

Mix all ingredients until creamy.

Cakes done, I popped them out to cool. After about an hour, I decided to frost the cake, decorate it with some of the left over lychees and show Bryan. 

Bryan came into the kitchen, excited for cake, took one look and said, “Oh lychees…” in an amazingly disappointed tone. My smile faltered, “You don’t like lychee?” Bryan grimaced. “They’re, okay…” He hates lychee. How could I not have known? I sighed. Bryan looked at the cake, slightly disgusted. “Those look like penis heads.” I put my head in my hands. I was going to have to eat this whole cake by myself, and try not to think of genitalia while doing so.

Southern California Short Shorts

When I first moved down here, I promised myself I wouldn’t lose my Northern California clothing sensibilities. Up there, I wore jeans, boots, and t-shirts. I had maybe six tank tops in my wardrobe, and two pairs of shorts that were wrinkled permanently from living in my bottom drawer. Both pairs of shorts went down to the middle of my thigh or further. My white, white legs hadn’t seen the light of day for longer than I could remember, and I had no intention of exposing them to sunlight. Ever.

There were a few things wrong with this plan. Southern California is known for its sunshine, and with sunshine comes heat. A lot of heat. The cool, breezy, foggy Northern California days are just a dreamy memory now, and baking in my jeans has become my uncomfortable reality. It seems that I can no longer ogle at the girls in their short shorts, booty shorts, “daisy dukes”, cut offs..no more sarcastic comments, uncomfortable jokes about butt cheeks hanging out–well, I’ll probably still do those things, but there will be a little bit of hypocrisy present. Yesterday, out in my garden, my shorts up to here, my legs were reacquainted with Mr. Sun. Aside from the blinding reflective white skin nearly blinding me, it felt pretty good to soak up some vitamin D. Of course, today, my legs are either blushing in shame for so much exposure, or they are really sunburned. I’m thinking its the second one.

I keep thinking, maybe the more I wear shorts, the less ridiculous it will look. I’m not a leggy, tan, socal bombshell. I don’t weigh 120 lbs, wear four inch heels, dye my hair blonde or care about famous people, pop culture, surfing, or cars. I like hiking and nature and homegrown food, and paying the least amount of money I can for things. If I succumb to wearing shorts on a daily basis, what else will I start doing, or lose about my norcal self?

Time to iron out the wrinkles and flash my white legs in public!

Insomnia, an epidemic?

Every time I go to bed, I come up with some new trick to help me fall to sleep. It used to be that I would read a couple of chapters in whatever crappy science fiction or fantasy novel I was into, but inevitably I would just become so engrossed in the story that, before I knew it, it was four am and I had to be up for work or school in three hours. Reading, clearly, wasn’t going to be much of an option. After that, I tried watching some t.v. on my lap top. I would turn the volume way down, lower the brightness of the screen and lie down. Some shows would actually do the trick. I became a huge fan of “NCIS” for its snooze factor. but, alas, like reading, I became too involved with the characters, their dramas, their banter, whatever. You name the relaxation technique? I’ve tried it.

My mom’s suggestion was always simply, “Lie down and meditate. You don’t have to sleep, just rest your body.” Pretty sound advice, coming from the most anxious and high-strung person I know, and, as the old adage goes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. If I lie down to meditate, my body will submit to the calm, and for maybe half a second, my brain will slow down….and then wham! A thought about the day, the future, my past will pop into my head and the mental propellers start whirring all over again. I start to doubt my choices in my life now, regret my choices from six years ago, worry about the choices I will be making tomorrow. All in all, no biggie, right? Easy to let go, ignore, and put aside for another day? Not for this nervous Nelly. I spend my nights worrying about the most ridiculous and unchangeable things.

Last night, I kept thinking about my cat, Avi, who died last year. I worried that I didn’t love her enough. That her little kitty life wasn’t as fulfilling as it should have been. I never did give her any kitty treats and I was pretty stingy on the catnip, but she was a cat! Her whole life was made of naps, food, petting, and more naps. It is ridiculous to even worry about! You see, I get this. Still, I passed out in the wee hours of the morning and ended up dreaming about my poor, deceased cat. No sleep there.

Valerian root tea used to help. After a while, when it didn’t help enough, I added passion-flower and chamomile to make it help more. I’d drink two or three cups of it before bed. That had a relatively expected result. I’d fall to sleep in a blissful cloud of blankets, pillows, and herbs, only to wake up abruptly and urgently needing to pee four hours later. One would think this would have crossed my mind by the second cup of tea, but no. No, I would crawl out of bed, crusty-eyed, make my way to the bathroom, trip over my own junk littering my bedroom floor necessitating the need for light, pee, stumble back, and stare at my ceiling for two or three hours (who’s really counting?) until the first gray lightening of the sky peeked through my blinds. So, tea is out.

I’ve done the drug route, but I don’t really trust myself. I feel like taking Benadryl or Tylenol PM leads me down the dark path of addiction, and even melatonin makes me nervous. I’m going to try something new, and hopefully productive instead. Rather than read more, or watch more tv, or lie in the dark, staring blankly at the ceiling, I will write. Or draw. Or clean. Getting out of bed and doing something completely unrelated to sleeping seems like a counter productive or counter intuitive plan, but why not? I’ve tried everything else, right?

Wish me luck, and to all the other insomniacs out there…Well, I have no idea if it will work for me, but it might work for you?

I’m feeling tired already….

Living for the Weekends

It used to be that my weekends happened on whatever days I wasn’t working. So, one week, my weekend would span from Thursday to Saturday. The next week, I’d have Monday and Friday off. Now, though, things have changed. I have no job, so my week is just one long seven-day weekend, but Bryan has work Monday through Friday, so conventional weekends have become the days we go do stuff. Especially this weekend: Korean BBQ, birthday dinner, brunch, and beaches!

Everybody knows that the weekend really begins the second you walk in the door after a long day of work, strip off those slacks and collared, button-up shirts, and change into your house clothes on Friday night. This last Friday night, Bryan came home, joined me and a few other friends–most of us don’t have jobs–then drove us all out to Korea Town in L.A. The five of us crammed ourselves into my little Honda Fit and careened down the freeway toward our dinner destination: Hae Jang Chon, or in English, Honey Pig. The restaurant was incredibly hot, steamy, and crowded, Korean pop music and cooked meat smells filling the air. Amazing. After an hour wait, we got our table in the far back corner, picked our first round of “all you can eat” meat, and settled in.  Of course it was delicious. My favorites were the beef bulgogi (marinated beef) and galbi (marinated short ribs) but the thinly sliced brisket was pretty excellent. There were a ton of choices for sides, like spicy garlic bean sprouts, rice wraps, a strange sweet potato and apple salad, pancakes, and of course kim chi. A bottle of Soju and we were set to indulge our carnivore sides. After about five or six rounds, we unstuck our stuffed selves from our seats and rolled out into the cool night.

Saturday was more relaxing. We didn’t wake up until almost noon, which is its own special treat, particularly for Bryan. Most of the day was chores, yard work and tidying, but for the evening we made our way up into Santa Clarita for a family BBQ and birthday celebration. I was put to work carving four gigantic flank steaks. That pretty much was my upper body work out for the day. There were also some amazing Bockwurst sausages from Germany, and Bryan had the brilliant idea to combine my mom’s curry dipping sauce, meant to be used for raw veggies, and ketchup to create a creamier version of the currywurst that we had eaten in Berlin earlier this summer. The faux currywurst sauce was a huge success, and I mean to get that curry dip recipe…

Once home, we spent several hours getting our butts kicked in online games of Star Craft, where it became even more apparent that I have no idea what I am doing. By 1 am, we were exhausted, but diligently setting our alarms to wake up for Sunday brunch at Norms in Anaheim.

After all the food, little exercise, and even littler sleep, I decided to take it easy on the breakfast and basically just had eggs and toast. Thank goodness! I would have been weighed down too much if I’d had the eggs, bacon, sausage, hashbrown, pancake breakfast Bryan had! Especially since we decided to drive to Huntington Beach after brunch to walk along the water and enjoy the beautiful balmy SoCal weather, and some cajun fish tacos for a late lunch.

The day isn’t over, and there is still a computer to upgrade. Maybe that will help my star craft game? I doubt it, but its worth a shot and will cut down on the lagging.

Chicken and Waffles

I really do think that the most difficult advice to follow is…well any advice at all. So, when my doctor says, “you need to make sure you are getting enough exercise,” which we all know is doctor-speak for “you’re getting fat,” I should probably pay attention and exercise. Or when my parents say, “you really shouldn’t get a dog right now,” I should stop looking at all the adorable and tempting puppies for sale. The hardest, though, is following my own advice. For example, I tell myself, “Reyna, you should get rid of all the chips, chocolate, ice cream, and microwaveable food, so as not to tempt yourself. Also, stop eating out so much. Just because you have a craving doesn’t mean you should give in to it!” Wow. Such good advice. That I clearly do not follow.

I would really love to do all the things I keep telling myself to do. I mean, my ideal schedule is:

6:oo am Wake Up

7:00 am Go For A Run (it takes me about an hour to wake up–though usually “wake up” looks a lot like “fall back to sleep for an hour”)

8:00 am Take A Shower (because in an ideal world I will be able to run for an hour, instead of two minutes and then spending 58 to recover)

9:00 am Go To Work (ideally I will have a JOB!) modified: 9:00 am Apply For Jobs…

12:00 pm Eat A Salad followed by some writing, then some art work, then some yoga, then more writing or drawing or yoga (if I don’t have a job…) until it is time to make dinner and by then Bryan is home and we can eat, talk about our day, watch some tv and then pass out, satisfied that we accomplished, well, anything during the day. Perhaps it is time to say goodbye to Roscoe’s delicious fried chicken and melt-in-your-mouth buttery waffles, however delicious they were.

I’m going to take a moment to talk about Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. It ties into the above comments so long as “having self control” is similar to “following one’s own advice.” As a fan of the salty/sweet combo, fried chicken and syrupy, butter slathered waffles are a dream come true, until I finish eating. Then they become leaden weights in my stomach, creating an almost instant urge to defecate. Seriously, I’m pretty sure that the weight and girth of my full stomach pushes down on my intestines and… well you get the idea. Needless to say, finding a bathroom becomes imperative. So, why couldn’t I have just followed my own advice? Stayed away from fried, fattening foods? Because after finding my waffle maker in a pile of boxes this morning, I was unable to think of anything else all day.

 

My Blog

In an attempt to stave off boredom, I have decided to create a blog, sharing personal things–probably a lot I shouldn’t share–with the internet and anyone who might happen to be reading…though I’m guessing this will be more like a journal than anything else–a journal that I leave sitting open in the middle of the living room for anyone who passes through to peruse at will. So private, personal stuff, meet the internet. If you want to just skip to the bottom, that’s where I tell you why I’m even writing a blog. The rest of this is back story.

Not too long ago, I was living with my really good friend Bryan W. up in the Bay Area in a dingy little apartment with his cat, Eros, who I renamed “Meow-meow.” We had our friends over most evenings, played board games, video games, watched movies, cooked junk food, ate junk food, talked about nerdy, geeky things, read, made war hammer models, slept, cleaned, chatted–it was a good life. I was fit, and losing weight. I rock climbed with my buddy Skuyler–I wont say “best friend” because that sounds ridiculous, if probably true–and worked a steady job at Barclay’s, a pub on College Ave. in Oakland. I had my peeps, my job, and my hobbies to entertain me. It was a truly good life. With one downside. A whopping big downside.

My boyfriend, Bryan V. (yes, my boyfriend and my roommate nearly had the same name, but I assure you were two different people) was living down in Long Beach getting his Masters in some kind of engineering that I still don’t really understand. (IEOR? What is that?) We had been living long distance for two years, with the ups and downs that come along with that, and it sucked. I hated it. I hated not being close to him, not talking to him, not seeing him while still very much in love with him. The love part made it so much harder. If we weren’t in love, I’m pretty sure things would have been fine. But, corny as it sounds, we were in love, and he was way too stubborn to move back up to the Bay Area (we met while he was in college at Berkeley) so the only way to reunify would be for me to move down to where he was. So I did.

Which brings me to now. Bored, jobless, friendless, and slowly getting fatter, on the couch in his house–now also my house–in Long Beach, CA where the sun is always shining and we thank God for the afternoon breeze off the ocean.

Bryan–from now on, if I say “Bryan” I mean my boyfriend–and I moved all my crap down here, took off for Germany for two weeks, which was an amazing trip by the way, had a chance to spend some solid time together before he had to go back to work. He finished his degree, and now has a really great job doing whatever it is that his degree was for. I, on the other hand, started my battle with the failing economy and swamped job market.

That’s what this blog is going to be about. My struggles with not having a job, looking for jobs, hopefully getting a job, going back to school–that’s a biggie–and combating the uphill battle that is weight loss. I’ll probably include a whole bunch of other stuff too–like I said before, personal stuff–so be warned. It might be “TMIOMG” in the colloquial

Welcome.