The Startup Wife

Life as bullet points/a photo dump

2012-01-26T02:09:00.000-08:00

- Happy (late) Chinese New Year! My brother was born in the Year of the Dragon.

- Also, I am now decidedly in my late twenties. Ahh.

-I really liked the first episode I saw of New Girl, gave up after the second, watched one more because everyone told me to and thought it was eh, and then watched two more with J last night and almost died laughing both times. That show got really, really funny.

- Every now and then I get really, really sad thinking about Rich Cronin of LFO being dead. Something about that band is like the epitome of youth/being young/high school and junior high for me, or actually maybe it's just the kind of thing where at the time they seemed old but now when I listen to those songs (because I swear my iTunes shuffle plays them more than anything else in my playlist) they seem incredibly young and sort of juvenile and just--ugh. Sad. You should be allowed to grow a lot past that.

- J has been really funny lately. He brought me home leftover Indian food from school the other day, and this was deemed the most appropriate method of transport/storage (and this is what went into our fridge, too):

Another day, I was out all day with my friend and we had a show-watching marathon planned, and when we came back J had hooked up her computer to the TV and arranged two chairs in front of it for us because he figured we'd be tired and would want to come home right home and start watching right away. It was really amusing/cute.

- I'm trying to do the take-a-picture-every-day thing in 2012. I think I've missed like 10% of January so far already. But before I get there, here are some from 2011 (in reverse chronological order since apparently that's how Blogger uploads things these days?):

Did you know if you take the white/root parts of scallions after you cut them off and stick them in water, the whole thing regrows? Amazing. Favorite discovery of 2011.

Sunset on New Year's Eve.

Went to a free basketball game recently (USC vs. Stanford, or, Battle of the Overfunded). Men's college basketball is one of my favorite sports to watch, so it was fun. It was also really weird thinking how much younger all those people were than I am. It's weird when I really think about how long ago college was.

Cousin game night! It got intense, as always, but this time (unlike our last one) no one shed blood. Some favorite quotes, during Catchphrase: "INDIA!" (my cousin's answer to "It's a continent ... below Europe ...") and "POO!" (same cousin's answer to "It's a girl's name ... I ________ on the floor"). My cousin brought these pretzel-looking things in a pie tin, and we all sort of left them alone because we weren't sure what they were, and at some point someone asked her and she explained they were pretzels with a Rolo melted in the middle. My cousin's girlfriend and I stared at each other and then wordlessly, immediately shoved back our chairs and made a beeline for them. So good.

Went to Global Winter Wonderland in Santa Clara because a friend really wanted to. It was really funny. (And kind of racist.) Also, cold. But fun going with friends.

Bff Secret Santa dinner!

My own Forever Alone moment: basically the only person who calls me is my mom. "Brett" is my brother, and that 800 number is I think a telemarketer.

On our way back from SD this Christmas we got to see our friends' baby--it's been a year! We saw him as a newborn, and he was cute then but is so ridiculously adorable now

My in-laws' avocado/citrus grove the morning after Christmas when we left. I love, love, love their citrus trees.

FaceTiming with the fam on Christmas.

Walking around the tide pools in SD w/ J's brother, sister-in-law and mom.

That day was the lowest tide I've ever seen in San Diego!

Go-carting with J's family in SD!

I suck at buying gifts for J, but this year Groupon had some deal on RC helicopters, and I saw it and thought, THAT. Then he shredded that little Christmas tree decoration with his new helicopter's wings, which is when I remembered most years I don't get him anything at all.

W/ my bff

HAHA. I forgot about this one. My work holiday party this year was at the California Academy of Sciences, and we saw this guy while walking around the exhibits. I about died laughing. God's funny.

One time, years and years ago, I mentioned to my grandma that I liked Peeps. Since then, she's bought me Peeps for every single holiday and also signed me up for a membership to the Peeps Fan Club (which literally came with a card). I don't have the heart to tell her I don't like them, but it's really cute how she makes a big show of buying them and telling me they're disgusting and how she tells everyone they're so gross but her granddaughter for whatever reason loves them.

That same grandma's had this decoration all my life, and it always hangs in the exact same place at Christmas and I always think of it.

My next-door neighbor strikes me as somewhat lonely. One day, he knocked on our door with a box of light bulbs from like the 70s to say he couldn't use them but did we want them? I've been trying to think of an excuse to stop by since then, and finally decided to bring him fresh bread. I lost my nerve with I think three loaves, but this one I brought half over. It was incredibly awkward and I think he wanted me to gtfo, haha, but later he thanked me and made it a point to say he thought it was really good, which was sweet of him. Bffs.

Hiking! I barely go anymore. Need to fix that.

This particular puzzle has been out at my other grandma's house forever, because the sky/cloud part is epically hard. Anyway, this amused me. Someone in my family is really OCD.

Fall was really pretty here. It came late this year.

Cousin's baby at Thanksgiving. She's a big sister now! (I just met her little sister for the first time on Monday. SO. FREAKING. CUTE. Made me want one.)

Thanksgiving!

I really love watching the sun set from my living room window every day. Every day it's different. I hope I can live here forever. Also--this is the first January in three years we haven't moved! I'm THRILLED. Hope to basically never move again.

I hadn't been cooking in a really long time and we were just sort of scavenging around at dinnertime because I was always writing, and I started feeling bad, so this was one of the forays back into the kitchen. Tomato soup (really good), roasted sweet potato fries, roasted cauliflower, and raw kale salad w/ avocado.

J's family got him this tripod for our camera a while ago, but he figured out it also works perfectly to hold his iPhone in place so he can watch Dr. Who while washing dishes. MacGyvered.

(This was when I got a new iPhone and realized I could use Instagram. And wanted to take a picture of everything and Instagram the crap out of it.)

I used to be really into making everything from scratch, but lately I feel annoyed at anything that takes time. So I bought the frozen pie crusts from Trader Joe's because I heard they were really good. I was unimpressed. But next time I need a fast meal I should remember about quiche and frittata.

SOPA

2012-01-18T17:32:00.000-08:00

Did you know that the jokes on popsicle sticks are deliberately terrible so that you never find yourself in a situation where someone people chuckle and find the joke clever and some people don't get it at all and find the chucklers pretentious? The jokes are awful so they unite everyone in the room together against the joke.

J told me that a couple weeks ago. Timely, because if I didn't know better, I think I might actually think that's what's happening with SOPA/PIPA and that the bills were the result of a good-hearted soul truly concerned about the level of divisiveness in American politics making a last-ditch attempt to bring everyone together. Because I definitely know people who are all over the spectrum politically, and this is literally the first time ever when every single person I know (Rupert Murdoch's Twitter account notwithstanding ...) to vocally pick a side has taken the exact same stance.

Myself included. Down with SOPA! Long live the Internets! Write to Congress now!

.

2012-01-09T11:45:00.000-08:00

I have a childhood best friend who I've always said has probably shaped the way I relate to others probably more than anyone else I know. The way I feel when I talk to my brother sometimes--that no one else in the world has quite the same access to one another in terms of present self and past history--I feel with her too.

My best friend had a somewhat unique situation in that she grew up across the street from her grandparents; half the time when I went to see her she was at her grandparents' house. Her grandmother always loved kitsch--their house teems with dolls, figurines, birdhouses, Native American artifacts, crafts, cross-stitching, teddy bears, chairs for the teddy bears, and the like My best friend officially lived there a few summers (though my memory blurs, because there was so much back-and-forth I was never fully sure). Her grandmother is as central to my memories of her life growing up as her mother.

This weekend her grandmother died. I can't quite describe the way that grieves me; I know saying "my friend's grandma died" doesn't usually mean it feels like part of your heart got ripped out. I'm aching for their family so badly I can barely stand it, and (more selfishly) I can't believe I'll never see her grandma again. The last time I saw her was last Christmas, when my friend was home for the holidays. She wasn't at her mom's so I went over to her grandma's instead, where they were wrangling the lights for the Christmas tree. The house, of course, was brimming with all the Christmas decorations you'd expect.

Yesterday all day J kept catching me staring off into space. At some point I was sitting at the table supposedly working, and he was working at his desk, and I was sitting and staring again and he said, "Want to come sit on the couch with me?" That was when there was a knock on the door.

We weren't expecting anyone. J went to get it. It was Sylvia, our 77-year-old neighbor who lives upstairs.

"Hello," she said. "Would you like to come see my Christmas decorations before I take them down?"

The symmetry of the moment didn't offer much more than that--the symmetry--but in that, and for its own sake, it was nice. We went and looked at all the decorations she'd put up and she told us which ones had been made by her niece, or her sister, or her friends. She showed off her little Christmas village (where slightly mismatched snowmen dwarfed the library and general store) and the knitted nativity scene made by her disabled niece. She told us about growing up in England and how her father left her and her eight siblings, then didn't pay child support because most of them weren't sons. Sylvia, too, loves the kind of figurines my friend's grandmother always loved. She promised to invite us back sometime for afternoon tea, and hugged us when we went. I was glad she came.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T23:57:00.000-08:00

We're spending Christmas this year in San Diego with J's family. So far it's been a lovely visit comprised of one of the lowest tides I've ever seen, Go-Kart racing, fresh (and GOOD) citrus from the family's backyard grove, some of the best Indian food I've had in a long time, a Christmas Eve steakhouse dinner at this really rustic place in Pauma Valley (itself really rustic) and lots of Dominion, the card game, which is an excellent game. Also, a runaway dog. My in-laws' dog is seriously the weirdest creature I know.

Also, tonight we found a house that coordinated a Christmas lights show to music. There was one we used to go to at home, and it was incredible, but the amazing man who put it on died this year. I thought of him as we watched with J's family on our way home from dinner. It was cozy and amusing and just really nice.

This is an amazing problem to have, I know, but there were too many families we wanted to celebrate with, and I miss mine a lot and am crushed to be missing Christmas with them. Getting this tonight helped, though:

(My brother, and one of our cousins' kids.)

So did Facetiming with the family during the White Elephant gift exchange, and getting a bazillion pictures from my mom, who recently got an iPhone. Her first cell phone ever. Thank you, Steve Jobs & Co., for allowing me to virtually meet my cousin's three-day-old infant on Christmas Eve. Thank you for letting me say hi to all my cousins and cousins' babies and aunts and uncles and parents and grandma. Thank you for enabling my little brother to decide to open my present for me while I watched. Thank you for giving him an easy way to point to the stack of White Elephant gifts and ask me which one he should choose. Thank you for letting me feel like five hundred miles isn't actually all that far.

And thank you, God, for many amazing families--both here in San Diego and at home in the Bay Area. And thank you for coming to the world to be with us so that our deepest longings for God could be filled.

Hope you have a wonderful day, blog friends! <3 And here's to a really great 2012.

A corollary: Things where I had an opposite (and usually negative) reaction from the rest of the public

2011-11-13T23:28:00.000-08:00

image

Things I feel like you're supposed to like, or at least feel a very specific way about, and I just don't get it:

1. Glee. Hate it. Hate it to pieces. Hate it so much. For some godforsaken reason watched the whole first season (I was about to get on an international flight and was flipping out and couldn't focus and all I could do was click watch next episode over and over as the minutes wore down), but I hated it the whole time and hate it still. Oh, the smugness of it. Ughhhhh.

2. Anthropologie's Mompos dress. See it everywhere. (I read a lot of style blogs.) I've seen really gorgeous people in it looking gorgeous, as always, but still really do not like that thing. Something about the pattern really ... doesn't agree with me.

3. Snakes On a Plane. I know you weren't supposed to find it scary. But that movie ... I mean, frankly, I think you could film Utterly Well-Intentioned Travelers and Their Security-Approved Luggage On a Plane and it would still be basically a horror film, so. Also, the opening scene where they killed the guy was so brutal I can't get it out of my head all these years later.

4. Grocery store cookies. Why do people like those things? Soft, chalky, crumbly--blech. And grocery store cupcakes with their disc-like sprinkles on top ... gag me with a spoon.

5. Macarons. They're ... not actually that good, right? Am I missing something? Are there people who would genuinely rather spend those calories on a macaron than, like, a croissant or something? I've had them from Bouchon and I've had them from Miette and I've had them from Laduree, so it's not like I've never had a good one or something, but the most I can ever muster is that they're fine. Acceptable. Inoffensive. Or--good for what they are, but still, less good than, like, a Take 5 bar.

... But seriously. They're not better than, like, cheese or chocolate or doughnuts, right? Or even like, graham crackers?

6. Angry Birds. It's frustrating, and not particularly fun.

7. Seasonal decorating. I love holidays, and if/when I have children I plan to go alllllllllllll out for holidays the way my mom (who, it turns out, also hates seasonal decorations but sucked it up and forced us to decorate a tree each year and like it, dang it) did. But aside from the random items my aunts have given me, I have no decorations and would never have them. I am never remotely, remotely, remotely tempted to buy one in a store. No matter what.

That said, though, I like when I'm in other people's houses and they decorate, so.

... Also, throwing out a Christmas tree after Christmas is just the most depressing feeling in the world. I always hated that SO much.

8. Other shows I just can't get behind: Cougar Town, Two Broke Girls (couldn't even finish the pilot), Community, and anything else really ... stylized.

How about you?

Unguilty pleasures

2011-11-09T12:14:00.000-08:00

image

This might say something about my tastes, but I think three times in the past two weeks I've mentioned my affinity for something or other only to have someone say, with a knowing smile, "Oh, it's one of your guilty pleasures?"

Which--heck no. In every case I was talking about one of my straight-up pleasures. There are, apparently, quite a few things that fall into that category, so. These are things that I always feel like I'm supposed to be embarrassed that I really like, but actually am not embarrassed about at all:

1. Harold and Kumar. So freaking funny. Watched A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas this past weekend in 3-D, which was great. The thing about those movies (meaning the first and third; I skipped the second) is that they're actually really smart. Hilarious, and smart. Totally go see the movie. When it's out on DVD I'll watch it again.

(Also, thank you Alvin for making me watch the first one in your apartment in Davis six years ago at like three in the morning.)

2. Chick lit. This one tends to surprise people, which probably means I come across as a book snob or something, but, well, nope. I've read The Nanny Diaries maybe fifteen times. I'm picky about chick lit, but when it's done well (Jennifer Weiner is nothing short of fantastic), then sign me up. I'm never not in the mood for something like that.

3. Also, chick flicks. Remember A Walk To Remember? I rediscovered the soundtrack (which I really like) recently and remembered how much I was into that movie. (Also, I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes, and it had a 27% critic rating and an 81% audience rating, which ... I will not analyze too deeply.) I could also watch Sweet Home Alabama probably every month and not get tired of it.

4. Gossip Girl. People always act all horrified, but those are the people who've never seen it. That show is so good.

5. Teen Mom/16 and Pregnant. I like almost anything that's a really pure example of itself, if that makes sense--it's part of why I like high schoolers so much--and this show's great for that.

6. Junk food. That could be a whole post in itself, but pretty much any candy bar (I draw the line at anything that comes from grocery store bakeries/pretty much any non-candy packaged sweet), or chips/Cheetos/Funyuns. I want that now. Slash I want that always.

7. Actually, I feel like it used to be something of a guilty pleasure to admit you liked Britney Spears, but now I feel like it's something you just do. You have do it; it's like a moral obligation. But, I liked her even when it was embarrassing (and have the CDs to prove it), so. (P.S., in case you were wondering, those songs totally hold up.)

How about you?

A moment of gratitude

2011-11-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

This morning I was at a meeting for a non-profit that works to provide support for foster children and foster families, which is something I've been drawn to all my life. In the office, a freezing cold room in the upstairs of a nearby church, the director asked me who I'd known growing up who was in foster care or had been a foster parent.

I'd just finished telling her that even as a child I knew it was something I always wanted to grow up and be involved in. And the question was not did I know someone, but who did I know? When I looked a little startled she explained that it's true of everyone who comes to them to get involved--the issues were on their radar because they'd known someone. I racked my brains, trying to come up with a good story from my childhood. Was there a friend in elementary school, or a family from my church?

But no. There are people I love dearly now, but back then there was no one. No good story. And it wasn't until later that I realized: it was books I read as a child. It was characters whose stories haunted and stayed with me and opened my eyes to the existence of a world I knew nothing about.

I spend a huge amount of mental and emotional energy feeling insecure about what I do. Most days I can distract myself by worrying that I'm not good enough, that I'll never be good enough, that the work I produce doesn't meet certain nebulous standards. But underneath that there's a deeper, and greater, fear: that even if I do manage to produce something I deem acceptable, that ultimately it's meaningless in the end after all. That spending my days delving deeper and deeper into the minds of people who don't exist does nothing of real value for other people. That creating non-existent situations and characters is so utterly, painfully devoid of any real worth. Sometimes, or maybe always--when I think how much my schedule is my own, and how for nearly all of my working hours I'm just at home, alone, with my computer and that's it--I worry that writing is the most selfish thing I can do.

I don't let myself think about it that often. It's too terrifying a thought; it would mean that I've devoted myself, essentially, to one of the highest forms of idolatry. (And maybe in ways I have; maybe it's so easy for all art to careen that way.) But it was nice, today, to be reminded that fiction--while not an end--is a means of accessing things of value.

That's what I need to remember, I think--that fiction is a tool, a vehicle, a means. The best fiction remembers this. It holds you for a season and demands something of you, even if it's just your company, and then it relinquishes you outside its pages and back, changed, again into the world.

Themes

2011-10-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

I come back to the same themes, over and over, in my writing. The plots change, the settings and the characters and the circumstances and even the voices change, but those key issues hold steady, and this is true particularly when I write about characters and their families.

Mediocre undergrad writing workshops are fond of pinning this kind of thing on a writer's personal issues, which is both inaccurate and obscenely irritating. Writing about an absent father, for instance, doesn't mean you have one yourself. Writing about a character wrestling with the emotional fallout of an abortion doesn't mean you were the one feeling like you couldn't breathe when you left the clinic that day, and even if it did this would be completely irrelevant anyway. Fiction is craft, not confession or therapy, and should always be taken as such.

But I think there's a reason for everything you write, a certain emotional logic that informs the words you put to the page, and I've always wondered why I'm drawn to the things I am. One of the biggest underlying themes in what I write is abandonment, particularly parental abandonment, and it's odd because that's not something I've ever really feared. I used to think that this was based on some primal fear of death--that kind of abandonment--but when I write about death it's very different, so I don't think that's the case.

The characters I write are obsessed with achievement--with being good enough to earn a parent's love. The idea of achievement is something that resonates with me personally because I'm haunted by the notion of self-worth, and yet my parents have never made me feel as though there was any way I could fail badly enough to negate their love.

And yet my characters wrestle with this over and over, all of them, or at least the ones I inhabit most intimately. They are lost and unsettled when they find themselves in relationships they aren't confident they've full earned. They are at peace only when they know they're needed. They are comfortable with justice, and sometimes even mercy, but never grace.

And this, too--their deepest, most private and most damaging wounds come from the ways in which there are fractures in relationships with their fathers. I don't know why this is. Because I'm lucky, more than lucky; this has never been true for me.

So I don't know why all these things churn and current underneath every single day I approach my work. But then, sometimes, I think this: that maybe every character I ever write is some attempt at reflecting or working out or maybe circling towards all the things I don't understand about God. Maybe these characters are a fumbling grasp at relating to and seeking him in the only ways I really know.

Nerd love

2011-10-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

Image source. Since this really isn't one I took myself.

This was--oddly--the most heartwarming and moving thing I heard of all week.

So, J likes Reddit, and I don't really read it so I'll probably butcher this explanation, but there's this one forum on Reddit called Forever Alone where people write about how Forever Alone they are. (It hails back to some internet meme, if I'm not mistaken.) And it's mostly self-deprecating but sometimes really sad, actually: people will say things like, I'm geeky. I've never kissed anyone. I ordered two extra-large pizzas because there was a sale and when the deliveryman came I called "Pizza's here, guys!" to my empty house so he wouldn't think they were just for me.

Sad.

Anyway, this one guy's Forever Alone was, "Every night I broadcast myself playing Starcraft but no one ever watches."

Crucial to the story: this isn't actually as 'well, duh' as it sounds, because (if you're unaware, as I--believe me--would be if not for J) watching people play Starcraft is actually a real thing. There are professional Starcraft players. There are semi-professional Starcraft players. There are players who apparently are just flat-out amazing to watch. You can watch gameplay on forums, you can watch on YouTube, you can go to conventions.

Last night (because this was a story I had to share as soon as I heard it), my friend--who doesn't play Starcraft himself but watches it--contended that this counts as a spectator sport in the same way you'd watch someone play, say, baseball. I said no. Anything where you can sit down the whole time doesn't count as a sport. My friend shot back with 'What about NASCAR' (also not a sport IMO) and 'It's watching guys compete with mental and physical skill,' so, whatever, I think there's something to be said for at least covering some physical distance, but whatever, I'll concede the point. Moral of the story is: people watch Starcraft the way you'd watch sports.

Anyway, after reading that, the forum readers thought, Well, that's just sad, the world could be a better place than THAT, so they (and J) all went and waited for like an hour in his broadcasting forum to surprise him when he showed up to play another night with no one watching. He was extremely surprised to show up and see over seventy people waiting in his forum. (He was also, it turned out, based on his Starcraft ranking--extremely good.) And then they sat around and typed to one another on the chatroom and watched him play so he could have his night where he wasn't Forever Alone.

CUTE, RIGHT? Come on, tell me that isn't the sweetest thing you've heard in a long time.

Humanity is adorable. Humanity is a squishy, huggable ball of nice.

/ story.



2011-10-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Cupertino: my heart

2011-10-05T23:12:00.000-07:00

I'm from Cupertino, and today my hometown, the place where my father grew up and where I grew up and love like I'll never love another place, was all over the news.

At four in the morning, a shooter opened fire at a cement factory and killed three coworkers and injured six others, attempted a carjacking and fled; my friends' neighborhoods went on lockdown, and SWAT teams arrived and homeland security and the FBI, and the media identified the shooter. On Facebook, on Twitter, in text messages and in conversations--all of us from Cupertino watched together, waiting and praying.

The victims' families waited outside the cement factory--it's up in the hills, and sometimes when you were driving up to friends' houses up near there you'd sneak closer, in the dark, and it was spooky and eerily lit and growing up there were always rumors that the whole place was a cover for some covert operations--and received the news of their dead. They were hardworking men, family men, men who worked in the early dawn hours to provide for their loved ones.

Meanwhile, the manhunt lasted throughout the day, and is going still. The shooter's friends and neighbors, his pastors and colleagues, pleaded with him to turn himself in peacefully, and speculated what could cause a good man to snap the way he did. He had six firearms on him. He shot the men he worked with one by one, until each fell. He's the single father of a seventeen-year-old daughter and has done community work in support of female victims of domestic violence. He wrote a book.

And then, in the afternoon, Apple announced that Steve Jobs had died, and the all-day, front-page coverage shifted. Once again Cupertino reeled, and again everyone took to social networks to offer condolences and pay respects and reflect on what Steve Jobs and his legacy meant to us.

I have Mac products, and--because I am a writer for whom order and structure and routine help define process--they're important to me, and they feel deeply integrated into what I do. My best friend produces a beautiful, beautiful photojournalism magazine that literally would not exist without Apple. One of my most amusing memories from high school was entering the journalism room and discovering that someone had unscrewed the clear front of one of the Apple G4's processors and put a half-eaten burrito (I kid you not) inside. Those feel like not such small things for me.

But this is the most enduring way that Steve Jobs was a part of my life.

I went to high school in Cupertino, down the street from Apple and in the heart of the Silicon Valley. My school's been the subject of various controversies, and there were things about it--the constant pressure, the endless and often crushing drive to succeed--that haunt all of us still. But sometimes I'd watch sitcoms or I'd see movies or I'd read books about, say, a guy who really wanted to play trumpet, or be good at computers, or dance, and he couldn't do what he really cared about because his peers would make his life a living hell. And because of Steve Jobs, it wasn't until I got to college and heard those real-life stories from other people that I realized that was real.

Because going to school in Cupertino, if you were good at something, anything, no matter how odd or specific or nerdy--people respected that. They celebrated it. They recognized that there was a place for it. I went to a school that achieved (for a senior project, for instance, one girl in my class built a freaking working hovercraft) and a school that believed in doing well at whatever you did. And I went to a school that lives on as a community still, and part of that, I think, is because all of us are excited to see what great things everyone will do.

And that--all of that--was at least somewhat in part because the closest thing we had to Silicon Valley royalty was a guy who never wore anything but Dad jeans and a black mock turtleneck and sneakers and who was really into technology. Steve Jobs made Cupertino a place where doing well--where marching to the beat of your own drum and pursuing success in the most honest way you knew--was cool.

I read this comment forever ago on an article in the New York Times, and it was just a small thing, just a comment someone wrote on an article I probably just skimmed, but it's stayed closely with me ever since:

several years ago I came back from a poetry reading by Chase Twichell, and told my software developer husband her three rules for making art: tell the truth. don't decorate. remember death.

Without missing a beat he said "that's like Steve Jobs."

Artist."

I'm not a writer because of Steve Jobs, obviously, or anything like that. But I think it's fair to say I'm a more resilient writer because of those people who have shown that devoting yourself to creating what you love, no matter what people say, is a valid and beautiful thing. And Steve Jobs made everyone believe in that in a way almost no other artist has ever done.

When we found out he died, people in the Mission gathered in at the park to hold a candlelight vigil for him--except instead of candles they held up their lit iPhones. I wish I'd been there. People stopped by Apple stores, and set flowers outside his home, and lit up social networks to pay respects. Tonight J and I watched the keynote address where he introduced the iPad, and tomorrow morning I'm going to walk by his house--I go running there occasionally--and spend a moment saying silent thanks.

Cupertino lost many men today. I feel heavy-hearted thinking about all of them--the man whose creation captures and enables and infiltrates the most mundane and most intimate parts of our lives. The men who lived quietly and died senselessly, cruelly, horrifically, on a cold rainy morning in the hills. And the man who, right now, is still fleeing from police and has lost everything he ever had and is, I imagine, perhaps beginning to come to terms with the magnitude of what he did and what that means and how there might be no way back now.

It's staggering the weight of all the choices and opportunities and moments these men had that took them all on such different paths. May they all rest in peace.

(Overlooking Cupertino from the hills on a hike with J, Mom and Brett this past winter. The bigger building you see near the middle is my high school.)

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

- Steve Jobs

After celebrating my dad's birthday with my family this week I realized it's a wonder I still have any sentimental bones left in my body at all

2011-09-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

My parents on a trip we all took to Europe four years ago to celebrate my graduation, Brett's graduation, and my parents' 25th anniversary*.

"When they have them, I just don't go." - My dad, on what happens when people celebrate birthdays at work.

"I just think it's so stupid. Everybody has one!" - My dad, explaining his take on birthdays at work/probably birthdays period.

"Then I got REALLY MAD at her." - My dad, summarizing his reaction after my mom called his office and said, "I called to talk to the birthday boy!!!"

"Good thing he doesn't care about wrapping." - My brother, when both of us showed up with presents in plastic bags.

"Here." - My mom, dumping a bunch of shirts onto my dad's lap--his birthday gift.

"Not these two." - My dad, when my mom asked if he liked the shirts.

"Yeah, I didn't like those either." - My mom.

"Feet." - My brother naming things that remain important despite everybody having them.

"These work, right?" - My dad, who'd been instructed to pick out a birthday dessert at Trader Joe's after diner, after bypassing the cake-like options and spotting these:

image

And also:

"Happy 25th anniversary!!!!" - Me, this summer, to my parents. Not only was it their 29th*, it was also the wrong day.

Austin, part 2

2011-09-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

For the second half of our time in Austin, we stayed at a little cottage we found through airbnb.

Photos from/rental information here

It was the first time I've ever used Airbnb, and (once we found the right place) it was great. If you're ever looking for a place to stay in Austin, I'd highly recommend this little cottage. It was fun living in a neighborhood and getting a sense of the pulse and daily rhythms of life here; the place was spacious, and bright, and beautifully furnished. In the mornings I got up before everyone else and sat out on the back patio and ate my local-Texas-dairy yogurt and it was quiet, and very hot, and I wrote and read the book of John and listened to the country music I've been kind of liking lately; at night, even though it was still hot, we sat out under the Christmas lights (they love them here) and played cards.

Also, we looked up how much a place like this would cost to buy, covered the number before we saw it, lowballed it like crazy and guessed around three hundred thousand dollars, and about died laughing when it turned out to be one-fifty. WE'RE MOVING TO TEXAS, EVERYONE.

Since we'd been there on a game day and all, and since football apparently holds a crucial role in Texas culture, it seemed like a duty to go see the University of Texas and the stadium. You can see the stadium from the freeway, and you can see it from space, because it's mindblowingly gigantic. For having so many students, though, the campus seemed surprisingly small, so we kind of just drove around in circles a little bit and then went into the LBJ Library and Museum for the express purpose of using a bathroom and then ended up getting pulled in by the sweet elderly woman behind the counter. I'm glad we did; it was one of the better museums I've ever toured.

We wandered a little bit around Old West Austin, where we had some truly terrible coffee but saw a perfectly period-y drugstore where some people happened to filming the opening sequences of a horror film.

We got dinner at the flagship Whole Foods, then took it up to Mount Bonnell to watch the sunset.

It was Date Night Central up there, yo. Actually, there were also a surprising number of joggers, which weirded me out every time I saw one. Sure, it wasn't as hot as it was during the heat of the day, but even at sunset it was well over ninety.

Other things that weirded me out about Austin, while we're on the subject: the number of ATMs everywhere (when was the last time you even noticed ATMs? That's how many there were), how crowded it always was in the strip club parking lots, how everything I ever read about we ended up passing on our way to something else at one point or another (Austin's really small), how it became a hotspot for outdoor music festivals (it's lovely, but so hot) and how, ultimately, it wasn't actually that 'weird' at all despite the slogan.

(Small, right?)

Really though, despite all the KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD stickers everywhere, Austin didn't strike us as remotely, actually weird in any real way aside from all the ATMs. But I think that's because we're from SF, and are unfazed by things like Whole Foods and recycling and hybrid cars and live music and Democrats. I bet Austin is pretty weird compared to the rest of Texas.

By the time we were down to one full day left in Texas, it felt like we'd seen all of Austin, and then some, so we took a little jaunt down to San Antonio to see the famed Alamo and Riverwalk.

The Alamo was funny. By funny I mean not good.

I think if you were obsessed with Texas' history and had done more than, say, Wikipedia the story of the Alamo the night before, it might be a cool place to see so you could get a sense of where things happen. If you're going expecting to actually get a sense of the history, though, and the story and its importance, then I thought the whole setup was really sub-par.

Guess we should've ponied up the eight bucks or whatever it was they wanted for an audio tour, maybe.

They did have these huge koi fish, though. You can't really tell from the picture, but apparently everything really is bigger in Texas.

Anyway, we crossed the street from the Alamo and entered what I think was maybe a place designed by San Antonio city planners who'd been to Disneyland, liked it, and wanted to make it a little more adult: the Riverwalk, which is totally passed off as a thing you really want to make sure not to miss.

This ice cream cone was four dollars. That should've been our first clue.

The Riverwalk was ... huh. The best way I can think to describe it is that it had a Rainforest Cafe, and that there's never in the history of planned malls-made-to-look-like-something-more-exciting-than-a-mall been a more apropos location for a Rainforest Cafe.

To be fair, it's not like we don't have places like this in California--we have Santana Row, and hell, we also have Irvine. But that's not why we tell people to visit California, and we also don't have a Ripley's Believe It Or Not and a Tomb Rider 3-D across the street from, say, Alcatraz. Just saying.

Then we drove through a--and I quote--Texas-style safari on our way back! So random. But fun.

(A sidenote: when we got back that night I found a tiny little blog post from a summer newspaper intern in Austin saying the Alamo could've been handled much better--which is maybe appropriate given its historical significance, now that I think about it--and that the Riverwalk was boring, dirty, and smelly.

It was kind of an insignificant little corner of the internet, but hoards of people from San Antonio somehow found and descended on the post. Mostly, people trashed Austin with 'BUT WE HAVE THE SPURS!!!!!!!!!! THE SPURS YOU GUYS!!'. My favorite comment, though, in defense of the honor of the Riverwalk, was: "All attractions have unpleasant odors emanating from them from time to time."

Schooled.

And someone else wrote: "At least I'm not from Austin, where you love marijuana more than God."

Oh Austin. So weird.)

These fawns look so ... put-upon.

This guy was actually kind of scary. Also, you can't really tell from the picture, but he's HUGE. Way taller than our car.

And finally, we drove around in hunt of places where Friday Night Lights was filmed. Best thing ever.

Ray's was one, and the people were really friendly, and also, immediately onto us: "Y'all been watching some Friday Night Lights? We get a lot of people coming in with cameras .... "

This, from Ray's, was ... so totally devoid of any nutritional value, but it was so good. As was the piece of chocolate cake. It seems like a good rule of thumb is to get a piece of cake from Texan barbecue joints.

Thanks, Austin. You were delicious and fun, even if you really weren't all that weird.

Austin! Part 1

2011-09-19T19:39:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't have guessed that of all the places in the U.S. Texas would be the one I'd visit twice in two years. But you hear about things* like Austin City Limits and "Keep Austin Weird!" and how Austin is amazing and like the San Francisco of Texas and an oasis of beauty and culture and, of course, Friday Night Lights lives in my heart forever, and we've been talking about going for a few years now with one of our best friends, and recently we were at dinner with him and were sort of vaguely talking about making a trip to San Diego soon, and five minutes later we'd suddenly decided to go to Austin. In like three weeks. And we booked tickets that night.

It was pretty exhilarating. And then we tried to get all our friends to come, and one happens to have a work situation where it worked out perfectly for him to fly out for the weekend, so, yay!

J and I never really do travel spontaneously like that (except for the occasional drive to SoCal, which doesn't really count). But, hey, this has been on the bucket list, and we tried to go last year, and anyway, it occurred to me that this is probably the only time in our lives, aside from retirement, when we've got time for this kind of thing.

So on a Thursday night we flew into Austin! I felt this way in Dallas, too, but the people at the rental car/hotel type places were noticeably friendly, which is fun. We checked in and then walked around the notorious Sixth Street for a while, where we were surrounded by a stunningly homogenous and stunningly preppy group of what must have been college students hitting the bars.

We kept hearing about Austin's famed lakes and parks and rivers, so we went for a walk near what was maybe Lady Bird Lake? I'm bad with maps. It was nice, and reminded me of the Bay Area, kind of, except that it was 897528753 degrees so we didn't stay out too long. There were all these coolers set up near the entrance with paper cones for water, which was a nice touch (although might also have had something to do with the fact that the tap water there literally tasted a little unsafe to drink).

Then we ate ate a cute little house turned Tex-Mex-breakfast place. The tortillas were so. Good. The migas were really great, too, and the nopales salad was pretty good, but those tortillas--man. I could eat those every meal of every day.

A huge, huge reason Austin always held a mythical place in my heart is because of Friday Night Lights, which won two Emmys last night, and which you should watch if you haven't! It was filmed mostly on location in Austin, so we were excited to see some of the places where it was shot. Austin, it turns out, is really small, so we happened to drive by several of the locations without even looking. It was really exciting every time.

That night we wandered around one of the food trailer gatherings for dinner before picking up our fourth member at the airport.

And then we picked up our friend and headed north, to do one of the things on my Texas (and life, maybe) bucket list: see a high school football game in Texas.

The game (Anderson @ Georgetown) was every bit as intense as I pictured, if not maybe more so.

A PRESS BOX, for a high school game. A high school game!

I just tried to find a picture of my high school football field for comparison's sake, but I couldn't, because no one cares enough to have posted one online. But believe me: it looks nothing like this. Also, no Jumbotron.

Also, after halftime at my school's games, this is what happened: sometime during the week one of the spirit squads would've halfheartedly painted some kind of peppy purple and yellow message across a long sheet of butcher paper, and then when halftime was over said squad would kind of grab a corner and stand there while the team ran through it. Sometimes it broke, and those were the more dramatic times, and the other times everyone would sort of lose their grip and the paper would get tangled up in the players' legs and they'd have to push it away and keep running without tripping.

That is to say, we definitely did not have these.

We stayed through halftime, and saw some pretty impressive marching bands, too. Texas: you are so interesting. Your devotion to watching teenage boys run around with a ball in a multi-million dollar stadium is so fascinating.

Also, Friday Night Lights is the best show of all time.

Austin stays awake late, which I like. After the game we made it back to the food trailer place and hit up this cupcake place just in time to buy four of their last nine cupcakes (sorry to the people who came just after us!) and then we sat outside on the tables, under the strings of lights, for a long time and just talked, which was lovely.

People were still out and walking around, milling about. The pace of life feels so different there--much slower. (Maybe it's the heat.) It was nice.

In the morning, we drove a little ways through Hill Country to Driftwood, to eat at the famed Salt Lick. It was a game day--BYU vs. UT--and the place was packed with diehard fans of both. I grew up in a huge football family in the Bay Area when the 49ers were good, and I've still never seen anything like that.

Friends T and J tried Big Red, like we did last year in Dallas. T put it well: like cough syrup but without the medicine.

What's a little scary, though, is the sweet tea J tried the night before was even sugarier. Texas: you are hardcore!

The burned brisket was amazing. The beef ribs were really, really good. The sauce was excellent. The potatoes and coleslaw were exceptional. The sausage and pork ribs--just all right.

I started to take a picture, and this guy beckoned me back and said, gruffly, "Better shot from back here."

Which it was.

Also, I still feel kind of weird that I ate that. Ever since I stopped cooking with meat it feels a little weird every time I go out of my way to eat it.

From the Salt Lick we headed out into more back roads in search of a swimming hole we'd read a little about. Central Texas looks like this everywhere. Though I'm told (by a friend from El Paso) that because of Texas' drought, it's usually much greener.

We made our way through the back roads, passed a town where City Hall occupied a shopping center space next to Barnes & Noble, passed several 9/11 Tea Party rally signs, and finally, in the middle of a country-ish neighborhood, found Krause Springs.

I hate swimming, a lot, and I'd planned to kind of just sit around and read, but it was so hot walking in from the parking lot that I changed my mind even before I saw the place.

You walk up to a house (because Krause Springs, amazingly, sits on someone's property; the same family has opened the place to the public the past fifty or so years), pay the (totally worth it) six-dollar entrance fee to a man who tells you, firmly, "The rocks are slippery, so y'all be careful now," and, equally firmly, "Y'all have fun now" (and he might give you some floating things to facilitate said fun, if you ask) ...

You walk down this path from the house ...

... past the spring-fed manmade pool ...

... and you can stand at the overlook and see the swimming hole below ...

... and then you walk, carefully, down the walkway and across the rocks to the swimming hole.

The rocks were every bit as slippery as the man warned (and I totally fell, which I guess came as no surprise, and then later I banged my foot against a rock on the bottom of the pool because I miscalculated the distance and an immediate, blue lump rose up like it was filling with blood) and they were sharp, too, and so hot it hurt to walk barefoot.

But the water was perfectly, sharply cold and there were turtles in it, and a rope swing and a waterfall and little caves and roots you could swim around, and a kid who for whatever reason didn't let go of the rope swing on one of his attempts and got smacked against the rocks on the backswing and then hung around mope-ily in the water until his dad finally made him do it again, and after that he was a pro.

This lazy hot summer afternoon was exactly the small-town Texas I hoped existed.

UT swim trunks saved the day for our friend who didn't bring his. Judging by the textbooks and homework being written out, we were among quite a few students.

Also, a group who showed up a little bit after us brought a hammock. So genius.

It was a little crowded by late afternoon when we left.

That night we stopped by another food trailer to eat. This is going to sound sort of odd, but I think maybe my favorite thing I ate while in Austin was a green curry tofu crepe from Crepes Mille. I wasn't super sold on the idea before I had it, but it was SO GOOD (and then I realized I guess it's kind of like roti, right?). J's pizza-y-flavored one was just all right, and our friend's brisket one looked all right as well, but I'd really recommend the green curry tofu crepe if you're ever in Austin.

I'll say this for Austin: I think they do the food truck scene way better than SF. Here, we've got a bunch of food trucks and they're fantastic, but they don't stay in the same place. (Which, admittedly, is part of why you'd stick a food establishment on top of wheels.) And because you kind of have to strike while the iron is hot, I guess, there are crazy, crazy lines and it's like this whole scene, when all you really wanted was, like, a cupcake. In Austin, the trailers live in one spot, the lines aren't that long, and plus it's a hundred and ten degrees so there's pleeeenty of room for you at the little picnic tables nearby. (Take note, SF! Minus the temperature part.)

Then we went to watch the bats take off from under the South Congress bridge.

It was underwhelming, but in a sort of pleasant way, I suppose.

We saw a comedy show at Esther's Follies, which was incredibly reminiscent of cruise ship entertainment, then walked around Sixth Street for a little bit. The Saturday night crowd was way different from the Thursday night crowd--more diverse in every since of the word.

Sixth Street is all bars; nearly all of them have their doors open and some kind of live music inside and large, tightly-shirted guys telling you all shots are two dollars. Amusingly, sprinkled in between the bars are tattoo parlors that keep the bar's hours. I'd love to hang out in there between, say, midnight and two a.m. on a Saturday to and see what happened.

*So, I thought this was normalish. Especially because whenever I read blogs like Apartment Therapy or Serious Eats or whatever, Austin's a pretty major player. But everyone thought it was sort of strange and random we were going there, including a woman at a tourist attraction there who was really startled we'd come from California to see Central Texas, so.

I feel like it's back-to-school time right now, even though (sigh) I'm no longer in school.

2011-09-18T15:17:00.000-07:00

My goodness, it's been a little while. Hello, friends. :)

So! Summer. Is almost over. So odd to think about. I had a slight break from work at the beginning of it, which I filled by writing a draft of my next novel in an insane amount of time, and then suddenly work got really busy and writing was really busy and I never slept.

Incidentally, it turned out that when I was only sleeping 4 hours a night I never felt anxious about anything. It was like my body turned off all non-essential function, and needless worry didn't make the cut. There's something there, I think. Going to experiment a little more with that one later on.

Anyway, summer! Mostly, I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote and freaked out about it and hated it and fell in love with it and wished desperately to not be doing it and also wished to be doing more of it a million times over. I never forget how lucky I am to get to do this, but still, writing's really hard. It's like a relationship, I think, in a lot of ways, with all its ups and downs and the very specific form of intimacy you're trying to go for, except that it's a relationship with basically your own mind and so you feel kind of crazy if you think about it too much. Which I always do.

We went to two baseball games this summer, too--one pathetic one against the Pirates with my family where I got a weird tan line from one sleeve and it still hasn't gone away and where my dad decided he was boycotting the Giants until they could win two games in a row, and one with friends against the Brewers where we sat next to crowd from Milwaukee who kept saying things like, "The Giants fans are just upset because their Blackberries don't have reception," or, "They're just booing because they ran out of wine and sushi," both of which amused me because they were just off enough (we're an iPhone city!). Anyway, we won that game, so.

We also took a few trips in the past month or so, to DC and to Austin, Texas--made it to DC just in time to be there for Hurricane Irene, and made it to Texas to be there in time for the wildfires and the heat wave. Actually, Texas IS a heat wave.

The trip to DC was to meet our friends' six-month-old baby, and I don't want to plaster pictures of their kid all over the internet, but believe me a) that there are many, many pictures and b) that he was FREAKING. CUTE. So, so, so cute.

Because the hurricane canceled the MLK Jr. memorial dedication, we got to see that memorial, too, and hunker down with some games and some really good friends we hadn't seen in way too long.

And, as of the beginning of this summer, J is officially no longer a startup employee! That probably deserves its own post.

How are all of you?

Winners! And whiners. (One, anyway.) (Me. If that wasn't clear.)

2011-08-09T02:56:00.000-07:00

Lately, I don't sleep much. I kept telling myself it was by design--I'm writing 8-12 hours a day, every day, and when you're also working part-time and generally existing in the world, something's got to give and in this case sleep didn't make the cut--but right now it's 3:45 and J and I are both up and I just ate some bread and then J just ate some leftover apple crisp, and I had a bite, and this is after we both laid in bed for like two hours trying to sleep and I can tell already I'll be up at least another hour. Maybe longer. Maybe like a week.

WE ARE BROKEN, I tell you. My body laughs mockingly in the face of my pleas to let me sleep. Something like:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAH! HAHAHAH! HAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHAHAHHAHAHA!

The worst part is, I'm really tired.

Also, the apple crisp wasn't that good.

I'm not actually technically complaining; every night I stay up a few hours too late and then I get up too early in the morning because I so resent taking those hours away from doing something I really love. That's well worth the weird constant pressure around my temples and my increasingly strong propensity to laugh uncontrollably at wholly inappropriate times, like in church (yup, happened yesterday). And whatever other signs of sleep deprivation--extra clumsiness, slight insanity--are becoming old friends.

It's worth it, anyway (and I guess I deserve it), assuming my workaholism is the reason for the insomnia. But I've had insomnia on and off as long as I can remember--some of my earliest memories are of staring up at my ceiling and being unable to sleep all night when I was three or four years old--so if it's not my writing schedule but instead my body betraying me, then, boo. I thought we were supposed to be on the same team.

Anyway. In happier news, thanks so much for the survey help, friends! :) Winners are:

Allison of La Dolce Vita
Katie of Latte Love
Mrs. D of Life of a Doctor's Wife

Congrats! And thanks again! Email me at thestartupwife@gmail.com to tell me where to send them!

Wedding party!

2011-08-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago one of my dearest friends got married! It was so lovely, and it was the first time (since I was flower-girl age) that I got to be in a friend's wedding, and it was so moving and just so much fun.

Also, nerve-wracking. But mostly lovely and fun.

The nerve-wracking parts were super narcissistic. I don't worry that much about details or things going the way they're supposed to because I feel like in a big enough group of people things usually do, but I literally had two nightmares about getting ready for the wedding. We all did our own hair and makeup, and I ... still don't actually know what 'primer' is and have never 'done' my hair in my life, so. There were some concerned glances when I was brandishing a borrowed curling iron and a couple suggestions I shouldn't have discarded but did because they seemed too complicated (hence the strange ... unevenness of the final product) and then in the limo on the way to the reception I sat the wrong way on my dress and snapped one of the shoulder straps off so I spent the rest of the night accidentally (and in a few cases, publicly) stabbing myself in the chestal area with a safety pin.

But! Other than that, no mishaps. (And when I first tried on my dress it was too hard to breathe, so out of paranoia I stress-ate snack food for two months and avoided trying it on until the morning of, which is my time-honored way of dealing with potentially disastrous situations. It worked, apparently, in that I didn't, you know, faint or anything.)

I grew up with the bride and so I know her two sisters (on the right), and--especially since the older one now lives in Louisiana--it was great to get to spend quality time with them.

And I really, really loved getting to meet and bond with the cousins of the groom (the other two bridesmaids), who were fantastic. Their whole family was just really, really special, and I can see why my friend is so excited to officially be a part of it. Heck, I wanted to be a part of it. It was just really beautiful to see their two--extremely different, in like every way--families come together.

I adore my friend's husband. He's kind, devoted to others, and madly in love with my friend. Before he danced with his mom, he took the microphone from the DJ and talked a little bit about how grateful he was to her for raising him and all the sacrifices she'd made for him and his brother. Tears. (Mine, I mean, and everyone else's watching. It was really, really sweet.)

Image credits: all from here.

My parents came! (And J, of course.) I hung out with them some at the reception, and also watched the groom's cousins surprise him with a dance they'd choreographed (so fun) and the groom's little brother's dance crew perform another (and super legit) piece. I think there might be nothing I love more than watching little brothers at weddings. (Mine was particularly great.)

Anyway, it was a huge blessing, and such a beautiful lovely day. I came home feeling just really emotionally full.

Relatedly: holla!

And also: win a pair of handmade earrings! (Your odds right now are GREAT.)

Win earrings & help out a friend!

2011-08-01T16:01:00.000-07:00

Blog friends!

1. My best friend is doing some exciting work right now looking at the ways people interact with media, and he wrote a survey and needs as many people to respond as possible! This is a bff, and I would so, so appreciate a few seconds of your time to look at this.

2. I made some earrings! Want a pair?

If you click over here and fill out the survey before Friday--it's literally nine questions (one of which is your age group), so it'll take just a minute of your time--then let me know in the comments that you did, and Saturday, I'll pick three comments to win a pair of handmade earrings. (They'll vary.)

Enter again if you tweet this, and again if you link to it on your blog!

Thanks so much, friends. :) I really really appreciate it!

My parents in a nutshell

2011-07-26T01:50:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I went to have dinner with my family. My brother took the GRE that morning, and when I got there this note to him was still waiting on the counter where my dad left it that morning so Brett would see it when got up:

My dad is intentional, deliberate, and deeply present. His involvement both in the midst of things and especially from the sidelines has been one of the steadiest undercurrents of my life--all the little notes like this one every time I had a test I was worried about or an important volleyball game, every first day of school, every accomplishment.

I don't live with him anymore, so now I get the emailed version of these notes instead. I get them on my birthday and my anniversary, I get them when we haven't talked in a little while, I get them when he knows I have something big coming up. I get them when he's worried about something, and those are the ones we laugh about, like one time I emailed my mom's family's listserv to ask if the rosemary growing in my grandma's yard was the edible kind and my dad, who's never once responded to a single of those group emails and who I didn't even think read them ever, replied-all with: "Kelly: if you don't know, I think you need to assume IT IS THE POISONOUS KIND." I got an email when he heard the song we danced to at my wedding come on the radio--"Kelly: I heard 'Father and Daughter' last night. Wonderful song."

We laugh about these emails, my brother and I. My dad's taken to doing this thing now where he'll email Brett with his pertinent point in the subject line, and then you open it up and it's empty because he figures he already said everything he needs. He also figured out how to flag things as 'important,' so he does that with all his emails now. Another thing we laugh about is how once, when I was still in San Diego, I flew back to school and emailed my dad to let him know I'd gotten in safely. I told him the flight was terrible (I hate flying), that we hit a lot of turbulence and it freaked me out, that I was doing okay being back at school but that I still felt kind of tired and that my classes were okay and that, coincidentally, on the plane I'd sat next to the older sister of one of Brett's friends from school! He wrote back: "Name?"

I still about die laughing every time I think of that one.

You know that book about people's different love languages? It's big in church circles, I think, and so I've had this conversation probably ten times over, and I usually would say mine was some combination of quality time or gifts or words of encouragement or something. But once I was talking with my best friend and I told her mine was effort, which wasn't a great way to put it, but what I meant by that, I think, was this: that I maybe first understood love by the way I've always known my father is never not thinking of me.

When I showed up on Friday my mom had just gotten back from a week-long pastry class in Denver. She brought me back a chili cherry chocolate bar (which, yum) and--and this is really her in a nutshell--she brought back to show me and Brett the menus of what she ate while she was there:

Food is incredibly important to our family--I think this is true of most Chinese families--and I think part of that is the way it creates a kind of shared experience. It's a way, I think, to share some of the most core and personal parts of yourself--your senses--in a way that most things don't allow you to do. This is one of the most salient things about my mom: the way life, to her, is meant to be shared with the people she cares about. That's why even though she calls me a bazillion times a week, and why even though whenever she calls the odds are good I've already told her everything remotely new or interesting going on, she'll hang up and keep dialing my number again until I drop whatever I'm doing and answer.

When I call and tell my dad something, she always takes the phone or calls me back later to demand the 'girl version,' by which she means all the important details that might've slipped past my dad. She calls me a zillion times a week to talk about nothing--to scroll through my friend's wedding registry while she's reading the items aloud to me, to tell that my cousin got a new job, to tell me that she read this post on Apartment Therapy where there was a kitchen that reminded her of mine and did I see it and am I by my computer because I should look it up--because it matters to her to share these things. During the two interminable years she was remodeling her house, she would call at all hours to demand that I find my tape measure and measure out, say, the height of my countertops so I could tell her if I liked them and thought that was a reasonable height for her kitchen-to-be.

She wants emails and pictures from my trips, she wants a recounting of every conversation with my agent, she wants to know what I've made for dinner and what J's doing at school and what I did over the weekend. Then, every time, she always says, "What else?" Last week she went to the wedding I was in and then she left the next morning for Denver; at dinner when she got back she wanted to talk about the wedding the whole time because, I think, she wanted to form a communal experience so it was something that we shared. No detail of my life is ever too boring or small for her, and she expects that same sentiment from me.

This is the thing I learned from my mother about love: that it means you care about someone else's life as though it were your own.

This morning, when we woke up:

2011-07-18T21:28:00.000-07:00

J: I had this awful dream both of us were seeing someone on the side!

Me: I dreamed we had to move.

J: Oh. Yeah, that's worse.

So true.

Back to the world!

2011-07-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

I just went on this weeks-long writing bender, and I think it's over now. I was pulling 18-hour days for a while there, not exercising hardly at all and often forgetting to eat and not really sleeping, and I was literally starting to feel a little bit insane. Like, if someone looked at me for too long, I could feel myself about to dissolve into giggles. (If it was J, I did dissolve into giggles. Like, dissolve.)

Good times. Also, my back muscles stopped working because I spent so many consecutive hours hunched over my laptop on my bed.

Anyway, a draft got sent off to my agent this week, and I'm reemerging back into the actual world. My best friend just moved back after 2 years abroad, so it's rather good timing; my grandmother had some relatives in from out of town, my brother has a guest visiting so we went over to my family's house for dinner and then watched The Social Network, which is maybe my favorite movie and though I've seen it three times now I still want to watch it every week. My mom told us she's supposed to take my grandma to watch the same movie at the senior center this week, which about made me die laughing. Actually, even watching it with my mom was pretty funny. ("Who's Justin Timberlake?" [Camera cuts to some random doorman for the briefest second.] "Is that Justin Timberlake?" And then, during that one bathroom sex scene: "DO YOU THINK I WANT TO BE WATCHING THIS?")

Last night we went out to a hotel bar to catch up with a recently-returned-from-travels friend, and this morning we got up early--early for the Silicon Valley, anyway--and went out to another bar to watch the World Cup with other friends. (Usually, my life is not so full of bars.) It was fun; there were kind of a lot of people there, and a hugely diverse collection. I guess that's maybe what happens when you go to a bar at nine a.m.. Anyway, it was a lot of fun; I always like sports.

Today, I've watched the U.S. women somehow pull off a win; I've cleaned out the fridge, done laundry, vacuumed, prepped for work since I'm starting up again this week, done some low-key editing, done a little cooking, and am now working on stocking the fridge. Later I'll make homemade Lara Bars, and go to a friend's bachelorette party, and catch up on some of your blogs. :)

I'll read. I'll hopefully re-learn how to sleep. I'll probably start doing a little editing, but in a calmer and less all-consuming way.

It's nice to be back, but if I'm being honest it's a little sad too. I sort of miss being inside the writing that way.

Lake Tahoe

2011-07-01T02:02:00.000-07:00

The other day J heard an expression he thought was really funny, and when he said it, I was like--oh, wow, that's TOTALLY ME. The expression was: sack of wuss.

Which I am. About everything.

But I felt like Tahoe last week earned me maybe just a few more toughness points. For one thing, I went on a bike in the first time in twelve years, because twelve years ago I was biking and this kid ran out in front of me and I had to swerve, and fell, and promptly (wussily) gave up biking forever. P.S., mountain bikes are awesome because you can crank the gears alllllllll the way up so you couldn't go fast even if you wanted. (It's a start, right?)

I also got a bite that made my leg look literally misshapen (and I was obsessed with it):

And then I got some kind of weird allergic reaction on my other leg:

So tough, I tell you. So tough. Also: everyone in the family got sick, and (despite some intense insomnia) I fought it off until the very last day. Bam.

However, I'm still a bit sick, and as it turns out I can't aim to save my life:

Embarrassing.

Anyhow, Tahoe was super great! I haven't been to South Lake Tahoe in eight years--when we go around there, my family usually goes instead to Truckee--and actually it wasn't until like the third night there I realized I'd even been there before at all.

It was beautiful.

We got to spend really great quality time with J's family.

(From left: me, J, J's sister, J's little sister, J's little sister's boyfriend, J's brother's wife, J's brother)

J's family rented a place in the Tahoe Keys, and so there was a little lake-like thing in the backyard where we could go boating.

We (braved the altitude like the non-wusses we are and) went on some really pretty (albeit easy) hikes.

Relatedly, the one day I tried to go running, I'm pretty sure I ran like a forty-minute mile. Exercising in the thin air is just the weirdest thing.

You can't really tell from the pictures, but this drive was kind of terrifying, so much so that we were all just laughing. Sheer dropoffs, no guardrails, in some places no shoulder, and blind curves. Luckily, though, J's standup brother drove very slowly and very carefully and even told us to tell him if he was making us nervous--and really, the fastest way to my heart is to assure me that no risky behavior will be engaged in while I'm around, so. After that I would've loved him forever even if I didn't already.

A contingent went on a super-successful fishing trip. (Not me, even though--thanks, insomnia--I was still awake when they left.)

I made everyone try It's-Its, after learning recently that they're a strictly local treat and J had never had one. Tragic. They used to sell these in the lunchline at my school, and I hadn't had one since then, so I was eager to see if they held up. (Totally did.) It's a chocolate-covered ice cream sandwich made with (the best part) oatmeal cookies. The coffee flavor is new, and, in my opinion, the best.

J and I also made grilled tofu banh mi for everyone, and, because J's little sister's boyfriend is an extremely picky eater, told him it was chicken. I don't think he was fooled, but he gamely tried it anyway, then said, "Wow, never thought I'd like tofu." Then he thought about it, and allowed, "Well ... I guess technically it's meat." HAHA. I was dying.

Also, on our last full day there, we saw a bear! Because I was safely on the balcony (and because I knew instantly I was never again setting foot on the backyard lake), I was more excited than terrified.

It's cute, right?

I was impressed--and a little alarmed, if we're being real here--at how easily it climbed up into the tree. Bear claws are no joke.

It's funny, because J's family's labradoodle is even more of a sack of wuss than I am, but for some reason she got really bark-y with the bear, and--even more inexplicably--the bear actually seemed afraid of her. I thought she was going to get eaten, but instead, the bear hopped up a tree and then scampered away.

I didn't swim this time, because Lake Tahoe is seriously epically cold (and also, I hate anything that requires bathing suits), but J's little sister and her boyfriend did, for a hot second. (A cold second.)

A great trip, and a great time with family.

Have you been to Lake Tahoe? Where do you like to go to vacation?

#reason2haveguybestfriend

2011-06-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

When I bought my laptop four years ago this was the picture I set for my desktop background, and it stuck. <3! It makes me smile. This was a nice day.

The new project I'm working on has an almost entirely male cast of characters, which is extremely unusual for me. It's also narrated by a seventeen-year-old boy, so for the past month or so, that's the voice that's been playing in my head all the time.

Baseball is also a somewhat important factor in the project, so I've been making a more active effort to listen to the games. Yesterday the Giants played a double-header, which I kept on while I was writing all day (and I do mean all day), and by the end of the day, things felt so weirdly ... male, I guess. I felt like I'd been pushing myself to go into a different place for a long time, and it was sort of strange.

Then, on Twitter, one of the trending topics was #reason2haveguybestfriend. I thought a lot of the tweets were really stupid (less drama, no PMS, blah blah blah--or the ones about how it's impossible to have a guy best friend who doesn't want to take things further), but some made me smile.

Anyway, here's what guys had to offer on why you should have a guy best friend:

"They don't beat around the bush like females, they're more blunt for your own good. "

Eh. I'll accept that, on the whole, men tend to be blunter, but I think that's more about social pressures/expectations than anything else.

"guys like me will give you, Honest opinions without expecting... "MORE""

Ew. Minus major points for the implication that offering honesty without the expectation that, in return, you will get sex is something that goes above and beyond and something for which a female should feel grateful. Seriously? Get new friends, dude. Or new standards.

"We are much less snakey. Girls would snake for a ride in a rented Bentley."

I'm not even sure I know what this means?

"the inside jokes are just WAY funnier.."

Do you not know funny girls? I have to say, overall, my inside jokes with my girlfriends are the ones that really slay me.

"Guys only need 3 things to survive the weekend : Beer, Boxers, and Batteries for the remote."

Ew. Exactly the kind of I'm-supposed-to-laugh-at-the-truth-of-this overgeneralization I hate. NEXT.

Some of them were kind of sweet declarations of friendship, and some, I thought, had good points: it lets you see a different perspective. Also though, I felt like a lot of these were not-so-thinly-veiled love notes. Like these ones:

"he will be there for you when you are sad and make you smile and forget about the guy that broke your heart <3"

"We can protect you, don't gossip about you, hold you, and be there for you when you need us"

"His hugs will comfort you, his advice will warn you & his love will ALWAYS be there <3"

Those guys are totally in love with their best friends, right? Or at least, in love with someone they're hoping reads their Twitter accounts.

Anyway! My mom often tells me how in her generation, people didn't really have opposite-sex friendships the way our generation does. I'm super obsessed with Dear Prudence, and she often says the same thing, too. Which is interesting to me, because I feel like if I'd limited my friendships to just with other girls, I would have really missed out.

And all this made me feel grateful for the male friendships in my life. I don't mean to lump them all together en masse, because that feels ... disrespectful to the individual history of each friendship, I guess, but today, in a way, I do kind of feel a sort of general gratitude.

I think it's enormously different being a man in the world versus being a woman in the world, so much so that I think in some ways you almost come from different worlds. One time J asked me how often I thought about my own race, and when I said constantly, I think he was surprised. I was equally startled to hear he almost never thinks about his--though I suppose I shouldn't have been, because you always hear how that's what it means to be a white male: that you don't have to think about it. In some ways, I think there's a parallel there to gender, too. I've worked with teenagers in various capacities for a while, and one thing that strikes me is how much, before they've even finished high school, a stunning majority of the guys have developed this innate confidence and ease with themselves, a sense that it never occurred to them they might not be taken seriously or might have to justify themselves based on gender, and an equally stunning majority of the girls don't have that. I mean, they're not stupid--they can look around the world and see the way things go and who holds the most power, so it's not a stretch that, by seventeen, they've internalized this.

Anyway, it feels really invaluable to me to be able to have those conversations in a co-ed context--learning more about where one another is coming from, and learning more about gendered experiences. I appreciate hearing, and sharing, perspectives from a different lens.

And the other thing, I think, is--this is maybe less true for me now, but I think especially in teenage years there's a certain amount of pressure to take a boys-will-be-boys attitude about the way you're treated by guys, you know? And I'm a little older, but I still feel like there's implicit social pressure to listen to things like the Twitters telling you extremely patriarchal things about how you're lucky to have a guy want to spend time with you, that men are somehow more valuable, that this gives them license to treat you however, because they can.

And, in all of that, I'm extremely grateful to know guy friends who are decent, who are kind, who make an effort to treat people the right way and who don't buy into the ridiculous notion that reckless irresponsibility towards another person's feelings is somehow a male trait, or something you should just put up with. Guys who live in a way that challenges male privilege; guys who take responsibility for themselves and genuinely seek to be good men.

Anyway! Yay for good men. Yay for good friends. And yay for Twitter.

P.S. Speaking of, I super want Ta-Nehisi Coates to be my bff. SUPER WANT.

What's your take on co-ed friendships?

Writing life

2011-06-27T22:56:00.000-07:00

The thing about writing is that sometimes--most times--it's kind of a grind.

I wrote about 500,000 words, total, for my last 88,000-word novel. Obviously most of those words ended up getting deleted (or actually, transferred to holding documents, because I never delete anything), which basically just means that it's a process, sometimes it's tedious, and it's a lot. It's easy to get sick of things. Those times, writing feels more like work than like art.

But sometimes--and very rarely--I feel the opposite, and I feel like there's so much I want to write and I know where a story is going and all I want to do (all I can do, really) is get it out. Right now is one of those times; I'm putting in about fifteen hours a day, and I resent the time I have to spend on things I usually love, like eating, or checking email, or sleeping. (Though in truth, I'm not doing any of those things all that much.)

I'm not complaining, though--these are the times when writing feels necessary and worth and like an end to itself, when I don't feel like I need to find a way to justify it. It's kind of a rush. This is sort of what I imagine it might feel like to be manic. (Which is ironic, since just today I read this article about how researchers have discovered possible links between creativity and mental illness.)

We recently got back from a week in Tahoe with J's family--complete with a BEAR SIGHTING, which was GREAT (and, surprisingly, pretty cute)--and it was a good way to step back a little bit. I was writing as much as possible there during our downtime, but it wasn't anything like my schedule before or after. I process more when I'm away from the actual text, so I came back feeling re-energized and ready to get back to work, which is what I've been doing. I'm sick (everyone was sick in Tahoe), and I should be sleeping, but instead I've been staying up writing until four-thirty or five and getting up around nine to continue. I hate being separated from the story for even those few hours. I like this, though--I know it's not sustainable, but I hope it lasts.

The downside to all this is I think I literally might have given myself some kind of carpal tunnel syndrome (this weird shooting pain up and down the side of my hand ... ugh) from typing too much. The other downside is I never have anything interesting to talk about, because I'm entirely absorbed in what I'm writing.

Worth it, though! And anyone have any tips for carpal tunnel?

This is maybe the most courageous piece of journalism I've ever read

2011-06-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

I can't imagine what it took to live this life, to write this piece, and to come forward with it on a national stage.

And I think everyone should read it.

One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. office to get my driver’s permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. “This is fake,” she whispered. “Don’t come back here again.”
Confused and scared, I pedaled home and confronted Lolo. I remember him sitting in the garage, cutting coupons. I dropped my bike and ran over to him, showing him the green card. “Peke ba ito?” I asked in Tagalog. (“Is this fake?”) My grandparents were naturalized American citizens — he worked as a security guard, she as a food server — and they had begun supporting my mother and me financially when I was 3, after my father’s wandering eye and inability to properly provide for us led to my parents’ separation. Lolo was a proud man, and I saw the shame on his face as he told me he purchased the card, along with other fake documents, for me. “Don’t show it to other people,” he warned.
I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it.
I’ve tried. Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the country. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.
But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.

I feel so incredibly humbled--changed, even--after reading Jose's story.