Everything's So Bitch!

Vietnam Adventure Part Five: Maybe you go back America you fuck fuck fuck your uncle.

2009-06-17T11:56:05Z

- The food here is delicious
- In the first week, meals were offered/forced upon us around once every few hours (though currently now we're only offered full meals 3-4 times a day (we usually accept 2) with copious snack offers in between)
- It is almost always given to us in portions 3-4 times bigger than that of our relatives
- I was able to almost keep up eating it for the first almost-a-week or so
- In which I had the disturbing feeling of forgetting 'the feeling of being hungry' to the point where I was slightly afraid I wouldn't know it if I was forgotten by my relatives for a day and felt it again
- And also given the feeling of being in a reality TV show in which the producers try to fill my stomach with Vietnamese food and coffee and if I can't keep up I'm going to be voted out of Vietnam.
- Feeling was not helped by the fact that my relatives with their non-reality-tv-show-sized portions tend to linger around the table after they're done eating staring at us with great amusement and almost continuously screaming "EAT FINISH!!!!" in my ear in either English or Vietnamese.
- Or by that one time during second breakfast in which the room was filled with nearly ten people who were not even served food, just started, and then who TURNED THE WEB CAM ON US SO THAT MOM, DAD, AND ALL THE COUSINS BACK HOME IN AMERICA COULD WATCH US EAT, TOO. (And of course we could see ourselves on the computer screen as well.)

- As I survived the first week, the challenge was upgraded to include ia chay (the running poop)
- And feels-kind-of-like-I-swallowed-something-corrosive stomach pains whenever I eat to more than half way full or so
- And somewhat debilitating bouts of nausea (possibly at least partially caused by lack of sleep due to the family waking up around 4-5 am or so and usually not letting us sleep much later)*
- And steadily growing portions whenever we're cooked something at home

- It is difficult to turn down food or not finish a meal because people will do lots of the aforementioned screaming
- Along with telling Clay to say, "Tell her if she doesn't finish, we have to throw all the food away."
- And complaining about having to throw food away to each other later, which Clay can understand and irritates him but luckily I can't so well.
- (An extra dose of sadistic is added to these practices by the family occasionally, after the usual yelling and messages about food wasteage through most of the meal, will tell me with around 2 or so bites of food left, when I've gone well past the nausea-and-stomach-pains barrier and may as well just finish, in a kind, concerned voice that "...You know, you really don't have to eat all that if you're full.")

- Recently, we learned that the reason for this was because they're worried I'll go back to America and complain to my mother that my family didn't feed me enough while I was here.
- Just after that, Brother and I did our usual complaining about being fed too much to our mother on the phone while here, and about how sick and almost constantly miserably nauseous I was getting, and Mom sounded very sympathetic to my situation and very concerned, and then gave my brother a talking to about getting me better at turning down the relatives
- Because, she explained as she finished, "We don't want her get too fat."

- I'm not really sure what kind of reality TV show I think I'm on anymore.**

EDIT: In the last couple hours, Fappy II stopped turning on. T_T Apparently this is a problem common with its series of HP Pavilion laptops. T___T I want to read more about it but they're making me get off the internettttt. T___________T

_____

*Once, I almost slept a full 8 hours (till 9am) and since I've had a reputation for sleeping excessively, which my relatives are now pretty sure must be the reason I'm so fat since I EAT SO LITTLE OF MY FOOD (though as mentioned before I don't tend to take naps the 3-4 times a day they usully try to get me to). While at first we laughed, I'm realizing now that in a way they must be kind of right, because lack of sleep tends to give me nausea, which tends to make me eat less, so I guess getting a full night's rest MAKES ME EAT MORE, so INDEED IT MUST BE MAKING ME FAT.

**When I was around 3 or 4 years old, I used to pretend to have a TV show, "The Nora Show", which would most often be run while I was sitting on the toilet in the bathroom. I don't completely remember what the show was about, something sort of like a talk show, and something that occasionally required me to do something slightly magical with excessive amounts of toilet paper. I think it's kind of cool that my TV show now also requires me to spend a lot of time in the bathroom. It's kind of like things are coming around full circle, you know? Even if the bathrooms here often don't have any toilet paper. Or soap. Or toilets. (Is it weird I can abide the idea of lack of the latter more than I can combined lack of the two former? As for lack of all three, well, one may as well be holding a TV show in there for the next couple minutes, because I'm really not sure what other business one's supposed to get up to in a room like that.)

Vietnam Adventure Part Three: Good relief for burning pain because of sun-bath at the seaside.

2009-06-15T14:03:36Z

Uncle: *Talking in Vietnamese*
Clay: (Translating) Did you take your pills say yes?
Me: ...Yes!

No one ever told me the tubes on the sides of the scooters were incredibly, scaldingly hot. Clay didn't even remember let me know when he was telling me to pose (or “sexy pose” as he does love to request) next to one. And that's how I ended up with this:

Later, it developed many puffy blisters. When we tried to go to the medical shop to buy some gauze, we were instead given ointment and a Vaseline patch. Though I'd read on the Internets not to put anything much on the burn besides bandages, I was still a little relieved, since when the lady came from behind the counter to put the patch on my leg, I flinched slightly at the sight of her tiny pointy scissors. (HEY. I have a mother who BLEEDS HERSELF when she's sick. I feel bad for even thinking it, but I don't trust anyone from the same culture to come around my blisters with pointy things.)

The Cau Bai, the uncle who was around when it happened got upset we didn't mention it earlier, only of course we had but I suppose he didn't understand (or didn't try very hard to. When you express a concern he seems to like to say 'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' dismissively, and it's hard to tell if he's being dismissive about your concern, or dismissive about trying to figure out what you're saying to him.)

The next day (or two?), when another uncle's family saw the burn, they came into my room with no new clean bandage or Vaseline patch to replace the disgusting dirty one, but another more different ointment and Mystery Pills in lots of pretty colors:

Pill takeage patterns over the next couple days:
First set: Spit into my backpack when giver turned away
Second set: Swiped into a plastic bag when left alone in the room with them
Third set: Thrown into my bra while making a mock tossing-into-mouth motion (when pulled out, they were slimy, slightly dissolved, and the smallest either entirely dissolved or missing. Also, one fell through the keyhole in the bra I forgot was there and had to wiggle to get it down into the waistband of my pants. Clay said it was very skillful, though.)

At the time I couldn't really remember what exactly the doctor lady we talked to before we left had said about taking local medication (later Dad confirmed we should not), but considering the way the next day when we went to the same medical shop to get clean patches they tried to sell us an other more different kind of ointment (that makes three), again as if it was the usual thing they always used for burns, I was feeling cautious.

I'm scared for when the blisters burst, because I'm not sure the water here is clean. :( The ladies liked to grab my calves and squeeze them and say how pretty they were. Clay and I think this is the price we must pay for the vanity of my family.

EDIT:
Since this post was written, we were with the help of mother able to convince the family to stop giving me pills (that, or they ran out) and instead get me some turmeric and giant aloe:

I was really happy about the aloe, and took and broke off a tiny piece to keep in my room, leaving the rest in the big bag o' aloe they'd brought, figuring I could go get more when I needed it. That night when for desert we were served something milky and sweet with large, rectangular clear chunks in it, I realized I had made a mistake.

Still, I conserved what I had and the burn is almost better now, even if everyone still keeps asking me why I keep washing it all the time and wiggling bottles of medicine in my face.

Uncle Number Seven, Cau Bai, who speaks some English:

2009-06-15T13:45:00Z

mommy-san for you say uncle uk fung
give nora go work
i say i say i say
i say mommy-san you nora don't go don't go
maybe i get nora go bisikoo
tied tied
no big big
her sleep beaucoup big big
maybe sick too
yeah yeah
lay
maybe go long way neba neba happen sick
got drink whiskey...? maybe no big no sick
ah nora
same same ba wai
you know before ba wai
beaucoup big big sick
ba wai mama
.........................
right here
beaucoup big big sick
beaucoup big
every long way no more
beaucoup big sick
sick die
ba wai
ba wai you know
i say mommy san you say
give nora go work do
give nora work do!
mommy san you say my say uncle uk fung
you know
nora don't go don't go
yeah maybe sit someday with me
get him do
get him go work
never happen
no
maybe afternoon i give nora you
drive bisicoon
yeah good good good
tired good good good
............
sleep big big
............
you say american
beaucoup big big
give money titi
..............
i say nora you say nora
nora six o'clock
go bisicoon
i give nora one
...........
bisicoon die throw away*
you know bisicoon here throw away
............
maybe i tired
you know
ride bisicoon tired
good good good
tired good
maybe sleep beaucoup sleep too
sick too
beaucoup kilo
sick too
no go work
sleep
beaucoup kilo
sick too
go work
go work
no sick
maybe petiti sick you know
petiti sick
now sick o'clock i come here
i say got six two scoon
yeah go
six o'clock

Translation:
Nora sleeps a lot (Note: While here, sometimes nearly seven hours a night, though not usually, and though I never take naps during the day when they tell me to accept once when I was feeling sick.), and it makes her really fat, and maybe even sick. Your grandma got really fat and sick and then she died. Your mom, she told your youngest uncle to make Nora work (Note: At making rice noodles. You can see the very skinny rice noodles making ladies here.), but I said no. I said maybe I could take Nora for a bike ride this afternoon at six o'clock. If a bike breaks we can just throw it away (The night before, the kick stand on the bike Clay was riding wasn't working, and the in the process of drunkely fixing it, Uncle Number Seven rendered it unridable.). She'll get really tired and that will be good, and she'll get skinny.

Thusly did we go on a five minute bike ride to the house of a girl who could speak English and wanted to practice. Hours later, we took a five minute bike ride back.

_______

*Note: I'm rather sad he didn't say 'die and go to hell' here. Usually he does. The first time I thought I was supposed to laugh when I heard one of my relatives had 'die and gone to hell,' till Clay explained to me he'd learned English from GIs during the war and that it wasn't meant in a mean way. Before that I'd also been continuously been reminding myself that as much as it *sounded* like he was saying “mommy-san,” surely I was, in my desperation to understand, just trying to draw knowledge from the wrong language, as I sometimes do.

Vietnam Adventure Part Two: Idon'twanttodieearly. I don'twanttodieearly. Idon'twanttodieearly.

2009-06-09T11:18:39Z

(This picture contains foreshadowing. What do you think is about to happen?)

After we got out of the airport, we were greeted by our family and taken home in a rented van. From my seat in the middle of the second row I had a really good view of the road in front of us, and consequently spent the entire trip trying to suppress the urge to laugh.

Most people here get around on scooters. As I watched them, I kept getting the suspicion no one on the road was headed anywhere really important. Probably anyone who actually cared about getting to their intended destination in this lifetime would not travel around so many other scooters and cars either without having or without following any rules regarding speed, distance from other vehicles, turning, passing, or trying not to die Traffic signals seemed more a suggestion to stop rather than an obligation.

The sheer, constant life-threateningly dangerousness of it all was fantastically, horrifyingly amusing. Any time at which I as a driver would have slowed down to make sure not to kill someone (multiple scooters I would have sworn must have grazed the vehicle, people on foot running across the road and looking likely at their present speed to cross paths with the van, swarms of scooters turning in front of us to get to the other side of the road), my uncle would honk the horn and otherwise decline to react in the slightest.

I know humans are all the time disconcernedly doing things that are bad for them or will lead them to an early death just because that's how they've learned to act, but I have never seen such an incredibly immediate display of that behavior. If I had been at the window seat, I could have reached my arm down and patted crazy people on the head (or helmet, rather. In the few years since Clay's been here, it seems they've started actually requiring the scooter riders to wear helmets for some reason) the entire way home!

Only I'm a crazy person, too, because I rode around Saigon on the back of one of those things earlier this week now. And also later while my driver uncle was drunk, because I had no other ride and didn't know any way to insist on some other means of transport, which ended with us stopping to discuss a drink at the cafe (just after we slowly and calmly drifted into a near head on collision with a large blue truck, though I don't think anyone else noticed).

Earlier while we were chatting with the family back home, Clay tried to suggest to Cousin Liem that he should go swimming in a canal, to which Liem said back, “I don't want to die early.” (This conversation also included Thao discussing her hopes for her baby's gender with us: “My husband, he say if baby is girl he happy, if baby is boy he hit me.”) I liked his response, only now it keeps running on loop in my head as we swerve to turn in front of buses and screech to halts as we nearly hit other swarms of scooters on the other sides of buses.

If we get to go to Saigon again, I want to go by bus. This doesn't actually mean I *will* get to go by bus. I'm just saying.

Vietnam Adventure Part One: The stuff in the stuff you put in your children makes them spit on me.

2009-06-09T11:09:52Z

Brother talked to me before we got here about Vietnamese coffee. It's pretty much a shot of espresso mixed with lots of sweetened condensed milk, served with so much ice it's almost more like a slushie (though just in general they serve everything with too much ice, which is fine with me because I've always loved too much ice). Sometimes they'll have it with lots of sugar but no cream. It's good but incredibly thick and sweet, and I'm constantly tempted to pour the tea they serve it with in the cup to water it down, only I'm a little afraid they'll all think I'm weird (though I'm not sure if it would be any weirder to them than the way Clay insists on drinking his coffee with NO SUGAR OR CREAM.)

What Clay didn't warn me about was just HOW MUCH coffee they drink. This probably does have a little to do with the fact that we live next door to the cafe, but still. Every time you go to someone's house (which we did a lot the first few days), they will insist you drink coffee with them. Every time you've been on the road for a little while, someone will insist on stopping at a cafe. Every time you're sitting around at home around the time intervals at which you might be offered water or something else to drink in America, someone will come at you with a coffee. I think I had under ten cups of coffee my first day here, but not MUCH under. And that's with trying to turn them down.

Usually, at least, there's a pot of tea with it to drink afterward, but never water. It's always a little surprise to see water when we're out (at home there's a big jug of it we can drink from, though I've almost never seen anyone else in the house but us do so), especially in restaurants. A couple days ago we were having some sort of fruit-salad-drink-thing at a roadside stall and they actually served some to us, though.

But they served it with shot glasses.

And that's usually how it seems to go. Coffee = large glass, tea = small cup, water = pewny tasting vestibule. I guess I shouldn't be surprised I've almost never caught anyone here actually using a bathroom.

Maybe after reading all that you know better than to wonder, but in case you had any doubts and are trying to figure out what the children drink, I did indeed see a maybe-seven-or-younger already hyperactive child served the espressosweetmilkdrink (later, she spent a good couple hours tirelessly spitting on us and trying to pry the digital camera from my hands. In a friendly way, though) together with all the adults. When Clay tries to tell people he's had trouble sleeping and doesn't want to drink coffee at 10pm, sometimes they answer back, “Why?”

When he tried to look up the word for caffeine in the Vietnamese dictionary, he instead found a phrasal definition that said, “stuff that is inside coffee.”

Since we've been visiting people less and they're maybe starting to learn we don't want to drink coffee that often, I think my coffee intake has gone down to four or so cups a day. Someday, when we can, we hope to sneak away to the market to buy bottled water to smuggle in our rooms. Till then, I only feel sickly dehydrated sometimes.

A Summary

2009-06-06T14:00:58Z

I really hate 'summary of what I'm doing posts.' They're not fun for me to write, not fun for me to read later, and I suspect not really fun for other people to read. So for my Vietnam Adventure I figure I'll write in themed posts on...whatever's fun to write about. On the other hand, when I know someone who's gone somewhere interesting, I do like to have at least a little bit of a general picture of how life goes, so for the first post, here is your boring introduction:

We are staying in Cuchi, a district that is pretty much the suburbs of Saigon, in the house of our youngest uncle and his family. Despite the fact the house is only three bedrooms and I've yet to be able to count exactly how many people live here, we've each got our own room with our own fan, our own room-wall-crawling lizards, (and in my cause my own slightly see-through locking door) and our own surprisingly hard pillow.

I don't think our family really trusts us to go off by ourselves, and I'm not sure I trust us to go off by ourselves, and I'm not sure what there is to see around here in walking distance, so as going Places and doing Things goes, we're pretty much at the will of our uncles. And since for reasons I'm not entirely sure of they object to us traveling very far from where they live here in Cuchi, our days so far seem to be spent (in general order of how much time is spent on the activity) being tired at home, being taken to the homes of relatives in the area to visit, eating, drinking coffee at the cafe of our other uncle next door, (in Clay's case smoking and drinking whiskey, whilst I am distracted with a bottle of soda or group of females), and going to the “market”*.

The farthest we've gone anywhere so far is Saigon, and that was just to visit a couple family houses. Our family seems reluctant to take us places very far, though I'm not sure how much of that is time constraints and how much is just that they don't see why we should want to. The house we stay at has a computer with internet, but other people are usually on it and even when they aren't I feel a little mean staying on it for long in case someone wants to use it. On the other hand, we feel bad trying to go to the internet cafe, since likely the parents will insist we use the computer in the house and yell at the kids for using it so much.

I barely have any diarrhea at all, I sleep a decent amount despite the family waking up around five in the morning, and I'm only a little worried my leg is going to get infected and fall off (due to a scooter mishap. While the scooter wasn't moving). Occasionally the people here teach me how to do cool things, like how to eat peanuts or ride a bike.

And since any post about a trip surely needs at least one, here's an obligatory picture of me in Vietnam:

_____________________
*Note: Not actually a market.

I've had an awful lot of pizza lately.

2009-06-01T13:53:34Z

Location: Vietnam
Doin What: Goin to.
Objective: To distribute bars of Irish Spring soap, chocolate, and vienna sausages to the people of Cuchi.
Will probably get: Dysentery.

I really wanted to give Michael one of the bags of M&Ms. I remember too well the times in my childhood that mother packed away shiny toys and other attractive items I already had a fair amount of (though to my credit, mine were never so SHINY) to send to children my age in Vietnam and the poison green jealousy which I felt.

Instead, I gave him a mint and let him pet my cat. And he totally SCRATCHED HIM ON THE JAW. I didn't even teach him to do that cause I figured it was beyond his 2.5 year ability. Then he tried to steal Best of Sam Part I and II.

Goodbye, Michael.

Also the rest of you.

(Stupid Gmail is stupid and has not let me check my mail for the last half a day and will likely not work again till after I am gone. Mean. T_T)

Happy Birthday Jennies

2009-05-15T23:38:06Z

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JENNIES.
I'm sorry we made you only one musical sing and dance routine.

I'm sure you've all tried it at some point.

2009-04-16T04:36:21Z

I think it was yesterday when Mom told me that this time when she gave Benji a bath, she used laundry bleach to "make he more apricot." He's not orange, blue, bald, lime green or any other weird color, so I'm hoping that's an indication she didn't leave it in very long. That, or maybe she mistook one of the copious jars of sauerkraut for a jug of bleach, the same way she mistook an old, inbred, single-toothed, hard and unappealingly proportioned brown toy poodle for a home decorative item.

It's a good thing they didn't get us barbies. Toys like those are just unwholesome.

2009-04-10T07:51:31Z

If there's actually anyone out there that reads this that doesn't know yet, I was accepted as an alternate for the Jet Program. So if enough people turn down/quit the job some time from now till the end of December, I may be asked to replace it. Bleh, almost worse than getting a 'no.' Supposedly they're pretty good at guessing the number of alternates they'll need and most eventually get offered the job at some point. But I'm a pessimist who does not find much encouragement in neither that nor the likelihood of the number of people who usually turn down the job staying the same considering the current zombie apocalypse.

In other news, long before the days of The Rotten Lettuce (a recorded play in which a late elementary school-aged Brother and I with three of our friends from the neighborhood acted out a mostly nonsensical story which eventually climaxed in the marriage and make-out session of two elderly same-sex couples.), Brother and I played extensively in the world of Ponyland, a rich, complex landscape which you can see some of the fascinating details of through these bits of conversation.

Carl Kitchen: got that my little pony thing you sent me
Carl Kitchen: it was funny
Nora Kitchen: i don't think they explore the idea as thoroughly as they could
Nora Kitchen: but it was a promising idea
Carl Kitchen: yeah, i could go much more in depth
Carl Kitchen: i want to write a serious scholarly paper on it
...
Carl Kitchen: and that episode with the big brothers still bothers me
Carl Kitchen: where were they, why do they leave, what is there relationship with the ponies
Carl Kitchen: the ponies seem to be so excited that they're coming back
Nora Kitchen: i think i had a vague idea it was kind of like this....sailor/fishermen like situation
Carl Kitchen: for some reason when i was a kid, i assumed it was a war.
Nora Kitchen: lol
Carl Kitchen: i think the gulf war was just starting.
Nora Kitchen: you were always so much more violent
Nora Kitchen: my little ponies in the gulf war
Carl Kitchen: or at least they were talking a lot about how their might be a war, i'm not really sure.
Carl Kitchen: because i don't think the gulf war started until i was in 2nd grade.
...
Carl Kitchen: i always thought OUR pony world was much more natural.
Carl Kitchen: and realistic.
Carl Kitchen: even with the implied incest.
...
Carl Kitchen: i don't think i ever thought of it as incest. both pairs had the same parents, but i didn't think of them as brothers and sisters.
Carl Kitchen: maybe we were acting out our secret incestuous fantasies through our ponies.
Nora Kitchen: yeah, well, they all must have been little princes and princesses since their mom and dad were the king and queen, right?
Nora Kitchen: royal incest is a lot more normal
Carl Kitchen: true, lol.
Carl Kitchen: i wish mom and dad had asked us about their kinship ties.
...
Carl Kitchen: i think in the end, willyee and barnacle ended up marrying them [Featherdust and Firefly, their sisters].
Carl Kitchen: buttercup was an exotic fling.
Carl Kitchen: and turned out to be a crazy bitch too. even though originally, she was much more beautiful and elegant.
Carl Kitchen: and cool.
Nora Kitchen: she wasn't their sister, right?
Carl Kitchen: she could've been. i don't think we were ever really clear on that.
Nora Kitchen: i could see her being an illegitimate child
Carl Kitchen: she will probably end up going off on her own, meeting salty, and marrying him.
...
Carl Kitchen: i like how we added majesty, but it was never really clear if she was above or below [king and queen] lightning and firefun in the pony hierarchy
Carl Kitchen: i like to think that she was above
Carl Kitchen: spiritually
Carl Kitchen: lightning was the political ruler
Nora Kitchen: yeah, that was the impression i had, too
...
Carl Kitchen: we should've killed ponies off once in a while to keep it exciting.
Carl Kitchen: but say there was a pony we no longer thought we would play with. we could just kill it off and put it away forever.
Carl Kitchen: like meriweather, i like to think she effectively died.
Carl Kitchen: even though she was there from the beginning.
Carl Kitchen: with gusty. [Gusty and Meriwether were our first My Little Ponies which parents gave to us for Christmas.]
Carl Kitchen: who also died, i like to think.
Nora Kitchen: was gusty a lesbian?
Carl Kitchen: they weren't characters you could identify with.
Nora Kitchen: cause surely meriweather was
Carl Kitchen: gusty was transgender.
Carl Kitchen: born a girl, but identified as male.
Carl Kitchen: the two were obviously too ahead of their time.
Carl Kitchen: so they got kicked off to make room for a more wholesome teen drama.

...Of course, that one time where the ponies went back in time and got magically turned into babies by some sorcerer and the only way they even got back was because they devolved into embryos and then got implanted into Featherdust's stomach so she could rebirth the entire pony kingdom kind of complicates the family relations even worse.

A Report From Brother

2009-03-06T21:47:39Z

*brother walks upstairs*

Mama: I got eeeeverytin' I need to make lasagna.

Mama: I got noodoos and meat and cotta' cheese...

Clay: You need ricotta cheese mom, not cottage cheese.

Mama: I say I got 'cotta cheese!

Clay: Ricotta cheese!

Mama: 'Cotta cheese!

Clay: Ricotta cheese!

Mama: 'COTTA CHEESE!

*loop*

Daughter Abuse

2009-01-30T10:15:13Z

I IS GOING TO FAIL.

2009-01-28T13:01:13Z

I HAZ JET INTERVIEW.

NOW ALL I HAVE TO DO IS FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET SOMEONE WITH A BETTER PERSONALITY TO DO THE INTERVIEW FOR ME, AND I'M SET.

Tolerate my blog abuse. It's my first day back.

2009-01-20T00:18:53Z

This takes a little while to get interesting, but still. I think it's still pretty deserving of an OH JOHN RINGO NO.

Dinner At Any Cost

2009-01-19T21:31:27Z

After the constant big dinners every night of fried chicken, clam chowder, pizza, tacos, egg rolls, etc., along with the blinding amount of candy Mom took up here and offered everyone to eat at every chance she got (after dinner, before dinner, between lunch and dinner, after lunch, before lunch, between breakfast and lunch, after breakfast, and before breakfast, often with reminders during the meals that there was candy waiting after we finished), along with me now living on the same floor as her in a room with no lock so that she may constantly pop in and note how much time I spend reading or on the computer while on vacation with nowhere to go, my mother is starting to go through one of her phases of being extra concerned about my weight.

These times consist pretty consistently of the following:

- Mentions of how disgusting boys must find me

- Mentions of how I will never be able to marry a rich man looking like this

- Helpful advice like, “You know, they say that even when you on diet you can still eat yogurt.”

- Taking me near the clothes sections of stores so that she can slyly point out something “putty” with sequins and then act like she'd like to buy it for me (or outright offer to), then suddenly realize it isn't in a size that would fit me (sometimes because we're in the children's section), and then sadly put the piece of clothing back on the rack

- Offers of pills to make me not eat

- Mentions of skinny girls who were able to get attractive, rich husbands but would not have been able to if they had not been skinny (if we derail the conversation by pointing out attractive skinny girls who have fat, not-all-that-rich husbands, she will insist the husbands are actually richer than they seem)

- Still offering me sweet and fatty foods at the same rate and with the same enthusiasm, and still getting insulted if it is something home made and I turn it down entirely, but if I happen to eat a smaller amount than expected, saying “Good, you cuttin' back,” or various other such comments, and then often starting in again on the subject of weight loss and bringing up any of the topics mentioned here

- Reacting in a similar way if she sees me doing anything mildly athletic

- Telling me if I get any bigger I will break chairs, not fit in doors, and need help getting in and out of cars

- Telling Clay to talk to his sister and tell her to lose weight

- Making insulting comments about my friends devaluing their worth as decent human beings because of their weight (this does indeed go for even the friends who are not overweight, as though her comments on them are not intentionally insulting, I know if I were them I wouldn't find the implication that they look down on fat people, keep skinny so that they can snag rich husbands and cheat on them, and that they aren't very intelligent or independent because they don't NEED to be because they can just depend on said husbands very suggestive one is a decent human being myself)

- Offers to “pay someone some money” to “get you taken care of”

- After two or ten comments along these lines, insisting that in actuality what she's really worried about is my health

But despite the repetition, each time Mother goes through one of her phases we get new gems of insight. This time, I asked who they were going to pay to get me taken care of. Mom said the doctor or Weight Watchers. That kind of surprised me, because I knew doctors killed people so they could harvest their organs all the time so it's not so surprising they'd do it by request, but I had no idea Weight Watchers was into that sort of thing, too. I guess I'll have to watch out now.

Also, she informed father while watching TV and movies with him (this is what she does when she's on vacation with nothing to do. I get the feeling if I did this with her rather than read she'd be a lot more approving) that the heat your body makes when you exercise is in fact the literal burning of one's calories. (It sounded to me like she was implying the heat of the body was what was actually burning the calories (rather than the heat being a byproduct of the burning), but I wasn't sure and brother was even less.)

Also this time, Mother realized that she disapproved of me playing Dance Dance Revolution. She used to be happy that I was “gettin ya blood circulatin'” but when she watched brother and I play it together she noticed that it took a lot longer for me to get tired. I stepped around too calmly, while brother bounced around more to hit the arrows. Now, mother is unimpressed by the game because clearly I'm playing it lazy and not using any energy. (She doesn't tend to see me play the harder songs as I don't tend to chose them when playing with other people because, of course, they bounce around when they play too much and can't survive as well through them if at all.)

On the other hand, Mother does occasionally play the game sometimes (on the slowest songs available on beginner mode) and occasionally she does see me playing alone too, so she also told me now that (despite my lazy style) I'm going to wear out my ankles playing that game. When I asked her what she meant (meaning more to get elaboration than not understanding the basic concept), she laughed like there was some big embarrassing joke I wasn't getting and told Dad to explain it to me. I figured there must be some story behind this with all her inside-joke-implying laughter, so I encouraged Dad to explain what she meant, but all he'd say was 'Some things are just hard to understand.' ...If there were anything to explain I think he'd have said it, so I think she was just meaning it would wear out my ankles because I was so heavy, and thought I didn't understand from the beginning she was implying that and was laughing (because she was in a particularly good mood) at how clearly unaware I was of the state and weight of my body. Hahaha. Haha. Ha.

Cheerful good humor escaped her entirely, however, when she discovered I'd decorated my depressingly bare Siletz!Home room walls with entirely-in-Japanese-and-with-pictures recipe cards I'd found in the thrift store.

Despite all the talk of good husbands, though, my mom in the end told me yesterday that what I should really look for/care about in a man is how many times he calls in sick to work. So long as he has a good job and doesn't call in sick much, then he's good enough. With high standards like that I might have to put up with him sleeping around some*, but it's a much better than trying to stick to just faithful men in the end.

*Though at times I may play around with my mother's phrasing of things to emphasize the silliness of some things, this is pretty much exactly what she said, reworded to make it make sense to..normal English speakers. She said it multiple times.

But anyway, this leads me to my final point: I NEED TO DECORATE MY SILETZ!HOME ROOM WITH AS MANY PICTURES OF FOOD AS POSSIBLE. Currently in the works is a collage of magazine cut outs of food that I will put on a large piece of cardboard I have. I wanted to finish it here before we left, but I just don't have enough food pictures yet. Clay did find for me a newspaper headline that said 'Dinner At Any Cost,' though. So. IF YOU FIND ANY GOOD/INTERESTING PICTURES OF FOOD, PLEASE SEND THEM TO ME. Remember, I'm at 11954 La Pan Dr. Boise, ID 83709. (Stalkers, please keep in mind that my mother also lives at this address. Unless you have a really good work ethic, she'll probably come after you with a butcher knife.)

Also, DO YOU HAVE ANY AWESOME STORIES OF PARENTS AND WEIGHT ISSUES? I want to hear all your fantastic stories.

PS. Back at Boise!Home now.

PPS. Probable next journal entry: Child Abuse, On Tape

Boy, dog.

2009-01-06T00:36:49Z

*Benji dances around at Mom's feet, glancing at his food bowl constantly*

“Boy, dog, you know? Dey can't talk but Dey sure can...you know.”

“Yep,” Dad says, continuing to pull on his boots. “They seem to be able to let you know what they're thinking without having to say anything at all.”

For my birthday

2008-12-12T03:16:59Z

If possible, I would appreciate it if one of you guys would get me one of these for my birthday.

In other news,

You know what I mean?

Winzzzz.

2008-11-05T06:11:08Z

Bwahahahahaah, we winzzzzzzz.

I was right behind Sarah Sanfalippo (if that's even how you spell her name?) at the polling place today. I didn't even recognize her till they said her name when she voted, so I helloed her and said so. She asked how I was doing and left pretty quick. I figured she didn't remember me, and then felt bad, because you know, I bet you have to put up with a lot of people who remember you that you don't remember when you have a name like Sanfalippo.

:(

2008-08-26T19:30:45Z

My ADD linguistics professor Mary Ellen died in the fire last night. I was going to go to my night class with her at six today. ...Not fair. :(

Chronicles in the Life of Porn Goddess

2008-08-24T21:25:04Z

As I walked down the stairs today, after I woke up to find all the little cousins, their parents, my half-brother Ben, and one of my little nieces over (oh, and now I hear a friend of the family up there, too), I noted the homemade wrapping paper Pock used to wrap the 'THE PORN GODDESS officially approves this for your virgin eyes' stamp she so kindly gave me, which I had apparently forgotten to take downstairs and was sitting conspicuously in the entranceway to the house.

It was, of course, covered in multi-colored penises.

*wins for today*

(PS. They've installed a switch to disconnect the battery in my car! So now when my car stops for no reason in probably the next few times I use it, I'll be able to easily turn the battery off and pretend that's why it isn't working! I think it'll give me a lot more of a sense of control over the situation.)

Haunt me forever.

2008-07-26T11:08:12Z

I went upstairs, and there was a banana sitting in the middle of the table.

I went back down, and scratched my leg, till I realized I had a mosquito bite.

...This is going to haunt me forever, isn't it?

PockLove II

2008-07-22T00:34:21Z

pennergy: We didn't have weiner until now. Good thinking, Nora!

...You might want to know, but I certainly don't want to tell you.

PocketLove

2008-07-21T00:19:00Z

pennergy: I had to turn off pictures in my web browser.
pennergy: Because web sites that tell you how to get rid of spiders have pictures of spiders on them.
pennergy: Which just seems cruel to me.
pennergy: If I wanted to look at them, I wouldn't be trying to get rid of them!
[ . . . ]
pennergy: After I started crying, Matthew put rather a lot of rum and creme de cassis in my orange juice.
pennergy: I'm still scared, but now I move slower.

<3

For Jennies

2008-07-13T10:15:48Z

Poor Tajima. :(

Gone cabbinning.

2008-07-05T02:24:55Z

Gone cabbinning. Once Parents find a battery to replace their fancy coded door lock. Cause apparently when it wears down, it stays in a permanently unlocked position.

But we'll leave. In fact, we'll probably leave right now. That's the Mama 'now,' of course.