Indecisive Peach

In January, still enamored with having steady health insurance, I decided to go and see what an orthodontist would say to my teeth. Now in a family of Germans and Scottish, I came out with a hint of Austin Powers teeth. Both my parents had neatly aligned teeth, so, they never thought to open my jaw like a horse to divine the quality of mine. The German efficiency was tossed aside when it should have been, “Dear child, you have some nice acne and are sufficiently awkward now, why not amp it up with some braces and when you’re in your mid twenties, you’ll be able to just remember all that, with vengeance, as just building character?”

No.

So, I wiggle around as I sit for a mold of my teeth and smile wider than I do naturally for my Before Shot. The consult with both the doctor, a laid back Texan, and his business end, his polished early-fifties ex-cheerleader wife, went well. He told me that I had a whole slew of problems, crossbite, overbite, orthoitis of this and orthoitis of that with a bout of snaggle. A little of this and bit of that and in 20-24 months, you’ll be set. Holy moses, two years, I thought and sunk into my chair. Oh, and before we start, get your wisdom teeth removed, missy. He gets up to shake my hand.

Right.

With the business end, I nodded blankly to the figures, still mulling the time in my head. Now in January, I was still thinking Japan! and Sushi! and Hot Japanese Guys! so I told them I needed to wait, but that I’d take them up on the wisdom teeth idea and after that I’d get back to them. I set up for the wisdom teeth removal, blessedly only the top because the miracle of evolution made me not have any on the bottom, and this is another story not to be told here except that you know that someone loves you when they take wads of your blood-soaked bandages and only wrinkle their face.

[Thanks J. ^_^]

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It seems that there is a mythic type of parent-child relation, the time when the child realizes that the parent is very much human and fallible. That it can be a bit of a disappointment in what you’ve built as a small frame for the world. Not that I particularly think it’s a good thing (and nor do I blame my parents for it), but the fact that I was able to experience it very early allowed me to integrate that into who I was even as a teenager. Somehow, I felt that it gave me equal amounts of exasperation and compassion toward my parents.

I would wager to say that what I’ve been grappling with lately is also something very potent in terms of recognizing yourself inside or outside the models of life that your parents created for you – specifically, how well do their values align to what you feel is right for how you want to approach your life? There is a lot of nagging in my mind on the naivete that is espoused in value creation. If I am firm and resolute about something now because of the experiences I’ve had, will I be a sell out if I change my mind when I’m older and these things do not apply? Or I realize that they didn’t mean the same compared to what I thought they did right now?

My Dad’s favorite saying that he liked to impart to me was, “Live to work or work to live?” He was very, very anti-establishment, as much as one could be being in the military. He refused to play nice for a lot of things sometimes, in the theoretical vein of, ‘Why play nice, when one has ethics to stand up for?’

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For me, it never fails that the reflection of a past year tends to be a matter of thinking about how random life actually can be and that the best laid plans really can be even better than what you thought they might be from the onset.

I’m approaching this in a positive light because this year has been pretty damn swell. Granted, there are still roughly sixty days left and sure, there are nuggets of discontent, but when viewed in the glow of the environment, everything is peachy.

A year ago everything was incredibly stable, but also with this strange malaise of looming change. My Mom would be making the change to Germany, yet we had no idea how quickly this would happen at the time. I was in a terrifically horrible relationship that equated to a complete waste in time and effort. I was applying to the JET program, trying to take a blind leap of faith out of the system.

2009.

It turned out that my Mom’s call to the universe helped clear her mind for the better. It turned out that there was a cheerful young man I needed to meet and fall in love with. It turned out that with the first application I got at least runner up placement and as non-Japanese speaking, non-certified teacher I felt that was a very pleasant outcome to my waffling query of the universe.

What I did realize is that being severely pointed in discussions with the universe (and yes, this unfortunately meant in the completely New Age tint) is probably the best way to go about things. Waffling has been my m.o. for a very long time, but somehow…things need to change and I need to change them. Step one: more writing.

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Her face lifted and brightened as I approached the counter and I gave my best wary smile.
“I’d, um, like the – “
“WOW. It has been a long time.”
I focused on the woman.

She was a small woman with blonde hair pulled starkly back into a short ponytail. She was woman that as a child probably already had a hard, angular look and when the tint of age began to seep in, her face welded into a mask of worn porportions. It was a look of rough life, but to me it somehow was a look that spoke more to a life that is being made more hard than it needs to be. I had never seen her before.

“It has been a really long time since I’ve seen you,” she said excitedly. “How have you been? Wow, it’s been a long while since I’ve seen you. It’s been months since you’ve been here, right?”

I bit taken aback as I quickly calculated, “It’s been a while…sure.” I nod slowly at her.

“I knew it!” She gave me a large grin. “How are you?”

She asks if I’ve graduated and what I’m currently doing, a constant hum of genuine pleasure from every question. I start to feel a little umcomfortable. As she takes my order, she takes my name and nods authoritatively with recognition as I give it.

She leans back to put the order to the sandwich makers behind her and I had a thought. Leaning a hand on the counter I asked, “And…I’m sorry…your name is?” She spun back forward, brightening even more. We banter on a bit more and then she curls over the cash machine, “You know what?” She pulls out a extra large cup, “The least I can do for a long lost customer.”

First, an extra-sized drink – next, the world.

“This is going to go into your blog again, isn’t it?” he said as we
stepped out of the apartment and I nodded vigorously with a large smile.
“Of course it is! Dialogue is one of my favorite framing methods for
writing.”

I had texted him the day before during lunch to pick me up and take me off campus. As I climbed into the car, “Anywhere, I don’t care,” I huffed. I
leaned my head back and closed my eyes, “And I’m not hungry so food is up to you.”

J had been driving one of my cars since his had been in the shop. As it
works out on our campus, I’m able to watch him drive up from the main
University Street from a circular lookout inside the campus where I can be
picked up. I had been in an uncomfortable mood. I had been
considering that I needed to keep thinking about concrete thoughts instead of letting my emotions get a hold of me. As I watched the car, the paint stripping from the sun off the top, I thought about my Dad and how he would have viewed my morose inaction in my current situation. And I had slipped back, swallowing hard. I thought about the concrete – my German flag novelty license plate I saw as he drove up was a pretty good representation of who I was. A haphazard identity, crooked even, that’s me.

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“It’s like being permanently tied to another person with a 20′ long rope. You can use the rope to rescue each other from dangerous situations or you can use it to strangle each other.

The choice is yours.”

- User pamsblog, from Reddit’s question on, “What is married life like?”

“I’m going to be really sad if you start writing all of your posts in Spanish.”

“Did you see the paragraphs between the Spanish ones?”

“…I did,” my Mom replied and continued on, “But…do you…actually understand what you were typing, the words?”

“Did you read to the end?”

And in a wavering voice that clearly means ‘No’, she slowly said, “…Yes?”

[Ed. Note: I found this hysterical collection of writing prompts and I’m choosing one specifically to goad someone into commenting, even if he’s grimacing, typing with one hand, and shielding his eyes with the other. As I did my best eyelash batting while asking him to comment, he told me he was hesitant to, “I would never comment… how your friends comment.” I told him to not mind E. He has a strange Matt Lauer obsession.]

33. Write a post in a language you don’t speak.*

Yo no soy el mayor fan de la comida mexicana, en teoría, pero he adquirido el gusto por algunas de las opciones de tonto. Como de tarde, he estado ejecutando a lo largo de los locales de comidas en el campus en torno a 10:30 de la mañana para obtener mi burrito de frijoles y queso revisión. Tengo que entregar al burrito-juego de palabras poco la intención – es eficaz. Mi genética aprobar.

I’m not the biggest fan of Mexican food in theory, but I have acquired a taste for some of the wimp options. As of late, I have been running over to the local food court on campus at about 10:30 in the morning to get my bean and cheese burrito fix. I have to hand it to the burrito –pun slightly intended – it is efficient. My genetics approve.

Hace años, hizo su mejor J destetar a mí después de la comida picante en que lo conocí, incluso después se dio cuenta de que era muy similar a un toro a arrastrar masacre. Le imploro a intentar, pero se negaría al azar y el orden en el menú. Por lo general, esto me dejó picar sobre la tostada fuera algún tipo de mezcla de diablo y comer los frijoles, arroz, tomate y lechuga y aderezo. Estoy aquí para decir que puede perder peso comiendo comida mexicana si no lo hace, usted sabe, se come.

Years ago, J did his best to wean me onto spicy food after I met him, even after he realized it was much like dragging a bull to slaughter. He would implore me to try, but I would refuse and order randomly from the menu. This usually left me nibbling on the toasted outside of some sort of devil concoction and eating the beans, rice, and lettuce and tomato garnish. I’m here to tell you, you can lose weight eating Mexican food if you don’t, you know, eat it.

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I have an early memory of being with my grandparents as they were picking up their potato crop. I must have been about three or four as my grandma held out wriggling snails in her brown, dirt-caked hand that she found as she went along. I remember how the dirt smelled as they turned it over in searching, how the potatoes clunked one-by-one into the buckets, and how it felt to sit on the collected mound.

The translation of my Mom’s last name is people of the cliffs. My grandfather’s mother’s name is people of the fields. An earthy tincture should run in my blood. I should have meandered into this world with both thumbs being bright green. As I’ve looked over the immaculate rows of carefully tended vegetables in my grandparent’s garden, with strawberries that do not taste like water and cucumbers that compliment butter, I feel that I should be able to cull plant growth much like Batman’s Poison Ivy. Hell, Uma should have NOTHING on me.

It seems, however, that I’ve taken the Kill Bill role and have killed many, many plants in my time. I kill flowers, spider plants, herbs. I’m pretty indiscriminate in my murdering. I kill cacti and that’s nearly damn impossible. The last was a perfectly stable cactus I got from my Mom which I believe I over-watered in my excitement and it fell inside itself with rot. [Sorry, Mom. *cough*]

And so the current apartment farming experiment I’ve conducted has been a success of sprawling and epic proportions. Check it out, my first crop:

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After five years of archival experience, I was in a room with the development officer and the man from the company who was persona non grata. Only last week did it slip in the last meeting before the department head left for vacation that I’d be handling a meeting for someone who was restricted access to a collection we had.

I sat in the cramped room full of cast-off teal chairs with a holdover from the seventies who really was a researcher that want to know how to be an archivist.

What gets my goat, and my goat is more spry lately, is that I don’t get paid, nor recognized for the profession’s work I do, yet here I am, refocusing this man’s excitement about sub-woofers into archival procedure. FOCUS PEOPLE.

Priorities in a project. Audience being addressed. Why am I telling a 50 year old man, a many decaded engineer, how to manage a project at the very basic level? This is not rocket science people. It is figuring out an audience for PAPER. Google can educate you in this.