“Beautiful,” he said holding the small piece from the envelope.

Holding it in the light, he showed it to me. I nodded my head quietly. Finally. After almost a year of waiting.

As he put it in, I was suddenly afraid. Was this it? Last year in March, I cried in pain—pain of losing not physical pain. “What do I do?” I wailed standing in the doorway. A few weeks later, I found a solution and started making the financial payments. Ironically, I gritted my teeth as I handed over my credit not once, not twice, but three times.

And today…at 9:40 am, I was sitting in a chair as I finally received what I had paid in money, time, sweat, pain, tears, sleepless nights…

I blinked and it was over. It was in. It felt tight. I tested it and he gave me a mirror. I was normal again.

“Beautiful?” he asked.

I nodded.

I have too many demands.

Computer troubleshooting (for others), essay, birthdays, trips, reminding others of their obligations (because they have trouble remembering)

There is a singular goal. It all depends on you now.

You shout your commands. These are the ones that are meant to be heard. You cannot do it alone and only you can see it through.

But nothing happens. The landscape stays unchanged. The sun stuck in the sky and the moon out of reach. It stays. In your mind, you will it to change. Change! you shout. But the trees, the sky, the water don’t hear you.

Or if they do, they complain. They can’t do it. They don’t have the power to change. You have the suggestions, the recommendations, the steps…you give it all to them. You are giving. You are constantly giving. You don’t think that you are commanding—an malevolent force. You rule with empathy and patience.

But perhaps, they don’t see you that way. And that’s why time is frozen and unchanging.

“Are you sick?” Jeff asked without hesitation, hearing my voice over the phone.

“Umm…yeah,” I admitted. “Ok, maybe I shouldn’t go to lunch anyway.”

For the rest of the day, I shut myself in my room. The fourth week that I was sick with some unidentified culprit, sneezing and letting my nose drip in privacy. In bed, I finished reading Choke and browsed through the latest issue of Good. For nearly an hour, I let myself lie…without reason. Not asleep, but not awake.

In that dream state, I remember being told how I should exercise. So at 4:45 pm as the sky was getting dark, I put on my contacts, pulled on atheletic pants and a U of M sweatshirt. Stuffing my feet into my Nikes, I tumbled out the door, walking briskly up to Noe Valley.

Two people looked at me weirdly with my head completely covered with my hood. At the top of the hill, I felt that I was on a rampage. I raced across the streets, only pausing at streetlights. At one intersection, I stopped waiting for a light until I realized there was no light. A car had stopped waiting for me to cross and sheepishly, I trotted forward after the realization.

At Castro, there was a biker blaring loud music as he drove around the block and back again. Families glanced at him. The couple not accustomed to a place without taxis looked startled. I let myself follow their thoughts of what a nuisance and disturbance and what kind of place that doesn’t have taxis? But corrected the conservatism to my usual liberalism as I crossed the street and again so that I was where I had started.

I zoomed back down the hill, avoiding the clothing stores and the bakeries that beckoned me. I had paused at Noe Valley Bakery earlier, but in my sudden desire to leave my apartment, I decided only bring my keys and a single dollar bill. At the time, I thought a dollar bill will be sufficient to buy whatever I would be compelled to buy. But of course, it wasn’t and I window-shopped instead.

In less than an hour, I was back in my apartment wiping my face and realizing that my apartment is really warmer than the outside.

An awkward moment is when your significant other’s bestest closest male friend makes small talk with your sister at a recent football and is told that she’s the opposite of you—that she is inherently more social and extroverted—and he deliberately flirts with her on Facebook but she thinks it’s a joke and you think it’s funny too and you encourage her to just hang out and they do on a Friday night which leads to a long 4 hour happy hour where he lets her win in pool and various contests but you already know your sister prefers a different type and is really looking for company since she’s moving in less than a month but unfortunately he didn’t get the memo and thinks there’s something more than there really is and you spend the rest of the Friday evening wondering if she’s ok and really it was he who wasn’t ok because she stood in shock in the middle of downtown when he made a move and you say Be mature and talk it out when she returns and they do, but you know the very next time you see him in person, he won’t feel compelled to talk as freely and there will be silence that blankets the room because you yourself feel mixed about what happened because you knew it was never meant to be in the beginning.

I have been tagged by the Naim! This means I have to write 7 random/weird facts about me. Even though it may be the same as some of the 100 things I have posted somewhere…out there!

1. I don’t drink.
   The one fact that many of my friends know. Drink as in alcohol. I have had sips here and there, but barely a full drink. At first, it was the morality that got in the way…but once I got over it. I still wasn’t interested. I never felt like I was missing anything despite following friends to bars and accompanying coworkers to the local happy hour. Somehow, I never liked the taste and often opted for the non-alcoholic drinks—telling bartenders to fill a glass wit tonic water and declare that I was drinking gin and tonic. I would joke that it was jenn and tonic. There are times that I know life would be easier to have a social lubricant, but after an hour or so in the company of people who had several drinks…I too become a little wilder than normal and can fake my stumbling pretty well.
2. I love to plan.
   When I was a kid, I would plan out family vacations, dictating where we would visit. The transportation it would take. Now years later as an adult, I can’t help but also take charge of planning trips, planning parties, planning reunions. It’s almost in my blood. If I am not at the helm, I am very near it…sometimes so much so that someone will eventually hand the reins to me.
3. I almost never use any acronyms or slang when speaking online.
   I admit that I like to be coherent in English. I see slang and acronyms (except for btw and brb) to not effectively deliver what I want to communicate. In almost teasing lightheartedness, I declare wut in presence of an unexpected situation. I tend to spell out everything in im and in email. Although there are times that my language will stoop into what is now known as LOLZ CATZ language. I learned that way before all you wannabes!
4. I used to host an online radio talk show
   It was called Screw Those Idiots. I hosted it with a guy I met online (of course) who lived in Eastern Washington. Having never met him in person…being the day before podcasts, he hosted a winamp stream on his servers. Using a headset through my computer, we discussed topics from horrible bloggers to the state of the internet. We had approximately a total of three shows usually consisting of criticizing someone or some culture. We made phone calls to people for interviews. At the time, I had some stake in an online community and received much backlash for critiquing a fellow blogger who I felt wasn’t attempting to convey anything beyond what she ate for breakfast and how sleepy she was. The show ended when the guy—a high schooler then—came out of the closet and his parents kicked him out of the house.
5. I had headgear as a kid
   I only wanted to be accepted as a child. When given the (death) sentence of headgear in middle school, I decided that I only wanted to wear it at night and on weekends to avoid any public embarrassment at school. Fortunately, in less than 6 months my teeth were corrected and I didn’t have to wear that horrid thing anymore.
6. I make prints of my digital photos once every year.
   Physical media I feel is the best marker of memories. There are digital photos sure on Flickr, but it’s not tangible. It’s not always present. It’s lost within the screen, behind windows and websites. Every year, I print out a large batch of pictures using a code to get free prints. Then I put them in my album or hand them to people. People seem to appreciate it…because they don’t have tangible evidence of memories.
7. I love citrus-flavored drinks and cold desserts.
   Lemonade. Mojitos (usually non-alcoholic). Lemon sorbet. Lemon gelato. Lemon iced tea. Arnold palmer. Is it girly? For some reason, I love that sour and sweet taste. It hits me to remind me that it’s not naturally sweet, but there’s some other flavor to twist the taste into something…so different and complex. Or at least, it is a fascination to me.

Oddly enough, most people in my online world…don’t blog as much (or would never stoop to the level of Internet memes or haven’t blogged for more than a year)…but I tag:

And the rules:

1. Proposition 8 to win
2. Enjoy visiting Pittsburgh more than New York City
3. That the election would touch so many people’s lives
4. A woman in the race would be on the Republican ticket
5. That I realize there are some friends worth saving
6. And some friends that are not
7. My boss would leave the company
8. To get a chance to attend SXSW
9. To volunteer for IxDA
10. Become tired of being Yelp elite
11. Meet others who were tired of being Yelp elite
12. Get a call requesting that I take down a Yelp review
13. Getting a followup message on yelp threatening a lawsuit of no less than $25,000
14. Receiving such help from the Yelp community about said issue
15. Get tired of froyo
16. Attend not one, but two weddings
17. But not make it to a wedding that I really wanted to attend
18. Little Big Planet to be my favorite video game
19. Attend the Emerald Bowl as the only football game I attended
20. OJ to actually be a criminal!
21. Gas to hit $4
22. Gas to hit $1.50
23. A man named Joe would be a national sensation
24. Take a BATS improv class
25. Willingly karaoke in front of strangers and not just shriek my voice off