You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby
Learning more about my mom’s Coming To America story always yields interesting facts:
Three people could order full meals for a total of $7 at McD’s – including milkshakes. Also, her American beginnings were a lot (and by a lot, I mean really, really a lot) more humble than she originally let on. I think she’s telling me her story now (albeit in bits and pieces) because she knows I’m old enough to understand and appreciate what she’s been through. I know that my pre-college self wasn’t mature enough to fully comprehend all that my mom, grandma, and aunt persevered when they first tried to find their feet in the US. I don’t think she’d want me sharing too much on the interwebs, since she’s given me the impression that sharing these memories is not an easy task for her, so I’m not going to divulge too much here except to say that my parents have come a very, very long way.
On Saturday, the four of us had a family portrait session. It was Dad’s idea – he thought it was kind of sad that the last time we had professional photos taken (not including yearbook photos senior year of high school) was about 20 years ago. The pictures came out pretty good, I think.
Today, I saw a wedding announcement for someone I knew from my swim team days. It’s amazing how much he seems to have grown up in the span of 5 years. I could recount some pretty entertaining stories about his antics during swim practice, but I’d like to think that he’s put all that behind him now that he’s a married man and perhaps on his way to being a family man. All I can say is – having known what this guy was like in high school…woah.
So today’s lesson is that we’re never very good at predicting how people are going to turn out. We just never know.
To Do
On my ever-growing list of things to blog about:
- The Republican Alternative Budget without any concrete numbers except for the 11% tax cut for the wealthiest;
- How agencies that are “too big to fail” are, some argue, too big in the first place (anyone remember that teeny episode of trust-busting in American history? Or is that only a figment of high school government courses’ imagination?);
- My heartbreak when it comes to chucking my college notebooks in the recycling bin because they take up so much space and render so little use these days.
Since all of America is sitting on the edge of their seats until some vague point in time next week when Boehner and his crew finally unleash some specifics regarding the Republican alternative budget, there isn’t much to write about on that front that hasn’t already been exclaimed by more proficient bloggers and commentators.
The same applies to #2, where anything I have to say on the subject has already been echoed by experts on the subject of Corporate America’s back-and-forth tango with (de/re)regulation legislation. My main thought on the subject is this (and although I haven’t seen these comments made by anyone else, it’s probably because I haven’t been reading widely enough – I know someone else is thinking this, too…):
Fiscal conservatives LOVE to talk about small businesses and their potential to create more jobs. Let the businesses keep their hard earned money, it’s been said, and these small businesses will hire more people, yadda yadda yadda. That statement I have no problem with. I do have a problem with the fact that they REFUSE TO PUT THEIR MONEY WHERE THEIR MOUTHS ARE.
I’m not going to bother with the three-names-in-a-row bills that created (then dismantled) regulations that barred (then de-barred) major money-related corporations from combining forces. The bottom line is: the end result is that fiscal conservatives WANTED LESS regulation so that mega-companies could form once again in order to make mucho bucks. These great, big, money-hungry operations PUT SMALL BUSINESSES OUT OF BUSINESS. Every time CitiGroup added another branch, they BOUGHT OUT the small guys and FIRED people who held jobs in those small ventures because they already had people working in those positions. CitiGroup, Bank of America, and the other corporations became the WalMarts of the market, buying out the mom and pop banks and pushing small insurance and credit companies out of the picture. How is that advocating for small business? When you’re taking big corporate donations and feeding off their lobbyists, how can you pull off the act of posturing for the small business owners who get swallowed up by your donors???
You can’t go around showing off your state-of-the-art aquarium of big ol’ fancy fish while saying, “I support the carnival-prize-goldfish in the little bowl on the kitchen window sill.” Don’t you realize these goldfish are otherwise known as feeder fish to the species you keep in your megatank? I wish these conservatives would own up to the major discrepancy that exists behind their money-grubbing actions and their self-righteous language meant to woo their voting base.
As for #3 – I just want to sigh. Those were some good times.
Here’s To Your Health
Just watched a tv commercial for Centrum Silver and couldn’t help noticing the parallels in advertising between Centrum products and the claims printed on the label of pellets I feed my fish. They both provide “essential nutrients” needed to “maintain optimum health” and list various combinations of vitamins, minerals, and who knows what else – in Centrum’s case, to improve heart health, etc. and in the fish food’s case, color enhancement and protective slime coating (wouldn’t want our elderly covered in slime).
I can speak for my fish, affectionately known as FishyFace. He swims around in a 5-gallon tank all by himself (a Betta) and the only food he eats is the food I give him. Sometimes he frolicks around in the fake plants, but most of his time is spent creating spit-bubble nests to impress the females that don’t exist. I feed him fancy fish food because no one makes betta food that isn’t fancy. Bettas are, inherently, a fancy fish. So I’m not giving him special pellets that contain special nutrients and supplements because I’m being overly indulging, but because there isn’t a fish food out there for bettas that DOESN’T contain these things. So FishyFace couldn’t get away from these “vital nutrients” if he tried.
The elderly, on the other hand, have access to a diet much more varied than FishyFace’s. Even when I picture the sordid, stereotypical nursing home/hospice care meal, I see foods of different colors, ranging from having little (or no) nutritional value to being chock full of things that would have provided greater benefit to their health in earlier years. My fish doesn’t get Jell-O, tomato soup, or anything covered in gravy.
I guess we can all sleep better at night knowing that society is looking out for those less able to fend for themselves because FishyFace and Grandpa/ma are getting their daily dose of a random assortment of who-knows-what, even if the FDA has not approved any claims relating to these products.
Oh, I Wish!
This morning I showed up for my scholarship interview, expecting it to be very similar to the last time I was interviewed by the same organization as a high school senior planning my undergraduate finances.
Last night, I pictured a panel of interviewers, and psyched myself up by practicing my answers by pretending to be on a Sunday show like Meet The Press.
It was nothing like that. Instead, I had a very pleasant chat with a single interviewer for approximately 25 minutes, and that was that.
Only In Dreams
This morning, I had every intention of waking up at a decent hour in order to pack at leisure for my trip, but for some unknown reason I decided to go back to sleep even though I wasn’t that tired.
I’m so glad I did.
After I went back to sleep, I had one of the best dreams I can remember, so I’m blogging about it before I forget.
The where and when are fuzzy, but what stands out is this: I’m telling Michelle Obama that I got into UChicago and my dream is coming true. She gives me two thumbs up and a hug and says, “I knew you could do it.”
To Be Young Once More
*unleashing my inner 12-year old again*
OMG! Best week ever! 10 hours early! http://twitpic.com/2a9fi
Three Volcanoes
The Little Prince climbed a high mountain. The only mountains he had ever known were the three volcanoes, which came up to his knee. And he used the extinct volcano as a footstool. From a mountain as high as this one, he said to himself, I’ll get a view of the whole planet and all the people on it…But he saw nothing but rocky peaks as sharp as needles.
I called my parents last night to tell them the good news about getting into school. My dad reminded me that, had it not been for the brutal rejections I got in previous years going down a different path, I would not be able to appreciate today’s great events so thoroughly (not to mention, this would never have been possible in the first place). He told me about his early days as an aspiring architect and how difficult it was for him to find his feet in the field and establish himself as an entrepreneur – all stories which I’ve heard bits and pieces of in the past few years as he’s watched me struggle growing up, but I still like hearing about how he eventually found success.
This is a wonderful moment. The past couple of years have been filled with volcanoes, but now I can look back at all the eruptions and know that I came away in one piece. The mountain I’m on now is a temporary high – there’s a lot of hard work ahead, but it’s so nice to be able to stick my head in the clouds and just breathe for now.
Crescat scientia; vita excolatur
Beginning in September 2009, I will be a graduate student at the University of Chicago’s Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy Studies.
Thank you to all who have generously provided the love, support, mentoring, and experiences that made this possible.
Behold! The Night Mare
And the night mare rides on, and
the night mare rides on
With a december black psalm
And the night mare rides on~Smashing Pumpkins, Behold! The Night Mare (Adore, 1998)
I live directly below an agoraphobic hypochondriac. She doesn’t open the door when people knock and she doesn’t answer polite notes handwritten on fancy paper. Instead, she whines and bitches through her still-shut front door about having some vague, non-descript ear condition that requires some un-Godly contraption that threatens to drive me clinically insane with an intense, low-pitched drone as I lay trying hopelessly to sleep at night. Apparently, because one of her other neighbors watches TV and because she can hear her own refrigerator in her 600-square-foot apartment, that means it’s ok to drown us in noise that would drive any regular Nascar fanatic bat-shit-crazy.
But as a friend poignantly observed the other day, “You’re not living in Chicago if you don’t hate your neighbor for doing something stupid.” I really hope I’m not that that neighbor to someone else…
