My Mother

My mother is the most wonderful, bewildering, exasperating, terrifying woman I know. I'm torn between a fervent desire to grow up to be half the woman she is, and a bone-deep fear of possessing all her strange quirks and maladies.

We look almost the same, if it weren't for my colouring, but most of our similarities end there. I'm devoutly liberal, and my mother has all the political awareness of a cucumber. I've loved music since day one, and everything from jazz to punk, to opera and back again is on my playlist, whereas my mother can't pick out a baseline to save her life. I like verbal humor littered with socio-historical and pop-culture references, and my mother likes Mr. Bean. She wanted my to be a punked-out lesbian, I ended up a straight-laced heterosexual.

We do share a few things in common though. We both get cranky as hell if we aren't fed, and neither of us has anything remotely resembling a healthy lifestyle. Diet is a four letter word, and exercise is for other people. We have managed to avoid both heart attacks and obesity through what seems to be sheer will-power alone. We like people with no qualms about saying what they feel, and as such get along better with the bitches of this world more than is probably entirely healthy. Family comes first in the list of people you take care of, and no matter how tough it gets, you had better come last.

There is one thing that terrifies me, and I know I get it from my mother.

I'm not fragile, it's true. My fracture lines are in hard to reach places, and they know that the world is a battlefield, and that the best way to protect yourself is never to let anyone see you. It's cost me more friends and loved ones than I'd like. But this armor is like a badge to my mother, and it fills her with so much pride to see that her baby girl grew up strong, that I don't know how to tell her that I'm not sure this is real strength.

That said, I've never told her, along with a lot of things, that though I don't fall in love half as easily as I'd like, but I've spent whole nights pulling petals of "he loves me, he loves me not", trembling in anticipation and fear, hanging bunches of forget-me-nots like talisman against heart-break, and falling asleep worried that I don't know how to properly show how I feel about them.

I'll fight to the death for the people I love, but I don't know how to fight to keep them. I don't know how to get up in their faces and say, "Hey! I'm worth staying for!" I don't know how to convince them to stay, because I'm not entirely certain that there is anything to stay for.

In this, my mother and I are so alike, it's frightening.

I blog therefore I....what?

I'm sitting in bed as I type this, and for the life of me, I cannot fathom how anyone is able to continually update these things!

I'm a well-meaning blogger, but life so often tends to get in the way. I'm usually so busy doing stuff, that I don't even have space in my head to think about how I'm going to write this down. So why do bloggers bother?

I don't know. Maybe it's the information age's equivalent of a bottle in the ocean. It isn't even things we can't tell our friends, most likely they read your blog too, it's the idea that your musings, ramblings, rages, and in my case, sad attempts at humor, resonate with someone. Anyone, really.

In some senses it's skips right past vanity and heads straight for all-out egotism, but it's a tiny sin, Because, who knows? it might be true this time.

A couple of days ago, something happened. I don't want to say what, because this isn't a diary, it's a blog, but if something similar happened to someone who happens to read this, it's alright.

You aren't alone.

Maybe I'm starting to get this blogging this.

OBAMA 08!!!!

Being a terrible child, and a foul example to all students, I played truant today.

Being a nerd, it was so that I could watch the final lap of the US presidential election.

OBAMA WON!!!!!! It seems silly, but I feel like a was present for a piece of history that my children will be learning about in school one day. I know that Obama is the first African American president, but it feels like more then that. It feels like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff, about to step off.

Obama, you've got a helluvalot to do. You Americans are the last superpower left, time to shape up.....wanna hear a secret? I think you can do it.

I'm so happy it's bizarre! More later.

Cool it with a baboon's blood, till the charm is firm and good

...or at least not as lethal.

It's soup day at home. Soup is a wonderful thing, it can warm you up, cool you down, be constructed delicately with a distinct air of chefiness, or made by upending a tin can into a pot. Generally, soup is a cause for joy!

Unless you're a good little Chinese girl living in Hong Kong.

Because when you're Chinese, there are two kinds of soup, the one to be consumed with the family as part of a meal, and one that is supposedly good for you.

And you know what, it would all be so much easier if it didn't work. But Chinese medicine is amazing. It'll cure almost anything you throw at it. It can do anything you want it to! You just need to go to the apothecary and describe your unique problem to the lovely people behind the counter, and they'll make anything you need!

Though despite all it's power, it would seem that there isn't anything one can do for the taste.

The soup my mother enjoys forcing down my neck tends to be black and viscous, smelling of toenails and herbs-- the uniquely distinctive smell given off by all Chinese medicine. There are no real words to describe the taste, my meagre linguistic ability fails in the face of such horrors. Suffice to say that once you get past the taste, swallowing it is like swallowing a bitter, lukewarm, poisonous frog...while it's still alive.

According to my mother, such soup, if taken regularly, will clear my skin, give me better blood circulation, soothe my throat, soothe my headaches, fight tooth decay, prevent pregnancy, give me better eyesight, cure cancer, enlarge my cup size, help me maintain longer and stronger erections, and get me a better deal on my mortgage.

I'm uncertain whether my mother truly thinks I have this much wrong with me, or if she just likes to watch me suffer.

That pot has been sitting on the back burner since morning, and even from upstairs, I can smell it's familiar, malodorous stench. It's only a matter of time before my mother will look up from her soap on TV, and declare that it's ready to drink, and look how wonderful she is to have made a whole pot for us! And we had better not waste any of it, or she'll kill us.

The last time I refused to drink the hated concoction, my mother not only screamed that I was a wasteful, selfish girl, and threw things at me, but she held me down, and tipped the potion down my throat, so that my only options were drink or drown.

It was a tough choice, let me tell you.

And staring at the menacing pr essence of that sturdy pot at the back of my kitchen, I still don't know if it was the right one.

Here's to hoping.

The First Load

I keep a diary.

Or should I say kept?

However, after the third time your friends find and read them, and after the eighth time your sister has plundered their pages, one tends to get a bit shirty. During my most recent spat with a dear, though misguided, friend in which I demanded to know what strange quirk in his psychology made it okay to read a person's private thoughts and ramblings, he looked at me blankly and said:

"I really don't get why you're so upset about your diary. Isn't it like, a blog?"

It would seem that the blog culture is to blame for my lack of privacy. (or my mate's lack of scruples.) It would also seem that I am the only kid in the class of 09, who is not in possession of a blog.

*You are sixteen, going on sixty......*

But since there seems to be something refreshing in baring your soul to strangers, which, I have come to understand, is what this whole 'blog culture' is about, I have decided to give up on diaries, and create a blog (cunningly withholding the link from my friends). So here is my truth zone. No matter how ugly, shameful, dull, or weird, I will tell the truth about what I think and feel, omitting personal details of course.

And so, dear stranger, the first load is put out to dry....