…beyond nice.

Things have been hectic around here. I am so sick of packing and unpacking. There is still much to be done. In between moving to different places, I would stay at my mother’s house for a while, each time leaving some stuff behind, thus my mother’s house has become something of a storage space for me. Since I now have my own home, I feel that it’s only right that I empty all my accumulated crap from her house. I don’t know how, but I acquired so much crap that after the fiftieth or so trip, I’m ready to pretend that my size 0/2 ladies clothing belong to my brothers.

Yesterday, I played hookie from work and did my 45lbs mountaineering training up Mount Si. The jump from 35 to 40 pounds hurt so badly, like I’ve finally hit the weight increase that will cause my bones to snap. Every step caused every joint from my ankles to my shoulders to pause and simultaneously ponder why the brain is allowed command this ship, because right then, it feels like we have the world’s shittiest captain. From that experience, I half expected a mutiny when going from 40 to 45lbs. Shockingly it was not all that bad. The absolute worst part of 45lbs is that it’s probably approaching my deadlift barrier (I don’t work out, so yes, I’m a bit wimpy in this department) so trying to put on or taking off the pack is a pathetic series of grunts and near-herniated disc.

The boyfriend’s parents are in town.  LSAT is a week away. We are knee deep in moving. I am three weeks away from Baker climb and behind on training because of everything.

We did get my totally awesome tufted pebble rug. Walking on it is like a mini-foot massage:

I’ll be back to bask in the glory of life when we are a little more settled in. In the mean time, here’s a video of a cute cat taking a bath:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YRhxCXCM0o

We got up early today.  Too much excitement over painting new rooms!

Because of the whole “you have a loan, no you don’t have a loan, we too can give you a loan, we lied you get no loan, oh we fucked up so here’s a loan” thing, we didn’t order furniture for the new place until the last minute.  Apparently, when you go to places and they tell you they keep just about everything in stock, it means, everything except the item you want because that’s back-ordered for 5 years.  We did manage to find a couch that we loved that was in stock and they happened to deliver on Sunday.

So sweet.

The couch was our only piece of furniture on our lucky move-in date.  Part of the lucky ritual included us bringing in rice, salt, sugar, oil into the space before just about everything else.  We lit some incense to bless the place and boiled water for good luck (saying “boiled water” sounds a bit like “acquiring wealth” in Chinese).

The couch delivery guy was early and we barely finished the ritual before they got the couch in. The couch matched the place better than I thought it would.

Then we got to painting the rooms.  We painted for most of the day.  And now my brain is mush from being so tired.  But lucky date was great. We still can’t sleep there yet because of the lack of bed and curtains, but we are very happy.

Our furniture will be trickling in for the next couple weeks, but we do have a matching ottoman that is not arriving until 4 months later.

My sister gave me a card to her BizX account a long while back, it basically allows me to eat for free (do need to tip though) at a list of participating restaurants, I just found that the restaurant directly below us is part of BizX. Gaining weight for mountaineering should not be a problem.

My loan went into escrow yesterday, which means, if all goes well, I will be signing papers today! And getting keys by Friday!

I woke up at 5am too excited to fall back asleep. Also the birds were fucking loud…or loudly. Whichever.

Our condo is in the middle of Capitol Hill, not even outskirts of it, so I will miss the sound of birds in the morning. I will miss the smell of fresh cut grass or the soft purr of a lawn mower in the distance.  There will be much to miss about living in the suburbs. But, I am so ready to move to my own place too.

My home loan has been approved and going into escrow early next week!!!  YAY!!!

Friday was 40lbs up Mount Si training day.  When I hike, I usually have a stupid grin on my face, however as the weight went up, the grin graduated to a grimace.  This was becoming more and more obvious on the time it took traveling the same distance up and down Si, and the level of concern on the passerby’s face.  More and more people walked by with encouragements to cheer me on for training.

Ever since I started training with my big backpack, people have been walking by the boyfriend, who had been leading the way, saying hi to him then look at me, then do a double take on his small daypack. They never said anything, but it’s clear they were wondering why that asshole would let me carry all the weight. I was always caught between the urge to explain that the boyfriend was hiking along to help me train or shout, “Yes, that douche-bag is making me carry all the weight.”

On this last trip, when the weight went up to 40lbs, the bag creaked under the weight and I was clearly weaving a bit from being so top heavy, some lady finally cracked and stopped us to ask if the boyfriend was going to help carry the bag halfway.  Like maybe we were going to switch off. After many trips and judging looks, we got to explain to one person that I was the only one training for mountaineering and the boyfriend was there for moral support.

The boyfriend has been waking up early, packing his bag and weighing down my pack. So his support has been tremendous. However, people didn’t know this and were judging him. We were thinking maybe the thing to do was to fill my other backpack with pillows, but now, I was thinking maybe helium balloons.  I could tie a string to him and have him float alongside me. It would better demonstrate how hard he’s working.

The extra pack weight sucked, it sucked from step one, the one saving grace was my body got used to the suck factor and learned to deal with it. Eating big bowls of spaghetti helped. Usually by about the half-way point, my body would feel like I’ve got calories-seeking-woodchuck chomping at my muscles to find whatever fuel to burn, this last trip I felt pretty good energy-wise. I’ve been trying to gain a big of weight too so, it was very nice to have a guilt-free double bacon cheeseburger with milkshake after the trip.

I currently have bruises where the pack’s shoulder straps touch my collar bone.  Now the boyfriend looks the douche who makes me carry all the weight AND punches me in the collar bone.

I don’t believe in giving people a hard time even when I know I’m getting the short end of the stick. This is clearly something that needs to be worked on.

After I generally fell apart in pathetic wails of my-life-sucks over a stupid failed home loan, the boyfriend took to calling the loan rep’s boss to bitch about the crappy service. Not to mention the sitting on my file for two weeks until I reminded her of an impending due date, to which she did a “Whoops! I’ll file an extension for you free of charge.” Yeah.

The loan rep was terrible. She actually told me I would have to look elsewhere, with less than 13 days left on the timer with seller. I asked her if I tried to apply for another loan through them, if they would be able to at least help speed it up. If I went with another company, I would have to wait for credit checks and appraisals all over again. She pretty much said no.

Somehow, after the boyfriend bitched to her boss, I got a call back from her today offering all kinds of loan options. When all the initial options failed, they created a loan for me which they call “Special Case Loan”. I’ve never felt better about riding the short bus and also I need to learn how to bitch more. I’m only ever good at bitching out the boyfriend and small puppies, clearly I need to widen my target audience.

Two things I didn’t know until now: The mild mannered boyfriend is the Bitch Master in the relationship. I have much to learn, such a young grasshopper I am. I always assumed loans have set rules and guidelines that must be met or fuhgeddaboudit. Apparently, if at first you don’t qualify for a loan, yell until they give you one.

In telling my friend, Sung, about the “Special Case Loan” he said, this is because it sounds better than “We Fucked Up So We’re Sorry Loan”. The new loan carries the best conventional loan interest rate we’ve been offered since starting this whole process back in March and since it’s conventional, we no long have to pay mortgage insurance. Yay!

So the lucky move-in day is back on!  Hopefully I will be moving in on my lunar calendar birthday. My mom made me a list of stuff I have to move in with for good-luck, it’s a strange list of stuff like pillow, bag of rice, soy sauce, etc. Sung asked if he should buy some rice and soy sauce for good luck too. It doesn’t quite work like that, but I advised him that in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse, he might be able to survive on rice and soy sauce for a while, so he should get some regardless.

Here’s something you don’t want to hear two days before your mortgage loan is expected to close: “You never qualified for the loan in the first place, so we have to close your application as rejected.”

I’m still in a state of shock of how this happened. They had my file for over a month. I paid for all sorts of appraisal fee and questionnaire fee and insurance for the new condo and they only now realize I did not qualify for the loan to begin with?  How?

I’m starting to get the idea that someone doesn’t want me to move into this unit. Perhaps the over coincidence of 420′s related to this unit and I are too much! I was pretty upset when I found out today, but now I’m just starting to think I’ve been a bit lopsided karma-wise lately.

When I had more free-time and money, I used to volunteer a lot. I haven’t done any of that in a few years, right about the time the economy took a nose-dive, and I became more me-oriented. It feels like I’m long over-due for karma attuning. I’ve been helping my family a lot, but that doesn’t really tip the scale on a universal level.

One would think feeding the wild-life at the top of Mount Si every week might help, but lately the birds have been crazy aggressive and dive-bombing our face while we eat. The dove-like birds are small so they shouldn’t be scream inducing, but feeling some scritchy-little bird toes on your fingers with wings beating on your face while you are trying to take a bite out of your sandwich isn’t all zen-like either. We usually bring a chicken havarti sandwich, so we are effectively saving them from cannibalizing on their cousins, but perhaps not.  Who are we to judge if some little birds want to eat chicken?

Happy Mother’s Day to all you lovely mothers out there. I hope your day is going well, and I hope, if there’s a dim sum eating tradition in there, that you did not give the poor restaurant staff hell. Every single year, the one day I fear the most is Mother’s Day. It’s not that I’m not thankful for my mum, she really is awesome. It’s that every year, if I’m in town, no matter who I’m working for, I will help out at the family restaurant. That day is always, hands down, the busiest day of the year for us.

Every single year, even if we extra-staff that day, we will have more guests than available tables and at some point, more tables that needs to be cleaned than staff to clean. I will have at least few parties asking why I’m not cleaning out a table for them because they see there are tables, but I’m not cleaning it for them right that moment. They ask me this like I like getting yelled at by strangers, like I want bad tips for my crew (okay, maybe for one of them, but I adore the rest of them). When it gets busy we take down the number of people in the party, and give them the next number in line. Their ticket number is simply a marker for us, people get very worked up when they have a ticket #50 and I’m calling #54, even if I explain to them over and over that they are waiting for a table for 10, while I’m seating people on my 4 tops.

This years Mother’s Day went pretty well. Only one lady went out of her way to bitch me out. I consider that a win. My mother had a fantastic day overall, another big win.

Writing project for today: “Future Fantastic: Spend a few moments writing about your life in the future. Imagine that everything has gone really well. Be realistic, but imagine that you have worked hard and achieved all of your aims and ambitions.”

I was raised pretty traditionally Chinese despite having been in America since I was 5. There were things that I was raised to believe in as a Chinese. Now I could be very wrong in my assumption, but I think even in America, a lot of first generation Chinese that speaks very little English are not working jobs that have pension or 401k plans. In Hong Kong and China, I don’t think there are very many jobs that have anything like a pension plan unless you’re working for the government.  Most of the old folks either have some cash stashed away or their kids are their pension plan. Which is to say, I’ve grown up with the assumption that I am my parents’ pension plan. It’s not something I resent or fear, it simply is the circle of my life.

When I pictured taking care of my parents when they are old, I pictured them as an old couple together. I didn’t think to picture in the cheating bastard father, who fathered who knows how many bastard children with the string of women he cheated with. Nor did I envision his wife beating ways would cause my family to call the cops on him resulting in restraining orders placed on him. After many years of beating, my mom finally got the courage to divorce him, but being very old-fashioned Chinese herself, she never really believed the divorce was real.  She thought she was scaring some senses into him.  Instead, less than a year after the divorce he remarried a Vietnamese woman about my sister’s age and had more children with her soon after. Just like that, less than 2 years after 30 something odd years of being with this family, he created an entire set of new family. We didn’t keep much in contact because his new wife was the jealous type.

As messed up as this sounds, I still wish to be able to take care of both my parents when they are old. Even though, my father did a lot of things wrong, he was always a good father to me. He has so much money issues now in this down economy and I feel so bad that I can’t do much to help him. Right now, I’m hardly in the position to even take care of myself. In the future, I want for enough success for myself, be it being a lawyer or running my own business, that I can comfortably take care of two elderly parents. My mother, right now, is understandably bitter toward my father. It causes her pain to think that we would ever speak to him again. So in order for me to be able to provide for my father, I feel like I have to first sufficiently provide for my mother.

My mother is currently very well off, there is a good chance she will need nothing from me in the future. However, in order for me to be okay with myself for providing for someone that has caused my mother so much pain, I need to first get over the guilt by making sure my mom would want for absolutely nothing.

Understanding that true achievable goals are broken down to more attainable steps, I still aim for a future where I can work hard enough to achieve enough to take care of my parents when they are old. I know I am currently working hard at putting myself in the right position to be able to take care of two elderly separately, and in my fantastic future, this will be done without upsetting my mother. Also, I want a Barbie Dreamhouse with all the little outfits and cool little hangers for them, and I can crochet well enough to make her some chintzy looking dresses.

I skipped a day on happiness writing by accident.  Yesterday, I hauled 35lbs up Mount Si again. I’m sad to report that repeating the experience doesn’t make it suck less.  It still sucked about as much as it sucked last week. The only big difference was recovery rate at this point.  My legs went from shouting, “With God as my witness, I shall never move properly again!” To: “Oh what?  We just did some exercise?” Soon as the pack was removed.  The pathetic day-after shuffle is not nearly as noticeable too.

For Terrific Times: “Think about one of the most wonderful experiences in your life. Perhaps a moment when you felt suddenly contented, were in love, listened to an amazing piece of music, saw an incredible performance, or had a great time with friends. Choose just one experience and imagine yourself back in that moment in time.”

I’ve been very fortunate to have countless wonderful experiences.  The only reason this one thing came to my mind at this point, stronger than anything else, even though I know I have better memories, is that I remember feeling at the time that I wish I could bottle that feeling forever.  Perhaps other times I was overwhelmed with joy that I forgot to think about bottling it.  If I had to guess what I would be writing about, not knowing myself, I would have thought it would be about being in love.  Oh, how I woke up and it felt like someone had adjusted my gamma settings five notches brighter, and oh the birds were singing and my god I only slept 2 hours but I felt so awake and alive.

It’s not that.  The day that I wish I could bottle was snow camping with my friends.  We backpacked up our way to Lake Enchantments the first weekend it stopped requiring camping permits.  It was extremely rough and treacherous getting up the “Wall” in knee deep snow.  When we got up there, we felt like we were the only people in the world.

The thing that made it so memorable, perhaps is the fact that it’s not about being in love or even being loved, it’s that we just felt very lucky to be alive, to be there to experience that moment.  Our world was blanketed in snow with small frozen lakes after lakes.  Everywhere we looked, the world looked like a Christmas postcard that makes you wonder where the photo was taken and if the place existed at all on earth. The snow untouched.  The world was so beautiful that I got sentimentally teary-eyed just looking at it.

It wasn’t even about our company to each other in that moment, it was simply the joy of being there. It felt as if you breathe in too hard it will overwhelm your lungs and you actually choke from it.  Which I think I did, and the coughing fit wouldn’t let up for a while.  I remember wanting to bottle that joy of feeling lucky to be alive.

My sleeping schedule lately has been highly suspect, that is to say, there hasn’t been one.  The only trend is that it has been very late, even when I try to crawl into bed early, I’m caught with a thousand things flitting through my head. Like right now, I went to bed a little after midnight, and now that it’s nearly two, I threw in my towel. Then the next day, I’ll be so tired I fall asleep sitting up.

I can’t say any one thing is bothering me in particular.  There’s just a lot going on.  I don’t feel like I’m perfectly happy with my LSAT studying progress.  I’m not sure I’m quite up to the correct amount of weight needed for climbing Baker. The loan with BECU is still chugging along very slowly because I just found out the loan rep has been sitting on my file. She saw the extension we filed with the seller and assumed that was the expected loan closing date, which is completely off because we filed the extension with double the amount of time expect for the loan to close in case something went wrong, instead of giving time for her to sit on her ass.  While I understand that loan reps at BECU probably have a good amount of files to work on and she isn’t really sitting on her ass, but ignoring my file and emails for nearly two weeks doesn’t make me feel any better about whether she’s a productive BECU employee or not.

I feel like a bit of a downer right now, which makes me feel worse because I’m a huge subscriber of positive psychology. Even when things are really bad, I believe that a bit of laughter and positive thinking helps.

Last year, I went to Burning Man, and had a really good time, but then the trip home was a total nightmare.  We were traveling home in a caravan of 3 vehicles, one truck kept breaking down, so we kept stopping to let things cool down, then fix, then move, then it died completely and we waited around for half a day for arrangements to be made.  We ended up leaving the truck behind, the second truck split off to grab things to retrieve broken truck.  I was traveling with the RV.

We were driving along after resting for the night, I was in the front keeping the driver company, when all of a sudden, we heard a loud “THWACK!”  Everyone else in the vehicle was sleeping up till then and they woke up yelling, “WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” I thought we got shot at first, then I realized I couldn’t see the road because the hood was up on the windshield.  Luckily Sari, our driver remained calm, and there wasn’t anyone around, we slowly pulled over to the side.  We tried to get the hood back down, but it was stuck under the overhead bed which had a row of rivets so the hood couldn’t slip under.  I asked Sari if she had a cookie sheet to put between the rivets and the hood, which finally helped it slide out.  We had to zip-tie the hood down because it was pretty deformed from the flipping upward.

Things were pretty uneventful from there.  We were happily approaching home.  Then when we got to near Portland, we heard a slight pop and people around us starting honking at us and starting pointing behind us.  Our trailer popped a tire, there were sparks flying.  The trailer was beyond repair at that point, so we had to abandon it on the side of the freeway.  It was late already so they wanted to sleep in the RV at that point and wait till day to fix the trailer.

I called the boyfriend up to come get me then.  I needed to go home to work the next day.  The whole drive home had been terrible, but even at the worst moment, I knew that things weren’t all that bad, not to mention, soon as that was over, everything would seem so much sweeter for a long while after.  Sitting on the couch and doing nothing felt absolutely amazing almost better than I thought.

Back to happiness psychology, I just started reading 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, and there’s a little writing exercise I want to try. It involves writing a short bit every day for a week.  Today is Thanksgiving: “Think back over the past week and list three of these things.”

1) I’m very thankful for my mom.  She’s been very supportive in the whole condo buying and recently she picked out a lucky move-in date for the condo.  It’s May 22, which is my lunar calendar birthday 4-20, which corresponds to the unit #420 which appraised for the value of $420k.  Even though I would love to jump right into the condo soon as the loan closes, it’s nice to think about giving ourselves time to do some painting and plate replacing.

2) I’m thankful for the boyfriend who has been packing my backpacks early in the morning before we go hike.  He helps me careful weight my pack with my target training weight, even though I later give him the dirty look for putting that weight in my pack while slogging up the mountain.

3)I’m thankful for the help the books and LSAT course has been providing me, while I wish I’m a bit further ahead, I feel both has been tremendous help.

bonus thanks: Yesterday, I put in the order for my dream rug:

It was spendy (read: 2k) , but I got to touch a sample of it, and it’s very much what I wanted.  I pictured bare feet on the tufted fake pebbles. Little things like that bring me simple joy.