A Different Kind of Surprise Party

I went to my friend's birthday party last night. It wasn't a surprise party for the birthday boy; it turned out to be a surprise for us. He knew about the party. He arranged the party. He invited the people. He was in charge of bringing the alcohol. But, surprise! He never came. Well, at least not by the time I left at midnight.

People warned me, people that have known him a lot longer than me. (Technically he's the best friend of my good friend, but I figure I've hung out with and talked to him enough to call him a friend.) The party was supposed to start at 8pm, so I was planning to go then. But my good friend warned me not to count on that. By twenty after six, no one had heard from the birthday boy, not even the girl who was hosting the party. At 7:30, a mass text:

"Sorry i haven't been in touch... Been a long day. Everything's on for tonight but i probably won't be there til after 9."

'That's a new one,' I thought, 'how you gonna be late to your own birthday party?' By 9:30, he still wasn't there. It's common for him to be late, and other people I know where starting to gather at the house, so I figured I'd head over anyway about 9:45. After a little trouble finding the place, I made an entrance to the sound of "Oh your not ----." Nope, I'm not. My good friend was already there, as well as some people I know from watching his basketball games and from the surprise birthday party he had for me last time I was in the Bay. It was all good, and I figured birthday boy would show up any moment.

Three entrances and several phone calls later, the party had grown. Still no birthday boy. No call, no text, nothing. His birthday pie was nearly gone. There was no alcohol, and the only food in the house was cereal. About half the group headed for Safeway. (You can buy alcohol here after 9pm.) My friend and I decided it was time to go. He has to study all day tomorrow, and I have church. The remaining people began playing some card games. It was the lamest birthday party I have ever been to. It may even have been worse than the pool party we had once where only 1 person came.

I think I have more patience than most when it comes to dealing with friends, with relying on them and having things fall through, with losing touch, with flake outs. But I'm already getting to a point where I don't want to bother, where I don't think it's worth my time to try calling or emailing him. I've only been here a month!

The worst part is, something really terrible could have happened to the birthday boy, and no one would know. Apparently, he does stuff like this all the time. Says he's going and shows two hours late, if at all. Disappears into the abyss of disconnected cell phones and no email. What do you do with someone like that?

I N D E P E N D E N T

"How are you going to celebrate the founding of our great nation?" my roommate's boyfriend asked the small group of us assembled in the kitchen.

"I'm going to get all dressed up in red, white and blue, and play marching music." It sounded ridiculous as soon as I said it. They must have thought I had just come up with the most absurd thing I could think of and sarcastically spewed it out. But I was dead serious.

A half hour later, accompanied by John Philip Sousa, I emerged from my bedroom in a blue and white checkered circle skirt (i.e. poodle-less poodle skirt) with red rick rack trim, a blue tanktop, stockings with red seams up the back, white earrings, blue shoes and a red ribbon in my hair. My glasses and undergarments were also blue, but they don't really count. Happy Fourth of July!

This is how I celebrate my third-favorite holiday, in all it's patriotic glory. I used to have these wonderful America-holiday shoes to go with my red, white and blue outfits. They were fabulous, blue glitter covered strappy sandals with little American flags and red, white and blue streamers in the front 3" clear platform, 7" stiletto heels in the back. I loved them. I even wore them to celebrate American holidays in Zambia (and for our Texas Trash party). They broke at school on Labor Day. So sad! This year, I had to settle for my shiny candy paint royal blue shoes, still fun.

All dolled-up, presidential campaign songs and 1776 playing in the background, I spent the rest of the day being a law student. At home, I'd spend the day going to a variety of parades, usually to watch my sisters march past, and then go home to swim in the pool until dinner time. After dinner, we'd gather our things for the fireworks. Pop Pop Pop, the popcorn bursts forth from the hot air popper and into the waiting brown paper bag. Calls of "where's the frisbee?" echo out of the back hall closet where some feet hanging outside remain the only evidence someone has ventured inside. "Did anyone count these cards?" the deck is picked up from next to the cribbage board and carefully gone through, "ace, two, three, four...." The old brownish blanket sits in a half-folded, half scrunched-up mess next to the cooler. We head out to the park as the sun looms low in the sky. After parking the car a few blocks away, we pick out a nice spot on the lush green grass and get ready to "ooooh" and "ahhhh." Oh well, when stuff's got to get done, it's got to get done.

It was a fairly productive day, and I did get to see some fireworks! My friend took me to the Berkeley marina for the show. It was a lot different than back home, but still wonderfully 4th of July. The city closes down the street leading into the marina (but offers free valet bicycle parking), so we had to park really far away and walk. The only bad part of the walk was going up the bridge to cross the freeway. Mostly, it was a nice walk. We went all the way down to the shore and stood behind several rows of people sitting on the waterfront rocks. It was jam-packed!

While waiting for our show to begin, we could see the Marin fireworks off to our left and the Richmond fireworks behind us to the right. In front of us, bits and pieces of colored sparkle peaked out as the fog below radiated a pink glow. Those were the San Francisco fireworks.

Finally, our show began. It was a lot different than the shows back home. Ping, wssssh, pop. Pause. Ping, wssssh, pop. One at a time, the fireworks launched into the sky and quietly exploded. We were close enough to see the launch site at the end of the pier, but still didn't feel any booms. About 10 or 15 minutes into the show, they set off all the big booms at once. The force knocked into my chest and I wavered a bit. A big smile spread across my face. All of 5 seconds and it was done, back to Ping, wssssh, pop. I was still really happy to be at the fireworks and enjoying the show. As they continued to launch the singular fireworks, we began to see less and less sparkle and more and more rosy aura. Slowly, the fog continued rolling into the bay.

Though fireworks were still launching, the show was over. My friend and I turned to head back to the car. Half the crowd was already on its way. Holding tight to the sleeve of my puff coat, the rest of me huddled inside it, my friend led us through the crowd and back over the freeway. It was definitely the least climatic fireworks show I've ever seen, but I'm still glad I got to go. It was the Fourth of July after all!

Bed

Happy

Phone Home - Lil Wayne

The Office Celebrity

No it's not me.

The secretary that I used to sit next to, Saundra, came over to chat. "Is that a celebrity?" she exclaimed, looking at the framed picture on my desk?

"No. I said laughing. That's my friend at our law school formal. He just graduated from Vanderbilt Law School. He's studying for the Bar now, and he's gonna be an Assistant District Attorney." My voice was filled with pride (cuz he was my date for the formal).

The secretary was shocked. "Wow. Tell him I'm proud of him." She doesn't even know him. She just assumed from the picture that this was an extra big accomplishment. "I thought he was a rapper or something. He looks like one of them rappers." She looked back at the picture, "Is he from Oakland?" That easy to tell, huh? Well, Oakland and El Cerito, and everywhere in between. She grew up in Richmond, so maybe she has an eye for these things. (The city names might not mean much to anyone not from the Bay Area, but just google one and you'll get a pretty good idea.)

The next week, one of her friends from the mailroom was upstairs visiting us. She stopped by my desk. "Is that Dennis Rodman?!" The secretary and I both started laughing. Before I even had a chance, Saundra was going on about him as if it were her son. "Oh no, he's taking the bar. He's gonna be a DA!" This also seemed to astound the lady from the mailroom.

Saundra couldn't believe her friend had mistaken the picture for Dennis Rodman. "Dennis Rodman is light skinned," she says, as if that's the only difference between them! I thought the absence of large piercing's or funky colored hair was a better giveaway.

But beyond all, my absolute favorite was the new secretary I sit by, Dianne. She was looking at the picture from the formal and asked, "who's that?" So I told her. Then she says, "is that him, too?" and points at my poster of Lil' Wayne!

Rap star or basketball player - I wonder what else people will come up with before the end of summer. It's amazing what a big pair of sunglasses can do to your image. (...and a fitted hat, and a nice suit, and giant earrings, and a grill...)

Me with the "Celebrity".

Bed

Cheerful

Birds Chirping

Sometimes You Just Have to Move On

Saying goodbye is hard, especially when you've been together for several years. You know what to expect, and even the bad things seem sort of endearing, at least they're familiar. And as you contemplate actually leaving, you relive the past, both good and bad memories flood the mind; it's so hard to decide if this is the right thing to do. But there comes a point where you realize it's time to go, you've out grown this and you need to move on. I've reached that point. This is my transition.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm leaving livejournal. It was a tough decision, and I weighed several options, including staying, but in the end, my blogging has outgrown it. It's as simple as that. There are definitely things I will miss, primarily the cute little mice that display my emotions. However, the new journal has lots of great features for me and should make things easier for my readers as well.

New Title

In addition to moving my blog, I decided it was time for a new title. The blog is no longer "Why You Think I'm Weird: Stories from My Childhood," because it contains so much more than that. There are plenty of commentaries on other things, current events and stuff, as well as stories from my childhood. My new title is "Garter Skirts and Legos." I think it sums me up pretty well, and encompasses the grown-up aspects with the child-like playfulness.

It's All Still Here

Every single post from my livejournal is available on my new blog, thanks to the amazing blog2blog software. You'll now have an easier time finding old posts you want to re-read or that involve you. There's a side bar that sorts posts by date, but allows you to see the titles. At the bottom of the page, you'll find a list of all the tags. Depending on how much I like you, you might find your name at the bottom. Click any tag to see all the posts pertaining to that subject. Each post includes a link to the original live journal post, in case you want to see those mice. Each also has any extra information that was on the livejournal post, such as music playing, mood or location, and each post has copies of all the original comments.

Don't Miss Out

If you're worried about staying up to date with my new blog, have no fear. There are several options for keeping up to date with the new blog. First, the user name is the same. If you type the address into the browser, you only need to change one part. Where you used to type "livejournal", now type "blogspot". You can also add my blog to a reader. For those unfamiliar with readers, they're like a little elf that runs around the neighborhood purchasing all the newspapers you want to read and then puts them all on your kitchen table. You just tell the elf what papers you want and he keeps track of when new issues are out and which ones you've read. I suggest google reader, easy enough for novices, simple and useful. If you really don't want to do any work, my new blog can do it for you. Just email me or leave a comment here and I'll give your email address to the magic blog pixie. She'll automatically send you an email whenever there's a new post.

Features for You

Aside from the fun features mentioned above, the new blog has a second side bar. This one lists other blogs that I read, in order of updated. You can check out what some of my other friends are up to, or the new sewing tips and trends. It's fun! And for those of you who are on my sidebar, I hope it's an incentive to keep updating. You don't want to be at the bottom of the list, now do you? This new blog also lets me put in pictures, without making me pay money. This is nice for my readers. Check out the last three posts; all have pictures in the new blog, whereas they couldn't on livejournal. The comment section allows you to put your name and your blog's address, email address or aim name. So if you're not using the same blog service as me, it doesn't matter! No more having to click anonymous and then signing your comments. By the way, comments are called "little indians" on my blog.

Features for Me

I now have some control over my comments. Ha ha, don't say anything mean; I might just delete it. I'm kidding. ...maybe. I can also track visits to my blog. That's really cool. In the few weeks it's taken me to setup the new blog, Google has sent several visitors to my site. One was from the UK, looking for Angela Nyirenda on i-tunes. Another was from Australia, looking for Cookie Monster garter skirts. Pretty neat! And I love that I can put pictures in now. Some day I'll be really cool and put in videos like my friend. The whole format is much easier to navigate and use.

Reflections on Moving

Moving the blog turned out to be really hard. Not logistically, but emotionally. To add the comments and fix some errors, I basically read every blog I've posted in my 5 years at livejournal. That's a lot of life, and 2007 is conspicuously missing. The hardest part was reading the posts from Zambia. As it got closer and closer to April 2006, I didn't want to keep reading. It was like when I near the end of Pride and Prejudice and don't want to finish the book because then there's no more Mr. Darcy. I didn't want to keep reading, because I knew if I did, I'd leave Africa. That made me sad all over again. It was also really hard to read all the comments. I started to feel the same anger I felt when I first got them. I remembered being so frustrated that by the middle of my second year some people were still only writing "I miss you. When are you coming home?" That infuriated me, couldn't they understand that Cheelo was home for now? And couldn't they see that it didn't matter when I was coming home, because nothing would be the same? Almost as bad were all the empty promises of writing letters, or the claims by some people who no longer talk to me that they would always be my good friends. At least the conversations between Mommy and me cheered me up a bit, though they were bittersweet.

Anyway, it's done now, and I'm excited about it. Tomorrow I will put up my first official new-blog-only post. I've been waiting a long time. Thanks for sticking with me!

NEW BLOG ADDRESS: http://goldenrail.blogspot.com

Sad

Bed

Hello Goodbye - The Beatles

36 Hours in Paradise

No matter where I'm coming from, no matter how long I've been gone, landing at General Mitchell International Airport always makes me cry. I'm just so happy to be home. The plane comes in low over the city. I look out the window down to the land and water below. There's the Hoan, and the Firstar building. We continue east out over lake Michigan and begin our turn towards the airport. As the plane descends, it seems as though we could just reach right out and touch the deep blue waves. A full 180 and the land comes into view again. There's my high school, and the football field. I can name the streets below like its a google map. There's Lake Shore Drive, and Packard, and Ramsey. There's my parent's house! And as we graze across the telephone poles on Pennsylvania, I know we'll soon be on the ground.
It wasn't any different this weekend. And also as usual, the trip felt far too short. But, it was absolutely wonderful! Before we were even in the out of the airport parking lot, before I could even ask, my sister piped up, "should we go home before we go to Leon's?" And that's how the weekend began, with frozen custard and my favorite people at 9:30 on a beautiful balmy night. And the weekend just kept getting better. The next day was Grandpa's surprise party! Where do we start? The gorgeous 80 degree weather, or the hundred-something relatives that came to my grandpa's birthday party? The weather speaks for itself. Even though it rained a bit twice, the sun quickly came back out and our spirits were not dampened.
By far, the best part of the weekend was sitting around listening to my grandpa's cousins, i.e. my first cousins thrice-removed!, talking about when they were younger, the relationships in the family and the cultural rivalries of their day. I was particularly amused that my great-grandparents were upset when my grandma and grandpa started dating because my grandpa is Polish and my grandma is German. Now it seems half the South Side is Polish/German! I certainly had plenty of friends growing-up who's mix included Polish and German. The really ironic part is that we're not quite sure what country some parts of the family are from because of constant wars and border shifts.
The old photos cousin Claudia brought were especially delightful. She even had the passports/entry documents from my great-great grandparents. These were my grandfather's maternal grandparents. The papers were from Ellis Island, dated 1918, and my relatives had marked the signature lines with their "x"s because they couldn't read or write. My great-great grandmother's had a picture in it. My great-great grandfather's did not. She looked to be a portly woman in her 50s or so, but I really have no idea on her age. Mommy tells me this is about as far back as we can trace this branch of our family. (I would like to point out, for my readers who may think that all "white" people can trace their families back super far and know where they've come from, that this date is only the beginning of the 20th century, we don't know exactly what the last name was because of spelling variations, and we're not actually sure what country they're from.)
Cousin Claudia's being there was in and of itself a very special treat for Grandpa. At first I didn't understand why Mommy introduced herself to Cousin Claudia and then took her around and introduced her to everyone and explained who they were. Then I found out, my grandfather's family had sort of split back when he was a kid. Her parents the the parents of the other cousins lost contact. Standing in the background, I listened to the cousins try to sort out what had happened.
One of the cousins was talking about how her parents always fought, and how her dad was only nice when he wasn't drinking, which wasn't often. Others had similar stories. Cousin Claudia figured that's why the family got split. She knew her mom didn't like all the drinking and stuff. It appeared Cousin Claudia had been quite young when the parts of the family lost contact, yet she still remembered some other relatives that the other cousins knew. It was neat to hear them exchange stories. It also turns out that Cousin Claudia knows all my grade school teachers (we moved when I was 10) and may have even served on the same committee as Mommy back in 1988!
Other excitement of the day included following around my adorable second cousins (my cousins' children), taking pictures of them; eating cheese, snaps and shampoo raisins; and answering questions with things like "yes, I'm the one that was in Africa," "no, I'm not the one that just got back from China, that's Katrina, she's over there."
After getting home from the party, Mommy, Wendy, Katrina, Nathan and I played games! We were up 'til past midnight. Nathan does a very good Elmer Fudd, and Mommy does a great Mae West.
The next morning, it was off to the airport. Far too soon. As we soared higher and higher into the sky, I watched the familiar places shrink away from me. Goodbye Daddy's office, goodbye 794, goodbye church, goodbye home.
(Original Post)
Bed
Cheerful
Lena Horne - The Lady is a Tramp (especially the part that says "hates California, it's cold and it's damp)