The world is trying to tell me something.  And through chocolate?  It knows me well. 

I think one of my biggest flaws is that I try to put on a brave front and pretend like I’m strong enough to handle whatever gets thrown at me.  I came to this realization this morning when I started crying at work again just because my boss (but most importantly, my friend) asked if I was ok.  I didn’t intend to share my sob story because I thought I was fine, but all it took was a simple “everything ok?” and the words just came pouring out.  The more I got into it, the more I felt the tears coming on.  And after repeatedly saying that I was fine (almost like if I kept saying it it would be true), she asked if I wanted to go home because my eyes looked misty.  My mascara smudged a little, but I finally got the cry that I had probably been suppressing all weekend.

You see, my dad has dementia.  And this weekend just happened to be the turning point where my family decided we need to seriously start looking for a care home. I was never very close with my dad.  The memories that I do have of him in my childhood are not really good ones, so when dementia started to set in, I was honestly a little angry at him.   He decided to retire early and then proceeded to sit in front of the TV all. day. long.  He didn’t go out because all his friends were from work, and when he retired he stopped seeing or talking to them.  TV became his life.  Was it any wonder he got dementia?  He’s only 63, turning 64 this year.  By his retirement, he left all the strain of bill paying along with paying for my sister’s tuition who won’t graduate for another year, to my mom.  She works 2 jobs and is thinking of taking on more hours to help pay for a care home.

Up until this past weekend, he was fine.  He could still take care of himself without any help from us.  But now, he’s completely dependent on us.  I’m finding myself doing things I never thought I’d be doing for at least 20 years.  It’s hard for me to write this post, but like crying, I think this is therapeutic.  I can’t keep bottling things up.  Only now am I starting to feel sorry for him, which I guess is also a necessary step.  I need to let go of my anger and accept the situation for what it is and deal with it.

So while my family deals with sleep deprivation (he calls out a lot during the night), we’re starting the care home process.  This is a big transition period for all our lives.  We’ll make it through all right.  I know this because in the midst of all our troubles, we’re still able to find something to laugh at.  Laughter is good for the soul.

I saw this video on Yahoo! today and thought it was just amazing.

Around the world in 6,237 pictures

My thoughts are simply:

#1 I wish I was brave enough to quit my job and travel around the world.

#2 I hope to be able to see places from the photographer’s perspective one day. Usually I tend to focus on the “big monuments” or the “notable” things of where I am. But there is beauty even in the seemingly mundane.

#3 Take more pictures!

Happy weekend, friends.  It’s a long one!

A couple months ago I bought myself a smash book after having read about one on Much Love, Illy‘s blog.  I’ve always thought about scrapbooking, but it seemed so stressful to start.  Everything would need to be perfect since it’ll be something to look at for years and years.  I don’t do good with pressure, folks.  But the smash book seemed so much more informal.  An on-the-go type of thing.  Which I LOVE.  This way, I can just throw things in there.  It’s so handy that the pen has a glue stick on one end!  And there’s lots of fun accessories that you can get, including some washi tape.  The books come in a variety of colors, but you know I had to get the pink one.  If you haven’t seen the video yet, take a look:

Smash Book

Looks fun right?  Well I got mine and then I let the book sit around for a while.  I was having a hard time deciding how I wanted to go about using it.  I knew it would be something I’d love to take while traveling so I can write it in and put pictures inside RIGHT AWAY.  But I also knew I’d love to keep knick knacks and things inside.  Finally, I decided I’d need to keep the two separate or I’d lose my mind.  Seriously.  I’m crazy like that.

And voilà!  I started my first two pages (and ordered another book)!

The page with the polaroid pictures is my favorite.  I wanted to include them so I could always see my dogs and my family even while I’m traveling.  I didn’t put Bryce because I assumed I’d be with him anyway.  I think.  The second page is just a compilation of fun magazine cutouts.

What do you think?  I’ll be taking it for a test run next month in San Fran!  I’m really excited to finally have a way to preserve memories before I forget I want to preserve them.  Know what I’m saying?

I know I’ve yet to share my Biggest Loser transformation, but it’s in the works!  Most days I still feel like the old me: overweight and frumpy haha.  I think it’s mainly because I’ve gained a couple pounds back since ending my diet on December 2.  Let’s chalk it up to the holidays and the abundance of delicious food.  But there are some days where I feel especially pretty.  Yesterday was one of those days.

I don’t know whether it was because I had on a new pair of jeans – which I think fit me particularly well, -  whether I was trying new layering things, or if it was because it was the first time getting dressed up in 2 weeks.  But I felt good about myself!  It also helped that I had a fun sparkly purple color on my toes. Also, Bryce comes home today. <3

So remember how I said I hoped to be in the kitchen more often this year?  I’m already off to a good start!

I’ve been bugging my mom for a while now to teach me how to make more Korean dishes.  I figure it’s about time.  I was obviously not one of those children who followed their parents around the kitchen and learned how to cook all kinds of things early on (although I really wish I was).  And one of my favorite Korean dishes to eat is the New Year’s soup, or duk guk (which is essentially “mochi soup”-yum!).

She finally agreed to teach me!  Although we didn’t eat it on New Year’s since she worked, we ate it yesterday.  Better late than never.  So I got out my bright pink notebook with my purple pen and headed out prepared to take an onslaught of notes while cooking.  Except, she had me put away my pretty notebook and simply said, “you’ll remember.”  Um hello, does she not know how neurotic I am?  But I had no choice as she quickly handed me a handful of green onion to slice and a few other things to prep while we waited for the water to boil.  As we waited, my mom began to tell me how she remembered her mom making the soup all those years ago.  It’s been a while since my mom got to celebrate New Years with her parents since they live in Korea.  I felt really bad for her because I don’t realize often enough how much she misses them.  What I fail to remember is that even though she is my parent, she has parents of her own.  Does that make sense?  Anyway, I digress.  My point at the end of all that was I got the feeling she felt badly about not being able to make the soup as fancy as her mom does.  My grandma apparently makes the broth ahead of time instead of using a powder like we did, and she makes everything else like the mochi and mandoo instead of using frozen ones like we did.  All of that didn’t bother me at all.  I was just happy to be learning from my mom.

The soup is much easier to make than I thought.  I’m going to attempt to tell you how now, but since I didn’t take notes it could be a disaster.

The ingredients:  (2 tablespoons) anchovy powder, (about 1/3 of a bunch) green onions, (1/2 a package) duk (mochi), (1/4-1/2 package) mandoo, (5 big eggs) egg, (5 cloves) garlic, and (a couple thinly sliced) beef slices.  Here’s the thing.  I don’t know where the anchovy powder or beef slices came from.  They just materialized out of my fridge!  I’m assuming they came from the Korean supermarket we have here, but my mom said the beef is just steak meat.  And the measurements were kinda eye-balled so what I put is based on a serving size of 4 gigantic bowls.

Start by bowling a pot of water with 2 tablespoons of anchovy powder.  The powder makes for a fishy broth base.  Then throw in the 5 smashed garlic cloves, black pepper, and beef slices.  The beef slices are to add to the flavor of the broth as well as presentation later.  While you wait for it to boil, soak the mochi in some water, chop up the green onion to look like the picture (kind of diagonal 1″ slices), and throw it in with the scrambled eggs.  When the water boils, drop in the mandoo and mochi.  If your mandoo was frozen, put it in earlier than the mochi because the mochi cooks real fast.  When both the mandoo and mochi have risen, it means they are done cooking.  You can then drizzle in the egg mixture.  According to my mom, you need to do this slowly and swirl the egg into the soup or it’ll look bad haha.  Lastly, sprinkle some black pepper and stir!

It should look like this in the end!  Unfortunately, I have to work on my presentation, but when my mom does it, it turns out great!

I’m hoping to make it next year myself.  It really is a delicious and simple soup.  Oh and if you’re wondering why this is the traditional soup to eat in Korea (because I had no idea as well until my sister told me), it’s apparently because the mochi is cut from a long strip that symbolizes long life.  So essentially, you eat this soup on New Years day for good luck and for long life.

I wish this upon everyone even though you may or may not have eaten this soup.  Also, here’s to the continuing of traditions!  I love stuff like that.

Do you believe in superstitions?  I believe in some because that’s what I grew up learning from my mom.  Don’t walk under a ladder.  Don’t cut your nails at night.  Don’t give someone a pair of shoes or they’ll “walk out of your life”, unless they give you a coin in exchange.

While many of these sound silly and I’ve outgrown them, I still feel weird if I do any of them.  However, one has stuck with me more than the rest.  Whatever you do on New Years reflects on how the rest of the year will go.  For example, my mom always had us clean our room when we were little so it would be clean the rest of the year.

According to this superstition, here’s how 2012 will look for me:

• My room will be a mess.  Really, it’s still recovering from Christmas shopping and then wrapping.
• I’ll wake up everyday with snuggles from my babies, and one will snore on my face.
• I won’t see Bryce much, since I didn’t see him at all (for almost 2 weeks soon)!
• I’ll hopefully be in the kitchen more for non-baking things, because I helped Bryce’s mom prepare the New Year’s dinner for the first time.
• I’ll still talk to a friend – even though she is far, far away now – since I got lucky and chatted with her this morning.

The big downer for me was that I didn’t get to ring in the New Year with Bryce by my side (you totally knew that already, didn’t you?)  But in retrospect, everything else was great.  So even though it’s highly possible that I won’t see much of Bryce seeing as it’s his last semester of law school and then he’ll be taking the bar, I’ve decided not to focus on the bad and instead think how lucky I am to have been able to have a great day regardless.

So I’m pushing my superstitious nature to the side this year.  I’m not going to let one day sway my feelings on how my year is going to be.  Who knows, 2012 could be awesome.  Happy New Year, friends!  Let’s make it our greatest year yet!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to blog more.  I’m not very good at keeping my resolutions, but I’m going to make an effort!

I’m on vacation now and trying to enjoy myself, but before I go, I’ll leave you with this ridiculous picture of me and my awesome friends at our annual Christmas get together.  It was so much fun and I really hope we can keep up what’s become a super fun tradition.

So I know it’s been a while, and I’ve totally missed blogging.  But a lot has been going on!  Here’s a not so short update on things.

• Halloween came and went this year without much fuss at home.  However, I ended up volunteering to plan the office’s Halloween party!  I love things like this (and since I’m semi type-A the planning process comes pretty easily to me).  Cool pics and details to follow in another post!

• Most of the ladies in the office participated in a 5 week Biggest Loser competition where the winner would get $125!  Because of the competition, I decided to start the Jenny Craig program since I had been thinking about it for a couple of months.  The competition gave me that extra push to just go for it.  Anyway, to make a long story short, I ended up winning!  By then, I think I had lost about 11 lbs.  Jenny Craig is a 10 week program, so even though the competition ended, I’m still following their diet plan.  I’ve since slowed down in weight loss, but at least it’s a downward trend still.  I have 7 lbs to go to reach my goal weight of 130 lbs by December 2!  Wish me luck.  I’m going to need it.  And for one big reason.  Thanksgiving is the week before my final weigh in!  Eeek!!  You guys, that’s more than 2 lbs a week I need to lose in order to reach it and I’m not sure that’s doable.  Also, another post with pics will follow up on this as well!

• Bryce will be gone through the holidays this year.  He’ll be going to Japan on a “boy’s trip” and won’t be here for both Christmas and New Year’s.  I’m so bummed!  Christmas is my favorite time of year (my favorite holiday!) where you should be with the ones you love and basking in the warm glow of happiness.  Did that sound lame?  Haha.  I’m trying to be understanding since it really might be his last “boy’s trip” for a long while, but it’s really difficult.  And while I feel like this makes me really selfish, I find I don’t care all that much.

• To sort of make up for it, he invited me to go to San Francisco with him when he goes up for a competition in February!  And let me tell you folks, I am SUPER excited about this trip.  While I feel I’m not prepared in the least (no cold weather clothes etc..) and I probably can’t afford it (or I’ll rack up some credit card bills), I feel like THIS will be our last “vacation” until our honeymoon.  Also, it gave me a really good excuse to buy boots!  It was incredibly hard for me to find a good pair for a reasonable price, but I finally found one!  Target was acquired.  The best part is they can be worn both long or by my ankle!!  I’m all about versatility.  What do you think?  Also, if you have any suggestions on what I need to get for my trip, I would so appreciate it.  I’m already thinking of getting a cardigan (can you believe I don’t own one?) and I’m already covered with my big jacket.  Any places I absolutely must go to?  We only have a couple of days to go sight-seeing as the trip is really for his competition, but we’ll try to squeeze in a few things!

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now.  But I’m so looking forward to blogging about the Biggest Loser and the Halloween party.  So look out for those!

So my weekend away with Bryce for a little staycation was amazing.  The hotel was lovely (and secure might I add! You couldn’t go up the elevator without a card key).  The view was gorgeous!

And I’m happy to say that Bryce was totally into it and did not pick up a book until late into the night when I started getting sleepy – mission accomplished!  We went to the pool to relax for a while in the afternoon.  There were a lot of people there, but for some reason it was mostly kids in the water (which kind of made me worried… if you know what I mean).  But it was a salt water pool (the first for me!) so I figured the salt would kill extra germs.  No?

That night there happened to be a block party in Waikiki, which was actually pretty cool even though there were way too many people around me that did not all smell great.  But I got to eat strawberry/banana crepes, shave ice, and hurricane popcorn (before dinner )!  No wonder I need to lose weight.  When we eventually got dinner, we headed back to eat in the room to have some peace and quiet.

I made reservations for the hotel’s beach-side restaurant for breakfast the next day so we could enjoy being so close to the ocean.  Plus I had heard good things about it.  While the food was so-so, the view was amazing.

The rest of the morning before check out was spent lazing about and I may or may not have buried Bryce under all the blankets…

While the weekend was wonderful, I will say one thing.  I think I have a problem with relaxing.  Ha.  I want a schedule to follow.  I need a schedule.  I had a moment where I kind of freaked out that we didn’t have anything planned for the afternoon, instead of just enjoying the fact that there wasn’t anything to do.  I’m not sure there’s a solution to this problem, so Bryce may just have to deal with having things outlined with a time table (like I did when we went to Kauai ).  Hi my name is Vanessa, and I have a problem relaxing.  Oops.

PS – all pictures were taken with my Retro Camera app for android!