family stone...

As a dutiful and loving daughter, I took my parents out to dinner tonight. It was a very wholesome experience. Very pure, very sincere, very enjoyable.

The outside weather was charming and inside, unconditional love was apparent. We laughed, teased, smiled, and listened to one another. They told me they were proud of me. Proud to be my parents. Honoured to be able to gesture my way and utter with confidence and pride, "that's my daughter". (Supposedly, I would be a perfect daughter if I dared to clean my room a bit more often than every 6 months, or longer)

They've sacrificed so much. They've given me so much. I can't help but to want to reciprocate, and more. They took a leap of faith by putting their heart and soul into my future. I was/am their monumental investment, an investment with a lack of definite return and maturity, yet filled with inevitable risks.

My mother was telling me about her friend's daughter who is turning 30 this year. She gave a sympathetic sigh and continued to inform me that she lacks a boyfriend (let alone a finance/husband), is overweight, holds a dead end job making less than me as a co-op student on work term, and lives at home with constant nagging from parents to get on with her stagnant life.

I got an impression that she is direly fearful of me being unengaged or unmarried at the age of 30. She will be beyond devastation and prone to constant anxiety attacks than me, the protagonist involved in this ordeal.

There are certain things I am able to promise an extravagant return on, and that is attributable to academics, career, and good behaviour. But the volatility of human emotions in the face of marriage, that's something a trend analysis cannot guarantee.

She encourages me to diversify. But I'd rather strategize accordingly to my desired niche market. I'd rather win big with pride, than win multiple smalls with regrets.

L: "Go big, or go home."

Mother: "But L, I don't want to go home yet. I want to go to T&T."

L: Yes, mother.

Not in any grand, destined sense; just in the quiet, stubborn way that unfinished business has of imposing its will on the unwilling.

when you're simply not prepared for the foreseeable stress. Since hindsight is 20/20, I stupidly ignored the fact that I would be bombarded with multiple "MUST GET DONE TODAY" tasks.

I woke up with a tiny pimple on top of my lip, far from reaching its ripe stage of disgust. So I chose to carelessly ignore it while trying to tame my mad woman hair. Although Asians girls may actually purchase shampoos to volumize their limp hair, I have a natural pump of volume in my hair since birth. 99% of the time, my hair is ridiculously cooperative as I do not need to brush my hair, at all. Today was the 1% of anomaly. It was appalling. After unsuccessfully taming my hair that retained a life of its own, I scurried out my front door.

I obeyed the road signs and adopted the actions of a civil driver in order to prevent the possibility of somersaults from any hurdles. By hurdles, I am referring to my temporarily reattached bumper failing to stick. My patience was tested to its max, as with my life.

Today was a big day for my baby as it was time for her long awaited lip implant in the wee hours of 8am. Since the auto repair shop was situated on the mid-west part of the GTA, the streets were narrow and the parking was daunting. I pulled up to a residential street curb alongside the shop to check my keys in and to sign a work order form, all in which together, summed up to 5 minutes max. I trotted along back to my car to grab my necessities for work and found myself face to face with a yellow parking ticket. It was merely 8:30am in the morning so my reaction time was a bit delayed, but after I parked the car behind the fenced shop lot, what happened decided to finally hit me. I got my first parking ticket trying to fix my temporarily parked car. I was in disbelief. This week is/was not my most fortunate week.

After several mental curses, I got picked up by a co-worker to head downtown for a supposedly quick meeting with co-op coordinators from Waterloo. Meeting ran a lot longer than expected, the weather was a lot rowdier than expected on our way back to the client's, and I ate a lot more than I expected as I devoured my chicken enchilada with glee.

My co-worker and I agreed that today was one of those days in which we should just go home, call our nonexistent boyfriends over, buy greasy Chinese take out and a bucket of KFC together, watch re-runs of Friends, and curse our profession while liberatingly shaking our delicious drumsticks in its face.

Anyway, running around outside in the thunderstorm with 2 inch heels, short capris, short sleeves, no umbrella, and a witch hairdo was an endearing sight.

Consequently, drying my worn clothes in an unventilated dinky little room while combating itis after lunch with gazillion points on my to do list at work, resulted in a grouch face for the rest of the day.

Being a dutiful auditor, I changed the 10000lbs water of the water dispenser as it was crying for replacement. I must bill the client for my initiative that's above and beyond my call of duty, as with my generousity in changing another client's toilet paper rolls.

Parting ways with the warehouse at 9:45pm to journey back to my head office to finish some admin work, was like having a fully boiled kettle pathetically wailing since 1pm.

Now an update on my supposedly tiny pimple. It was sly since it used the stressful day as a catalyst to ripe itself, taunting me with its unimaginable pain. I interrogated the client with my best poker face while resisting the temptation to make an E.T. like expression to counter the strain above my lip.

And it's one of those days that you feel like an oversized whale amongst the pretty dolphins. The angry weather might of added to the perpetual sneezing and the watery eyes too.

Oh, and I forgot to eat dinner.

Life is good.