Reading all the stories on various news sites this morning (like the one I posted above) broke my heart. I’m all kinds of broke right now (my SLR broke and is at the repair shop right now), but I knew I had to donate something. 2010, as I’ve said, is about putting positive energy out there and the people in Haiti certainly need us to send some positive energy (in whichever form you choose) their way.
NPR has posted a listing of various charities you can donate to. Not a full listing, but definitely something to get you started. Go look here.
I chose to donate to the American Red Cross and it seriously only took 2 minutes to do. All you have to do is select “Donate Now” from the front page and select “INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE FUND“.
If you’re not near a computer, you can actually donate via text message! The State Department’s DipNote blog writes that “for those interesting in helping immediately, simply text ‘HAITI’ to ‘90999′ and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts, charged to your cell phone bill. For more information, read the Red Cross’ press release on it.
Skip buying lunch today and donate that $10 to the charity of your choice.
I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions. Last year, I promised I would exercise, I promised to stop eating fast food, I promised to finish my coursework, I promised to do about a million things that have long left my head. On New Year’s Eve, I thought about all the resolutions I abandoned and I felt guilty. I sipped champagne with my friends, a good 15 lbs heavier than I was the year before, ready to say goodbye to 2009. I realized then that New Year’s resolutions (while they may work for some), do not work for me. The ones I’ve made in the past just weighed me down, filling me with guilt and regret.
2009 was a rough year, particularly for my health (this is not related to my broken resolution to avoid fast food, I promise). At the beginning of the year, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. I spent the rest of the year trying to get my condition under control and resigning to the fact that this would consume my life.
This is not a *boo hoo* rant, trust me. I’m grateful to finally have a name for my condition. In college, I’d have major stomach issues for months at a time. TheEx would always lose patience about a month into a flare-up and tell me to just suck it up and deal with it. But now, now my condition has a name. It’s not made-up-imaginary-stomach-problem, it’s Ulcerative Colitis and it’s real. My condition affects everything. It has become an imaginary third person in the relationships that I’ve had, controlling my plans on many occasions. It’s been a big adjustment, but I’m finally adjusting to my new routine, my new life, my new companion.
2009 was about loss. Losing routine, losing love, losing focus, and losing my way. A lot of my friends seemed to be dealt the same cards and we spent 2009 laying low, just waiting for the year to end. Celebrities that I grew up watching on television died left and right, leaving me feeling uncomfortable and uneasy about death in general.
2010 will be about putting out positivity in the world when I can. 2010 will be about generosity and good deeds. I won’t set a minimum or maximum, I won’t get caught up in the specifics. I’m just going to make a mental note to myself about what I want this year to be about.
TheEx’s family had a New Year’s tradition of popping fireworks until midnight and then eating fresh saimin together at the dining room table. It’s a tradition established long before me and will continue with the next person theEx decides to share New Year’s Eve with. This year while I lit sparklers and drank champagne with my friends, I remembered those years I spent with theEx on New Year’s Eve with her family.
Long before theEx was, well, theEx, she was just known as Linda. I went with her to family functions and helped her mom wash dishes after her relatives left. On New Year’s Eve, I’d sit with her family at the dining room table and slurp through a bowl of fresh saimin.
Her brothers filled a stack of hollow bricks with fireworks in front of the house while Linda and her teenage sister, Jamie, wrote their names in the air with extra long sparklers. Linda’s mom sat in a broken lawn chair, poking their lopsided grill with a stick to keep the fire going.
“Let’s play a game,” Jamie mused, dropping her sparkler into a bucket of water and watching it fizzle out.
“Okay,” Linda answered, practicing a cursive “L” in the air.
“This is a ‘this or that’ game. I’ll say to things and you have to choose one,” she explained.
I sat off to the side and crushed pop-pops under my shoe. Linda pulled up a chair next to me, tossing her sparkler into the bucket. “Okay, go,” she said.
“Okay, if you had to choose one person to save, who would you choose?” Jamie asked. She paused for dramatic effect and then continued, “Mom or Hitler?”
Linda laughed, open mouthed and wide, as if caught by surprise. “Mom, of course!”
“Okay, that was too easy,” Jamie replied, playing with the lighter. She lit another sparkler and shook it near Linda’s leg, white sparks bouncing on the pavement.
She pulled away, shooting Jamie a dirty look. “Okay, next.”
“Mom or Dad?” Jamie asked without hesitation. I knew the answer; Linda’s father was barely in the picture. He was merely a stack of giftcards scribbled with “from Dad”, sometimes “from Mark” when he wasn’t paying attention when signing.
“Mom,” Linda answered. She turned to me. “Do you want something to drink?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m good.”
She kissed my cheek and leaned into me. “It’s almost midnight,” she whispered. “I love you.”
I crunched a pop-pop under my shoe. “I love you, too.”
“Hey! We’re not done playing!” Jamie pouted, pointing the fiery sparkler in Linda’s face. She hid in my shirt collar.
“Kristel or Mom.” It wasn’t really a question.
“Both!” Linda called out with a laugh, but Jamie wasn’t smiling.
“No, you can’t do that. That’s not how the game goes.”
Linda stood up, walking to where her brothers were still blowing up fireworks and just about anything they could fit into their stack of blocks. “I’m making my own rules,” she answered in that baby voice she used to talk to her family.
She grabbed Linda’s arm. “No, Linda. You have to choose one. You can’t save both. One will die and the other will live. You have to pick one.”
I tried not to look at either of them, but I could see them out of the corner of my eye. Linda’s mom had gone in the house to start boiling the saimin noodles and Linda’s brothers were busy filling the cement blocks with newspaper and smoke bombs.
“Mom,” I heard Linda say. I turned to see if she had called out to her, but I quickly realized it was answer.
“Good choice,” Jamie gloated, slapping Linda on the back. “You have to choose your family.”
I could feel Linda’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t stand to look at her. She didn’t have to answer. She didn’t have to give in to her sister, who played the game just to watch my reaction.
“Kids! Saimin!” Linda’s mom called out from the kitchen. The boys dropped the lighters on the sidewalk and raced each other into the house.
“Ready to go?” Linda asked, reaching for my hand. She smiled at me, in exactly the same way she had when she said, ‘I love you’ earlier. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just tired.”
“Come on, let’s go eat.” We went inside and her mom handed me a steaming bowl of fresh saimin. Linda saved me a seat next to her and I spent the meal trying not to cry in my soup.
It’s the last day of 2009 in ohso voggy (volcanic fog) Hawaii. I have a few hours to kill before I go out to celebrate the New Year with my friends. I’m writing this entry while looking out the balcony of my apartment and I feel content with my life. It’s something I’ve never felt before.
New Year’s in Hawaii is crazy. The illegal fireworks start right after Thanksgiving, with random aerials lighting the sky in the early morning hours, and continues well after New Year’s Eve. As a kid, I’d stick a whole row of sparklers in the grass and light them one by one. When I got brave, I’d play with Morning Glories and write my name in the air, letting the sparks dance to the asphalt.
The big finale came at midnight, when my parents would string up the big red Chinese firecrackers to a ladder and light it. It’d take a good 10 minutes to finish and then another 45 minutes to clean up, but after it was done, we’d all feel luckier and happier somehow. If we celebrated at my Grandma’s house, the whole family would come over, we’d potluck, and light sparklers in the front yard together. My Grandma would get her yearly glass of white wine and fall asleep well before midnight and we’d all kiss her goodnight before going home.
I’m 26 years old now. My parents moved to Seattle and we rarely do extended family functions now. I’m going over to a friend’s house with a bottle of champagne, bought a small box of sparklers, and plan on eating junk food with the people I adore. We won’t light the “Big Red” at midnight or light rows of sparklers in the front yard, but we’ll celebrate together and that’s enough for me.
I Won’t Make You Eggs in the Morning is my response to all those cheesy pick-up lines you hear. Sometimes I go on a bad date and sometimes I’m the bad date.
I may not know a lot of things about dating, but I know I’ll never tell a girl I’ll make her eggs in the morning.
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