our house hunt: something bigger than a bread box

We met with the mortgage broker the other day. We brought Nathan along with us and I pulled out these cute Japanese books I bought at Daiso. The broker's assistant took note of this and asked, "Oh, so are you going to teach him Japanese?"



I shook my head. "No, I just like the pictures. They're cute!"

Her face deflated at this. As trashy as I felt, I should have pushed it a little more by saying that the best honey mustard I've ever had was at Denny's and sometimes I want to call them up and ask them what their "secret recipe" is. And the first time I ever dropped a chip in front of someone else, he said, "It's okay, there's the five second rule," and I answered, "There's a rule for that? I was going to eat it anyway!"

Luckily my idiocy had no adverse effect. Our loan gives us a housing option other than the airport tarmac. I thought that since Mike is an older, white male, the bank would just throw money at him, like that skit on SNL when Eddie Murphy went undercover as a white man. That didn't happen.

I was worried that we would have to tell our realtor that we're too poor for a real home and with that information (I didn't find any MLS listings for quonset huts or cardboard forts), she'd call us later, saying, "Okay Mike and Mona. I found you a place. Are you ready? The bad news is that it's a cave, but the good news is that there's tons of storage! You can have a fireplace anywhere!"



A mortgage means in addition to my job, I'll have to hustle on the side. I am filled with ideas. I could go to mommy and me get-togethers dressed in a trench coat lined with designer binkies and bottles of hooch. Maybe I could make cute bottles shaped like teddy bears. Who wouldn't want to drink Bailey's out of a bear?

Or, I could always peddle those Japanese books as manuals for the secret Asian alternative to Weight Watchers.



You can eat all the monkeys and watermelon you want.

bus rage

As the bus rambled through West Seattle, I heard a loud high-pitched scream come from the back. At first I thought that it was just some teens messing around, a very common eye-roll worthy incident. A small Chinese girl chased two black teens up to the front and she started shrieking, "EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME! YOU STOLE MY IPOD!" One boy was shoving his hands into his pants while she pulled at his shirt, furiously denying that he had taken it. She planted her feet and leaned back in a frantic tug-of-war with a thief. The other ordered the driver to open the door. She pled with the driver to help her, crying that they had swiped her iPod and if he could please do something.

So what did the driver do? He opened the doors and let the boys run out.

I watched those two jackasses laugh as they fled the bus stop. Their open mouths probably congratulating each other on a small and successful heist. The girl began shaking as she stomped back to her seat. Some women surrounded her, yelling out, "Why didn't the driver do anything? He just let those guys go!"

Those thoughts echoed throughout the bus and everyone who didn't witness it were tuned into the drama that spilled over us. The girl was still sobbing while one woman dialed the police, another announced she was calling Metro. Others took turns storming up to the driver, demanding why he hadn't done more.

The driver, an older looking man with deep frown lines, shrugged it off. "I didn't know what was going on." The whole incident happened within his arm's reach, with a teenage girl pleading with him that she had been robbed and yet, it remained a mystery. I watched him stare at the three before he pulled the door lever.

The blatant victimizing compounded with a lax driver only worsened the already steamed crowd. More people yelled at him, calling the door-opening bullshit. More stops. More passengers. More people learning of what happened to the sobbing girl in the back and the idiot behind the wheel.

I could tell the driver was getting frazzled by the passengers and the noise. He almost missed a stop and pushed the brake too hard, jolting us forward. At the teenage girl's stop, the consoling women followed behind her, bellowing at the driver.

As she passed by, I slipped her a note with my name and number on it. "I saw everything," I said. She was still a red-faced mess and nodded towards me. I wrote down all the details on my notepad--the bus number, route, and time. This could not escape his record. (Edit: I just got an email explaining that employees have permanent files, not records. I've been spending too much time scanning the police blotter for my name. Also, I once saw my elementary school file and my kindergarten year was filled with many notes saying, "Mona is very talkative," and "Mona continues to flip her dress up, exposing her panties. We are concerned.")

I left the bus without saying anything to the driver. I shot him a look that I usually give people who expel a lung's worth of juicy phlegm right in my pathway. I was mad at him and myself for not doing more. I could have yelled at them to quit it or thrown something at their heads. I should stop stuffing Lean Cuisines in my purse and start packing ninja stars. No one messes with ninja stars. (Note to self: work on aim).

At home, I spoke with a lady from Metro customer service who had received several other calls about the theft and explained that it's their policy to move altercations off the bus. "Drivers aren't supposed to get involved." Wow, that totally makes me feel safe on public transportation. If I'm beaten, my attackers will just have to pause their pile-driving until the driver lets us all off.

"Well, he didn't tell us that it was policy to sit there like an idiot and say that he didn't know a theft was going on. He just sat there like an idiot and said that he didn't know a theft was going on. I want that to be included in his record."

All-about-me tangent: The only time I've ever been robbed was in Hawaii. It was my fault. I put my purse down to pick up some shoes on the top shelf and when I looked down it was gone. I ran to the salesclerk and she said she saw two girls zoom out of the store. It was too late. Worse yet, I had my brother's passport and my sister's pager inside. Even worse than that--my brother had an international flight to take three days later and my sister had many drug deals pages non-drug-deal-related pages to receive. When my brother found me filing a report with a security guard, his then-girlfriend said with her fat, puffer fish mouth, "Mona, did you get lost?"

On the bus ride tomorrow, I'm going to hold a hawkeye watch over my things. Who knows how much a microwaveable sesame chicken lunch is going for on the streets these days. Besides, if two teens ever rob me of my food and concealed ninja-gear, I'm on my own.

two fat stories

About three years ago, my friend Leslie and I went to a Weight Watcher's meeting in downtown Seattle. This was a poor decision because it was right before Thanksgiving and the bulk of the meeting focused on what we weren't going to eat. The room was packed with women slipping off their shoes and stepping on the scale and then congratulating each other on that week's total. It looked like the entire Oprah audience decided to leave the studio and fill a Weight Watcher's meeting.

A woman with tightly drawn red lips passed around paper plates, instructing us to list what we were going to eat. I went to town in my circle, writing mostly ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, ham and some more ham. Then Miss Lips said that we were going to count up how many points we had based on our food. I stopped listening after someone asked how many points were given for gravy and she said, "Gravy? Don't even think about it."

I flipped the plate over and drew a weepy frown where real food should have been.

That was the first and only time I have ever attended a Weight Watcher's meeting. Now, three years later, I still get stalkerish mail from WW like brightly colored postcards with a sweaty woman smiling as she holds an eight-pound dumbbell in one hand and her unattainable idea of beauty in the other. (Because unrealistic notions of what a woman's body should look like have no points whatsoever.)

These mailings have always printed the same phrase: "Dear Mona, we haven't forgotten about you!" Lately, they've taken a darker bent, moving from, "Come on Mona, give us a call," to "Still fat, Mona? We're not! How do those pre-pregnancy pants fit? They don't? That's too bad. We've enclosed a tissue to wipe those tears. Remember, tears are five points!"

--

Yesterday as I was driving, I realized that I had been sitting on my phone. When I got home, I looked at the screen and it said, "NOT IN SERVICE." My phone couldn't pick up a signal from under my ass. I've been able to make calls in tunnels and parking garages, but not from the dark depths of my junk in the trunk. There are few things in life more embarrassing than contemplating, "How big is my ass that a call from under it would include roaming charges?"

Seriously, how much area is there? What does this information do to my measurements? What am I now? 36-24-48-contiguous-states?

And writing all this has made me hungry.

coulda woulda shoulda: the real estate edition

During the next two weeks, Mike and I will be meeting with our mortgage broker and real estate agent to figure out what kind of hovel we can afford. I've mentioned in the past that our breadbox home can barely contain our family and that we. need. to. move. This has been a huge source of anxiety for me because I keep thinking, crap, why didn't I buy a house ten years ago? Oh yeah, that's right. I was 14. What was I going to do? Use our golden Toyota Previa as collateral? Would it be worth more if the license plate didn't say, "MO"? (Thanks Mom. What a gift! A tanned phallic-shaped automobile that's personalized for me!)

We have some simple criterion: hardwood floors, West Seattle location, and enough room for me to host a festive sweater party. I have so many awesome party ideas, but who wants to go to a party where it's standing-room only? Where are people going to make out and do jello shots? Plus, Mike doesn't want that big of a yard. He had a yard (along with a house, which went to his first wife. Yes, I'm wife number two. I don't feel bad, two's a bigger number) and he doesn't want to do any yard work. I don't either. The closest thing to gardening I've ever done was cover a gnawed mango seed with a little dirt, which only attracted red ants and the ire of my mother.

It has been great embarrassment that we rent. Even more so when I admit that half of Nathan's room is our office, so when I tell you that his nursery theme is Microsoft Word, I'm not kidding.

But we're doing it, the big American dream IT and if you have any tips, please please please send them my way. It feels like I've stuck my finger into an faulty electrical socket, one that jolts when I think that maybe we'll have to move so close to the airport that our address will be Gate B12.

Unsolicited information

1. It wasn't until Anna Nicole Smith died that I learned how to correctly pronounce "executor," as in executor of the will. I had been saying it like, "execute-tor," like Skeletor. I don't know any other -tor suffixes, but if I did, I would list them here. Also, I found out that the statue of limitations and the statute of limitations are two different things. The statue of limitations is headless.

2. In the fifth grade, several branches of a Christian group called YWAM (Youth with a Mission) would visit our parochial school. They would sing Christian songs and accompany it with a dance routine. When American sect visited during assembly, one guy introduced himself by saying, "Hi. I'm John. I'm Korean and I'm from L.A." My whole pew busted out laughing because until then, the only Koreans we had ever known were from Seoul, not South Central. Koreans not from Korea? Whaaa? They don't exist! That was so absurd, it made our poor geographically ignorant selves hysterical. Sometimes, I wonder what it must have been like for John to be in front of giggling elementary school kids, trying to figure out what was so funny.

3. In the eighth grade, I joined my school's MathCounts, not because I qualified, but because my coach was too nice to point out that they looked down on counting on your fingers. Besides, the Korean kids knew everything. They were drafting blueprints for nukes when I was writing one-act plays for my Barbies. During the final round of the state competition, the smart ones went on stage while my friend Sara and I waited in the audience. When the answer was announced bellowed to each other, "See, I told you!"

4. My relationships with gay men have only been fleeting, like at the hair salon or the time when my friend Odawni forgot that I was coming over and instead, three gay guys let me into her building and said, "Come on in giiirl!" I have this idea that I am not fabulous enough for gay men. I will never be a gay man's Grace. That is not being homophobic, that is gay men being mona-phobic. I'm a mona-rity! Where's my parade?

5. If there's one thing I hope Nathan does not inherit from me, it's my inability to perform math. In second grade, I discovered that if I faked a stomachache, I could sit in the nurse's office long enough to skip over the dirty part of the day devoted to long division. And because I was feigning a stomachache and not an epileptic seizure (which is what my break-dancing looks like), no alarms sounded and I could relax on the paper-lined bed until I returned to class. This brilliant scheme to usurp Mrs. Miller's authority worked until my dad opened up a parent's note and I never saw the inside of the nurse's office again.

6. In the fifth grade, my teacher and her teacher friend in Kentucky orchestrated a trans-Pacific penpal program between the two classes. I received a letter from Andrea, a country girl who loved Garth Brook and horses. She wrote, "Do you like the SHOWER?" The question stumped me. Why did she put "shower" in all caps? Was there a deep abiding love for hygiene and general cleanliness in Kentucky? Or maybe the shower was a hangout spot, like the skating rink or the movie theater. After a week of formulating a perfect answer, I finally wrote back, "I don't know the 'SHOWER.'"

Her reply arrived weeks later and sealed my fate as the worst representative of Saipan ever, "Dear Mona, I asked you if you like the show E.R. Are you really that stupid or do you have to go to a special class hut for that."

Aren't they supposed to be knitting sweaters?

At the Greenlake PCC today, I saw two elderly white women almost come to blows over a parking spot. It was like the deleted scenes of the Cocoon Director's Cut DVD, the part that shows what the movie was really about, not procreating with aliens, but pure grandma-on-grandma fisticuffs. As I watched these grannies barking outside their Buicks, ready to pull the curls out of the other's eggplant colored coif, I thought, if you shop organic but fight it out, does it mean that you love the earth but hate the people living there?

My son has more hair than Britney Shears

Who cares about Britney Shears when Nathan's raving over Rice a Roni?

star sighting

There have been three times in my life when I have had a chance to talk to Heather McHugh and in all three times, my vocabulary has shrunk to that of my nine-month-old. When Nathan babbles, "Gah gah gah," it's cute. (Sometimes it's "Gan ja, gan ja," and I have to go, "Ganja comes later, honey. Wait till you're out of diapers.") But I'm an adult and you should expect me to complete my sentences, not act like I order my Depends in bulk.

The first time was a couple of years ago in La Conner when Mike and I attended the Skagit River Poetry Festival. See, before baby, Mike and I would dress up fancy. There were heels and stockings, and sometimes I would wear something nice, too! That weekend in La Conner, Mike stayed in our hotel bed while I bumbled downstairs foraging for food. I had made myself a bowl of oatmeal when Heather McHugh walked in. I could only stare at that hot gray lumpy mess and say to myself, "You are breathing in the same air as Heather McHugh! The same air! Think of something brilliant to say! Something witty! You can do it, Mona!"

When I looked up, armed to ask, "What's more difficult to achieve in a poem, complexity of image or complexity of sound," and, "Whose voice are we hearing in your poems," (Hello, On A Roll? It's me, Mona, I'm on my way!) she studied my bowl and said inquisitively, "Is there any oatmeal left?"

"Um. I think I used the last of it." That was the extent of my brilliance: a heifer breakfast.

The next time was at Mike's MFA reunion. I managed to squeeze into a conversation she was having with another professor and when I say squeeze into, I mean, I slugged my way from the cheese and crackers table to her sanctum where I eagerly nodded like I had been there the whole time. Like crude oil on a baby seal, I was so slick! So smooth! When the other professor turned to his colleague, it was just the two of us. Four if you count the bulbous, awkward silence and my stupid Elaine-contemplating-egg-roll-theft face.



I had to say something, so I shared that I was taking a poetry class with one of her former students. I managed to blub out something like, "Whenever I read your poems and then work on my poetry, I feel like I'm just drawing stick figures. She then joked, "Well, you know, if you rub two sticks together, you start a fire." I think I followed that up by saying her poetry is genius, like she discovered fire or something. I don't know what's more awkward to hear, a bad writer admitting she's a bad writer and bringing it up a notch with a compliment that makes no sense or being recognized as having secured the advancement of man. I seemed a lot smarter when my mouth was full of cheese.

Yesterday was the third time. I was driving through a parking lot, having just taken Nathan to his nine month check-up when I saw Heather walking to her car. I had this stunning idea of pulling up behind her and blocking her in. When she appeared at my window to ask, "What the F," which I know would inspire her to write, "An Ode to What the F," I would respond with, "Remember me? I ate all the oatmeal that one time and then that other time I also had nothing to say? Well, let me introduce my son! The doctor measured his head and it's off the charts! It's full of brain! Smart, poetry-addled brain!"

I didn't do it. I drove by and left her alone. I waited at parking lot exit, thinking of all the crazy stunts I could have pulled until I saw her car behind me and it was time to get out of the way.

sometimes...

Sometimes Mike and I wonder what we did to have a son who is consistently happy.



Sometimes, I talk to myself the way I talk to Nathan because man, that boy's funny.



I love the screen capture here. Thanks YouTube for making my husband look like the big-cheeked cloud on a map that blows wind into the ocean.



Sometimes, life gets too be so good, I think, yeah, I could live this day again.

I give it an "ehh"

We spent the bright part of Sunday at the Olympic Sculpture Park trying to understand what the hub bub was about. It was too windy to read the newspaper insert about the sculptures, so I just listened to what everyone else mused. "That lady over there said it was about global warming. So I think it's about global warming." None of the art "spoke" to me, but then again, I don't get smooth jazz either or people who slather butter on croissants because dude, that's made with butter.



This piece is entitled, "Bench." I wonder why. There are signs everywhere that say do not touch. But are we allowed to use it as a bench? If it's not meant to be used, there should be spikes and a moat with alligators around it.



I did like that you could see the Space Needle from many areas, but that's because I love the Space Needle. It's our country's finest needle.



I'm sure the Bench spoke to Nathan about the spread of Communism through Eastern Europe. Either that or poop. My money's on poop.

I loved the wide walkways perfect for families, couples, and strollers. I did not enjoy however, Beverly Peppers' explanation of her artwork. It reads: "The abstract language of form that I have chosen has become a new way to explore an interior life of feeling...I wish to make an object that has a powerful presence, but is at the same time inwardly turned, seeming capable of intense self-absorption."



Doesn't that statement seem a little, self-absorbed? I felt like I was back in my short-story writing class with the idiot, who smoked pot in the woods and got water for his bong from a puddle, explaining that the robots added to the "dream of fiction." I'm sure I could come up with the same abstract drivel if I were paid millions to chip away at a rock or on some serious peyote trip.

The "Do Not Touch" caveat burns me. Why couldn't Paul Allen spend a couple of million more on materials that would stand my exploratory hands? I WANT TO TOUCH. I can understand not touching paintings at the Louvre, but this is a park. Instead, there are security guards on bikes, vulturing around and warning people to keep their paws off. I'm still pissed at Paul Allen over building Qwest Field so he could recreate the experience he had growing up and going to games with his dad. Whatever. Now thanks to you, the Super Bowl will NEVER come to Seattle.

Bourdain makes my heart swell

On Rachel Ray: "Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that 'Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!' Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, 'Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could--if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?' Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better--teach us--and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. 'You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion--you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….'"

He goes on to snark about other cooks, like Sandra Lee. That rich, white privileged woman with her semi-homemade boobs (30% real, 70% saline), who made a Kwanzaa cake with CORN NUTS, annoys me to the point that it burns my eyes. Why does she have to make it semi-homemade? What about fully homemade?

She's not shut out of my black heart forever, though. The Semi-Homemade episode that would win me over would be one dedicated to Anna Nicole Smith in which Sandra Lee concocts some frou-frou cocktail and spills it onto her cheeto and vicodin tablescape, saying, "This one's for our homie." She could also just open up a box of Franzia because anyone who drinks wine from a spigot is after mine own heart.

I'm not from around these here parts

In the first and second grade, I lived in Salem, Oregon. This throws most people for a loop when they find out that this isn't the first time I've been to this glorious nation. (Yes, I've seen a dollar bill before. No, this is not the first time I've seen my breath, thank you. That's very nice, but I like to think that I speak English very well.)

I don't have to tell you that my class was full of tow-headed Jacqueline's and Jeremiah's and I was the only Pacific Islander there. I brought a mango for snack time and when Bobby Moore cackled, I saw someone else's tonsils for the first time.

And reading this makes me believe that Pat Robertson must have made his way to Salem and taught my classmates that playground game of overt Asian racism in which you take one finger and pull the corner of your right eye up and say, "My mommy's Korean," and use your other hand to bring down the left eye and say, "And my Daddy's Japanese," then with that stupid, twisted face, you yell, "SO WHAT AM I?"

my genius, oppressed

I was about to register for Jeopardy but unfortunately I'm too old to sign up for the Kids registration. I think this is a damn shame that they didn't open up that category because it's the only one I'm good at. I would be the star of Kids Jeopardy. I would sweep the categories. I know Jethro Tull is the name of the band, not the guy with the flute. Seriously, I would get all True Daily Double up in there. I'd be on the cover of Newsweek as the Awkwardly Placed Woman Who Knew Everything. Who cares that I'm college educated and two feet taller than the other contestants? I don't have a bedtime! My wisdom teeth are coming in. Doesn't that mean I'm smarter now?

If I could appear on Kids Jeopardy, I'd roll up to the Jeopardy studios in my Dae Woo and spot a kid wearing a bow-tie and glasses, frantically flipping through flash cards of Presidents and their wives. I'd open the window and shout, "Where's your driver's license, Timmy? Oh yeah, that's right, you're eight!"

I would saunter into my booth and flash my gold-plated bangles to the baby-toothed kid from Sandusky, Ohio and sneer, "How many lawns would you have to mow to get this kind of bling?" I would lean into little Johnny and warn, "Do the people on your paper route know you're gone?"

--

In awesome Friday news, I was bestowed with an ROFL award for January by the fuh-uh-ny Oh The Joys for my donut baby that wasn't.

This reminds me of the time that the New Kids on the Block performed on a local telethon and my cousin Geraldine called in, gave me the phone and told me to ask for Donnie. I choked and started giggling so I hung up. Then all of a sudden, we could hear the woman on the television, "Please children, this is a serious fundraiser. Please do not play on the phone." We FREAKED out and fled the living room, like the woman would climb out of the television, grab our collars and present us to our parents for discipline.

But there was that sweet rush of being one phone operator away from my favorite NKOTB member, a feeling that still jolts me now, years later.

This award is just as cool.

all the live long day

This past two weeks of jobbity-jobness has not been without doubts. Frowning thoughts have jabbed at me during the commute like, "WHAT AM I DOING WHEN THERE IS STILL SO MUCH GOLDEN GIRLS TO WATCH!" I drove the first week and then remembered that I hate hate hate driving in Seattle during the morning, the exact window of time everyone in the Pacific Northwest gets into his/her respective Prius and decides to get in the way of my arriving-to-work-on-time goals. I don't get road rage, friends, I get road murder.

I've been taking the bus and my chi is back to normal. Not just because I don't have to spend money on gas/oil/parking, but because I get to hang around crazy people again! I love you Metro for putting the crazies and loud mouths in my ear-hungry proximity.

Like today, when the pleather-jacketed dude sitting across stopped hypothesizing on Nam long enough to look up and say, "Sorry about that. Just working some shit out." And what about the mousse-haired pre-teens dressed in suits, nudging each other with, "Let me show you which building I want to throw a rock at!"

Let's find a backseat, King County. Awww yeah.

--

Nathan has been cruising a lot lately, shakily making his way from the coffee table to the couch, from the couch to whatever's nearby, like my lap or Lilo the autistic cat. If he were in college, he could blame the utter lack of graceful movement on the beer bong, but he's only nine months old and has only his developing motor skills to curse as he crashes onto the carpet. I shake my head at this and point at him, "Well there goes MENSA! Way to go my first-born!"

And would someone tell me how many times he has to smack his head on the side of the couch before he really needs a helmet?

You know who'll win? The team with the most points.

Mike discovered that my phenomenal Super Bowl chili is only delicious thanks to a packet of McCormick's Original Chili Powder and not my "ancient Chamorro secret," as I've been telling him these past five years. I have led him to believe that the "kick" he tastes is the stream of tears poured in because it hurts to stir and season for hours, when really, I just dump everything into our All-Clad slow cooker and scoop it out later.

Super Bowl Sunday is the best time to reveal anything because Mike's too wrapped up in the big game to fight over my culinary deception, especially since I don't really get the steak flown overnight from Mexico. Sorry, dear husband. You're really savoring the meat section from Safeway, not the soul of Tenochtitlan.

--

Even though I was pregnant this time last year, Nathan was still able to participate.



Nathan was right about the Steelers and would have been right about the Seahawks had the refs not been complete tools and Ben Roethlisberger not led the Complete Tool Brigade.

This year, Nathan cashed out his Coverdell account and put it all on the Colts. At least he didn't touch his baptismal money. We might need that for next Super Bowl, when Steve Hutchinson decides he has a soul worth more than his gazillion-dollar contract with the Vikings and returns to the Seahawks and we finally have a line-up that ferry us through the playoffs. In any case, here it is:



Colts: 41. Bears: 10.

And if the refs have a repeat performance of being spineless, impotent zebra-striped tools, it'll be an even bigger tragedy because they'll take the win away from my baby.