This one time I needed to write

I haven't written in my blog in a long while and I don't have an excuse other than pure laziness.  I will try to rectify that especially that I have only days left of being thirty-one years old.  The thoughts of a thirty-one year old are much different than those of a thirty-two year old I imagine.


My family came to San Diego this past weekend to celebrate my birthday with me even though it's really this Saturday.  We spent a lot of time at the beach in Carlsbad which was like re-discovering the city given that I work in Carlsbad but don't really know the area apart from where I work, the gym and the outlets.  I'm an outlet fan, what can I say?  Aside from stuffing ourselves silly there were some really memorable moments which I'll share.


The hotel played a movie every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in their outdoor patio.  We watched The Lion King huddled under beach towels sprawled out in the grass against the night sky.  I wanted to sing the words to some of the songs but no one else was singing so I just whispered, "hakuna mata" to myself.  That particular song reminded me of my sister Cristina given that she sang that song at one of her school productions.  She used to practice so often we eventually knew most of the words to the song as well.  I could hear my father's laughter to the jokes in the song as though he were watching the movie for the first time.  "What's a motto?" asked Pumbaa.  "Nothing, what's a-motto with you?" said Timon. 


On Sunday we took a stroll along the beach with my two nephews in tow, my husband, my father and my sister Vanesa.  My mom had a headache so she opted to stay in the car.  We pushed my four month old nephew in his stroller and when he started protesting I decided to hold him in my arms and then when he got heavy I held him in the baby carrier also known as the baby bjorn.  (Which is actually quite fitting since he looks like a little German given his hair cut even though the company is Swedish.  I like to say Auf Wiedersehen to him because I think it's hilarious.  It's from this movie Bridesmaids and that quote never gets old).  So I held my little German nephew even though he's really Mexican and he seems so observant with those black marbles for eyes so I spoke to him in Spanish, pointing things out to him as though he understands everything.  I described things that were happening around us, pointed out birds, asked him questions, I was just his translator until he found the words himself.  His response?  He just giggled in delight.  

This one time I wrote a Father's Day Poem

I should preface this by saying that my father was out of the country during Father's Day so I just wrote him this poem a few weeks ago.  I cried writing it and he cried reading it which is a sign of a good poem to me.

A Poem For My Father

Long fingers push the back of my bicycle

Streamers fly in the wind

Skinny legs pedal as fast as they can

Crooked teeth expose a giant smile

Memories float to the surface in remembrance

Flat stones skip across an ocean sky

Baseballs thrown and caught in a grassy field

Small limbs undulate to dramatic music

You are my loving father

Human elevator

Over-complicated math tutor

Family genealogy instructor

And loving father

When my hands are wrinkled

And years have passed

My heart will burst in remembrance

Of twirling in white with you by my side

This one time I went to the beach

Today I decided to jog along the lovely stretch of beach in Del Mar near my apartment.  Sometimes I like to jog in the mornings during the week where bits of my story comes to me in little snippets.  I think the beach inspires me.  One time I went for a jog and saw seaglass on the sand and was touched.  I had read this book called "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake" where the main character, this little girl, was described as seaglass by her mother.  Since then, the sight of seaglass makes me smile.

Today was more of a sight-seeing day since the beach was crowded with families and couples rather than the occasional jogger.  There was a young family on their way to the beach with Tommy Bahama chairs strapped to the parents' back.  They had two young girls with blonde hair so light it was almost white.  I couldn't help but notice that the youngest girl wore flip flops that were too big on her, as though they once belonged to her older sister.  I liked being close to them, as though I was somehow sharing an integral moment of their lives.

It was warm though the sun liked to hide behind the clouds most of the late morning.  As I jogged along the beach I noticed my surroundings.  There was a little boy about seven years old making a large W in the sand with his hand and I wondered how much sand he would get underneath his fingernails.  All that grit just to write in the sand.  Why not use a stick or your finger I wondered.  There was another family with two little girls although they were older, maybe five and seven.  They wore hats on their heads and bathing suits with a long sleeved top.  One wore pink and the other purple.  When the tide left, their father pointed in the sand and they quickly dug for what I can only imagine are sand crabs.

I remembered my own father showing my sisters and me how to find them.  They were so ugly but I liked how their legs tickled my hand.  I could almost remember those days at the beach when I was their age, burying our Barbies in the sand, making sand castles so huge you could sit in the middle of them.  The first thing my father would do was start digging a giant hole with our buckets.  Vanesa and I liked constructing the walls and getting the water.  Sometimes we'd get too much water and we'd have to re-construct the walls again.  I liked sitting in the middle of the castle and working from the inside out.  I would get so much sand inside my bathing suit but I didn't care.  I wonder if anyone would say anything if I brought a Barbie, a shovel and a pail to the beach and construct a giant sand castle all by myself.  I should try that sometime.

This one time I went to E3

There was this one time that I attended E3.  This one time was Tuesday, no it was Wednesday because no one wanted to go on the first day.  I rode the Amtrak train for what felt like the first time with my co-workers and time seemed to fly by.  There was a mother who sat next to us wearing hiking shoes, glasses and a short crop of grey hair who was on her way to Yosemite with her teenage daughter.  She spoke to my co-worker about her son who wants to work in video games.  Only he's a composer and wants to compose music for the games.  Later I found out that the best advice would be for him to strip out music from an existing video game and add his own.  Instead, his mother was told to surround himself with people in the industry that could offer him advice.

Before we arrived there were these NOS girls handing out energy drinks.  What struck me were their outfits - bright blue spandex dresses that resembled something I once put on my Barbie back in 1986.  Only their dresses showed more cleavage and were much shorter than the makers of Mattel could ever create.  As an added accessory, they wore cut out cheap-looking sunglasses to make them look nerdy.  I guess nerds like a woman in glasses.

Once inside it was sensory overload with loud explosions on gigantic television screens of multiple video games.  I got a headache from so much leaping out at me, demanding my attention.  Instead, I checked out the "booth babes" at E3 which were rumored to be hired models and beautiful women, maybe even strippers.  I was not particularly impressed.

In an effort to wrap up this blog I shall say this:  I'm glad I went but I may have had more fun playing Glee karaoke.  Next time I'll bring my cheerleading outfit.

This one time I wrote a Mother's Day Poem

A Poem For My Mother

           

Images flash across the night sky

Full of love and emotion

Spanning three decades

From a mother to her daughter

Your gentle touch piecing together

Strands to make braids

Securing plastic bunnies in place

The romantic sounds of a distant language

Rolling r’s, the tongue soft against lips

Comfort in singing songs of gaviotas

The hum of your red beetle against

The soft rock on the radio we didn’t dare touch

The pink flurry of tutus, wet bathing suits

Driving down road after countless road

Your love is an unending orbit

Unbroken, unwavering and unrelenting

As warm as the rays of the sun

Beaming in your wedding dress

Your arm linked in mine

Forever by my side

My mother you’ll be

This one time I played basketball

I started my new job and had a great first week.  I memorized everyone’s name, told a classy joke, played several rounds of WWE All Stars and impressed people with my basketball skills.  I should say that I haven’t played basketball in years but back in 5^th grade I was the only girl on an all boy’s team and was the worst player.  I had one amazing moment where someone fouled me and I scored a point (my only point) for the season by tossing the ball through my legs called a granny shot.  I attended basketball camp one summer with my sister and learned a few things that stuck with me over the years. 

Fast forward to this past Friday where I tell a couple guys in our QA department that I want to join them in their pick up basketball game.  They asked me if I knew how to dribble and I said yes but I knew they had very low expectations.  I show up on the court with my purple water bottle wearing gym clothes and my hair in a ponytail.  Everyone introduces themselves and they spare me the agony of choosing who they want on their team with a game of rock paper scissors.  The winners are on one team and the losers on another.  I beat my co-worker Romel with a rock against his scissors and am on the winning team. 

The game begins and I am over eager, sprinting from one end of the court to the other as the ball exchanges hands, careful to be open when my team is on the offense and guarding my opponent in the defense.  I should have paced myself better since I got exhausted the more the game went on, my face red with exertion.  I can tell that my team is hesitant to give me the ball initially and when they do I shoot and miss over and over again.  Despite words of encouragement I know I sink to their low expectations.  Even in the defense position, I run into two guys in my attempt to guard my opponent and fall to the ground like a girl.

Finally, the knowledge from years earlier and training sank in and I finally made contact with the backboard, scoring a point.  I can tell that the guys are surprised and beef up their defense against me.  Instead of being wide open I had two guys plot to block me.  My teammates slap me some skin and say “good job” or “nice” and even I am impressed with myself after scoring five points in a row.

We run across the court listening to old 1990’s rap songs on an iPod and I say out loud, “I wish I was taller,” and my teammate Dan responds, “I wish I was a baller.”  I think back to the rest of the lyrics from Skee-Lo from the song I wish and say, “I wish I had a girl who looked good I would call her.”

At the end of the game we all said, “good game” to one another and gave each other five just like when I did in 5^th grade.  Only this time they meant it.

This one time I wrote a music review

There is a raw, primal energy to Dev’s sexy, catchy tunes that was felt at her concert at One Broadway Thursday night.  The crowd pulsed with the electropop beats of her music, especially when she sang her big hits “Like A G6” and “Bass Down Low.”  It was as though Dev brought the sexiness and glamour of Las Vegas to San Diego.  One fan summed it up perfectly when she exclaimed to her friends, “we are rock stars!”

The space itself is expansive with three rooms each with a different motif.  There were painted flames on pillars, giant disco balls hanging from the ceiling and futuristic-looking props.  Despite the size of the club the Dev fans filled the space so that you couldn’t stand still if you wanted.  Everyone danced, swayed, and grinded to the high-energy beats of Dev and the Cataracts and were left feeling like rock stars.