In Twilight Regalia

What to Do With a Wintery Watery January Day….

It was grey and rainy and for some reason my husband and I were awake before noon on a Saturday. I was thinking of all the things I had told myself I was Going to Do with this weekend time, none of which I actually wanted to do, because they involved CLEANING.

My past history with Asian families changed my life concerning January and February. As a kid in the midwest, January and February were the months when you got snowed on, sleeted on, rained on, snowed on again, and then everything pretty much turned to ice soup and the school days went on and on and on and on in dreary endless repetition. No more holidays. No scenery. Dark short days without much color. No playing outside without armor of heavy clothing and whatever pair of boots that wasn’t soggy from yesterday. January to February was a BIG SNOOOoore.

But then I met my Chinese life head on and suddenly Christmas was a red and green blink and then

KAPOWWWW!!!!

NEW YEARS appeared in shining red and gold and fireworks.
Not the New Years that had single drunk people in foil hats staggering around to Lawrence Welk murdering Auld Lang Syne, or driving home intoxicated while their spouses admonished from the back seat, but ACTUAL New Years, not amateur night, but The LUNAR New Year about a half month later, where the focus is to clean up your shit from last year mentally, financially, and physically and get your shit together for
LIFE~
for SPRING~
for NEWness~
AND you have to be READY.
(It’s January 29 this year!)

Instead of sleeping and being annoyed with what is, you get on this fast track and
OMIGOD I’ve got to get my HOUSE cleaned and feng shui’d up,
and I have to get my bills paid or at least some new plan of attack worked out,
and get some goals,
and get some jai cooked,
some nin gao cake bought,
and some of those funny seed sweets and candied ginger and all in the octagonal trays so sweetness reigns on the year,
and some fresh FLOWERS oh yes, my favorite excuse for flowers,
and a mess of oranges for the altar (which for me is headed not by Buddha but by Huang Gung of the Chinese opera) with leaves on if possible,
with double stems if at all possible,
and buy some lycee (red envelopes),
and a bunch of other stuff and then
You rest. and Enjoy, and Celebrate.

I fell in love with Cantonese New Year. It’s the gaudiest, most gilded, noisiest gongs-and-fire-crackers time of the year and it is about JOY. And it sets my mind and my house in order.

I fell in love with it because it was about family and outings in packs,
and meeting some relatives you can’t even recall the names of,
and seeing your cousin’s new baby (whoa, she’s funny looking, huh?),
and waiting for a dim sum table for 9 or 11,
and Hi Ah-po, here sit down,
(what’s she saying?)
and sitting on your best guy’s lap because there aren’t going to be any more chairs in the waiting room,
and wearing your best jade,
and don’t worry about how much GOLD, the more the better,
and brocade,
and can’t we get everyone at the same table?
and at least two cell phone batteries are always dead and where the heck is she??
and everyone appearing at last,
and just plain flaunt your good fortune of family out for all the world to see.

You see I’m a Rooster-year baby, and flaunting it is right up a rooster’s alley.

It was like, someone just came and told me You Can LIVE Now. Ok? Stop dreaming and LIVE.
This is what’s happening NOW girl,
LIVE IT UP,
look at all these people around you and rejoice,
because you LIVE.
Look at the Grandmas and the babies and know that you were that once
and will be that some day, and all the while,
you are a part of this bigger thing,
You LIVE. And you enjoy your life.
Now is when you celebrate knowing that.

And looking around a big table full of my friends and family in all their party garb, I really feel that.

So these next two weeks are the prep for that day, even if I will spend it without some of those people, and I’m supposed to be running around scouring and organizing. Koreans have a much quieter version of that, much more sedate.

But today, surprisingly enough, my husband was in a great mood for some unknown reason, and inexplicably proclaimed that we should go to Rowland Heights and get some seriously professional Chinese fried rice.

POSTPONE MY HOLIDAY CLEANING????
Sure!

(I know, I’ll regret it next week)

But then: Fried rice???? you might say. Dude, you can get that anywhere.
NOT so. Not in Los Angeles. Not what HE means, and I know what he means. He had real fried rice in Korea, made by Chinese restaurant owners there, and knows the difference.

There is a particular toasty wonderful Golden Dragon Restaurant kind of wok-imbedded heaven in GOOD fried rice. Most of the Chinese food in Los Angeles is not Cantonese. It’s cooked by meagerly by Koreans, greasily by Mexicans, stickily by quick order chefs, bastardized by white fusion-cuisine wannabe places, and just plain murdered by pinch-hit quick steamtable places. Can you ruin fried rice??? YES, you can. There is no dim sum in Los Angeles proper that meets my criteria either, and none that meets his criteria for fried rice.

So we hopped in the car and headed to Rowland Heights, where the menus are seldom in English and the waitresses are all Mandarin speakers in terribly dorky looking dresses, and we have to point and banter to figure out what the hell we’re actually getting. They don’t even understand my properly pronounced Cantonese. But it’s still GREAT. We ordered five dishes and brought most of it home to go, all completely great. The funny thing is, they always understand “Mai dahn”. (Check, please.)

Then I dragged him around looking for New Year’s cards and flower pots and what have you and we bought some groceries and he looks at half of them and says “Honey what the heck is this?” but I know he’ll like it. I’m getting good at that.

Now after long naps, I must arise and rev into high gear, and get back on my speedtrack for
EEEEEK!
New Years!

*SPaRkle* ::SplooSHH::

In sympathy to my last post, my bachelor and partying friends up in Seattle took good care of me these last few days…. made sure I had a legitimate holiday with all kinds of important moments, including all the essentials: A poolgame, an adventurous and bizarre drink or two, a travelling New Years party pubcrawl with three bands, a disco ball and a bubble machine (also including copious photography of gratuitous boob shots of some chick named Mandy who sang 99 Luftballons and was so nearly falling out of her dress that every guy in the room was praying for a Janet Jackson moment), and many great meals, in beautiful places with chefs who showed us their bravado.

On New Years’ night, they took me to no less than four different bars in an evening, and presented me (yes, like a package) with a delightfully cute Japanese guy who was working on his English (Thanks Miotch, he was a cutey!); they made sure I got sufficiently walked about in the drizzle and had lots of chats with overly drunk amateurs outside smoking. They were all great and took cabs the whole time (that’s the main difference from the years back when we were in school), and managed to hold their liquor without puking and without even much of a hangover. I was totally proud of my menfriends. They did a credible and responsible job of rocking out while savoring their out-of-controlness.

This was all rather amusing to me since their lives are moving forward in a rush, and I’m the sober one watching all the antics from a sidebar.

One’s having a great time in a new relationship with a woman who brought a bonus toddler into the deal and he’s got instant parenthood; another is building his freelance business slowly into a solid reputation; another is jetting regularly across the country to be with his girl who’s a mom of two boys and they’re saving their pennies to move back to the rainland and be together as a family; one is finally admitting he’s tired of bachelor antics and really just wants a nice girl. Another who used to be in debt and friendless now has a great girl, a huge house, and looks like he can afford to marry her next year. (Amazing to those of us in California. ) The eldest one just recovered from a bout in the hospital with a blood clot and swears it hasn’t made any change in his life-attitude. He knew he still had stuff to do. They grow ‘em tough up there in Port Townsend.

To some credit, I was trying to be more fun, purposely. I usually refuse playing pool because they have such serious attitude about it and they are usually in teensy claustrophobic bars getting roaring drunk while instructing my every move. This time we went up to Port Townsend, where every bar and building is a quaint delightful work of folksy wierd postpunk art. High cielings, cushy chairs and surprisingly gourmet food were de rigeur; so being all rosey and calm in it, I actually played a mean game of doubles pool (only missed two shots, and they were near misses). This would perhaps have been normal if I were living up there again, an everyday event to some. But it’s just not me, the usual. It’s me the exceptional. I was quietly having a lovely debut of daring on a pool table that was conspicuously propped up by a bunch of newspapers on two of its legs. Some perilously drunk guy was watching like a madman from the corner and it didn’t bother me in the least. Fun to watch the balls sink away and have my best friend pat me on the back.

And my girlfriends!

My acupuncturist/artist friend is coming to a balance with or without marriage and doesn’t really give a damn; she’s getting content in her surrounding relationship and I note that her carrot hair which we all love is going paler and smokey white with time. She has her life in pretty good order and I feel so happy for her. She worked hard for this and lived through a lot of questioning. I hope her finances hold — she still questions, but it’s gotten calmer.

Our Lady of Perpetual Jetsetting has moved about so much she never got my Christmas present. Paris just isn’t good enough, she had to come home to be an aunt and a good daughter as well, but no time for Seattle….or L.A… Oh well, she’ll have time for it later. We text CALL ME, CiAO, etc. That’s how we work these days. I feel a bit like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life by contrast….

My friend of many colleges together is going through a dire winter. There’s no money. Her husband has been laid off twice in as many years, she has a mortgage, two little boys and no teaching certificate. My heart goes out — she is doing a more complex version of the dance I did two years ago. I don’t know what to recommend. YO, anyone with a job in Seattle for a guy who knows how to run a Heidelberg is appreciated. At least I think that’s what he does… I don’t want the Seattle economy to suck the life out of that little family like it did me.

Bev, down our former hallway, has mellowed and levelled out and we still love her insane palace of animalia, a tiny one bedroom with birds, 2 favorite pugs, cat, and EEEk, a snake. And she actually manages to take care of them all very well, while we just hope she takes care of herself. She also makes a mean crocheted baby hat. I guess new nieces bring out the best in us.

Actually this trip was about visiting animals, trees, and nature too. I hugged every dog I could get close to (about 5) and had a great time with Christmas lights and cold rainy atmospheric fog. It’s close enough to Christmas weather for me.

There was the disaster moment of the trip however, fortunately near the end. One always wonders if it’s karma or just an over-zealously polished restroom floor that sweeps your boots out from under you so fast. My tailbone was in serious hurt for the last day, but fortunately standing and walking was not the hard part, only sitting was. When I announced this accident upon my return to work, my attorney, true to form, said “SO, do you own the restaurant now?” Nah, I said. It’s just a bruise. It’s about five days later and I still wonder if I should go sit in a theater to see Narnia, I might not be able to stay seated that long. ooch.

Then there’s the Me Being a Dunce moment that’s inevitable. I took my friend’s only key to his apartment with me tucked into a corner of my purse to L.A. after I locked up and left. Once again, he demonstrated his Spider Man capabilities up to the second floor window. Sorry Mikey.

I kept missing something. Oh yeah, my husband. I’m not sure how that’s going. We’d arranged this trip long before the tussle, and when I got back nothing was any worse, better, or different. I had hoped absence would register fondness. Well, not really. I guess I wasn’t gone long enough.

But: I have resigned myself to reduction (spent all my giftcards on new workout gear - OH GAWD it’s come to THIS) and I plan on raising an eyebrow eventually. Some way. Any support appreciated.

I always wonder what all these people think of me in this circular madness of friendship that keeps swinging around each year, morphing a bit with each cycle. Perhaps it’s better not to know, and better to smile with the glitter and rain, and be grateful. What it’s made apparent to me this year is that they’re all taking care of themselves, and I’m needing to do better at that. Henceforth, I follow their cheery lead.

Thanks my dears.