Vaccine Time

So I have officially gotten vaccinated, both doses.

After the first shot, my arm was just sore for about a day afterward. I couldn’t sleep on my favorite side, but that was the most inconvenienced I was.

After the second dose, I got some chills a few hours later. I went to bed and ended up waking up in the middle of the night with a heavy head and achy limbs. I struggled to go back to sleep and woke up the next morning feeling more or less the same way. I took a dose of children’s Tylenol (I’m a terrible pill-swallower), and my symptoms almost immediately cleared up and did not return.

Getting the vaccine has felt totally unreal. It’s been this talked-of thing for the longest time, and the rollout felt like it would take years. Never have I felt a vaccine was so important.

I mean, I’ve gotten the annual flu shot every once in a while, but this felt serious on an almost Contagion level of seriousness.

Side note: This is the perfect time to watch Contagion. Watching it back in March 2020 was a bit of a mistake for me. I was riddled with anxiety and horror for a few days after.

I feel safer after getting vaccinated, but my relief stems mostly from having my mom’s safety ensured. She got vaccinated, and I got vaccinated. My biggest fear has been passing something on to her, which is why I shut myself in most thoroughly last year.

It’s strange to live in such times, but I’m sure that is something everyone who has ever lived has thought at some point.

I Ate a Snail! (And Spent Time with My Family)

A few days ago, I celebrated my Tia Kaki’s birthday with my mom and the rest of my tias. And by a few days ago, I mean weeks at this point. I am seriously scheduling/writing way in advance of these posts actually being published. I figure if I keep this up, I can build myself a nice buffer and go on a vacation one day.

Yeah.

Right.

Side note: For those of you who don’t know, “tia” means “aunt.”

My Tia Kaki wanted to get together with her sisters and have a nice meal out and about, and since they were all vaccinated and COVID restrictions were lifting, we all decided to take her out for lunch. So one bright and sunny morning, my Tia Kaki, my Tia Esther, my Tia Martha, my mom, and me piled into a car together and drove to San Diego.

It was seriously one of the best moments of my life. It might not seem like much, jamming five people into a car and driving somewhere for lunch, but it had been so long since I had done anything of the sort. I used to be the kind of family member at large gatherings who would greet everyone once, then settle down in one spot to read quietly. I was never much for socializing.

But during this trip, it’s like I hung onto every word my tias said. I wanted to know what they had been up, where we were going, what they thought of this-and-this piece of gossip. I just relished every minute of that two-hour car drive.

When we arrived in downtown San Diego, our first order of business was parking. My mother nervously circled around blocks looking for an open space. We found one not too far from the restaurant we had a reservation at. And while we waited for our appointed time, we went into this little boutique.

Never has browsing through a store seemed so appealing. It was empty except for us, and we were all masked and hushed as we entered. We spent no more than fifteen minutes looking at little scarves, bracelets, and hats, but it felt so reminiscent of a different time. My Tia Martha bought me a black headband with little golden bees strewn across the top.

Side note: My tias are the queens of spoiling both my sister and I and their various nieces. They have perfected the art of spoiling.

I was nervous when we went into the restaurant since it was my first time eating at a public place since quarantining and social distancing first became a thing here, but the novelty of what used to be a familiar experience soon had me enjoying the moment. Plus, I wanted to milk all the time I had with my tias.

It was a fairly swanky restaurant, and my tias ordered their dishes like pros. My Tia Esther ordered an appetizer of (get this) snails.

That’s right, folks. We had ourselves some escargot.

For the first time in my life, I ate a snail.

I’m not normally too daring when it comes to food, but I have been making an effort to try new things. So when my Tia Esther offered me the snail…I took it.

It was absolutely drenched in this garlic butter sauce, so flavor-wise, it tasted like garlic and butter. Drench anything in garlic and butter, and that is what it will taste like.

Side note: Maybe this is too much information, but for like…four hours after I ate that, every time I burped, this garlicy, buttery aroma filled my mouth.

Texture-wise, the snail felt like a mushroom. I’m not overly fond of mushrooms, so I think it’s safe to say I’m not overly fond of snails. Regardless, I’m still glad I tried it.

We all had buckets full of fun trying out the food and sharing from each other’s plates. My Tia Kaki got ceviche (lemony as heck), my Tia Martha got this crab cake thing (that was not to my liking at all), my mom got a beet salad (it looked like her plate was bleeding), and my Tia Esther got this lamb salad (interesting, very interesting). I am not joking by calling this one of my best days.

Afterwards, we drove to a shopping center, and we listened to 80s songs and sang along to them. We were all a bit off key, but that didn’t matter. We were having fun.

If you were ever to go shopping with my tias, you would immediately note their practiced eye as they meandered through stores. They have a keen understanding of the value of brand names, more than I ever have or will. They could estimate the current worth (and the eventual worth) of a Louis Vuitton bag faster than I could snap a finger.

My mom is the odd one out, where she prefers to just sit down at a shady table and people-watch, so after walking around with my tias, we reconvened with her and then departed for home.

The whole day felt gloriously ordinary, and I’m happy I got to spend that time with my family. COVID has placed a lot of things I took for granted into sharp perspective. I appreciated every second of that day, and I am looking forward to spending more with my mom and my tias.

The Story of My Parents

My mother came to the United States from Mexico. She and her family became naturalized citizens, and they settled in a small town nestled right next to the border. My mom’s father, my tata, worked in the fields for a living. The town is a farming community, and that was the work that was available. My mother was the first of five sisters to go to college.

My father was raised in a broken household in New Jersey. He spent some days with his mother, some with his father. Hunger was a frequent companion of his life. He wasn’t particularly close to his brother and his sister when he was young, but that is something he tries to rectify now. A tad directionless after high school, he joined the Navy.

After graduating from college, my mother became a kindergarten teacher at a local school. She has not left the place since she started, remaining a respected member of the faculty.

My father went through many experiences while in the Navy, most of which make for awesome stories, but he still jokes about how the Navy stands for “Never Again Volunteer Yourself.” After finishing his service, he decided to become a teacher. He learned Spanish, knowing that a bilingual teacher would be more desirable for schools to hire.

He got a job at my mother’s school.

When they first met, my mother thought my father was too proud. She offered to help him set up his classroom, an old-hand reaching out to a newbie, but he refused. My mother’s first impression of him was soured.

My father was completely oblivious of my mother’s dislike. He asked her out on a date.

They dated quietly for a while, until my father asked her to marry him. He also took that extra step to ask my tata for my mother’s hand. My father’s Spanish-speaking skills were perfect. He asked respectfully and quietly.

My father might not have realized this, but he was technically asking for my nana’s, my grandmother’s, permission instead of my tata’s. She ruled the household from behind the scenes. She sat next to my tata when my father asked, and she slapped his arm repeatedly, hissing, “Dile que sí!”

My parents got married.

My mother came from a large family, where family reunions included hundreds of people who all seem to know each other’s names. Everyone knows everyone’s business.

My father barely spoke to his own family.

My mother made it clear to my father as soon as they were married that she wanted children. A year after they were married, my older sister was born.

I came after, about a year-and-a-half later. Early on, my parents made it clear to the two of us that we were to be the most important person in the other’s life.

Of all the gifts my parents gave to me, this establishment of love between my sister and me is the greatest.

Not a day goes by where I do not hear an “I love you” from my parents. Despite wildly different upbringings, my parents came together with the understanding that they would create a nuclear family based on acceptance and love.

Of Couch Boats and Coffee Mugs

In a day, I’m going to go spend a few weeks with my sister.

Since I work from home, it’s fairly easy to travel to my sister’s place and stay over for extensive amounts of time. All I need to work is my laptop, a solid internet connection, the use of my hands, and my brain. The only real hassle in visiting Alya is the long drive.

I have found myself reminiscing about all the time she and I used to spend together.

We are/were each other’s best friend. We never really spent time apart from each other until she got married. This was due to the fact that we lived together, shared a bedroom, and couldn’t understand other people nearly as much as we understood each other.

As kids, we didn’t get out much. You know that ’80s nostalgia that’s been going around, with movies and TV shows about kids who leave their backyards to have wild adventures with aliens and other dimensions?

That was never me and Alya.

Our parents are of the “helicopter” generation of parents. Well, mostly my mother. We were never allowed to go out by ourselves when we were young. And since we lived twenty miles away from our school and most of our friends, we couldn’t easily walk over to hang out with classmates anyways.

So we made do with each other.

Our favorite thing to do was pretend we were other people. Cool people, not boring people. We would pretend we were in Middle-Earth slaying Uruk-Hai or that we were in Jurassic Park and a T. Rex was trying to eat us. One time, we pretended we were monkeys and we climbed our next-door neighbor’s tree. The looks they gave us made us never do that again. They weren’t mad. But they looked at us as if we were crazy.

On quieter days, Alya and I would do “Couch Boat.”

For those of you who don’t know what Couch Boat is, it’s when you pretend that your living room couch is an island in a vast ocean, an isolated spot you can only leave with great difficulty. Alya and I would gather up our most entertaining belongings (stuffed animals, blankets, action figures, books, markers) and climb aboard the Couch Boat.

And then we’d just stay there.

Sometimes we’d put on a movie in the background, but for the most part, we’d just float along alone together.

As I’m writing this down, it makes us sound incredibly unhealthy. We did run around in our childhood, okay? We got exercise. We were not just sedentary couch potatoes.

But on a Saturday morning, sometimes there was nothing better to do than good old Couch Boat.

Our Couch Boat these days has evolved. We bring tablets, lesson plans, notebooks, and coffee to the couch now. We do work together separately. But sometimes we’ll put on a movie we’ve seen a million times in the background. And we still pretend we can’t leave the Couch Boat. Well, we don’t actively pretend.

It just goes without saying.

.

How Do You Do That?! (Amazing Art from My Sister)

My sister is one of the most talented persons I know, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my sister.

Okay, maybe I’m kind of biased, but seriously, her talent speaks for itself!

From a young age, Alya showed an extraordinary knack for creating things. She excelled at all things arts and crafts. (Don’t listen to her if she starts saying she’s not that good. She’s lying. She is.) Her childhood doodles did not just deserve to be stuck to the refrigerator door; they deserved to be framed. And she drew so effortlessly. She made it look like nothing to churn out masterpiece after masterpiece.

And her skills only increased with age. Her work is jaw-dropping. As I’m picking my own jaw up from the floor, I feel like I have to apologize for this post. My paltry words are doing her art a disservice by merely attempting to describe them.

I’ll admit to feeling jealous of her when I was younger. Where I struggled to draw a straight line or a perfect circle, she sketched anthropomorphic cartoon animals as if it were nothing.

I’ve more or less grown up at this point (I hope), so I can appreciate her talents without necessarily belittling mine now. However, she is undeniably an artist of the highest caliber.

Side note: And by artist, I don’t mean one of those Abstract Expressionism kind of artists who paint a canvas white and THAT’S IT.

So here’s to my sister, an Above Average artist!

 

How My Dinosaur Fascination Began

I can’t really remember when I first liked dinosaurs. I was young, that’s for sure.

It must have started when I was three years of age. Back then, both of my parents worked at the same school, my mother teaching kindergarten and my father teaching second-grade. This was also the time when my sister started kinder there as well, so it felt like a very unfair situation to three-year-old me. Every member of my immediate family got to go to School except for me. I was sorely jealous of my sister. It was the deepest of betrayals for her to go to School without me.

(I know. Back then, I was such a fool.)

Instead of getting to go to School with my family, I was left at a babysitter’s for the day. My babysitter was a kindly older woman who had a dog and liked to do her ironing early in the morning. I was not the only kid she was looking after. Eddie came from another family with no connection to mine, but the two of us got to know each other through the power of playtime (and being toddlers).

I don’t remember much about Eddie anymore, but I do remember that he always got to pick our afternoon movie. His top two choices were Small Soldiers and, you guessed it, Jurassic Park. 

While none too pleased that I had been allowed to watch a PG-13 movie at the ripe old age of three while not under their watch, my parents were more than happy to encourage my growing admiration for paleontology. My mom showed this by getting me dinosaur toys (screw dolls, am I right?) and throwing me dinosaur-themed birthdays.

(One time, during one of these dino b-day bashes, they bought a Stegosaurus piñata that we just could not break open. My dad had to pull it down and break it with a sledgehammer.

My dad bought me dinosaur flash cards and educational CD-ROM games about dinosaurs. (CD-ROMs. Remember those? In case you’re curious about what these “games” looked like, here’s a link to a YouTube video that showcases one of the games I played.)

My love for dinosaurs only grew as the years passed. I knew all the names of my favorite dinosaurs. Adults would gape in astonishment at this little tyke (aka me) rattling off names like Plesiosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, or Dimetrodon. My parents took me to Dinosaur museums, and my extended family got in on the dino craze too. My tias on my mom’s side gave me glow-in-the-dark raptor toys, and my Uncle Dwight, on my dad’s side, gave me a Dinosaur Encyclopedia for a Christmas gift.

I even roped my sister into playing dinosaur games with me. We loved to pretend to be Iguanodons on the run from a Tyrannosaurus Rex. One time, in order to simulate being eaten by this carnivore, my sister and I decided to throw ourselves onto my mom’s recliner, imagining it was the giant mouth of a T. Rex. Unfortunately for us, the momentum of our leap into the jaws of death flipped the recliner over onto the backyard’s sliding glass door.

Anyways, as you can tell by now, I’m really into dinosaurs.

As time has gone by, while I don’t play with dinosaur toys anymore, I still have an abiding love for them and I gather what tidbits of information is available about them. If I could, I would go back in time just to catch a glimpse of these creatures in the flesh. Sure I’d have to adjust to the low oxygen levels that accompanied that time period, and sure I’d probably get eaten by a dinosaur myself before acclimating my lungs to said breathing conditions, but it would be glorious and oh so totally worth it.

Any dinosaur fans out there besides me? I’d be happy to hear

Happy Mother’s Day

My mother was born to be told, “Happy Mother’s Day,” because she was born to be a mother.

This might sound like I’m prescribing an unfair, feminine gender role on my mother, but people who know my mom know that this is not the case. She’s told me several times that for as long as she can remember, she has wanted to be a mother.

My mom is the kindest woman I have ever met. She feels honest pangs of discomfort when she sees animals on the side of the road. She’s always open to listening to your problems. She’s willing to drop everything to help out a friend. She thinks of other people’s needs before her own, and that is never more clear when it concerns my sister and myself.

She goes out of her way to tell my sister and me that she loves us. I can honestly say, hand to my heart, that not a single day of my life has passed without my mom telling me that she loves me.

(This became a slight problem when I went to school. I got so used to adding “I love you” to my good-byes with my mom, I even started saying adding them to the good-byes I gave to my friends. That led to some pretty awkward conversations later on.)

If my mom feels that my sister and I are missing something in our lives, she will do her utmost to make sure we eventually have it. (I once casually mentioned that my Xbox Live Gold Membership was expiring, my mom gasped like it was the end of the world, rushed into the nearest GameStop, and bought a year-long membership for me.) I hope I can say that my sister and I aren’t spoiled. (We might be.) But I know I can say for sure that we are both supremely grateful.

My mom is also the best person to take to the movies. She has this child-like suspension of disbelief when she watches one, and she has the best reactions. And her taste in movies is unbelievable. She likes happy endings and calm stories, so the typical Disney movie is what you would expect her to watch. She watches those too, but she’s an enormous fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Transformers series (for some reason).

My mom offers me the ultimate comfort. I have never been in doubt that she loves me, and I wish I could celebrate all she has done for me on more than one day. Happy Mother’s Day seems like such a paltry thing to say to the woman who gave me life and happiness.

But knowing my mother, if I told her that, she’d just say that having me around is enough to make her happy.

Happy Mother’s Day, mom. I love you.

Three Embarrassing Things I’ve Done While Taking a Shower/Bath

Before I continue, let me say that I’m writing about harmless antics. Nothing obscene. If you’re looking for that kind of stuff, best you go elsewhere.

Anywaysies, I thought I’d be a little more open to complete strangers, so I’ve decided to share some absolutely embarrassing things about me so that people can know I truly am a below average someone.

Here goes:

1. When my sister and I were really little, we would often take baths together. Rather than focus on getting ourselves clean (which is what we were supposed to be doing), Alya and I would have a grand old time playing with bath toys, making waves in the “deep waters,” and seriously messing with the shampoo.

We would take nearly empty or half-full shampoo bottles and fill them up partways with water. Then we would shake them like crazy.

In this manner, we created rudimentary foam shooters. The rich, bubbly mixture of shampoo and water would roil within the bottles, so that when we gave them a squeeze, foam would shoot out.

We thought it was fun to see how high we could get the foam to reach. We would aim the bottles at the ceiling, and try to get the foam to reach it. The end result of our baths would be dripping foam-icicles on our ceiling that we weren’t tall enough to reach to clean. We would have to toss a damp washcloth at the ceiling in order to hide the evidence of our tampering with the shampoo bottles.

2. I’m a tad embarrassed to admit this (though that’s what this post is about), but I’ve actually spent several minutes of my shower-time staring at a soap bar, trying to move it with, as yet, undiscovered telekinetic powers.

(Yes, I know it’s unlikely I could do this. No, I did not let this stop me from at least trying.)

I tried to clear all doubt from my mind, but a niggling worm of skepticism always resided in the small recesses of my brain.

Part of me believes it is this doubt that prevented me from lifting the soap with my mind.

3. Finally, I have, on multiple occasions, filled my cheeks with water and shaken my head rapidly from side to side, pretending to be Boss Nass. In case you don’t know who Boss Nass is, he’s the chief of the Gungans in Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace.

Here is the link to the noise I’m trying to imitate.

I wasn’t lying when I said this was embarrassing.

O Sister! My Sister

Sibling rivalry is a foreign concept to me.

I do have a sibling, an older sister, but we’ve never been rivals. Psh, we’ve been the opposite of rivals.

She’s my best friend. No contest.

Her name is Alya (pronounced uh-LEE-uh), and she is about two years older than me. She doesn’t look it, and she sure doesn’t always act like it. She’s more carefree than me. Where I’m the slow, methodical, and stodgy one, she’s the buoyant, spirited, and adventurous one.

Despite our difference, we’ve always been close. We never really had friends when we were little kids, so our go-to person for fun and excitement was each other. Alya was always the “idea” person. She still is, come to think of it. I’m never bored when I’m hanging out with her because she’s always ready with a potential plan for the day. It’s as if her default setting is to be as enthusiastic as possible.

We went to San Francisco about a year ago in order to see Hamilton. It was hella awesome. (You can strike me down for using the word “hella,” if you want to.) But even though this trip involved seeing Lin-Manuel Miranda’s masterpiece of a musical, my favorite part out of the week-long trip was the drizzling morning I spent exploring the city with my sister.

We had breakfast at a diner that served fairly adequate breakfast food, and then we made our way to a coffee shop for some darkly-brewed goodness. (Alya would have gotten herself lost if it hadn’t been for me and my impeccable sense of direction.) Then we went to a furniture store and ogled at all the modern concepts for home decorating. After that, we pranced our way through the misting rain to the Disney Store, where I shamefully got suckered in to buying two Star Wars action figures (K-2SO and Poe Dameron). No matter where we went, we had a blast simply because we were in each other’s company.

From a very young age, Alya was an artistic soul. Her preschool drawings put my current attempts at sketching to shame. (I stick to adult coloring books now.) Her creativity knows no bounds. She’s an artist in her thoughts and in her actions.

Because of this, I think, she can be wonderfully messy at times. I know this is an artist stereotype, but hey, these things become stereotypes for a reason. Back when we shared a room together, I’d have to slog through piles of her dirty clothing to reach the closet. Now that we’re no longer living together, I kind of miss the mess.

When Alya was in middle school, she suffered the cruel abuses that stupid classmates decided to shoot her way. These prepubescent girls thought it was the height of cool to make fun of my sister for her roller backpack or for the baggy shorts our mother would sometimes make us wear. (Alya and I distastefully called these shorts that reached to our knees and bulged out at the hips the “Puffy Shorts.”) They would laugh at Alya as she passed them by and they would kick her backpack, leaving dusty footprints on the surface.

Girls can be utter dicks sometimes.

She never told me what she went through until we were both out of high school. I don’t think she wanted to appear weak to me. Or unhappy.

But trust my sister to turn the situation around. Almost as soon as she entered high school, she just…blossomed. There’s no other word for it. Her self-confidence skyrocketed. With some amazing inner strength, she bolstered her spirits and disdained to even think about the kind of girls who would make fun of someone else because of their clothes or their backpack.

Honestly, because of this, my sister became the most beautiful girl at school. Seriously. She was/is gorgeous. She grew into the envy of all because she became this pillar of self-esteem.

Alya is the one person who I entrust with the entirety of my being. I can be a flawed human being around her, and she can be her messed-up self as well. We can be goofy, serious, sad, relaxed, excited, scared, enraged, or content around each other, and it will always be a blast.

She’s the one person I miss constantly when she’s not near me. I can tell her anything and expect absolutely no judgment (okay, well, maybe some judgment, but it’s an acceptable level). Plus, it’s impossible to lie to her because she knows me so well.

Her happiness gives me happiness, and I’m certain she feels the same way about me. There’s so much comfort knowing that someone cares about you that much, knowing that someone will always believe in you even when you don’t believe in yourself.

So sibling rivalry? Impossible for me and Alya. How can I be rivals with someone who only wants the best for me?