part two of crazy big final project finished! now 'all' i have to do is write a business plan and i'm done. but all i can think of is getting to california to meet this little one....

breaking news! a skiyomi is born!

it's a little girl for kiyomi and skip! and on the winter solstice too, a holiday which kiyomi and skip have always celebrated with enthusiasm, a party and occasionally a funny yule log cake. eddie and maria's 2 and a half week old girl just got a best friend....

okay, i have to get back to my tears of joy now....

p.s. happy birthday to tristan. if shared birthdays are any indication, this little girl will be one awesome human.

p.p.s. i cannot take credit for the above most glorious portrait of kiyomi and skip. it was taken by one of my fellow boat inhabitants in paradox lake...

take me to your alien unicorn leader

halloween was 'take your visiting friend to work' day, at least for kiyomi. so i spent the afternoon supervising kids coloring on trick or treat bags and serving as the volunteer p.r. photographer for her organization. it's always great seeing your friends in action at work--such a big part of their lives that you usually only hear about. so it was i found myself surrounded by 200+ kids at a park in san francisco's chinatown, all hopped up on sugar and the 'ghostbusters' theme, which played every fourth song. the above photo is my absolute favorite. i can't tell you why. i just laugh every time i look at it.

not pictured: the unruly bunch of displaced elder chinese gamblers who trickled back into the area when they heard about the free dim-sum. sorry kids! have some carrot sticks.

seeing kiyomi wrangle all 200 kids simultaneously gave me total faith that she is ready to be a mom. of course, i knew that already when she was 8 years old, dealing with a little sister and triplet brothers.

case closed

on the airplane out to cali for my stealth kiyomi mission, i drafted that post about the yearbook mystery. the strange details fresh in my mind as my hostess welcomed me to her home, i brought it up as a strange curiosity. we sat on stools in her little sf kitchen eating the insanely delicious vanilla ice cream and lemon sorbet (lemon-sicle!) she'd made from the familiar fruit from her parents' sebastopol tree.

me: so, yeah. it's totally weird. my name is misspelled. who is going to send me a birthday gift who doesn't even know how to spell my name?!

kiyomi (face turning pink): hmmm...

me: and who has a sebastopool post office box?!

kiyomi: (face ever pinker): yeah, um...that's strange...

me: it's so weird!

at this point kiyomi's face is not only red, but also slightly shaking with the containing of a secret, her chin retreating back and down with the weight of a failed poker face.

kiyomi: okay, okay! it was me! i had skip write on the envelope and intentionally misspell your name!

aha! mystery solved. apparently, a mutual friend of ours who i'm no longer in contact with was moving out of the country, discovered my yearbook on her shelf, and passed it on to kiyomi. what, i gave it to her to sign and never noticed i didn't get it back?!

i have to admit, it was a little anti-climactic to get my answer so quickly, from the first person i shared the strange circumstances with. however, it was pretty funny to be reminded of what a bad liar kiyomi is.

case closed.

in lieu of a baby shower card...

there’s been this post in my head for months. it’s such a major post that i put it off and i put it off some more, because it’s so major, and so important that i fear not devoting enough energy to it. and i don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but since i’ve been in this whole school thing, my attention span has been less than stellar. my following up habits are nil. my dedication has been kidnapped. i’ve caused friends to doubt me, and other ones to give up on me altogether.

i’m hoping once i graduate this can change. of course, then i sometimes think that maybe there is no catching up. maybe i’ve taken on too many interests, made more deep connections with amazing people than one can possibly maintain. will i always be known as the crazy multi-tasker who can’t slow down long enough to be there? i hope not.

in the meantime, there is this year. this has been an exciting year, a busy year, a frustrating year, a sad year, a blissful year. this year has been all over the place. and yet, i have not. at least, where all over means 'back home'. in fact, were it not for the surprise weekend trip i took to my neice’s first birthday party back in may, the bulk of this year would be spent with nary a visit to good ol’ californ-eye-yay. homesick? terribly. but what makes being absent from california worse, is the fact that my dear friend kiyomi is pregnant.

she announced her pregnancy to me back in may, during my comet-like stay in cali. i saw her. she was pregnant. but….she could have been lying. since then i’ve seen some pictures of a cute little belly. but….she could have stuffed her clothes with pillows, like we used to do at wendy’s house, then ‘jump the pounds off’ on the trampoline. i wouldn't be any the wiser.

kiyomi, like so many of my peers, is really taking this leap, not just pretending, into territory unfamiliar to me, territory where i’m not headed. that’s what the bigger post was supposed to be about (i’m hoping i’ll get to it later). it’s all about my peers going through with traditional roles that i’ve been talking for over a decade about shunning. it’s just, now that they’re here, it’s trippy to watch it all go down like dominos.

but the awesome thing is, even though i’m not choosing this path for myself, and perhaps, because i’m not choosing this path for myself, i’m so frickin’ excited about each one of my friends who walks down that aisle or brings a baby into this world. it’s not my thing, but it sure is a lot of fun watching it happen and bathing in the glow of that radiant light that comes from it.

but the thing with kiyomi is this:the thing with kiyomi is that we’ve been friend since kindgarten. since i was four years old. time in and time out we played together. we built forts. we tortured her little sister (amazing she’s still throwing kiyomi a baby shower!). kiyomi was a sassy little girl. at one point she was banned from my home. so i went to hers a lot. we invented really crucial things together. like strings that turned your bedroom light off from the comfort of your bed. who didn’t need a LAZY LIGHT system? and then there was VAMPISM. together we decided to forever dress in black, worship martin gore, spell out anti-sun-worshipper messages in the grass outside our high school in acorns (yeah, our geeky male counterparts had dungeons and dragons, we had acorn public service announcements), and be KOOL. except it was kind of me imposing my obsessions on her and her doing what she did which was quietly nodding and backing me up, then thinking i was crazy, and running off to an island in the caribbean for peace corps and a really big tan.

all thoughout our childhood we were a big part in each other’s lives. even in fourth grade when we spent all of our energy hating each other. even in seventh grade when she lived in japan and we talked into cassette tapes about the profundities of our pre-teen lives, like the locker-cleaning fairy. god damn we were nerds! that’s right, we used to go up to the junior high school on weekend, since i lived down the street, and break into people lockers. i had swiped the master list of combinations, being a devoted member of the student senate (ooh…corruption!). and how did we use this knowledge? did we steal lunch money? snoop on the boys we had crushes on? well that one would be an automatic negative, since in all of our years kiyomi would NEVER admit to having an impure thought about ANYONE to me. until skip. skip, i love you.

oh, but back on track. we broke into the lockers to organize them. to ORGANIZE THEM. are you hearing me? we straightened the books and threw away the candy wrappers and left little notes signed, ‘the locker cleaning fairies’.

and then, one day, on our conquering of the west road trip, while driving somewhere in the middle of montana or some such rugged territory, post high-school graduation, i said something about how life would be at our school. our new school. UC Santa Cruz.

and then we were quiet. that quiet came with the realization that uc santa cruz wasn’t OUR new school. it was MY new school. hers was University of Oregon. then Japan. and then i went and moved to new york city.

that was the moment that we both realized, really felt that our built-in reality of taking each other’s constant presence for granted was over.

it would be this catching up on holidays and forever wishing we could stay in better touch.

it would be almost missing her entire pregnancy even though i’m thinking of her nearly every day.

so all summer i’ve pined for a visit with that round kiyomi. that rare kiyomi. that mother-to-be kiyomi, my life long friend. and it hasn’t happened. this weekend is her baby shower. she’ll be nearing her final days of pregnancy just as i’ll be nearing my final exams. the thought of missing her whole pregnancy when i’ve tried my damnedest not to miss a phase of her life—even flew down to dominica to visit her on a 15 x 10 mile island—has been killing me. so, other factors in homesickness out the window, obligations out the window, a few hundred bucks out the window, come hell or highwater, i’m gonna be there.

i’ll spend two days with my kioymi. it won’t be enough. my phone will be off because though it drives me crazy, it surely isn’t enough to catch up with everyone else. but i’m shoving my guilt to the back burner and being frivolous and san francisco here i come! rocky, pk, kiwi, twin sister, save me a cupcake!

don't hate me because i'm going to paradox lake

paradox lake has become a sort of mecca for emre and i. could it have been three years ago that ten or so of us first stormed 'the cedars' for a weekend of cabin improvement and beautiful water? emre and i are so grateful that the cedars is still a destination for us. we're lucky that chelsea calls us up every year and says, "the adirondacks are calling us!" oh yes they are. and we're on our way. to share in our joy, to reminisce or to feel envious, check out a few photos from that introductory trip below.
missing kiyomi and skip a lot right now!



ah! and how could i almost forget the high jinx from last fall starring eddie and emre! check out the boys of paradox lake--a school project photoshop that ran so linearly i had to make a little movie out of the stills...
by the way, one of these 'men' is about to become both a doctor and a father (hint: it's not emre). be very afraid.