Real New Year's Eve

I'm supposed to be compassionate today. I'm supposed to be compassionate by nature but sometimes I don't know what that means when it sounds an awful lot like letting things slide into dishonesty. But what the hell. I'll go for it. I don't care about much anymore these days except just getting back to my home.

We all just got back from Maui. The last few weeks have taken me to Vegas, Big Sur, a crazy Christmas Eve feast at my parents house and Hawaii.

We headed out to Vegas for just a day. We stayed at the new Trump Towers in a suite that was one of the nicest hotel rooms I've ever been in. The place doesn't have a casino, but since all the rates were so low, we figured it would be a good time to get a great deal on a really nice hotel. It had an amazing view of the strip and everything was really classy. We planned to only stay for one night but the next day we ended up getting snowed in by that freak storm. I thought the lady from Southwest was lying when I talked to her about why we couldn't fly out. We're in the desert! It doesn't snow! But when we walked outside, indeed, the cars had high fades of white. I bet $10 on the Warriors to beat the lowly Pacers and they lost, and I got the most wicked case of food poisoning/stomach flu I've ever encountered. I was still throwing up at the airport before we got on the plane, but one of the attendants gave me Benadryl which got me through the flight. It was pretty brutal because we were supposed to have a day of rest before heading to Big Sur, but instead, we only have a couple of hours which I stayed in bed trying to feel better. We finally made it out, getting to the cabin just before they closed for the night.

We got locked out of our cabin on the second night. We were outside toasting marshmallows when I wanted to go inside and wash my hands, only to find the door locked. I tried it, David tried it and we decided to check the check-in booth even though it was an hour after closing to see if there was someone there or a number we could call. Turns out there was a number for emergencies but since our phones were inside the cabin, we had to use the payphones. I tried to call the number collect but it was an automated menu, so we ran into a guy at the recycling bin and he lent us some change. We called the number again and the system gave us another number to call. I called that number collect and the woman who answered just hung up. We had to walk around until we found someone else at their campsite, a German guy by the sound of it, who lent us 50 cents to try again. We called the woman and she apologized for not recognizing my name as one of the campers. We told her the situation and she said she'd be out in a few minutes. I felt really bad because she has a 2 year old at home and it was late, but we really didn't want to sleep outside at night.

We headed back to our cabin and waited. As a joke I said that we should try the door again to make sure we were really locked out or we would look like idiots. So we tried the door, bu this time it opened. wtf. It was so bizarre. So we panicked about what to do. We were going to look like idiots. David thought we should grab the key before we locked ourselves out again so that in case she couldn't open the door, we would have the key. We stood there panicking and then I closed the door...a few seconds before she drove up. She opened the door for us and we thanked her, waiting for her car lights to disappear before laughing and saying wtf. It was so bizarre, like some higher being playing a joke on us.

We headed back to Fremont and chilled for a few days getting ready for Christmas Eve. I was cooking the feast I usually cook on Thanksgiving for about 20-30 people, and I was excited because Rie and Eric were coming, as well as my friend Sarah from softball as kids and her husband Jef. I got about 4 hours of sleep the nights leading up to it because I had to start baking early, but ended up getting most of it out on the table and hot. The menu featured fresh-herb roasted turkey with cornbread and jalepeno stuffing, french bread stuffed with gruyere, mushrooms stuffed with crabcake, praline yams, parmesan garlic mashed potatoes, cheddar/jack-pepper mac & cheese and regular mac & cheese, cajun green bean bake, rosemary roasted potatoes, turkey gravy, fresh cranberry-ginger sauce, a caramel toffee cheesecake and two kinds of pecan pie - chocolate pecan and coconut pecan. We also had chocolate oatmeal cookies and a sugar-cookie decorating station where we let people decorate their own cookies. Mine came out looking so retarded, I tried to claim they were the work of my 3 and 5 year old cousins.

It was great to see the whole family and also have friends around, and everyone met David. We stayed up pretty late, but had to be up at 6 the next morning to catch our flight to Hawaii. Otherwise, I would have loved to spend more time, especially with Sarah and Jef since they live in Florida and I only see them once every few years.

I started crying when I laid down for bed. Not like distressed sobbing, but a kind of silent weeping, like some valve in my heart had opened filling my being with an overwhelming pain where I understood that time stops for no one and nothing, and I only bear witness. This in turn, opened up valves in my eyes and as I lay in bed, they just streamed. It felt like laying there as my heart bleed and my eyes leaked. It hurt...everything hurt, in a way where I was seeing things as they were and simultaneously accepting them so I was not resisting, but the realization still hurt and I had to let it flow through me in order for it to pass. It was a great amount of pain but in a way, it felt like it was important that I feel all these feelings that were passing through because the worst thing that could happen was for them to get stuck inside me.

Hawaii was good because we had a giant group including my cousins Bohr and Bing. I'm probably closest to Bohr of all my cousins. It was raining for the most part in Maui, but we did get a chance to surf a couple of times, scuba-dive for the first time and see a sea turtle while snorkeling (they're amazing creatures). There was some drama between David and I. There's always drama between David and I. But outside of that, I loved being there and being around my family.

My hopes out of 2009:

To get back to the place I found in early 2008 and honor it.