small joys & the makings of a cat lady

Got one evaluation today in which a professor says that with a little elbow grease, I have the makings of an "intellectual powerhouse." Wow. I am sure it will take much more than elbow grease to take the squeak out of my throat. But so far, so good.

At this point in my life, I will be content living in a tiny studio thing in the corner of the world surrounded by piles of books that can touch the ceiling. No real furniture. Just books. Maybe a mattress. I want to get used to the idea of the "home" as a state of mind with transferable sentiments. No lover, but maybe a cat. A really fat one that I can train to sit on my feet during those cold winter days.

Yechen stayed over the other night, and she began to lament the state of hyphenated Asian America. Honestly, I am over Asian America and on to bigger, badder things. Like world development policies and liminal spaces of being and existence within a migration context. Seriously, these days I feel like my brain is a sloppy sponge. The kind you keep for three years and now relegate to cleaning the shitty parts of molded kitchen countertop sidelines.

I am on a serious health kick with the exception of this nocturnal habit that is more appropriately "kicking" my ass (get it? health kick? kicking ass?). Any time a health related situation happens within the family (or extended family), there's always a real frenzy around the aunties and uncles. Rare fungi for soup making gets passed around, dried sweet beans for tea, some bitter somethings-each promising a remedy for chronic illnesses. There was that one week the Chinese radio announced that the tomato was the new "anti-cancer food," and my mother cooked everything with tomatoes the entire week. In this household, we drink a pot of chrysanthemum tea every night. Juice boxes on ocassion have to be covertly snuck into the house for sweet concentrated juices goodness.

In addition to these health worries is my soon departure from North America, and I am having trouble sleeping because I've inhabited my mother's obsessions and misguided assessments of probability (I would elaborate, but I suppose it's why they call it a "jinx"). She may be worried about me overseas, but I am about ten times more worried about fam here. Well, I guess to mask our affections for the other, we'll just yell our concerns at each other like usual. One can infer that this is probably the only time I succeed in projecting.

Side note: My mother tried to sneak two big bags of sanitary pads into my 2 ft x 3 ft suitcase. She overestimates the bounty of my uterus.