I have never known my home can be such a horrible place to take pictures. I am not sure whether it’s my inability to capture a good picture or what. Continue reading “My horrible first-attempt at a Photo Challenge”
Tag: Pictures
Five Photos – Five Stories Day 5
I told you we are going back today, didn’t I? This picture was taken on December 21, 2001 and it brings back great memory when I look at it. Continue reading “Five Photos – Five Stories Day 5”
Five Photos – Five Stories Day 4
We are once again going back in time. Continue reading “Five Photos – Five Stories Day 4”
Five Photos – Five Stories Day 3
Okay, I officially feel like I am going back in time with this challenge. The first day, I featured a picture that was taken last year, day 2 (yesterday), a picture from 2012, and now, for day 3, Continue reading “Five Photos – Five Stories Day 3”
Five Photos – Five Stories Day 2
I actually remembered taking this picture. Continue reading “Five Photos – Five Stories Day 2”
These Little Moments…
I don’t like taking pictures, especially of people, with people, eh… Bad experience with my mom on multiple occasions, don’t ask.
Continue reading “These Little Moments…”
Out of Place and Stuffed
So we’re waiting for the rest of the house to wake up before we can get a move on. I feel so out of place here like my mom’s friend’s American husband. I wonder Continue reading “Out of Place and Stuffed”
Maybe just need some inspiration…
I’m kind of surprised I’ve managed to write something each day of last and this week. Ever since I finished my term papers for my classes and began working on this month’s translation update, my head felt completely occupied, like there’s no more room for writing. I’m not sure if this is writer’s block or something else but for some reason, I just can’t feel the motivation to write anymore.
Maybe my life just been busy and boring as heck. With mom gone for two weeks, I’m just stuck at home working 24/7 while have to cook, water the lawn, work, and go to the gym. Ugh, it’s sucks to be grown up sometimes.
Anyway, it seemed like my block is just for life stuff. I don’t think I have any problem writing fictional tales. Hey, maybe it’s not a writer’s block after all, maybe I just have nothing to write about life or maybe I just need some inspiration.
Summer Rain
It’s raining cats and dogs outside my window! Figuratively speaking, of course. It’s been such a long time since there’s been any rain even though a storm just came through two weeks ago but nothing like this. This is truly a summer rain and it feels wonderful. Just hope it won’t ruin the air show tomorrow. Well, gotta get back to studying. 😛
Spring Cleaning
Spring Cleaning, that was how I spent my Memorial Day. I didn’t do it all at once though. Like those drawers, I haven’t got to them yet, sadly. All I did was clean the floors which thankfully, I didn’t have to clean the whole thing.
My mom dragged me out of my room and downstairs so I could begin cleaning the living room while my mom moved everything out of the shoe closet. The floor was seriously dusty, dust bunnies literally blew across the floor. I guess that’s what happens when you have to turn on the heat six months out of the year, dust accumulates in the vents and ducts and out it goes onto the floor.
We finally turned off the heat tonight, though. I feel so relieved to finally be able to open my window ’cause it feels so hot and stuffy with everything closed. And of course, my mom has zero patience when it comes to slow moving work. She wants me to clean but she wants it fast. Well, you can only have one of those, either slow and clean or fast and dirty.
I wasn’t even done with the living room when she took over. Then she almost flew through the house, cleaning at the speed of superman, colliding into every furniture I could think of.
My mother used to be a housekeeper when she first came to the U.S. and a housekeeper needs to clean everyday at a record rate. The house she worked for just so happened to be owned by a family of slop. So I can imagine how she became the clean freak as she is today. I’ll bet if there’s a Olympic event for cleaning, she’d be the first to win it. 🙂
Anyway, she didn’t let me mess with her cleaning but while she went out to change the water, I took the sweet opportunity to snap some pictures. I know, it’s stupid but she tends to make me watch her while she cleans so I can learn how to do in the future. I would never get it anyways. Cleaning is cleaning.
She finished the job in half of the time it usually takes me although I am still questioning if her efforts is the same as mine. I opened the window to blow dry the floor while taking another chance to snap more pictures. Then it was done, it was all the cleaning we can manage, I can at least for today. It is hard to imagine that before my neighbor introduced me to the Swiffer mop, I actually used a cloth, got down on two knees, and scrubbed the floor clean like Cinderella.
Are Drawers for Organizing or Disorganizing?
As I sit here at my desk tapping my nails on the desk trying to decide what to write for my next post, my mom is downstairs loudly rummaging through the kitchen drawers looking for the nail clipper. “Where’s the nail clipper?” She yells. Immediately, I know that is my queue to go investigate. I rolled my eyes and sighed.
I take a few steps out of my room and shout back, “It’s in the first drawer.”
“It’s not there!” I groan and drag my feet down 10 steps down into the kitchen and start rummaging through the drawer myself.
I look down into the drawer and my eyes popped out like Spike the bulldog. Didn’t I clean this drawer just a few weeks ago? Or was it a few months ago?
I shuffled through the content looking for the nail clipper and I too cannot find it. “It’s not here! Maybe it’s in your room.” I yell while wondering, could it have accidentally fallen into the garbage? Both of us are a little forgetful these days what with our work and our GMAT exam’s coming up. One of us could have used the nail clipper and attempted to put it back into the drawer but missed it and landed in the garbage.
As my mom finished rummaging her room, she came back down while I went back up to rummage through her room some more. The second I arrived on the landing upstairs, she shouts triumphantly, “I found it!”
Whew. Now I can finally go back into my room and write that blog post. Given what had just happened, a light bulb lit up in my head. However, after seeing that mess in the most used drawer in the entire house, my head begins to pound. Because this means that within the next two weeks during my mom’s time off from work, I’ll have to spend a day reorganizing the drawers. Throwing away any expired coupons, no longer usable receipts, and other scraps of paper.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Seeing the picture above is just the topmost drawer. You don’t even want to see the bottom three drawers but here’s just a little sneak peek at the next drawer down…
It is filled with used/unused plastic bags from grocery shopping for storing meats, vegetables, and wonton/dumplings, potentially important invitations and other unimportant mail, and all kinds of junk I don’t even want to know. Then there’s the two more drawers which I don’t even want to know what kind of mystery is hidden there.
Really makes you think about the purpose drawers serve, doesn’t it?
Aren’t drawers suppose to provide some sort of organization? To help us find things more easily? So we don’t have to run all over the house looking for the thing we need right at the moment?
Fear of snakes or just don’t like the view
For about three weeks now, I’ve been looking at this piece of land with my mom. For some reason, she can’t make up her mind about purchasing the land. For me, it doesn’t really matter since I may or may not live there.
In these three weeks, she’s been coming up with excuses after another.
- Don’t like the floorplan. My solution for her: Choose another one, after all, it’s a house that’s about to be built, not one that’s already built. You get to make all the decisions.
- That house is blocking the view. Her recent solution: just move the house up the lot.
- Too expensive. That none of us has come up with any solution. It’s a brand-new home, what did you expect?
After once again going out to the piece of land a few days ago as well as looking at a model home, another set of excuses were made.
- It’s too small of a house for such a big lot. I have to agree with that. The model home was even smaller than our current home but it’s not an excuse to not get the land. Just choose a bigger floorplan.
- The latest excuse and this one was the ultimate deal breaker. Snakes!!!
After her colleague/potential neighbor told her that there are snakes in that part of the neighborhood, it scared my mom out of her wits. She has been terrified of snakes ever since her high school classmates placed a tiny snake in her dresser as a prank. I don’t know if that’s the true story, although I doubt it, her classmates are way too serious to pull any sort of pranks.
Anyway, I think that’s the silliest excuse I’ve ever heard. There are snakes everywhere, does that mean you’re not going to live anywhere?
I also don’t believe in snakes just popping out from nowhere. There has to be something that lures the snake to its destination (i.e backyard, garages, house). I told her, if you see a snake in the house, you would’ve been the luckiest person in the neighborhood.
That turned out to be the ultimate deal breaker, right after she demanded the agent to lower the price. I think the agent might have a melt down after he tried so hard to negotiate the price. She doesn’t want it!!!
I feel a little bad for the agent now. 😦 On the other hand, I kind of have a feeling from the get go that this wasn’t going to work out no matter how gorgeous the view is and I have no interest of getting in the middle. The middle man always gets blamed whenever something goes wrong! I remembered how well that worked out when she purchased our current home.
More or less, I think her latest excuse is just the same as excuse #2. She just might not like the view no matter how high the house goes.
Traditional Chinese New Year Delicacy
A Wild Wild January
It is finally February, the weather in January this year had been so wild. As I was watching the weather report last night on the news, I couldn’t help thinking that I actually experienced that. I mean last year was so warm and dry that we experienced drought in the summer. Last month alone, there were 20 something days of snow, 30 days of haze and fog, and 1 day of freezing rain. Not to mention the subzero temperatures that are rarely faced in Salt Lake City. Worst of all, I had to take 2 weather days off school, which I’d never had to do.
Still, as I saw the snow pack total on the news last night, I just couldn’t believe when the weatherman announced that the snowpack total is only 84% for the month of January. I was like, 84%, the snow piles are as tall as a person outside my home. Someone in my neighborhood even had enough snow to make a large cute snow dog.
This picture was taken early January, trust me, there is a whole lot more now. Even this week alone, we received about half of foot of snow. Well, it’s been snowing nonstop from Sunday to Wednesday, what do you expect. Yesterday was started to get better and hopefully it will continue this way. I am so tired from shoveling all this snow that I am ready for it to end and hope that there won’t be another freezing rain storm soon.
This winter had been a long one and I am looking forward for it to end. By the way, did anyone catch the news about Ground Hog Day on Saturday? How soon will Spring Be here?
This is Another Story 