My Mother & The Birds and The Bees talk

Today I called home and actually had an argument-free phone conversation wth ALL of my family members. No yelling, no whining, no bad news (or at least nothing new) and miraculously no exchange of angry words. The fact that the conversations were pleasant was merely a bonus. The only awkwardness

Mom started cooing about how I will always be her "baby girl". "But, Mom", I protested, "I've been taller and bustier than you since I was thirteen." We started talking about my internship, her colleagues, my recent trip to San Francisco when she suddenly dropped the bomb on me.

"So, what is your relationship like with people?"

"Erm... good?"

"OK. Good. Now. What is your...*dramatic pause* relationship status?"

"You mean if I'm seeing someone?"

Yes, I'm seeing someone. No he is not staying with me, yes he's nice, no he's not Pakistani (I don't know where this came from), he's Indian. Anything else you wanna know? NO? Are you sure? And no mom, I don't smoke cigarettes.

"Are you sure you don't smoke?"

"Yes"

"Yes, you mean you smoke?"

"NO I DON'T SMOKE".

"Have you tried smoking?"


And so my mother veers into this strange cross examination about my smoking/nonsmoking status, varying the same question in the past tense, present tense, present continuous, future tense and suddenly without warning she drops bomb #2. First Hiroshima, now Nagasaki.

"Are you still a VIRGIN?"

"Mom, that's a personal question".

"Well...? Are you still... a V?"

I couldn't believe we were having this conversation. For as long as I remember we have never even came close to talking about the birds and the bees. Even when World War III erupted at home when I was allegedly dating someone who is of a different color, my mother continued to pretend like boys didn't exist, that there is no such thing as boyfriends, crushes, infatuations, sex appeal etc. How am I suppose to say anything in the matter of relationships to someone who says "V" in place of "virgin"?

"Well have you slept with him? Are you staying with him?"

It was absurd that she would think I would come clean and spill my life's details when the most intimate thing my mother and I have ever disclosed to each other was perhaps our weight. I laughed it off , told her it was private information and after a bit more small talk, the phone gets passed on to some other member of the family.

I have a feeling this isn't the last of it I will hear from my mom about my sex/love life. But maybe next time, she would approach the subject with a more normal question. Like "So, what's his name?"

San Francisco =)

Last Wednesday I flew to San Francisco.

It was my brilliant plan to escape the hell-hole boringness that is Fort Wayne, Indiana. What started out as a terrible first time traveling-by-plane-by-myself disaster, ended wonderful and delirious. In fact as Vanessa puts it ,"If you don't leave SF feeling like you wanna come back, then I have failed". And I do wanna go back,in fact I wanna live there :-)

So the plane takes off from FW and I will myself to sleep (motion sickness, how hateful). An hour and a half later, I gain consciousness not at O'Hare, Chicago for my connecting flight to SF, but in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Ground stop, terrible weather at O'Hare. To cut a long story short, I was stranded in Milwaukee, and then overnighted at Chicago before arriving tired and worn out at SF on Thursday afternoon. On top of that AA is the crappiest shit airline in the universe. They messed up my reservations a zillion times and had bad customer service. I'm too lazy to elaborate but basically I will never fly AA again because I refuse to deal with that kind of fuckarey ever again.

Anyway to the good part of the story, San Francisco, Vanessa and Rosalyn :-)

San Francisco is wonderful. Made me feel so loved and beautiful. I guess being in such a hip, diverse, random, beautiful city does make u feel that way. But also, I don't think I received quite as many compliments as I did in 24 hours in SF than in my entire life. (What better way to start my pilot post by bragging and flattering myself?) First, there were the staring dad with his kid on the street (he was staring at Vanessa not me)and the extremely nice and friendly grocers/ shopkeeper dudes (Vanessa claims they have never been nice to her in previous visits but Vanessa is known to stretch the truth sometimes hehe). Then there was the Hispanic tourist at the Golden Gate bridge who tells me I look like a movie star (alright so anyone who knows me know I m far from ZhangZiYi, but whatever maybe the fog and the wind made me look great lol). At the Palace (Palais?) of Fine Arts, these two fobby Korean tourists requested to take pics with me. Awwwwww. One of them even uttered, "You're so beautiful". Although, I'm convinced these Korean boys have just never seen cleavage on an Asian girl from where they hail. Then there was of course, the head bouncer of some club in Little Italy that took a liking towards me and let us into the club for free. Mirko, the bouncer even came in a couple of times later on to talk to us girls . Oh well Mirko had an English accent and was maybe 6'3, so I didn' t mind too much ;-)

I think that's the end of the bragging, haha.

Now to the real reasons why SF is such a wonderful wonderful wonderful place! (Vanessa I Love You for everything! And Rosalyn, we just met, but I Love You too!!!)

The city is an amazing mecca of everything. You want random, hippy? Berkeley. You want city life? Union Square. You want tourists? Truck loads and truck loads of em? Pick a tourist spot. Fisherman's Wharf to Sausalito to Ghirardelli Square. You want beautiful? Look out from the piers to the oceans beyond, stroll down Lombard Street (what a lovely lovely crookedest thing in the world.. if only i could say the same of my teeth haha. I love the change of pace and atmosphere of everything, from hustle bustle to random to quaint.

I love the hills - the up and downs of the landscape gives so much character to a place already so plentiful in character demographically. But what a pain in the ass to walk up that slope outside soapopera novel queen Danielle Steel's home. Man, no wonder everyone has such nice toned calves in SF.

I also love the parks and the trees. I love tall and big trees and you find them everywhere in SF.
P.S. One day I will own a pretty little house on Lombard Street. And a chauffer cuz no way I could park in my own garage there. I would topple over in my car (but die happy?)

We also went to see a musical called Insignificant Others. An indie production, supremely hilarious. And Vanessa the goddess got us tickets for nearly half price. Vanessa and Rosalyn lovedddddddd the musical cause they and so many people they know could absolutely say " THat'S MY Life!!!" The musical revolves around three girls and their two gay guy friends all living in the same apartment in SF. Hilarious and wonderfully done, the musical is about the trials and tribulations of dating in SF - the trouble of securing a straight man, of telling a straight man from a gay one ("Oh Madonna and Cher? And Prada? He's not straight") to falling in love with a man who is "ambiguous" about his sexuality and having your gay best friend falling for you. There was also the subplot of Starbucks being an evil chain-expansion obsessed establishment which I thought was SO FUNNY!

Ah, of course Italian waiters lap dancing on me! :-D how could i almost forget?
At Steps of Rome, Vanessa told the waiters that it was my bday. The bday girl always gets to dance with the Italian boy waiters and a lap dance too. LOL "cheap thrills" Vanessa calls em and indeed they were, but still so much fun. The Italian boys twirled and swirled me around for awhile in the middle of the cafe and then placed me on a chair. Simone our cute Italian waiter had a spoon of cake in his mouth and ready to move in my direction to give ME a lap dance... when all of a sudden the other waiter who obviously had more say management and lap dancing delegation wise, babbled a few italian words to Simone and shushed Simone to the other bday girl! No!!!!! So i got the other waiter - older, beer gut, moustache and all :-( *sulk sulk* hahaha, nevertheless it was still great fun! =D

Wow, this is an uncommonly long post I suppose even for a regular blogger?

Am really tired now. Can't be bothered to reread or edit. Like I told Richard, my blog is called lizleedoodles and not bookerawardcompositions for a reason.

That said, I probably left a lot out. I probably misspelled something. Whatever.

Thank you again Vanessa for making this trip happen and Rosalyn for your company and mega fantastic driving skills :-)


*Yawn* I wonder if I will ever keep up with this blog. Who knows. Maybe even blogging could become a habit for someone like me.