Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Redlands

Timing is perhaps the key to mom's hilarity. She will pick the worst time for you, to ask you for a favor. Whatever it is, she'll need it right this second, and she will not be happy if you say no. Could she have asked ahead of time? Probably.
Is she asking only when she knows you're busy? Absolutely.
Is it going to be worth being as angry as she will be? That's for you to decide.
So on a day when all of my cousins and I had decided to go to karaoke, she decides to stop one of my cousins as he is getting ready to leave. "Oh good, you're here. I need you to drive me to Redlands."

WTF? Redlands?!? She didn't even ask, but my cousin says no, and then she gets really scary. Like we just slapped her in the face and then knocked her to the ground.  

I'm a "horrible" daughter and my influence has obviously permeated the rest of my generation. LOL

Monday, January 26, 2015

Daughters

(A little backstory: I have 3 brothers)

My younger brother's first wedding was in California. At the reception, she said, "now that Jeremy has married you, I finally have a daughter." 

So yeah. That happened.

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Enchiladas

Mom makes great food, as long as it's something she already knows how to make. Unfortunately. the rebel in her comes in pretty strong whenever she sees a recipe. Mom is not a follower. She never has been, never will be.  
So if she offers you adobo, or afritada, or anything that tends to hail from an Asian country, dig in. It's when she makes "new" things that you really have to worry. Unfortunately, because it's new, chances are: she doesn't just have all the ingredients on hand. I get it; she's a busy woman. So she substitutes. Unfortunately, she does so to the point of completely compromising the integrity of the recipe.
On one week in particular, she decided to try making new things with ingredients we already own. I too, sometimes like to play this game, trying to figure out what I can make with whatever we have in the fridge. I tend to be less...(what's a nicer word for it?) creative about my concoctions. Mom's food tends to always look pretty appealing, so it's pretty hard to know what you're getting into until it's already too late. 
For a whole week, she had tortured my cousins with quesadillas filled with sliced american cheese, broccoli and cheese omelets (with leftover broccoli from last night's stir fry...in soy sauce), and various other interesting and equally disgusting meals.
I took pity on them, making sure that they were armed with snacks and occasionally brought them junk food.
Friday came, and she used the remaining tortillas to make enchiladas. Now this was a big gamble, because we couldn't see what was inside, and at this point she wouldn't tell us,
One of the cousins decided to be brave and try it, quickly verifying that the dish was not as edible as it looked. He, somewhat painfully, swallowed the bite and said "SPAM."
We all had thought there was no way you could ruin enchiladas. We were so wrong.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Love Language

Gary Chapman states that there are 5 specific ways we choose to love each other. My mom's specific love language is giving gifts, which I find to be peculiar because she doesn't particularly care about receiving gifts.  I assume that this is just a quick and dirty way of saying, "I know most of you are my children, but this is just more cost effective than spending quality time with you."  

When I took the love language test, I scored a 1 for receiving gifts, which made it the lowest ranked love language for me me.  Trust me, I love a good gift, but I can be pretty picky.  I'm not the girl who likes to receive bouquets of flowers, and body wash/lotion gift sets tend to make me wonder if the gift-giver is trying to send a not-so-subtle message about my hygiene.  But I digress....

Mom is constantly giving gifts.  They're not all good.

This afternoon when we were looking underneath the couch, I found a rain stick.  It's a beautiful rain stick, made of bamboo, etched with the name of the island from which we bought it.  When we were in the Philippines, my mom saw this rain stick and said, "We should get this for your brother."

My brother. With the 2 motorcycles and the tattoo sleeves. SMH.