The ground I play on

For some, work is a means to make

money and pay the bills, for others work is a place to escape their hectic home life, but for me, work isn't work, it is a playground. Most of the time I feel guilty for going to work because stereotypically, it is a place where one works really hard to earn a few bucks.

Today is Saturday and is the fourth and last day of my work week. With Diane Lau being my first client at 9 o'clock, my day heads in the right direction. Diane has gorgeous locks of dark expresso hair and when pressed straight with a flat iron, enhances its glass-like texture and bounces effortlessly to her every movement. With her wedding approaching in several months, and engagement photos next weekend, we have been nourishing every inch of its length, keeping it long and voluptuous.

Our goal today is maintain the shape of the layers while accentuating its fullness and body. I begin the haircut with a strong foundation by developing a defined base line then following it with soft interior layers. After working the foundation to my satisfaction, I reach for the powerful TGR 1800 watts blow dryer and start to create sexy curls. Understanding the stubborn straight texture embedded in each strand,I choose a brush that is strong enough to soften its stubbornness - an inch and a half metal brush.

From the nape, I section off 2 inches of hair, just enough to wrap it snug around the curvature of the brush, slowly applying maximum heat to the hair. Rolling the brush gently between my palm, the hair gets evenly separated over the brush, wrapping itself around it, blowing until the shape is built to my liking, and to finish off, I swing the entire brush counter clock-wise before releasing it, giving a perfect S-shape to the hair. Allowing that section to cool completely, I make my way up the head shape and drop down another section of hair.

Many sections later, her hair is full and soft curls dominate her style. This is when she says with great excitement, "this is exactly what I want for my engagement photos next weekend". Voila, we have discovered the look she didn't even know she wanted when she first sat down in my chair.

This is my first client of the day and it is a typical day at the "playground". It is where I do my best work, socialize with my best people, and leaving with a sense of confidence I could have never found doing anything else.

A new take

Dan and I attended a funeral today. I've had a couple of close family members pass, but neither of which did I have the honor of attending, so today is officially my first.

There are no words that can possibly illustrate the essence of spirituality from the Buddhist rituals during the three-hour service. It was emotional. It was empowering. It was calming. It brought me closer to my old friends. It brought me closer to my current friends. It brought me closer go my family. It brought me closer to Dan. But more importantly, it brought me closer to compassion.

Thank you for sacrificing existence on earth in order go give us valuable lessons. You will always be remembered.

A lending hand

I love your ability to hold me for as long as our faces will melt together with sweat brewing between our cheeks. Your arms are wrapped tightly around me as silence comes between us and your heart beat is the only thing I can hear. The sound is comforting, but the rhythm is not what I'm used to. Each beat is followed by the next and its vibration utters stories of the past. I want to extend my arm, open my palm inside your body and grab all that I can. As quickly as I can, the warmth of my hand will indulge your meshed flesh as I extract it right out of your body. Removing the heaviness that has been built up inside, giving you a sense of weightlessness.

The Tune-up

The weather App on my iPhone displays an icon that indicates it will rain today. For the most part, this feature is usually accurate and I can rely on this technology to help with my daily routines. The App world has expanded to include all sorts of things such as Mapquest to help find driving or walking directions to any desired place, Ladytime which keeps your menstraul cycle on record to help with fertility decisions, or ShopSavvy, a bar code scanner that helps locate the best price on a product. If you can think of it, there is an App for it. It is all great, until you go a day without checking into your Apps and you wind up like me today. Unfortunately, I proceeded my first errand for the day without consulting with my App

For the first time in 9 months, my car gets washed by the brand-new car washing drive thu offered at a local Shell gas station on the corner of Talbert and Brookhurst. For $8 and an additional .10 cents off per gallon on your total gas purchase, you get the whole nine yards, The Works - power wash, buff, wax, and dry. This is a deal I cannot pass up and it is a service much needed to maintain the longevity of the car's paint job. Driving through the car wash made me think of how spoiled I've been. Dan has been washing my car and detailing it every single week, all by hand and free of charge. God bless his kind heart. The day seems overcast, but still relatively nice.

My car sparkles as it gets driven to Thien Tan's Auto shop to get an oil change and on the way, rain came pouring over the entire car. The car wash excursion that happened two minutes ago was a complete failure. A text message comes through just when I am thinking that my eight- dollar car wash is being washed down by the rain. It is a text from a close friend whom I consider my own family, he informs me about his passing mom. Suddenly, nothing is that important any more. My heart skips a beat as I remember his mom and her unconditional love for him and everyone around her. She was the kindest and warmest woman I know.

As I begin to think about her, I begin to think about all the unconditional love

that surrounds me and appreciate the ones I interact with on a daily basis and regret to neglect the ones who are out of sight. Pulling into the auto shop, I push these thoughts aside in order to give my car it's usual tune-ups. A simple 10,000 mile oil change was my original intent and although I knew my breaks are on its last few stops, I was hoping it will last long enough to hold me over for a few extra weeks. But it's time. The breaks' life line has expired.

I feel slightly weakened by unexpected tune-ups expenditures exceeding my budget, totalling $950. But as I drive away from the auto shop, I acknowledge life in the grand scheme of things and understand that with everything that exists on earth, each requiring maintenance and all of which comes with an unforeseen lifeline. I will care for and maintain my car for as long as it will be with me. There are no Apps in the world that will predict how long my car will be around, so each day that it is with me, I will keep it clean and shiney, maintained to the best of by ability, and to appreciate and love it day in and day out.

Sunday

It all started out with a walk to the park, at 10:30am where Dan shot hoops and showed me how to line sprint on the basketball court. In addition, our day will consist of Pho, Yogurtland, and an intentional all-day vegging

It's about three hours into the showing of 84th Academy Awards, with my sore body unable to do much more around the house, I flop myself on the couch, laying my backside against the nicely worn leather with my feet tucked lightly under a soft black faux fur throw, I force myself to relax. My body opens up to the couch, pulls it close and grabs on to it tight, like the way Miss Dior Cheri envelopes my delicate skin every time I leave the house. I'm comfortable and able to forget about all the cleaning, organizing, cooking, and loads of laundry that ironically happened all day long. Whatever happened to the anticipated day of doing nothing?

My body becomes vulnerable to this couch and my mind is being relaxed by the white noise produced from the Academy Awards. I take a quick glance at Dan, who is lounging on the lover’s seat perpendicular to me, and notice his intense focus on the laptop in front of him.

I begin to reminisce about the guilt I felt yesterday, when we had jokingly posted a microwave on Craigslist to sell for $25. It took an astonishing two minutes to receive a response from a guy named Martin and within 45 minutes it was sold. I've never felt so guilty for selling a household item that was in mint condition and practically brand-new. It was a bargain!

After accepting the payment in cash and putting it my neon green American Eagle snow jacket's pocket, the guy said he's buying this to furnish a house operated by SoberLiving - a drug and alcohol recovery housing provided to those in need. My first reaction was to give back the money. “This is wrong of me to do,” I thought to myself. Resisted the urge to return the money, I quickly looked around the garage for more stuff to give him, as if to give him enough stuff to accommodate for the money he had paid me for the microwave. As if I owed him something and that I needed to help him somehow. I pointed to a pile of stuff that Dan and I had sorted through last weekend and told him to take whatever he needed. He filled his brand-new, black Cadillac SRX with a TV, lamp, and other nick nacks from the pile of stuff. The more his car was being filled up, the less guilt I felt and the more I felt like I was helping in some way. I’m not sure if that was a good deed that we had done, but I’m hoping to not feel guilty for spending our microwave money on a nice bowl of Pho sometime next week.

The Academy Awards is now over and I’m too relaxed for my own good. The timer on my body is clicked to “bedtime” and all I can think about is the enticing bed waiting for us in the master bedroom. We are ready to shut down the house.

Couch Potato

How much does it cost to spend time on the couch? After spending $2 on "50/50" and $3 on "In Time" at Blockbuster Express in a two-day period, you start to think that if this goes on for a month period, you'll be spending a minimum of $75. And that is watching only one movie a day and keeping the movie for just one day. Each day the movie isn't returned, you are being charged the same amount it was charged the first day. If the movie got buried under your school books and old gym clothes in the trunk of your car for weeks on end, consider yourself one poor bastard.

So to cut down on that expense, we added a new expense through DirectTv cable to have Showtime, Cinamax, HBO and other channels that provides movies we would've had to rent. The upgrade is costing us another $40 bucks a month which makes the grand total close to $120. That's over$1500 dollars a year.

We've done careful calculation and found that in order to hit break-even point for each month, we need to watch at least 16 movies a month, which averages out to .5 movie per day. So in order to make a profit, we would have to watch one full movie each and every day of each and every month. This means no starting a movie and then stopping it half way through, no falling asleep during a movie, no talking on the phone or doing homework during a movie, no cooking or house chores or sex during a movie, no going a day without watching a movie, nothing. If we missed a movie today, we'd have to watch two the next. If we've powered through three movies today, we are good for the next two days. You get the idea.

How is this cheaper than renting one movie at a time? Well it's not. But one good thing is we are forced to cuddle, all the time, on the couch. DirecTv is charging us a monthly fee to sit on our couch, in our own living room, and cuddle. It's costly to be a couch potato, but we couldn't be happier.

Aftermath

There isn't a richter scale made to accurately measure the aftermath of my previous weekend. A sudden cold-like symptom hovers over me and my suspicion of this cause is a combination of Origine Vodka & Tonic Soda at our house followed by Charlie Palmer and Tin Lizzie Saloon, all of which happened on Saturday, just two nights ago. My head is screaming uncontrollable pain and its heaviness is taking over my concentration. My brain and body are out of commission. Wish I can put up a sign that says, "closed for lunch, will be back a long long time from now".

My day starts out slow, listening to sparrows making music outside, watching the Cooking Channel, and waiting for a potential buyer, Danielle, to come and snatch a few wooden boxes. All sales revenue will be spent at the nearest grocery store today. Her expected time of arrival is 11:30am, which is about an hour away, and my expected sales revenue will be a whooping 75 dollars.

The central heating system has been on auto all morning, set to 75 degrees to heat upthe entire house, yet my hands and feet remain cold and numbing and I am more irratible than ever . I'm in desperate need to break out of this icebox and get outside where it appears nicer and the warmth provided by the sun seems cozy. Perhaps I should run an errand of some sort.

My vision is blurry and my thoughts are hazy as I head out to return a movie, "50/50" at Blockbuster Express located inside of Rite Aid. I am still exhausted! And I still cannot think. My mind is shot down by the residue of liquor intake (known as birthday shots) that occurred two nights ago. I feel weak and my body feels soggy like over-marinate beef skewers.

I'm sitting in class now, and just 48 hours until our first exam, I am trying to stay in tact and alert. I'm eager to go home and lay my beaten body down on the couch and snooze until I feel better.

The weekend was a blast, however, the repercussions are more than I can handle. Nonetheless, I vouch to not change a single thing when my next birthday rolls around. Thank goodness it is more than 11 months away. Thank goodness.