Littlest, Yellowest, Differentest

I have decided that this is an acceptable housewarming gift to myself.

Awkward Ponies

T Minus Two Weeks

A lot of people have asked me how my mom has been handling the whole “selling all my belongings, packing what little I have yet and moving across the country to move in with a guy” thing. 

That’s a fair question.

She’s been calling me a lot, as expected. And, because deep down I am a masochist, I have decided to start visiting her more often.

Mom: Ernie!  Now that you’re home, I need you to burn these CDs from my computer so I can listen in the living room.

I’m in Fremont, burning music for my mother. Because “visit your mother before embarking on a life-altering journey across the country” still means “run her errands.”

It should be said, that yes, I’m aware of AirPlay. I realize there is technology that can easily play the digital music from iTunes I purchased for her from her computer - located in the guest bedroom where my dad slept before he moved out - to speakers in the living room with a touch of a button. I also realize that teaching Mom how to use AirPlay would be extremely difficult, as Mom is in her seventies and I don’t know how to say “AirPlay,” “Speakers”, “Wireless” and “Don’t Press the Purchase Button” in Chinese. I imagine her running from the spare bedroom to play Baby Elephant Walk, then walking down a hallway to the dark cave of her living room, where she would sit on her thirty year old plush sofas.  “That’s too much work. Why would I want to do that,” she would ask, “when you could just burn me a CD?”  And then I would nod silently, cursing technology under my teeth.

Anyway.

Ernie: Okay mom, I’ll burn some CDs for you.  Which ones?
Mom: Andrea Boccelli and these other albums. *points to computer screen* 
Ernie: Here you go, ma.  *Burns Andrea Boccelli, hands it off to his mother as she heads towards the living room, proceeds to burn the rest of the albums*

[Mom starts listening to “Time to Say Goodbye” by Boccelli on her stereo.  She has it on FULL FUCKING BLAST, and you could probably hear the song from the School for the Deaf a half a mile away. The deaf kids from the School for the Deaf could probably hear the song a half a mile away. By the time she song has repeated itself three times, I run in from the bedroom.]

Ernie: MOM!
Mom: TIME TO SAY GOODBYE, ERNIE.
Ernie: Mom, I’m not dead.

If Mom is going through the seven stages of grief, I think she’s at the “acceptance” phase.

"self"

[sigh] I guess I’m not a hipster until I’m on a tumblr blog called adolfhipster.tumblr.com.

JUST GIVE ME A CHANCE BABY I’LL CHANGE I SWEAR.  

(Hat tip: Paris, whose friend found this photo of me. By accident. Yeah.)

An urban hike to the park (Taken with Instagram at Billy Goat Hill)

A real estate office in Noe Valley. Marina and Pac Heights are the blue properties. Bayview was the purple. :-/ (Taken with instagram)

How I spent New Years Eve: With Skype in one window and a cam of the Embarcadero fireworks in the other.

It wasn’t so bad, really.

So last week I bought a one-way ticket to Miami. 

Doesn’t that sentence sound so dramatic? Like, imagine if a fifteen year old girl from Escondido wrote that - you could just imagine the girl sobbing over the fight she had with her mom’s boyfriend as she packs all of her clothes in a little pink suitcase, her Greyhound bus ticket clutched tightly in her hand. While she could only see a future of a life of bikinis and part-time modeling jobs and a boyfriend named Mauricio, you know disaster would strike, most likely in a rest stop somewhere in Louisiana. The whole whole thing would go end badly, just like how it ends in that Soul Asylum music video from the 90s where they intersperse teenage actors becoming prostitutes and junkies with actual kids from milk cartons.

On an unrelated note: I just watched this video and it really makes me miss Tower Records. Anyway.

Technically, everything about that first paragraph is accurate: I’m moving in with my boyfriend. People move in together for relationships with all of the time, of course, but he’s in South Florida while I’m in California, so there’s a flight involved, hence the ticket. And I haven’t booked the inevitable trip back to San Francisco after my mother calls me, most likely accusing me of abandoning her. So yeah, I guess I did technically buy a one-way ticket to Miami.

I even used BaseCamp to organize everything. Fucking Web 2.0 project management software! Web applications that are usually utilized to track product specification lists for mobile applications and manage client expectation levels for software development are now being used to upload photos of the art in our respective places, “just to see if it will clash or not.” There are other relatively monumental things on there, listed inconspicuously as checkboxes needed to be clicked on:  ”Look into Florida auto insurance and health insurance.” “Cancel co-working space membership.” “Sell car.” They all have the due date of January 31st, the day my flight heads out. That’s — checking my watch — a month from now, as of two hours ago.

“So last week I bought a one-way ticket to Miami.”

Don’t mind me. I’m just going to stay up for a while and let that sentence swim in my head for a little bit.

"Dictators are not new to fashion scrutiny. For decades, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s outrageous outfits were the subject of dissection and ridicule. Overall, WWD awarded Kim Jong-UN a “C+”."

Kim Jong-un is Women’s Wear Daily’s ‘Man of the Week’. I can not tell if this is satire.