Buddha love my mother, but she is the bearer of bad news, doom and destruction and general superstitious heebie-jeebies. My parents live in Illinois and rarely come to visit, but when they do, my mom can't help but unleash all her gloomy predictions upon me. She visits fortune tellers regularly and I know she asks what lays ahead for her daughters. So yes, she does love us and cares deeply about our futures, that I am sure of. But can you stop jinxing me now?
A mere three weeks ago, within moments of stepping through my front door, my mom said to me, "This is a bad luck year for you." Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone. I already had a bad luck year, I told her. And guess what, I'm still here. And if I have another bad luck year, I can try again in 2012. I try to stay on the optimistic side of life. Yeah, things suck now, but they always get better. Just forge ahead and think of the good things in life. But it's really hard to do that when eerily, my mother's ominous predictions of misfortune start to reveal themselves.
Right now, we're pouring money down the drain for a rental property (courtesy of my sometimes flighty parents). There's a lot of stress related to a former tenant trashing the place and leaving us an entire storage unit's worth of trash we have to remove before repainting, fixing holes in the wall, broken steps, doors and windows, etc. And I just happened to quit my job and my steady income.
Yesterday, George says to me, "I don't want to add to the bad news, but I think the washing machine is broken." Yep, kinda knew that. And this morning, while I am drying my hair, the cord starts melting and plastic-burning smoke is filling the air. Yep, knew that was coming too. So is it bad luck? Or a series of maddening coincidences with bad timing?
My mom is just grasping conversational English after thirty years of living in the United States (which I am so insanely proud of her for) so she's not exactly reading my blog yet. But if she did, I want to say this: Mommy! Stop jinxing me. No more superstitious nonsense, okaaaaaay??? You're ruining my life!
And yes, I still call my parents Mommy and Daddy. Or Ma-Ma and Ba-Ba in Chinese. But when I am talking about my mom instead of to her, always, always, it's my mother who did something to drive me batshit crazy.
There! It's off my chest. Now up to the rental house in my half-blow-dried wonky hair to do some painting. I will be taking lots of pictures to share later. Stay posted!
2 comments:
I think it's our mums' goal to drive us crazy. Wouldn't it be eerie if they didn't? (although refreshing too.)
i'm glad you are so positive. :) i think this year will be a year of good things. our blog is doing amazing and it's only been 2 weeks! i have a feeling there are some very good things to come this year. (and my instincts are always right)
also, if you need to do some laundry, just bring it over here, we can have a laundry play date and drink some wine and take photos. :) i'm totally serious. it's the least i can do.
Post a Comment