Category Archives: Conflict

Coral reef scrapes, the painful burn, and the 4-year-old who wants to ice mama’s butt

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Given that I am a city person through and through, I guess it’s no wonder that I’ve always had a fear of deep water, especially the ocean water. I’m a human being living on the land; by definition, the ocean is a foreign place to me because I cannot live in the ocean. And for all you people out there who love swimming in the ocean and think you are really a mermaid, reality check: you are not! So on the three previous times I’d been snorkeling and saw very, very deep water and can tell the ocean floor is extremely far below me, I occasionally have this tiny wave of panic come over me and just hope to some higher power that my leg doesn’t cramp up or my life vest does not suddenly fail. So then I take a deep breath and keep swimming.

This morning was our last morning in Roatan and our last chance to be at the beach before taking a plane to San Pedro Sula, where we’ll be until midday Monday. No one is going to complain about a last beach outing, and I wanted to seize the moment and go snorkeling one last time. So we went to the beach for a couple hours before packing up and heading to the airport. Chris did not share the desire to go snorkeling again, so when I went out, it was just me while he stayed ashore with Kaia.

This didn’t really bother me that he didn’t want to go out again. The water is pretty calm and virtually waveless. It’s really the perfect place to go snorkeling without supervision or help. So I went out on my own. For a long time, it felt really nice. I saw a lot of the same fish as yesterday, and this time, I saw even more schools of different fish varieties. But then suddenly out of nowhere, I got hit by a wave that I didn’t anticipate, and I got pushed into a really shallow (and seemingly dead) stretch of coral. Then, I got pushed into a sitting position — on top of the dead coral. This was a really shallow area — the water was barely even two feet deep here. I kept looking around to see where I could swim to escape the coral — it almost looked endless no matter which way I looked. How the hell was I supposed to get off this thing?! I eventually got out of the area and into open water, but I could tell that I had more than just a few nicks and scrapes. Something on my right butt cheek was burning, and it was definitely from stupidly sitting on the coral. I mean, it wasn’t like I meant to do that, but it just kind of happened…

This is why the ocean can be dangerous: you have no idea what is lurking out there that does not want you in its space. And they will do things to you to harm you if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. I swam quickly back to shore, where Kaia immediately noticed scrapes bleeding on my right leg and asked me about my “boo boo.” I went to the restroom to properly clean my scrapes and examine my wounds. The scrapes were fine — they looked like any other scrape. But the wounds that were on my right butt cheek were another story: they were bright red, puffing, pulsing, and burning. And this feeling was not reducing in the least bit even after I washed the area and tried to pour clean, cold water on it. After a shower, the pulsing pain and burning persisted. So en route to the airport, I told Chris we needed to stop by a pharmacy to see if I could get an ointment for this. I explained to a pharmacist what happened, and she gave me a hydrocortisone cream to apply on my scrapes. When we eventually got to our hotel in San Pedro Sula, the hotel manager was really kind and made me an ice bag, and I applied that to my butt for a bit in our room before we went out for dinner.

Kaia insisted on helping me ice my butt: “Mama, I wanna ice your butt!” She shrieked multiple times. So I let her push the ice bag against my butt while I lay on the bed. She’s always looking for ways to be helpful, and I know she has a very strong, caring, nurturing side to her (I’ve lost count of the number of times she checks in with me on random “boo boos” she finds on my body, when she asks if something hurts, and when she cares for all the dolls at school when it’s activity center time). I find it really sweet and endearing, and hope she continues to be caring and attuned to others’ feelings.

After dinner out at Power Chicken (a local fast food chain favorite with huge portions!), we showered and slept. But I still couldn’t sleep. The pulsing pain and burning was not improving. And now when I scratched it, there was a very deep pain that would result from that. The ice bag was not a proper ice pack, so I couldn’t sleep with it without wetting the bed eventually. So after 1.5 hours of burning and pulsating, I finally came up with the idea of taking the cold plastic water bottles in our fridge and using them as a pseudo ice pack setup. The fridge was cold enough, so I was finally able to fall asleep.

And… I tried falling asleep hoping this wasn’t some insane outlier coral reef scrape infection that would end in sepsis and potentially kill me.

When parenting is not fun

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Kaia has been in a mood today. She was pouty at drop-off when Chris brought her to school. Then when I picked her up this late afternoon, she insisted that we had to wait for a little friend in the 3s program since she saw his mom outside waiting. I annoyingly complied and waited. When the mom and kid wanted to wait for the elevator and Kaia did, too, I insisted this was ridiculous. She yelled, so I waited for about two minutes, then finally had to nearly drag her down the stairs because the elevator was too slow, and I refused to put up with it. Whenever she is around her “peers,” she wants to be with them and do whatever they are doing (e.g. waiting for the stupid and slow elevator) for as long as possible. Most times, I humor her. Today, it was just frustrating me.

We got on the train uptown, and I gave her a pack of seaweed to snack on. Kaia refused to give it back to me when we got to our stop, so I (dumbly) let her hold it as we walked up the stairs. She then proceeded to predictably drop the seaweed box, wasting about five strips of seaweed. I hate food waste. She knew she did something wrong and yelled, “It was an accident!” And I brought her to the trash bin to throw the wasted strips away. The irritation was just growing.

But then the cherry on top really happened: instead of holding my hand to walk up the stairs out of the train station, Kaia haphazardly started running in front of hoards and hoards of people trying to enter the subway entrance because she wanted me to take a different stairway than she did. When she ran into one person and they stopped, she would back up and try to run into yet another person. It was as though she had suddenly stopped comprehending that she was in other people’s way and had to walk up where there was no one in front of her. After calling for her multiple times when she refused to listen, I eventually had to grab her and carry her up the stairs and across the street. She was kicking, screaming, and crying the whole time. I rarely care when people stare at me carrying or disciplining her when she’s fussy. But I really, really hate it when she inconveniences other people or gets in other people’s way because it’s so inconsiderate. If she wants to throw a tantrum, fine, but do not do it in the middle of a chaotic subway station with people trying to get by us. No one in New York City wants to be slowed down by anyone else.

She screamed and cried for the entire two blocks home. Part of that time I had to carry her. Part of that time, I was nearly dragging her. And all of that time, she was crying and yelling. I stayed as even keeled as I could. I rarely even raised my voice. But the entire time, I just thought: Really? This kid is almost 4.5 years old. When do the tantrums over things that make zero sense ever end? Do they ever end…? My goal is that Kaia will not grow up to be some self-centered, “me me me” person and think the world should revolve around her. But in these moments where she is physically running into other people and expecting them to make way for her, I am so tempted to just slap some sense into her.

Yes, 36 years ago, my mom would have done just that: she would have slapped, hit, or beaten me into submission, even for the tiniest infractions. In fact, I still remember once when I was the same age as Kaia today, 4-year-old Yvonne did something my mom did not like, and she immediately pulled me into a public restroom stall, beat me, then yelled at me to stop crying and wipe my face, “Otherwise people will think I am abusing you!” I am not doing that with my kid. …Though I’d be lying if I said I never thought about it in these moments of total chaos.

Well, it’s a good thing there aren’t thought police out there.

“Why is it just three of us?”

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Kaia woke up this morning to see that her paternal grandparents were not in the house anymore. As they usually do, Chris’s parents left on one of several side trips on this trip: for the next week and a half, they are off to Utah, Nevada, Toronto, and Maine. She came out of her bedroom and peered at our bed where Chris’s parents would sleep and did not see them. Instead, she saw a fully made up bed. She also saw me lying on the sofa bed, still under the covers.

“Where did Suma and Topa go?” Kaia asked, as she got into sofa bed with me.

“Remember we told you they’d leave this morning for about a week and a half?” I said to her lightly. “They’ll be back next Wednesday! They’ll be back before you know it.”

She gave me her contemplative look. She was clearly sad and did not like that they weren’t at home with us anymore.

As she ate her breakfast, she said to me, “Why is it just the three of us?” And when I told her that Suma and Topa couldn’t stay with us forever, she kept asking me, “Why? Why?”

Kaia wants everyone she loves with her all the time – forever. Like most kids her age, she never wants the fun to end, and she always wants to be loved and cuddled and given attention to constantly. It’s hard to explain to her in a way she will understand why some people she loves live so far away, and why these same relations (like grandparents) can be closer in proximity like her classmates’ grandparents may be. But I guess that’s all the things you start learning and understanding the older and more mature you become.

When part of your family thinks that doctors are the “persecuted class”

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I think it can be universally stated no matter what country you are in that doctors, as a group of people, can be considered a “prestigious” profession or class of people. They are known to earn good money regardless of where in the world they live. There’s pretty much no one you would meet, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, race, or gender, who would say that to be a doctor is not a ‘high class’ profession. And there is no one who would say that nurses are equal to doctors in prestige and/or pay.

But then, I met my in-laws and listened to a very big and loud debate they had with Chris tonight, and I realized that they are actually the only two people I have met on planet earth who actually do believe that doctors have the same level of “prestige” or “status” as nurses, and would even argue that nurses get paid the same — at least, in Australia. And I also heard my mother-in-law say that she thinks that doctors are a “persecuted class” of people in Australia.

I asked my good friend Claude (AI) what the average salaries are in Australia for nurses versus doctors. Claude informed us that on average for the last available year of data, doctors as a group make about double what nurses make there. Both in-laws refuted the data and insisted the stats were inaccurate. My mother-in-law kept insisting her own personal experiences were representative of all doctors in the country, and that her own anecdotes held more weight than national statistics.

I love my in-laws and think they are generally good people. But this doubting of real statistics feels like the spread of fake news. Now I understand why Chris and his brother always say they’d never take real career advice from their parents.

Suicide ideation in a 9-year-old

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Over the last decade, suicide rates among people under 18, and youth in general, have increased overall. There has been an upward trend pre 2020, a spike around the COVID period, and some recent improvement, but still elevated levels. Suicide has remained one of the leading causes of death for adolescents, and overall youth suicide rates are much higher today than they were just 10 to 15 years ago. Mental health struggles have increased in surveys of teens, especially among certain age sub groups. I’m aware of this not just because of my involvement with AFSP, but also because I generally follow mental health and overall health news and developments.

Today at an afternoon catch up with a friend, I was saddened to learn that her 9-year-old niece had attempted suicide by slashing her wrists. In the last few months, she’d already started withdrawing from friends and activities that usually interest her. She’s not even officially a pre-teen yet, yet she’s already feeling depressed. She has intense pressure from her mother to “make it” as a child model, and she’s constantly told she has to smile 24/7. It sounds like a pretty miserable life for such a young kid.

My friend is naturally a caring (and sometimes over-caring) and concerned person. She always wants to help and “fix” problems as best as she can. But this is one of those issues where I told her flat out that it would not be something to “fix”, but rather would need to be seen as a “work in progress.” At this age, kids need to know that they are good and enough as they are; they need a strong emotional foundation, and it’s up to the adults in their lives to help provide them that. Given she barely sees her niece once a month, she’s going to need someone more often present in her life like a counselor or closer family member to help reinforce this. She needs low-pressure, consistent communication. She also needs to know she has a safe space to openly speak her mind about anything and everything.

I think back to my old childhood and to Ed’s. And I know without a doubt that Ed had no adult he could rely on to be his safe person, his safe space. I eventually found two teachers in middle and high school who became mine, and ultimately my de factor mentors. If every little child growing up had real safe spaces with reliable, well-intentioned, kind-hearted adults, I think we’d have less mental health challenges amongst young people. But I guess we can all only try to do our own little parts to contribute to this.

A sore left hip flexor, and when cortisol spikes in middle age due to slowing metabolism

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I only did one run this week on Wednesday, which isn’t normal for my weekly workout routine. I did my usual warm up, then as soon as the run was done, I could tell my left hip flexor was tight. Then annoyingly, it remained tight all day… through today. I’ve never had a tightness in my left hip flexor before. After weaning from breastfeeding and doing more high intensity runs back in 2023, I discovered tightness on the right side for the first time in my life. The amazing trainer at my gym gave me suggestions for strengthening exercises for my glutes, hamstrings, and hip flexor to prevent the tightness. In addition, I did more hip flexor stretches and incorporated a yoga session per week to increase mobility. That seemed to do the trick: I cannot remember the last time my right hip flexor was sore. But now, it seems my left hip flexor is crying out for help, asking, “Hey! Remember me! You need to help me, too!” Those exercises I did for my right side were also done on my left side, too. So this may just be a new weakness I’ve identified that may need to be addressed in a slightly different way.

Aging is a gift. Not everyone is lucky enough to see their next birthday, to live up to the age you or I am at. And I’ve embraced it with more confidence every year. But I will be honest: identifying these new changes in my body and trying to figure out how to troubleshoot them have not been very fun. I am extremely active, exercise far more than the average person does, and try to take care of myself the best I can to ensure optimal health and fitness. But finding out about all these new physiological shifts of midlife, such as declining estrogen that slow metabolism, is challenging. Just a few years ago, if I knew I needed to burn some extra fat, I would just do a harder, more intense run and for longer. I’d do barre or pilates fusion until it burned. And it always worked then. This isn’t the case anymore, and it isn’t that simple where I am now. I’ve already been going hard for the last few months since coming back from Australia and the Philippines, and I’ve only lost about 3-4 pounds out of the eight I wanted to lose. The extra belly fat is just stuck there and doesn’t want to leave. No one else would notice it other than me, though. Running more intensely is NOT producing fat loss because it doesn’t address this age-related shifts that slow metabolism. Plus at this age, steady-state running can even spike cortisol levels, signaling that the body needs to protect itself and guard the fat more, especially in the abdominal area. I guess that’s why I have a little more pudge around my lower waist than I did pre-weaning.

I guess I will need to embrace brisk incline walks a couple times a week now, in place of 2-3x week runs. I will see if it results in any change because I have a feeling my cortisol must be spiking. I suppose this is the right attitude: test and learn, test and shift when things don’t work! These are the new things I am learning to live with — the fact that I cannot control all the changes happening to my body as easily as I did before.

Finding good things everywhere I go

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I get told I am full of shit for this belief a lot: I truly believe that no matter where you go in the world, whether it’s a different neighborhood, town, city, or country, that there is always good food somewhere there. I think of it like I think of people and beauty: there is beauty when you give a place a chance. There are also good, well-meaning people if you give them a chance and take a little time to get to know them. I know every single place I’ve been to has something good or great that I’ve enjoyed.

So, even for places that I have been to that I have very little strong opinion about, I can still feel myself getting protective over them when people I know make sweeping, negative generalizations about them. I was telling my friends this last weekend that I was going to be in Raleigh this week for work. A friend (who has never been to Raleigh) shared that her husband has had to go to Raleigh a few times for work, and she said he was not a fan; he said there was no good food in Raleigh. As someone who has been to Raleigh once and had three very solid meals there last year, I could feel myself getting annoyed.

“Where did he go, and who chose the places?” I asked.

She said some colleagues chose the restaurants and that he didn’t. To be honest, I don’t think I would have had much more faith if he had chosen them.

I told her that I found a really great bakery cafe there that I loved and was planning to go back this week. And today, I made good on my word: I stopped in for an iced latte, a kouign amann, and two caneles to go. Every bite of that kouign amann was perfection: each bite shattered, had this addictive crunchy sugar coating on the outside, and definitely had seemingly millions of flaky, buttery layers. I got one canele for me and one to bring home for Chris. I ate my canele in flight, over 7 hours after I purchased it. It still had a super crunchy outside and a gooey, soft, tender inside, with a strong vanilla bean flavor. Last August, I had a delicious tapas meal with a work friend. That same trip, my colleagues and I hosted a great happy hour event for a prospective customer that had amazing appetizers. And last night, I had a very noteworthy, crunchy banh xeo generously stuffed with lots of shrimp and pork, along with a pork bao and a calamansi spritz. If you do your due diligence and spend the five minutes or less it takes to look up Google Reviews or some AI tool like Claude or ChatGPT, I highly doubt you would fail to find a good restaurant or six in Raleigh.

Sometimes, I wonder why I feel so frustrated when people make negative over-generalizations about places, especially smaller U.S. cities. It’s clear that I do not live in a small U.S. city — quite the opposite! And I think I do know why: it’s almost indicative of how quickly and based on very few interactions people can draw sweeping judgments and harbor negative stereotypes about other people or groups of people. If you want to get to know anyone or any place, you have to come in with an open mind and an open heart. If you already are coming in from a big city and choose to think that everything in said smaller city must be crap, that will inevitably color whatever experiences you have there — and ultimately taint it. And well, that’s your loss, not that place’s, because it means you are not able to enjoy your time spent there. And since none of us is living forever, we should try to do what we can to at least attempt to enjoy every moment we’re so lucky and privileged to live.

When your kid ends up in urgent care while you’re on a flight home

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I came home today, ready to give my sweet Kaia Pookie a big hug when I got through the door. But coming home this afternoon wasn’t quite what I envisioned. It was weirdly quiet when I entered the apartment. Chris turned over to look at me, barely greeting me. Instead, the first words out of his mouth were, “She had an accident.”

I looked over his shoulder at my Kaia Pookie, sitting quietly on the living room rug amidst a bunch of her toys. Her arms were sprawled out as though she was just leaning back on the couch, but the entire center of her face was bloody and mucusy. I slowly walked up to talk to her. While she looked straight up at me, she didn’t respond or smile; she basically had no reaction. She was lethargic and seemingly in pain and/or shock. I took her in my arms to hold her, while also occasionally pressing an ice compress to her nose and wiping away more blood and snot. She was eager to come into my embrace and clearly needed the cuddles.

Chris explained that while they were at the Transit Museum earlier today, Kaia was running around on an old bus when suddenly, she tripped on something and fell down very hard, face first. He actually didn’t see this happen, but some bystanders in the museum told him that his child had fallen. As soon as he got to her and lifted her face up, all he could see was blood everywhere. He immediately took her to the bathroom to get cleaned up, but the blood just kept coming out. A museum worker waited outside to see if she was okay, and kindly offered an ice pack. Chris wasn’t sure if she was okay or if something more serious could be wrong, so he took her to the closest Urgent Care, where they checked her out, did a few tests to ensure she didn’t have any major head injury, and then said that we just needed to monitor her to ensure she was “still herself” and that she didn’t lose consciousness.

We spent the rest of the early evening intermittently icing her nose and wiping away her runny nose snot and blood. I knew she was quite herself, though, because I kept talking to her in Chinese, and she responded logically and with expected answers. When I asked her if she wanted a surprise gift I brought back for her, she immediately nodded. Then minutes later, she kept asking for her surprise gift. I took it out for her: a deluxe princess coloring book. She looked at it and was clearly in love. I asked her if she wanted to color with it now, and she nodded and ran to get her markers. Chris teased her and said it was actually his gift; I had already presented him with dark chocolate covered sour cherries from a popular local Asheville chocolate shop when she was sitting down. My Kaia Pookie was clearly lucid and understanding every single thing that was happening. Her face turned down, and she yelled, “No, that’s mine! You already got a present!”

Phew. So fingers crossed, it doesn’t look like she suffered any major head injury. But what crappy luck that this happened when I wasn’t home. I asked Chris if he missed me while I was gone. He responded in his usual in-character Chris way: “Well, you would have been really useful here today.”

And that is what a “romantic” response sounds like when you’ve been together for 14-plus years, and married (at least, celebration-wise) for ten years — just in case you weren’t already familiar with it.

The stupidity of American healthcare strikes once again

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When I made my mammogram appointment over a month ago, the provider I was referred to by my OB-GYN had an online portal that had you fill out the usual paperwork in advance online, so I was able to do things like upload my driver’s license, front and back of my insurance card, and fill out any personal and family history ahead of time. What it also did was give me an estimate of what my out of pocket cost would be at the time of appointment check-in. This was a rude awakening: it said based on my health insurance that my out of pocket cost should be around $350 for a mammogram and breast ultrasound.

None of this sounded right. Mammograms are standard and covered by pretty much every health insurance for women over 40. Breast ultrasounds are covered in New York state (and apparently… not in Kansas, where a friend of mine lives, and where she had to pay $300 PER breast out of pocket). I called my health insurance, who confirmed to me what I suspected: I should have zero out of pocket costs, no co-pays, for either procedure. They gave me a reference number to give to the provider. I then called the provider, gave them the reference number, but they said they could not tell me the cost until I came into the office, which seemed not only completely inefficient, but just plain stupid. “If you ask me to pay for this out of pocket when I come in, I will decline the procedure and walk out,” I said sternly to them over the phone. “I am asking if you can correct this ahead of time so we don’t waste your time or mine?”

The person on the phone seemed totally unfazed, like she didn’t care (and frankly, probably wasn’t paid enough to care). She told me there was no way to confirm until the day of the appointment when I came in (which seems false the way health insurance works, but whatever). So she told me to just come in, and she doubted I’d have to pay anything out of pocket.

Well, I came in this afternoon, and lo and behold, that same $350 amount showed up as what I owed at the time of service. I insisted to the receptionist I wasn’t paying it. I gave them the reference number once again, and she made a flippant response: “Breast ultrasounds are not typically covered, but okay, we’ll call your insurance.” Her associate called my insurance. Twenty minutes later, they confirmed that I was correct, that I did not owe them any payment… but, I would be required to pay $20 copay for the breast ultrasound.

“Copay – is just for the breast ultrasound?” I said to her, still skeptical. I made a mental note, planning to call my insurance to contest even this amount after I paid it because this still goes against what my health insurance stated to me on the phone, which I wrote down with the reference number.

“Yes, that’s what I said,” the front desk person said, clearly annoyed with me. I’m not sure what her problem was — it wasn’t like she was getting the money. Their office was the one who screwed up, not me.

I paid the copay, then had both the mammogram and breast ultrasound done. I walked out of the office much later than I estimated I would, so the whole experience was pretty frustrating, especially since I tried to prevent foreseeable problems way in advance, which this office obviously thwarted. But this is just one of many stupid, frustrating and senseless examples in my personal experiences of why our healthcare system in the U.S. is so fucked — an example of what not to be. I also made a note to ask my OB-GYN for another radiology provider because I definitely do not want to go back here at all ever, ever again.

Tardiness in friends

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At a previous company, I once worked with a sales leader I really respected. Although I am not in sales, I oftentimes listened to his team talks and abided by his advice. Countless times, I can remember what he said repeatedly about showing up to customer meetings: “If you are not 15 minutes early, then you are 15 minutes late.” To him, if you showed up for a 9am meeting at 8:59 or 9am, you were already late and losing the damn deal.

There’s some truth in this advice, and not just in business, but also with lower stakes situations, such as when you are meeting up with friends or other loved ones. You want to make a good impression, stay on good footing with those you care about, and ultimately, show some respect. When you set a meeting time, you are dedicating this time to this person, and thus you are respecting that they chose to set aside this time out of their busy day just for you.

I used to be the jerk who would be late fairly regularly to non-work-related events. In my early 20s, when I’d say I would meet with a friend at 6:30pm, in my head, I’d give myself a 15-minute window of “grace.” This was never spoken. I never told any friend this. But I figured I could get there by 6:45 and it would totally be fine. Sometimes, I’d arrive early or on time. But oftentimes, I was 10-15 minutes late. And finally one day, Chris called me out on it and said it was rude, said we agreed on a meeting time, and that I needed to respect that. Sheepishly, I admitted he was right. With that, plus the influence of work, since then, I make it a point to show up to meetups about 10-15 minutes early now, assuming I am not crunched for time by things out of my control (like work meetings that might run over). And that gave me the liberty (and permission) to start calling out other friends who would show up late to agreed meetups. It’s had a “trickle-across” effect: a couple friends who would usually be late are now almost always either early or on time. Now, the majority of my friends are always on time.

Well, that’s with the exception of one friend, who is notoriously late all the time. She has shown up to 1:1 meetups with me late by 10-30 minutes. Last year, she came to lunch with us late by almost an hour; Chris was infuriated. She came to my 40th birthday party late by 1.5 hours. And then this past Sunday, she came over an hour late to my Lunar New Year party.

“Being late is just a sign of disrespect,” Chris insisted as he grumbled about her. “Would she show up late to a work event or a workout class? I doubt it. So it’s not like she’s not capable; she just doesn’t respect her friends enough to be on time.”

I texted her about 10 minutes before she showed up on Sunday, asking if she was almost here (this is 50 minutes after the stated start time of my party on the Paperless Post invitation). Everyone else was already here; we were all waiting for her to arrive. When she came through the door with her husband, she saw my text as Chris took their coats, and she had said almost defensively to my text, “Well, we’re coming from far away.” Well, “far away” is all relative: we had friends come from Staten Island, New Jersey, and similar parts of Brooklyn, and they were all early or relatively on time, unless they had told us in advance they had to be late for some reason or another. With her, we had zero communication. And she clearly didn’t do the due diligence of looking at the start time, then backing out based on Google Maps how long it would take them to get to our place via public transit the way a logical person would.

Another friend was complaining to me about people who are perpetually late. “What, do they think an event start time is just a suggestion?” she asked me.

Although I’ve already called this friend out on being repeatedly late a number of times, I have a feeling that I’m going to have to confront her about it more seriously at some point soon because when I think of the sheer number of times she’s been late, it’s exactly what Chris says: it’s just a huge disrespect. Everyone is “busy,” but no one is too busy to constantly be late all the time and disrespect people they supposedly care about.