I went to see a primary care doctor to get my tetanus vaccination today – it’s the last vaccine I’ll need before our Brazil trip. Without even realizing it, the doctor I chose is actually originally from Rio and is Portuguese, and she gave me all these tips about things to buy (those thin cloths for lying on the beach, leather shoes), things to eat (fresh fruit from corner stores, but particularly those fruita do conde or sugar apples), and… well, what not to bring. She advised me against wearing the Tahitian pearl and diamond necklace I was wearing at her office, or anything else that could be perceived as “real” or worth money, as she said that local slum guys would just pull it off my neck. She told me to leave any fancy cameras at home. She also told me not to wear any clothes that look “designer.” “If you don’t speak Portuguese, you will be a target,” she warned.

I’m sure she was just trying to be helpful since she is originally from there and would know things I wouldn’t, but this doesn’t particularly increase my excitement about visiting Brazil. If anything, it would make me more paranoid and think twice… and maybe leave Bart at home, too.

When thoughts get dark, Ed comes back again.

I saw him in my dreams yet again last night. We were standing at the top of a hill where a family friend just bought a large house. It was one of those sunny, cloudless blue-skies days. Oddly, right at the center of the front lawn of the house was a long, skinny pole that went all the way down to the bottom of the hill. It was steep the way the steepest streets in San Francisco are, like the ones you can’t even walk up properly that require stairs to be built into the cement.

Ed effortlessly slid all the way down the pole to the bottom of the hill, then ran back up to meet me. I could see our parents standing at the bottom of the hill, and I could vaguely hear them arguing over whether doing this was a good idea. “You can do it! Just slide down. You don’t need to think about it so much!” he encouraged me. I keep staring down the pole at the base of the hill, and all I feel is terror at the idea of sliding down and potentially falling off the pole. “I can’t do it,” I whispered to him, yet he continues to encourage me on and on and tell me that I can do it. The last thing I remember is that at the end, I still wouldn’t slide down the pole.

While on a plane last night trying to get back to New York, I sat next to a guy who was a retired sanitation worker (over 25 years) originally from New York, but retired with his wife in Florida. He decided (since we were flying aimlessly from one undesirable city to the next to avoid the thunder showers) to tell me about his life, including his marriage, his two daughters, where he’s lived, etc. He had no interest in learning anything about my life (in fact, since my phone had died and I had no other way of checking time, he never even realized I asked him what time it was about three times before his neighbor kindly told me). He told me that when his two daughters went to college, he bought each of them a brand new car of her choice.

I was struck by his enormous generosity and told him. A lot of parents buy their children cars; not all of them would let their children choose it, and have it be brand new. He shrugged and responded, “Well, this is how I look at it: I’m not rich by any means, but we all have some money. While I’m alive, I want to allow my kids to enjoy that, and I want to see them enjoy it with my own eyes. It’s better this way than leaving it to them when I die and I can’t see anything!”

I was immediately overwhelmed and could feel my eyes slightly watering at this statement. In some ways, it’s kind of morbid because he’s anticipating his death, but on the other hand, he’s trying to be positive and ensure he’s able to enjoy life (with his family) as much as possible for the rest of his limited time on earth.

I wish my parents thought the same way – not because I want them to buy me a new car, mind you, but because they’d probably be happier and more fulfilled people.

Chris is in San Francisco for work this week, and he’s having dinner with my parents tonight. Yep, that’s right. He’s having dinner with them without me there. He claimed he was too busy to call them to make arrangements, so I had to facilitate their meeting time and location over the phone. Of course, since my mom doesn’t hear from him throughout the day, she worriedly asks me a number of times, “Are you sure he is coming?” Yes, Mom, he’s coming. I’m not having you drive across town to have you wait for someone who will never show up.

So it will be my mom, dad, and Chris sitting at a table tonight, most likely having pho, banh xeo, and banh cuon of some sort at a Vietnamese place in the Tenderloin. The strangest thing about this dinner happening is that subconsciously, in the back of my mind, I thought, Will Ed be there, too? I obviously remember my brother is not alive anymore, but there are moments I have when I think without really thinking about that, and I wonder if he will be at a certain place or doing a certain thing. Then I quickly remember again and think how ridiculous the thought was.

Anyway, he can’t be having dinner with them tonight because he’s coming with me to Chicago tomorrow. He’s never been to the Windy City before.

Tonight, we went to see the off-Broadway musical Heathers, which is based off of the cult classic movie of the same name from the ’80s. The first thing I think about when thinking about how I feel about this production is that I’m so glad I’m no longer an adolescent (and perhaps even happier that I did not have the “normal” high school experience of having bullies, football players and cheerleaders being the “cool cliques,” etc. I hated conforming then. I still hate it now). The second thing I think about is how fragile human beings are, and how tragic it is that so many people have had terrible childhoods that lead them into downward spirals of mental illness and suicidal tendencies.  It’s like we don’t take these people seriously. We just tell them to try harder at school, try harder to “fit in,” try harder to please those around them. Just try harder. If you try harder, you’ll succeed! You feel down today? Perk up and smile!! Maybe it’s more complicated then that, yes?

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is mentioned during the musical when an accidental death is faked out to be a suicide. Oddly, I read this book when I was just 12 because I had heard from a friend that it had similarities with J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, which I love. Sylvia Plath committed suicide when she was just 30 by closing all the windows and cracks in her kitchen, turning the stove on, and sticking her head into her oven. Her son, who she had with her husband Ted Hughes, also committed suicide at the age of 47 in 2009 by hanging himself. Sylvia Plath has a daughter who is still alive and is a writer and painter. I wonder what it’s like to be someone whose mother and brother have committed suicide.

Actually, I don’t want to know what it’s like.

I think the dependence on computers and mobile devices is driving me crazy. I hate that I set my alarm to wake up on my phone. I hate that I have to check the weather on my Yahoo weather app when deciding what to wear. I hate that when I wake up, one of the first things I do is check the time on my phone. I don’t like that most mornings when I wake up, Chris is already awake reading news or e-mail on his phone next to me. I even dislike that there are Kindle book sales that cost almost nothing, but if I want to buy that same book in print, it will cost 10-20 times the amount. Sometimes, I want to throw my computer across the room… maybe Chris’s phone, too.

Last year when I started my new job, I felt like a lot of my time was spent being idle, searching for things to do because my role wasn’t neatly defined. I spent time trying to look like I was busy when I was not. I felt guilty every now and then because it seemed like I was getting this nice paycheck twice a month for doing very little of anything.

Well, I’m never going to complain about being idle or not having enough to do again because those days are very distant now. I have so much to do all the time now that there are moments when I struggle for a few seconds to decide which to prioritize, task A or task B? When I am not at the office, I feel compelled to constantly check work e-mail on my phone or computer, and I get guilt pangs when I don’t respond right away. It’s funny how quickly life circumstances can change. This is what it’s like to be a workaholic New Yorker in tech.

After a night out for Greek food and seeing The Cripple of Inishmaan with Daniel Radcliffe, we came home and shut our door to hear a woman screaming in the hallway of our apartment building. She’s yelling in a language I do not recognize, and I believe she is on the phone because I don’t hear another voice responding to her. After a bit of yelling, she just starts sobbing. The sobbing lasts for what seems like forever, and it’s extremely loud. I can even hear it over my electric toothbrush with the bathroom door shut.

I feel sad for a while and realize that the first thing I think when I hear this person yelling and crying over the phone is, “Did someone close to her just die?”

That was me almost nine months ago.

Today, Chris and I flew into Phoenix and met my parents for our long weekend of exploring Phoenix, Scottsdale, Sedona, and the Grand Canyon National Park. As an added bonus, I arranged some time with my friend from Wellesley, who I haven’t seen since graduation almost six years ago. She moved to China to teach English, found an expat she fell in love with, got married, and moved back to Arizona with him.

It was hard to read her husband in the beginning. He was very quiet, serious, and had interesting eye movements. He was soft spoken most of the time and seemed very intent on… just observing. Based on what I know about my friend, I knew she would not pick a boring mute as a husband, so I knew he was a deep-thinker type, so eventually he started opening up, and I discovered his crazy sense of humor and wit that would no doubt attract my friend who I traveled to China with. He’s a balloon artist (not the clown type), and his goal in life is to make kids happy. If someone else said this to me, I’d call their bluff. When he said this to us, I really believed it.

After they generously dropped us off at our hotel at the end of the evening and we were parting ways, he gives me a big hug (as he’s a big man) and says, “Even though we spent the last several hours together, I realize I didn’t really get to ask you much. What is your purpose in life? What do you live for?” The question caught me so off guard that I initially just laughed. Because it was a big question for the minute we had left together, I said to him that I was still searching for my purpose and didn’t quite know what it was just yet.

In the midst of all my traveling, reading, brain games, theater, cooking, eating, exercising, grocery shopping, friends, family, cute things obsessing – what the hell is my purpose, anyway?

Today, I had a visit with my therapist again. I can count on one hand the number of visits I have left with her before she ends her time here. We talked about my upcoming trip to Phoenix and the Grand Canyon with my parents and Chris, and my thoughts around it.

I explained to her that my parents generally don’t take vacations. It’s not that they can’t afford it; they certainly can, but my dad is a homebody and generally doesn’t like to go anywhere because he likes being in familiar areas and thinks everything is a rip off or too expensive, and my mom is scared of the world and won’t go anywhere unless someone else suggests it to her first and then guides her around there (my dad won’t do this). So I told my therapist that unless I book, plan, and go with them on any “vacations,” the vacation will never happen for them.

She responds and says how mature that is on my part. She thinks it’s amazing I recognize this fact about my parents, but want to enhance their lives by planning these trips and then even going along with them, as she can imagine most kids would NOT want to do this, and would merely think, “eh, they’re miserable,” and let their parents continue on in their misery. They are who they are. I think I am getting too much credit for this.

While traveling with my parents is certainly not the easiest thing to do, I’m willing to do this because I’d like us to have shared, happy experiences, and I want them to see that there is more to life than all the work and pain and suffering they’ve had to go through. In most cases, the most rewarding things in life are not the easiest things to do.

The sad part about this trip is that we were supposed to have taken it this time last year with Ed. I guess this time, Chris and Bart will have to go in his place.