Recently, my good friend’s brother proposed to his girlfriend of the last several years. Everyone in their family really likes this woman, but they were really disappointed in the engagement story. She sent a photo of them after he proposed where she has the ring on her finger, and while it appears to be a small and dainty sapphire ring, I didn’t think much of it and figured that must be her jewelry style for my friend’s brother to have picked this out. She told me today that the family was disappointed because they didn’t care for the ring, and lo and behold, what he ended up spending a lot of money on ended up being a brand new Tesla for himself. “He cheaped out on the ring because he purchased himself a one hundred thousand dollar car!” my friend exclaimed to me over the phone tonight. The whole family felt betrayed, as though he had been cheap with everyone, even himself, until now.

The truth is that I actually got really excited when I heard this story. I’m not a car person at all, but the idea of owning one is so intriguing to me; no one I know until now owns one. It’s like one of those luxuries that actually deserves to be a luxury; it’s not some stupid overpriced Kate Spade bag that going to fray in two to three years. It’s actually a decent investment. I told my friend that since her brother has a reputation for being cheap, even on himself, maybe we should all be excited for him that he finally decided to splurge on himself. She didn’t seem to enjoy this idea. I think everyone should splurge on something for themselves. What else are we going to do with the money we work hard to earn?

I’m leaving for Paris today. The last time (which was my first time) I visited Paris, it was in June 2011. I’d never really traveled much at all when I went to France then. I was wide-eyed and excited, eager to practice my public-school-learned French (which means it’s extremely basic at best) and explore the world of butter and sugar and la joie de vivre. I stayed in two crappy hostels, one of which had a shower that had no separation from my bed, so every time I showered, my bed sheets got soaked. I even had to pack my own towels and toiletries. That hostel also had only a single toilet on every floor, which meant I had to share the same dirty, smelly toilet (it was so bad that I can still vividly remember how bad it looked. To give you an idea of how bad, it made some of the toilets I used in China seem squeaky clean) with about 20 other people each night. We also got kicked out after our third night because they said they had a policy of only reserving you a room for a maximum of three nights. So we ran around Les Halles and the Latin Quarter trying to find a place for our last two nights. I felt like such a loser — a frugal American running around Paris looking for housing in the summer.

My experience this time around will be quite different. We’ll be staying in the sixth arrondissement in the midst of all the major chocolate and pastry shops I want to visit, in a real hotel that will not only have a real bathroom and a real bedroom, but also its own private toilet and towels. We’re flying business class since we found a deal that was only $150 more than economy. Four years ago, I never would have consented to paying $150 more for business. I would have thought, but I could spend that extra $150 on pastries and other French treats I could bring home! But now I think, wow, how often do you ever see the price differential between economy and business be so tiny? The answer to that is never.

It’s a different life now.

I picked up a gown today for the wedding we’ll be attending next week. This is probably one of the very few floor-length dresses I’ve ever worn. Unfortunately, what that also tends to mean is that it needs to be hemmed since I am only 5’3″, and pressed for time, I need to do this myself. That’s actually not a hard job for me, though, in theory. My mom taught me how to fix simple clothing mishaps like holes, buttons, etc., and I took a sewing class when I was 12 on basic sewing, including hemming. Unfortunately, those above skills necessitate certain tools, such as an iron, ironing board, and even a sewing machine, none of which I have access to. So I did a hack hem with really basic sewing and measuring that took about 25 minutes, and it actually came out looking okay.

It’s a good thing I can come up with these things in such a short period of time and not have to go out and pay someone else to hem my dress. The estimate I got from the cleaner around the corner hurt just hearing it. The lesson learned here is that now, I need to invest in an iron and a small ironing board, even just for my small Manhattan apartment.

I went out for drinks tonight with a good friend of mine, and we discussed my drama-filled days in San Francisco with my mom, conjuring up stories of how Chris has “hurt” her and my dad. My friend says loudly, “Your mom is crazy. All moms are crazy!” The bar we are drinking at doesn’t have that many patrons, but the ones who are in there all start cheering and agreeing. The bartender agreed and said that some people have mommy issues while others have daddy issues. She said she herself had mommy issues and got along perfectly with her dad.

“I don’t want to say she is crazy,” I said to my friend. “I think it’s kind of disrespectful.” My friend defended it and said she didn’t mean to offend my mom, but that’s not the point of what I was trying to say. I honestly believe my mom has a mental illness that hasn’t and will never be addressed or diagnosed. I mean, who else insists that everyone is out to get her and hurt her and keeps secrets more than my own parents at my mother’s insistence? We can’t just write people off as crazy when we know there is something psychologically wrong with them because it doesn’t address the core problem. We become the people we hate, the ones who make generalizations about “craziness” and then don’t acknowledge how harmful and serious these problems are.