Category Archives: Contemplations on New York Life

A question I’ve never been asked before

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“Yvonne, who does your Botox?”

I wrinkled my brow and was completely caught off guard by the question. “Excuse me?” I blurted out. Did I hear this right?

“Who does your Botox?” my friend asked again with a smile on her face.

“Oh, I don’t do Botox!” I said, surprised. Then, I got confused. Does it look like parts of my face don’t move “normally”?! “Why, does it look like I do Botox?”

“No, not at all,” my friend insisted, still smiling and now laughing. “Your skin just looks so good. I thought you did Botox. In fact, doesn’t everyone do Botox?”

I laughed at this and paused. “Actually, I don’t think I have any friends who do Botox,” I replied to her.

She smiled even bigger this time. “Yes, you do. You have me.”

That’s when I was even more shocked. She does Botox?! She doesn’t look like she does it. As I’ve gotten into my mid-30s and am now 40, I can spot Botox on people’s faces pretty quickly. Some people are more obvious than others. But you can usually tell when you look at people who have been doing it for a long time. Their faces just do not move as naturally as they should when they smile or laugh. The tops of the cheeks and the foreheads that never move are usually the dead giveaway. She pointed out the three parts of her forehead where she’s been getting it done over the last year by her doctor friend, who shares a vial of Botox across three friends and splits the cost. I suppose she is an example of someone who does Botox where it actually looks natural.

“Well, if you ever change your mind, (friend’s name) hosts a Botox party about every three months,” my friend said. “And you are always more than welcome to join!”

In general, I’d always been against cosmetic surgery for things like eyelids surgery (UGH), boob jobs (except in the case of breast cancer related breast reconstruction, which frankly I do not consider “cosmetic”), face lifts, and anything related. I just think we have what we have, and we should work with what we have. On the other hand, I’m all for people getting things removed they do not like that really bother them (e.g. moles, sun spots, freckles, permanent body hair removal. Contrary to what Chris thinks, those procedures are not “cosmetic surgery.” They are cosmetic removals). And as we age, in general we should embrace the gift of getting older by taking care of our bodies, which includes our skin and hair. I’m a huge advocate of sun protection/sunscreen. I believe in regular exercise and eating well. And I believe in trying to reduce stressors, which all lead to a healthier and hopefully happier life and health span. And I’ve been pro retinol, vitamin C, and other skin nourishing ingredients forever. But outside of that, I never really considered any cosmetic surgery like Botox, fillers, or the like.

But then when my friend mentioned Botox, it started making me think of actual numbers. And that’s when I asked ChatGPT to give me a breakdown of usage: It shared that about 5 percent of the U.S. population aged 25 and above uses cosmetic Botox. The breakdown is estimated to be: 20% Baby Boomers and older; 39% Generation X; 35% Millennials; 6% Generation Z and younger. So that’s about 12 million people in this country — not a small number.

As I’ve gotten older, while I still do not think any of those cosmetic procedures are right for me (and more so, I absolutely am not willing to pay any of those prices out of pocket!), I’ve relaxed my general stance on them. At the end of the day, people have to do what they are comfortable with, and if they have the time and money to spend on these procedures, and they make them feel good about themselves, then all power to them. Plus for women especially, the beauty and “youth” standards are so stupid, senseless, and unrealistic that I totally understand why some women would just default to Botox, fillers, etc., once they get to a certain age, assuming they have a certain level of means. Yes, even today, the ageism against women continues to be that worse versus for men. So much for the equaling of the damn sexes.

The changing neighborhoods of New York City

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Today we spent the day exploring Bushwick. Bushwick is a much different neighborhood than it was back in 2008 when I first moved here. Back then, I still remember visiting two apartments with my friend/soon-to-be roommate in the area, and I wasn’t particularly enthused about the neighborhood. There didn’t seem to be that many local businesses other than drugstores, bodegas, and laundromats nearby. There were a lot of people all over the sidewalks and streets with seemingly nowhere to go, just loitering about doing nothing. I didn’t really understand it, but I knew it wasn’t a place I wanted to live then. The rent was cheap (for that time), but the cheap rent wasn’t enough to get me to seriously consider living there. Plus, neither of the apartments we saw were that notable; we would have been massively settling if we chose to move forward with them.

Well, since then, that roommate ended up living in Bushwick for about nine years after we moved out of our Elmhurst apartment. The area’s gotten more expensive and well… gentrified. Around 2016, I heard that a friend’s girlfriend who was living in Bushwick had to move out of her apartment because her rent was going up… 100 percent. More diverse eateries are opening up there, whether it’s Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Mexican, or Honduran. And a number of fun breweries, cafes, and bars have opened up, as well. Bushwick is a fun place to hang out in and explore now. It’s “cool” to say that you live there today.

We originally wanted to come to Bushwick last weekend, when we were meant to see our two friends for lunch. My friend ended up not feeling well, so she had to bail on us. But when I originally suggested Bushwick, she was not happy about it and said she preferred to never go there. As a child, she lived on the border of Bushwick, and her family had gotten attacked a number of times. So the area is a trigger for her of past trauma. She said she still thought of it as a dangerous place.

I totally get that bad memories are associated with places where bad things have happened to you. But in places like Brooklyn where the “boundary lines” between neighborhoods are a bit blurry, I just thought this was a bit strange. Sometimes when you’re in these areas, it’s not clear whether you’re in Bushwick, Williamsburg or even Ridgewood, where my friend grew up. Plus, that was now over 40 years ago for her. In the 18 years since I first went to Bushwick, the area has changed dramatically. So I cannot even begin to fathom how different it is today versus 40-plus years ago.

This reminded me of my ride-share driver from Raleigh back in April. He told me there was no way that Sunnyside/Woodside would have any good bakeries that people would travel to because “the place was a dump,” and he insisted it always would be. But I insisted to him, as I did to my friend about Bushwick, that places can and do change over time. You never know what you’re missing by assuming the worst of places.

But it’s not like Sunnyside, Woodside, or Bushwick really need that ride-share driver or my friend to patronize their businesses. They seem quite trendy and popular enough on their own!

Broken eggs

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Early on in my days living on my own post college, I would be *that* person at the supermarket, opening up the egg carton and removing every single egg, checking its bottom to ensure that there were no cracks. If you buy and eat eggs, you know that cracks in eggs are quite common, and some of them are so tiny that if you do not inspect them closely, you may actually miss one! So whenever I am shopping to buy eggs, I do this exact practice, every single time. I do not care that it takes a little bit longer. I definitely have never cared when I see people looking at me. Because in the worst case scenario, you realize you have a cracked egg. It may even be contaminated. Are you going to go all the way back to the store for a refund? Or, will you just suck it up, eat the egg (and risk getting sick), or just toss it and accept it as a sunk cost?

I hate food waste. It totally infuriates me. When I think of wasting food, all I think about is my mom constantly telling Ed and me when we were kids that she grew up barely having enough plain rice to eat, and that my dad went to sleep hungry many nights. Sometimes, he even ate spoiled leftover food and got food poisoning. So, you can bet that a) I don’t want to waste the food and b) I definitely do not want to waste the money, or the time it takes to return and exchange.

So Chris brought home a carton of eggs from Whole Foods yesterday where three of the eggs were cracked. I realized this when I carefully lowered two of them into boiling water to make boiled eggs yesterday, and both immediately ballooned white into my boiling water. I immediately knew this was not user error. Then, I went to inspect the rest of the carton and found a third egg bubbling with its white oozing out. So, off to Whole Foods I went to return them today. And I wanted an exchange. So, I went to the eggs section and carefully lifted every single egg out of the carton to inspect them. As I did this, another potential egg buyer, noticing what i was doing, decided that she would also inspect each of the egg bottoms while I did this. And then, we looked at each other, made eye contact, and I gave a little head nod of approval. She gets it.

I did the exchange swiftly. The cashier didn’t seem to mind and was totally unfazed. Now, I get all 18 of my eggs fully in tact.

A cancer diagnosis

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Chris, Kaia, and I were originally planning to meet two friends, a couple, this Saturday for lunch. But as the date was approaching, one of the friends seemed a bit non-committal when it came to picking a place. She was evading suggestions and not really saying she wanted or didn’t want anything. It was confusing because her tone wasn’t normally like this over text, so I could tell something was wrong that she didn’t want to share. Finally two days ago, she admitted to me that her head wasn’t in a great place because she just had a biopsy on a breast the other day that could mean she had breast cancer. So I suggested that we meet to catch up in person today, as maybe a 1:1 conversation would be easier for her to stomach than a group outing. And she agreed.

Yesterday, she got the biopsy results. They confirmed that she did, in fact, have a very early stage of ductal carcinoma, essentially stage zero breast cancer that had started developing in her milk ducts. Her doctor went over potential treatment options as a move-forward plan. She has another biopsy scheduled next week. She was very lucky that this was caught, as she had been avoiding mammograms for the last five years because her first mammogram was a miserable experience. Her doctor urged her to get the mammogram done, and then had the radiology department call her repeatedly to harass her into finally making an appointment. I told her she was very lucky to have such an involved, caring doctor. In my case, I am not sure I have any doctor who would be that insistent and make sure to follow up with me repeatedly… on anything. When it comes to breast cancer or any cancer for that matter, catching it this early is the best news you could possibly have.

My friend recently lost one of her best friends to an aggressive brain cancer. And previous to that, she lost her aunt to lung cancer (this is someone who had never smoked a day in her life). So cancer has unfortunately been top of mind for her in recent years. Now she has to go through treatments herself. She said this has forced her to think about death more, as unpleasant as it is…. and she sees all of this as a sign that she needs to go “full throttle” on all the things she wants to accomplish in life that will make her feel fulfilled before she dies… hopefully in another several decades.

I told her I think it’s really healthy for us to think more often about death. When you think about death, it forces you to come to terms with the fact that you will not live forever. And therefore, life is precious, and you need to focus on what’s truly important and meaningful to you. Stop obsessing over stupid shit. Stop spending time with people who deplete you and take from you but never give. Stop obsessing what “other people” will think. Stop putting off reading that book you’ve “been meaning “to read, or delaying that vacation you’ve been dreaming of taking. Quit your awful, toxic job and find something else where you’ll be treated better and like a real human. I realize all this is easier said than done, but all of this can be accomplished with little baby steps every single day. The baby steps become bigger steps, and then we start letting go of all the crap that doesn’t matter in life.

So, maybe this is life’s way of telling her that she’s meant to do great things, and she still has time. Plus, just get the freaking mammogram every year.

Canadian wildfires’ smoke come down to the Northeast of the US

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While this isn’t the first time we’ve experienced this, for the last two days, our skies have been grey, hazy, and smoky because of the numerous Canadian wildfires that are happening further north of us. The fact that it is causing air pollution here in New York City just shows how widespread and massive the wildfires are. Today, our building sent a mass email notification to let us know they would be shutting off the fans in all public hallways to prevent the wildfire smoke from further entering the building. Many people outside are wearing masks. Those who have respiratory issues have been asked to stay indoors. When I stepped outside today to go pick Kaia up from summer camp, I could immediately smell a burning smell.

All of this makes me sad. It’s a reality of living in a time of climate change. But it makes me even sadder that we have an administration that denies climate change is even a thing. And it’s even more terrifying that many people believe climate change is a hoax. How do you then look at the hazy skyline of New York City that is barely visible right now due to wildfires all the way up in Canada…?!

Hosting a customer dinner tonight

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Last week, I got asked if I could help co-host a customer/prospect dinner in Midtown tonight. Nowadays, I don’t travel very much for customer visits or do many customer events, so I happily agreed to go. The bonus was that the restaurant was just a 20-minute walk from our place, so it was very easy to get to. I actually hadn’t heard of the restaurant before, but I was pleasantly surprised that not only was the food very good, but the service was excellent. Our server was a drink whiz; he managed to make a mental note of the flavor profiles every attendee wanted, then kept the drinks coming!

I did not know any of the customers or prospects present tonight personally, but it was a really good event with lots of interesting conversations, both work and non-work related. I generally don’t like networking events very much, but this one managed to be fun. Despite not going to these events often anymore, I really enjoyed my time tonight meeting with new, very different people, and also being reunited in person with a handful of my colleagues who I rarely see in person. It’s funny to think that pre-pandemic, I was in an office five days a week unless I was traveling for work or on vacation. And now, seeing colleagues and customers, as well as being in an office, are more like novelties.

At the end of the evening, I exchanged contact details with some attendees. My colleagues and I had a nightcap before all going home. Overall, it was a fun, productive evening. I wonder how many more of these events I will go to in the future?

When a fancy cake store opens along the way home, and someone doesn’t get the cake she wants

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A new location of Lady M Cake Boutique has opened just a block away from where we live, and it’s along our walk back home from the subway. As we anticipated the cake shop opening for a while, Kaia kept asking when they would open so we could go in and have some cake. I told her that when they opened, I would take her and we could get some cake.

Well, the day finally came the week before we left for our Caribbean trip. I did stay true to my word, and we did end up going in. Kaia chose a slice she wanted, and we left with a very expensive slice of cake. Unfortunately, she never ended up having cake that evening because she was already full from dinner, so Chris and I ended up having to eat the cake ourselves. She remembered she never got any cake. So for the last two days when we pass this cake shop, she has raised hell with me and tantrummed like there’s no tomorrow to try to get her way.

And… well, it’s been pretty miserable for me. She knows I am softer than Chris, which is why she always asks me for these types of treats and not him. And she also lashes out a lot more when I say no.

“I WANT CAKE! YOU WILL BUY ME CAKE!” she screamed twice this week on the sidewalk as I nearly had to drag her along the way home.

I probably need to have a long chat with ChatGPT to see how I can calm a screaming 4-year-old down when she doesn’t get what she wants because my patience is really wearing with all these public outbursts. I’m *that* mother trying to control her child, who apparently thinks she can have whatever she wants when she wants it.

Another day, another layoff

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I’ve been working full time for over 18 years now. And at every single company I’ve ever been at, I’ve seen layoffs happen. At my first company, there was a layoff just four months after I started. Then five months later, layoff round 2 happened, and I got cut. Fast forward 18 years later, and layoffs are pretty much the normal thing that I expect will happen. The question, though, is, whether I will get laid off.

I’ve been at my current company for almost six years now. I’ve seen two rounds of layoffs here before today. The first was unexpected. The second was planned, announced, and very much expected. And then today’s was also expected given my company merged (or really, got acquired) by another company, so of course there were duplicities and restructuring that needed to happen. I guess at this point of my career, I have just become numb to all the madness, the constant change, the constant “reductions in force.” It’s tiring, exhausting, demoralizing. When you work in tech, your job is never, ever “safe.” Job stability is a joke here. The default expectation is that there will be layoffs.

Luckily for me this time, after layoff round 3, I am still employed. My job is safe — at least for the next few months. Who knows what will happen and what decisions will be made? I remember when I got laid off the first time in 2009, even though I had a big feeling I would be impacted, when it finally happened, I felt so sad, angry, and confused all at the same time. I felt a lot of insecurity and uncertainty about my place in life (it also didn’t help that my mom equated employment with self worth, but that’s another stupid story for another day). What I wish I could have told myself then was that — everything always works out in the end. “You will be more than okay.” Leaving a job not on your own terms is never a fun thing. But there’s always something better out there — the time just has to be right.

Impromptu friend catch-up and play date turns family dysfunction contemplation time

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The weather was so nice today that I wanted to make sure that Kaia and I got some outdoors time this afternoon. So I took her to Little Engine Playground at Riverside Park and let her blow bubbles and get wet in the sprinklers. While there, my building friend texted to let me know she was going to join us with her son (Chris told her we’d be there). So I had an unexpected friend catch-up this afternoon at the park and at Pier I after. I really enjoyed getting this spontaneous message because I almost never have any impromptu meetups with anyone — ever. In New York, I’ve just never made friends who are that spontaneous. Everything always feels like it needs to be planned in advance. And while I am a planner and do like having meetups on the calendar to look forward to, I also love just randomly deciding to meet someone with zero plans out of nowhere. It seems to be harder to do as people get older, as sad as that is.

I’ve enjoyed getting to know this friend over the last year. In the last several months, she’s definitely become more open in sharing more personal details and opinions she’s had, and I’ve done the same with her. One area we’ve never really talked much about is regarding our parents. I know a lot about her sister, and she knows about Ed and how he passed. But just today, we started talking about my parents because she knows about our upcoming trip to San Francisco to see them. She asked me if I looked at going home as a “vacation.” I probably paused for too long of a time as she immediately knew what the answer was.

As a 40-year-old adult child to my parents, I am clearly no longer a little kid. I have since grown up, had a career, gotten married, and given birth and am raising my own child, and so I’ve had enough life experience of my own to formulate my own world view — and also see exactly how different it is versus my parents’. I recognize they both had hard lives, and the life I have is extremely luxurious compared to anything they had. Their hard lives inform their world views. They both experienced varying degrees of trauma that shaped how they raised Ed and me. I recognize all of that. But my hope and goal is that I do not continue their intergenerational trauma, that it stops with them. I want Kaia to have a very different relationship with me than the one I have with my own mother. I can acknowledge all those things are true, that I love them, but that I have no intention of ever trying harder than I already have to have a better relationship with them. As I learned over the course of multiple years of therapy, it is not my job to fix my parents, to change their disposition, or even to make them happy. They will not change; they are who they are. If they want to wallow in their own misery and legitimate mess of their house, they can do that. I told my friend I go and stay with them for about two weekends and stay at a hotel the rest of the time because their house just is not livable, not enjoyable, not comfortable; this is all done out of obligation. It’s worse than the clutter; it’s just flat out dirty. And they are perfectly fine with that and think that I am the problem when I come.

I still remember the first time I was in therapy, from 2013-2016, and my then-therapist asked me a really simple question: “Do you like your parents?”

I wrinkled my brow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s very clear that you love your parents,” she explained. “But do you like them? Like if they were not your parents, could you see yourself willingly going out to have dinner with them and chat? Hang out together? Do you share the same interests, hobbies? Do you enjoy their company?”

This, I did not hesitate to answer. “Oh god, no!” I exclaimed. “Not at all! They are not even remotely fun to be around! We have nothing to talk about! We share none of the same views about anything!”

I didn’t want to freak out my friend and start going on about my parents; it’s probably too much information, too much negativity. I also don’t like going into detail about this sort of thing with Kaia around because she seems to be understanding way more than I want her to at this age now.

“I don’t want to sound terrible,” I said to my friend. “But they’re just… very unpleasant to be around. I hate to say it, but it’s the truth. I just go out of obligation, because I want Kaia to know her maternal grandparents at least a little.”

She looked back at me with sad eyes. “You sound like you try really hard,” she said softly.

Little does she know that as time has gone on, I definitely know I am trying less and less. As I get older, I honestly just care less and less. My patience in dealing with them has worn so thin — after Ed’s death, then after Kaia’s birth and the stupid ways they acted after she was born, and especially when we visited in 2022. I tolerate them in tiny bursts, and then I let them go and lead their own separate abysmal lives. It’s the only way we can feasibly coexist. I’ve made peace with the fact that I will never have the relationship I want with either of them, and it’s definitely not due to lack of previous effort on my part. We can’t always control everything or have every part of our life be the way we want it to be. And growing older makes you come to terms with all of that.

Filming in New York City: The Gilded Age!

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If you are into Hollywood and the entertainment world, New York City is a fun place to live in because there are always TV shows and movies being shot, as well as endless celebrity sightings. Unlike places like Los Angeles, when celebrities are in New York living and doing their thing, people tend to be pretty respectful here and actually let them do their thing (most of the time, anyway). I’ve seen random celebrities in cafes, parks, and even walking down streets in New York, and while heads do turn, people rarely crowd them or rush up to them for autographs.

Chris let me know that on Thursday morning when he took Kaia to school, he noticed rows and rows of trailers lined up on our block just outside our building, and lo and behold, they are filming the next season of The Gilded Age, which we watch! He got to see hoards of actors walking in period costume into the Mandarin Oriental. Unfortunately as I did not leave the building until late afternoon that day, I saw only the trailers with the names of the characters plastered on each of the doors. Even though I usually don’t get to see the scenes being filmed or the actors in their costumes, I still love the fact that I live in a city where so much action happens!