Category Archives: Travel

The four Disney princesses from Ed

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Every time I go back to my parents’, I try to take something back to New York that is a reminder of my childhood. Sometimes, it’s really little things like random cards or photos I find in a pile that I’d forgotten about that remind me of a happy memory. Other times, it’s slightly larger things like my hardcover copy of The Complete Stories of Curious George, which I brought back this time around. Kaia is at a point where she can follow longer stories, and the original Curious George stories are actually not as short as one might expect them to be! She always plays with my Curious George stuffed animal, which Ed got for me during a Christmas back from my high school days when Curious George was the holiday theme for Macy’s. So she knows who he is and that her mama likes this monkey. We already started reading some of the stories together while we were in San Francisco.

On the last morning before we left to go to Chicago, I was rummaging through a bedroom drawer I rarely go into and stumbled upon the extremely heavy mah jong set purchased during my first China trip in 2006. This was a legitimate mah jong set, and an extremely heavy one at that! The truth is that I only ever played mah jong one time ever and have completely forgotten the rules. The only reason I even bought this crazy heavy set was that I thought it would be a nice souvenir to have from my first time in my fatherland… and then predictably, I never even opened or played it even once after buying it. So that was very practical of me at the time. Fast forward twenty years, and now mah jong is all the rage. I sat next to a White woman on the plane who said she took a four-day full-time intensive course to master mah jong! And as ridiculous as it sounds, there is the “Chinese rules” mah jong and the “American rules” mah jong (whatever the hell the latter means). For a split second, I considered lugging it back to New York with me… but then my true practical side took hold, and I immediately placed it back into the drawer.

In that same drawer, I found something Ed had bought me years ago: Four Disney princess figurines, still in their original packaging, never opened. We have Cinderella, Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Snow White, and Belle (from Beauty and the Beast). They are all wearing glittering gowns. I knew immediately that Kaia would love them. Though the figurines are meant for display, I figured at this point, that didn’t matter anymore. The best thing we could get out of these four princesses was Kaia’s enjoyment, which meant being able to play with them. So I took them all out of the original box, tucked them into a ziplock bag, and put them into my checked luggage.

Of course, Kaia being the little investigator that she is, she found the princesses in my luggage when I had it open in Chicago, and she asked me what it was in her usual tone of, “Is that for me?!” I told her if she was good, she could open it when we got back to New York, but only if she was good.

Today, Kaia was happily playing with all four of them and marveling over their sparkly gowns. I told her that her Jiujiu got them for her mama over twenty years ago. He knew that when Mama was young, she loved all the princesses, so he wanted to get these for me. Now, these are a gift for Kaia. So essentially, Ed got these for Kaia… he just never realized it back then. I told Kaia that these princesses are very special, and now Kaia can have a token of Jiujiu’s love. I am not sure if it’s just me, but she seemed to understand.

“I love them,” Kaia said quietly, as she hugged all of them at once. “Thanks, Jiujiu.”

Ed may not be here today to see Kaia playing with these four princesses he gifted me, but I know he is in both our hearts and minds. If he is somewhere out there watching, I hope he is smiling.

Some people can still surprise you when you least expect it

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Years ago, I asked a friend what my least attractive quality was. I could name at least a dozen qualities I have that would deter people from liking me right away pretty quickly (to be honest, today, I don’t give a shit, but at least I have self awareness unlike many). But she said something I did not expect to hear: “You are really predictable,” she said to me at the time. That was in 2008. We’re 18 years past that now, so I’d like to think that may have changed… maybe.

If “predictability” is a real quality of mine, I’d like to say that I got it from my mom. If you know her as well as I do, almost every single thing she says and does is entirely predictable: her likes, dislikes, criticisms, reactions, lack of reactions, purchases, objections, what she wants to do, see, or eat. You name it, and I can predict it. But during this last trip, she actually said something to me out of the blue that I did not expect at all.

“Yvonne! Can you come here?” my mom called across the house when she was in the bathroom. “I want to ask you something.”

I wasn’t sure this was going to be good. Obediently, I walked into the bathroom where she was. Out of nowhere, she had my clear toiletry case laid out on the bathroom counter.

“What do you put on your skin now?” my mom asked, with a very curious look on her face.”I was looking at your skin while we were at the restaurant the other day, and I couldn’t believe how nice it looks! It’s so bright and clear and young! What are you doing?”

I sheepishly smiled. I wasn’t expecting that she was going to say anything positive to me about my skin or appearance. I am so used to my mom pointing out all my sun spots or pimples over the years that I have just ignored her most of the time when she points out my flaws… even when they are blatantly staring back at me in the mirror.

So I walked her through my skincare routine, both morning and night time. I told her what I use and in what order. I told her I always, always put sunscreen on my face and neck in the morning even if I don’t leave the house. I even reapply it midday now, based on what my dermatologist suggested. I told her about my prescription skincare and the “cheap” skincare I get in bulk at Costco. I even admitted to her that I always wear a hat outside now… which she had always advised me to do since my teen years… which I just ignorantly declined to do… until the ripe age of 35 when my sun spots really started to piss me off. So yes, sometimes my mom is right about some things…

My mom looked like she was a in tizzy after I walked her through everything. “How do you have time to use so many products? This is a lot!” my mom said in shock. “No wonder your skin looks this good!”

I insisted to my mom that it only took an extra few minutes each morning and night. Now, it’s so routine that it’s really nothing for me. She then proceeded to test out every skincare product in my toiletry bag. She told me she wanted me to buy her a specific one I’d transferred to a travel-sized container… which happened to be one of the cheapest items in my routine, which is the Cerave Moisturizing Cream with ceramides I get in massive bulk from Costco and just started using in the spring. I told her it’s just from Costco and that I’d send my dad the link so he can buy it for her the next time he goes. That cream is quite a bargain and a little gem find at Costco!

I am shocked that at age 40, I’ve already gotten complimented about my skin by both a friend who does Botox and my own mom! It’s interesting what wisdom comes with age! Maybe being “middle aged” isn’t so bad after all.

The tale of the TSA-confiscated pink capybara

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While up in Sacramento, our friend gifted Kaia a pink “capy smoosh-a-bara,” which is a capybara, currently one of the internet’s favorite animals. This specific brand is a best selling squishable toy. The squishy animal is so squishable and loveable because it is filled with a gel-like material. When I was playing with it, I could see why kids love it (cabybaras, somehow, are all the rage now, and it’s very coincidental because I feel like it started since we first went to Chile and saw a real one in the wild two years ago!). Adults would enjoy it for its stress-relieving sensation. It’s an all-in-one sensory experience and stress reliever!

Welp, we don’t have the pink capybara anymore. While we carried it on the plane from SFO to ORD with no problem, somehow going through ORD TSA was a different story. For the first time, we had Kaia travel with her own carry-on, a blue Bluey backpack. In it, she had her books, doodle pad, headphones, and random toys, including the capybara, which she recently named Marshmallow Jay. Danger became apparent when going through security and the Bluey backpack got put on the “bad” conveyer belt for inspection. Chris forgot to empty the water bottles, so he had to exit the line, dump out the water, then go through security a second time. During that time, I stayed with Kaia and our other carry-on bags and waited for a TSA agent to grab the Bluey backpack for inspection. Given it’s the Friday before a long holiday weekend, O’Hare airport was a total zoo, so we had to wait longer than we would’ve liked. I could see the anxiety growing on Kaia’s face; she was clearly concerned and had her eyes staring like lasers into her backpack beyond our reach.

“Why did they take my Bluey backpack from me?” Kaia cried. “That’s my backpack! That’s my stuff! I’m gonna go get it back!”

I urged her to be quiet and allow “the man” to do their job. I told her we couldn’t go back there because that’s only where the employees could go. When an agent finally came and went through the bag, she pulled out the pink capybara, squeezed it, then brought it to her manager for further inspection.

And it was in that moment that I remembered the capybara was filled with gel… which could get flagged as a no-go for being over 100ml “liquid” since it measures over 12 inches.

The TSA agent came back after consulting with the TSA supervisor and told us that this didn’t clear the liquid limit because of its size, so we had two options: we could exit security and check the capybara, or we could dump it. I told the agent that the capybara cleared SFO TSA security just fine; she told us that they weren’t careful enough and this clearly violated policy. Plus, I had just gone through a long “priority” bag-drop line for our one medium roller bag, and there was zero way I was going to deal with that ridiculous line again. Chris immediately vetoed the idea and told the agent to dump it.

Oh, shit.

As soon as Kaia realized that Marshmallow Jay was not coming with us out of the security area and onto the plane, I could see the tears welling up in her eyes. Her face scrunched up and her lips turned down into a huge frown. Then, she started bawling.

“That’s my capybara!” Kaia yelled out between sobs as we whisked her away from the security area. Her entire face was tear stained and she looked like she was going to explode. “That woman took it away from me! They took it away from me! That woman is not nice! She needs to give it back to me! IT IS MINE!”

Kaia was so upset that she refused to walk, so I ended up having to carry her to the lounge. She was sobbing that entire way and even after we got seated. I told her that the lady was very mean, that it was wrong she took the capybara away. I tried to validate her feelings. But I also reassured her that we’d get her a brand-new capybara she could also name Marshmallow Jay.

Then when we got to the lounge, I immediately got on the WiFi and tried to find a new pink capy-smoosh-a-bara to replace this damn thing. I felt so terrible for my sweet baby to have her brand new capybara taken away so soon, so suddenly and unexpectedly.

And there, in that instant, a TSA agent destroyed my child’s pink capybara dreams.

Kaia was still grumbling about it on the plane ride home.

“I want it BACK! She took it away from me! She is naughty!”  Kaia said softly but firmly. She knows to use her “indoor voice” on planes — at least, when she’s not having a tantrum.

“Well, now we know what that TSA agent is going to bring home to her kid tonight,” Chris grumbled.

And so, my friends, the moral of the story is: Terrorism can destroy our children’s faith in humanity.

Chicago as a visitor many times over and the Obama Presidential Center

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Given Chris and I have already traveled to Chicago a lot before, we didn’t have much of a tourist list of things to see and do when we got here. While I created a map of interesting restaurants and bakeries, there wasn’t any single place I felt we absolutely had to go to. The main thing I wanted to see this time around, which was obviously not around in any previous visit, was the Obama Presidential Center, which is located on the South Side of Chicago and just opened in June of this year. Unfortunately when we booked this trip in June, official tickets to enter the center were already sold out… through October. But upon doing research, we discovered that this wasn’t the worst outcome because so much of the center, both indoors and outdoors, was open to the public and did not require any ticket. We were still able to enter the library portion, which is part of the Chicago Public Library system, and see lots of personal belongings of Barack and Michelle Obama. We got to see photographs, murals, and paintings of their lives and the values they believe in. I loved the grounds, the walking paths, and the vegetable garden (of course, Kaia was also a huge fan). My favorite thing I got to see was likely the ridiculously long mural in the library with far too many colors and ideas to see in a single viewing. Even without access to the main museum, we could easily have spent a longer time there exploring the beautiful grounds.

Another favorite, quiet part for me was the Ann Dunham Water Terrace, dedicated to Barack Obama’s mother, who was an anthropologist by training and a huge influence on his life. In his words, “My mother, Ann Dunham, was the biggest influence on my life. She had a core belief in our common humanity, and she made sure I recognized the inherent dignity in every person.” This was noted as a “touchstone vital not only for a political career but for a life of service,” hence why the structure is made of two massive round stones, with water that flows from one to the other. She died quite young, at the age of 52, from uterine cancer. This heavily influenced Obama’s desire and push for healthcare reform, as she spent her last days worrying about expensive medical bills. While his mom had employer-sponsored health insurance that covered most of the costs of her medical treatment, she still had a large deductible and uncovered expenses, which were denied by her insurance for coverage because the insurance company considered her cancer a “preexisting condition.”

I’m really happy that despite not having tickets to see the entirety of the center that we were still able to come visit and experience the vast areas open to the public. I was thrilled that Kaia’s first presidential library experience was at Barack Obama’s, and that we got to do the super touristy thing of “posing” with Barack and Michelle altogether (okay, fine, their statues!). While I am pretty pessimistic at the direction the U.S. is going, especially with the current Dipshit administration for the disgusting second time around, somehow being here for the few hours we visited imbued me with a little more hope, a little more faith for the future. I need to have a little more hope and faith… at the minimum for Kaia’s sake.

Back in Chicago for the first time since pre-pandemic

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We were not planning a family trip to Chicago this year. But given the insane fuel costs due to the war in Iran on top of the fact that we’re current in the U.S. Open season, flying directly back from SFO to JFK this week would have been ridiculously expensive. In the end, we decided to fly to Chicago, stay three nights here, then fly back to New York on Friday; we also used miles to book these flights. This wasn’t the worst idea in the world: both Chris and I love Chicago; we’ve both come to visit separately for both work and pleasure. Kaia has never been, and so we thought it would be fun to spend a few days here together. Plus, our timing is right: not only did the Obama Presidential Center just open, but the world’s FIRST Hello Kitty Cafe also just opened here!

Since it’s still a working week for me, I had to spend several hours this morning working and doing meetings before going out for the day. Chris took Kaia out (and to the Hello Kitty Cafe already!) in the morning, and I ended up meeting them at Millennium Park, right where the Bean, aka Cloud Gate, is. As I walked down from our hotel to meet them, I started thinking about all the times I’d previously come here and what I did each trip. I’ve done about half a dozen work trips here over the years, and I have always tried my best to eat at interesting restaurants or grab coffee from fun cafes to maximize my time here. On one work trip I took here back in 2010, I remember I had to arrive by Sunday for an early Monday morning meeting. So I took advantage of the day and arrived early Sunday to spend the whole day exploring Chicago by foot, which included a few hours at the Shedd Aquarium (AMAZING place!).

The one non-work trip I did was for a girls’ Thanksgiving long weekend trip in 2009. That was the trip when I stumbled upon a German-style Christmas market just a few blocks from my hotel, and before my friends arrived from San Francisco. There, I had some good chatter with the German vendors there, who happily educated me about the glorious and magical Christmas markets I could experience if I traveled to Germany during the holidays. I had no idea that was even a thing back then, so my curiosity was piqued. It was then that I decided that I absolutely had to go to Germany during the holiday season. Four years later, Chris made that dream a reality for me, as we took our first trip to Germany (Berlin and Hamburg) during Thanksgiving week 2013! That trip cast a spell on me for European Christmas markets. After that trip, we just kept on going with the European Christmas market Thanksgiving week trips. Fast forward to 2022 and to present, Kaia has now also joined us for four of these trips! A new family tradition was born, all ignited from my very first leisure trip to Chicago in November 2009.

I love Chicago for many reasons. I love the layout of the city, the river, the lake, and the L. I love how walkable it is. I love the parks and the green spaces. I love the food scene here. I especially love the great things I’ve discovered here, including the beginning of my obsession with European Christmas markets and all things related to them. So I’m quite happy to be back.

Last day with family in San Francisco for this year

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My family tends to go through the same behavioral patterns in the last day or two when I am home. My mom goes through an anxious, angry period where she is either aggressive or passive aggressive with me, getting mad at me for innocuous things or accusing me of having feelings or intentions that she makes up. If I am not home during a given period, she will call repeatedly and ask when I am coming home; this is her way of actually saying, you need to come home now. On Monday, we planned to have dinner at my aunt’s upstairs, and my uncle would also be joining us. She asked us to come at 5 since my uncle needs to leave early since he cannot drive in the dark. So at around 3 while in Mission Bay with Chris and Kaia, I called home to let my dad know that we’d be back before 4. I could hear my mom in the background saying I was late and that I needed to come home right away. I could hear her angst, but I shrugged it off.

We went to pick up ice cream (black sesame and mango!) from Joe’s Ice Cream, a neighborhood ice cream shop that’s been around since I was a kid. Then we walked home from there. When we arrived back and I came into the kitchen, that was when I could feel my mom glaring at me with her eyes burning. “It’s almost 4 o’clock now. You are late,” she hissed at me. “You should have been home a long time ago! They are already upstairs waiting for us and eating.” Um. It wasn’t even 4pm. Who the hell was going to be eating dinner at this time? I said nothing and did as I promised, which was to help make a steamed eggplant dish to bring to the dinner along with my purchased dessert. She proceeded to get mad that we went out at all today and didn’t tell her, as she was hoping we could “talk more” together. I did not have that same hope.

As 4:50 rolled around, my mom started yelling that we’re all late and that we all needed to get upstairs, pronto. I was still cleaning up and washing dishes in the kitchen. Kaia was running around happily. My dad was doing something somewhere in the basement. Chris was lying on my bed, asking what the rush was. The reason she wanted us to go upstairs as soon as possible was that she wanted us to be done with this family dinner as soon as possible. She can only keep up her “family dinner” face for so long, and she had nothing to say to my uncle. While at dinner when we were asking my aunt questions about her potentially changing living situation, my mom got mad at me for asking questions and insisted we “let her eat her dinner.” I told her that it’s normal to have a conversation at the dinner table, and that shut her up; not everyone wants to eat in silence and call that a “family dinner” for god’s sake. It’s almost like she is in pain being at a dinner table with any wider family members and she needs to find a way to make it stop as soon as possible. When they invite her, she feels a need to “return the favor” and invite them back right away, which is “suffering.” Thinking about this is so exhausting.

There were some nice moments, though. This morning before we left, Kaia kept insisting to my dad that he show her his worms in his compost pile before leaving. Obviously this made my dad beyond thrilled, so he was happy to comply with her ask. Then as he rummaged through random junk in the garage, she insisted she wanted to stay with him to watch what he was doing. This attachment she’s developed to my dad has been really endearing. Every time she yells, “GONGGONG! GONGGONG!” and runs after him, it makes me smile and chuckle. Chris commented that my dad has probably never felt more desired or more affection from another human in his entire life before now. He is probably right.

And as we packed up the car to go to the airport, while she was being a little bratty and refused to give my mom a hug and kiss until the very last minute, she had zero problem giving my dad endless hugs and kisses and grabbing onto his leg until she had to let go and get into the car. My dad’s big goofy grin in this moment was pretty epic… and this is coming from someone who never uses that word.

When we got to the airport lounge and sat down, I asked Kaia if she missed Popo and Gonggong. She nodded her head and quietly said a drawn out, “Yeah.” Then, she didn’t say anything for while, but out of nowhere looked at me and said, “We never got to see Jiujiu… because he died.”

Yes, that is true. At least she waited to say that until after my parents were gone because I am not sure how they would have reacted to hearing Kaia say this.

Back in Sacramento after two years, and contemplations on the “sandwich generation”

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This morning, we drove up to Sacramento to visit and stay with a friend of ours who has a child close in age to Kaia. We have visited this friend up in Sacramento twice before, once while I was pregnant in 2021, and the last time in August 2024. We didn’t come last year because she was the primary caregiver of not just her son, for whom she is a single parent, but also her mom at the time, who was going through lung cancer treatment. So she just had too much going on at the time. She messaged me in December of last year with the good news that her mom’s cancer was in remission. Unfortunately, it seems that did not last long: the cancer had returned, and her treatments started again in the last couple weeks.

The kids got together after she picked up her son from school this afternoon, and we spent some time together at the NorCal Aquarium nearby, followed by dinner at a local South Indian restaurant we enjoyed five years ago. My other local friend joined us for dinner. Afterwards, we went back to the first friend’s house, where we chatted for the next several hours while the kids built a fort and made the most ridiculous mess in the dining room. The theme of our conversation was definitely around our health, our parents’ health and their aging and slowing down, and the overall maintenance of a home (and how overwhelming, exhausting, and expensive it can be). As I was participating in this conversation, it suddenly dawned on me how “middle aged” and “sandwich generation” this conversation felt.

That made me think about the time when the only grandparent I’ve ever known died. My paternal grandma died in 1995 when I was nine years old. At the time, my dad was 47 and my mom was 41. In the seven months leading up to her passing, my grandma was quite ill and eventually had to be moved into a convalescent home. I still have distinct memories of going to the hospital or the convalescent home almost every night after I got off school and my parents got off work. My parents somehow managed our household, worked full time, got food on the table and supplies for us, and cared for my grandma — all at the same time. I always look back at that fraught, frantic period and feel a sense of admiration for my parents and how they somehow kept it all together — at least sort of. I never felt neglected during that period, and I was always in the know with what was happening with my grandma’s state of health and treatment despite being so young.

To be frank, I am not sure if I could have ever done all the things my parents did. I can already see my parents slowing down a bit; I suppose I’ve been thinking about it a lot more on this trip. My dad, for the most part, seems to be in decent health. I know he monitors all his health results carefully and has modified his diet quite a bit over the last decade or so. My mom seems to be quite fragile, both mentally and physically. My main hope is that they live independently for as long as possible. I want them to have long, healthy, independent lives. I want to continue seeing them mobile, and I want Kaia to have a relationship with them and know them. But now when I think about how my grandma died when my dad was 47, and I am 40 today… that just gave me some chills. Death is an inevitable part of life. But I want to hope they will keep living for at least another decade or two. Here’s to hoping.

Eating less as we age

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The more I read about health and fitness into my 40s and 50s, the more pretty much all the sources say that we need to eat more protein… and likely less carbs. As we age into our late 30s and early 40s, the loss of muscle mass naturally accelerates, and for optimal health and fitness, we’re supposed to counteract that by increasing protein consumption and strength training. The frustrating part about this, though, is that these recommendations come at a time when our appetites just naturally start to decrease. For years, I just never ate much breakfast at all on the weekdays because I didn’t have the appetite upon waking. Now with my increased focus on body recomposition, I have to force myself to eat some form of (high protein) breakfast, otherwise I will just never hit my protein target for the day. And the only way I can eat breakfast is by drinking it through a smoothie, otherwise I just start feeling too bloated or stuffed.

When traveling, and especially while in San Francisco with my parents (really, my mom!), we eat a lot of carbs. It’s not necessarily a “bad” thing because these are all the things that are either homemade or are bought with love by my parents because they know I like these things. But I tend to eat a lot more carbs than I normally do, which means I just feel fuller… all the time, and especially in the last few years in my late 30s. While here, I also remember things I like that are really good in San Francisco that I just don’t have in New York (like my beloved scallion bao!). So since I’m not back that often, I want to enjoy them while I am here. But at the end of the day, I can only eat so much before I just feel too stuffed.

Let’s take today: we ate breakfast at the Westin St. Francis hotel lounge, where I tried to eat a higher protein breakfast by focusing on scrambled eggs, egg white bites with mushrooms and spinach, and French-style yogurt. Later in the morning, we went to Dandelion Chocolate Factory, where Chris had a chocolate milk, I had a chocolate “nibby” horchata, and we shared (with Kaia) a chocolate canele. Then we walked a few blocks and had half of a pistachio baklava each (generous samples!) at Baklava Story. Forty minutes later, we shared a super burrito at El Farolito along with a passion fruit agua fresca.

At that point, I realized that there was very little chance I’d eat anything substantial for dinner that evening. We picked up some pupusas in the Mission for Kaia to eat on the ride back to the hotel. Come dinner time, we had a few nibbles at the hotel lounge again, finished the leftover pieces of bean/cheese/pork pupusa that Kaia did not want, and shared a single slice of emerald beaut plum raspberry crumble pie from Three Babes Bakeshop (that was a truly excellent slice of pie in every possible way!). And that wrapped up our eating for the day. Yes, these foods, even the beverages, are far richer than we’d normally eat on a day to day basis back home in New York. But when you think of the sheer quantity of food we ate in this day, it really wasn’t that much. Once upon a time, I could easily eat an entire super burrito from El Farolito in a single sitting all by myself. But alas, those days are now in my past.

Presidio Tunnel Tops: nature-inspired and a great outdoor gift

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A couple years ago, my friend with kids told me that at the San Francisco Presidio, a large outdoor children’s play area had opened with sweeping views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and the entire city skyline. Built on top of 14 acres right on top of highway tunnels in San Francisco, Presidio Tunnel Tops connects the historic Presidio military base to the Crissy Field waterfront. It’s It’s open to the public, has clean, well maintained restrooms, and has a whole line-up of rotating food trucks just steps away from it seven days a week.

I originally wanted to organize a meetup/play date there last year, but we ran out of time. So assuming the crappy San Francisco weather cooperated with us this time, I insisted we go today to meet my friends and their kids. Luckily, the weather worked out in our favor, and we ended up having a beautiful, high-60s F, blue-sky day! Presidio Tunnel Tops has been open for just over four years now, and I was really impressed: the playground is nature-inspired, with areas for kids to play featuring boulders, logs, and lots of different water features. And unlike many children’s play areas, this is specifically designed to be interesting for kids ranging in age from two to 12. That way, if you have kids of varying ages, you can rest easy knowing that one won’t get bored faster than the other.

I also really enjoyed the variety and quality of food options available at the nearby mobile food trucks area. The Mess Hall just steps away from the Tunnel Tops recently opened, but only one major food vendor was operating, so that limited our options. The food trucks were the obvious place to go. The food ranged from Chinese, Filipino, Mexican, Hawaiian shaved ice (!!), to Swahili (they called it “East African cuisine”), burgers, and fried chicken. I chose food from the Mexican truck Mestizo and the Swahili Spot trucks; both were delicious and things I’d order even not from a truck!

Given we met up at 10:30 and stayed in the Crissy Field area until about 3pm, we essentially were outdoors for over half the day. When I thought about this and how nice it was to maximize time outside during good weather, I realize that this is one of the very best qualities of Bay Area, or even specifically, San Francisco living: you don’t need to travel too far or even outside of city limits to get truly fresh, crisp air, beautiful green landscapes, and ocean/beach views. Hiking and easy walking trail opportunities are countless. As long as the weather cooperates with you or you can tolerate the cold, outdoor access is just easier and better here than in New York City. When you walk the trails of the Presidio Tunnel Tops or watch kids playing on these massive wooden structures there, you kind of forget you’re even in a “city” because of how natural the whole setup feels.

It makes me happy that I can not only expose all of these great things about San Francisco to Kaia, but also that she can have opportunities to play with my friends’ kids while here. Now that she’s 4.5, I have a feeling she will start remembering more and more of these experiences and recount them. I hope when she remembers and talks about these moments that she shares them with great joy.

Entering the fog – literally and figuratively

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We woke up at the eye-burning hour of 3am today to take the 6am flight to San Francisco this morning. Miraculously, I got upgraded last minute from Business to First Class, which has only ever happened once in my entire life — four years ago, in August 2022. This was when Kaia was a wee eight months old and on a plane for the very first time. We can forever and a day say that her very first flight was a transcontinental, first-class flight from JFO to SFO. I pumped milk on that flight, and she had to go between First where I was and Business where Chris was.

After we got our one checked roller bag and got into a Lyft, off we went on the freeway north to San Francisco. And as we got onto 280, all I could see was a massive layer of grey fog descend upon the skies. We were about to enter the damn fog and pathetic 60s F weather — right in August, a SUMMER MONTH. It doesn’t matter how many times I come to San Francisco, but the sight of this has never failed to annoy me to no end.

We arrived at my parents’ place. We had a usual early lunch together of takeout dim sum and some jook/congee my mom made. My mom barely said anything at the table other than to try to get Kaia to eat more food. My dad barely said much unless I asked him questions, and he promptly left the table, with his plate still there, after he finished eating. When my mom asked him why he was leaving the table, he simply responded, “I’m done eating.” That was fun.

From what I can see so far in the house, not a whole lot has changed in the last year. There’s still endless clutter and things they should not own. It’s dust galore in most places, and likely even more cob webs on the walls and ceilings. But I did notice that two shelves in the living room were completely cleared. It annoyed me a little to realize quite quickly that the contents of those shelves were previously my and Ed’s VHS and CD/DVD collections. I suppose it’s easy to declutter stuff when it’s not yours versus yours, isn’t it?

I spent about two hours after lunch vacuuming the floors and cob webs from the walls and ceilings. I also dusted the dining room surfaces and the shelves in my old bedroom where we are sleeping. I filled the bathroom sink with water and used a damp sponge to remove the heavily caked on layer of dust that was on the bedroom surfaces. When I had finally finished reaching all the surfaces I could, the water had turned completely black.

I want my parents to live independently for as long as possible, but when I look at this house deteriorate year after year, with many areas completely not maintained at all, I wonder how much longer they will feasibly continue living here. It’s not like they live in complete filth: the bathrooms and kitchen are clean. The stove is safe. I don’t think anyone has cleaner, brighter, more mildew-free bathroom tiles than my parents do. The walkways are relatively clear and you can get through doorways easily. The beds and sofas are clean and clear, able to be slept in and sat on just fine. I have offered to get them a cleaner, but of course they were adamantly against it. And to be frank, you must remove the clutter before a hired house cleaner could really do much to be worth the added expense.

A once-a-year clean that I do for them isn’t going to make a huge difference because another year will pass until the same level of cleaning happens. But I feel better doing this for them because I can clearly see they are both much more tired than before. My dad is walking with a little hunch. He gets tired more quickly and has even admitted it after being on a ladder for over 1.5 hours today to fix the kitchen overhead light that went out this morning (to be honest, I was pretty impressed he was agile enough to get up and down that six-foot ladder!). My mom is slower to move around and even process things that I say to her.

It’s sad to watch your parents get more frail and elderly right in front of your eyes.