Kaia jumps into the water

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On Sunday and Monday, Kaia had swim lessons on back-to-back days since we had to schedule a makeup class from last month. I took her to class on Sunday while Chris had a dentist appointment, and Chris took her to the makeup class on Monday. In the last month, she recently graduated from level 2 swim to level 3 swim, which some people remark and (half) joke that it could be considered more of a “graduation” for parents than the kids: once level 3 starts at British Swim School, the caretaker/parent no longer needs to be in the water with the child. The child has to clear several requirements, though, including being able to float on their back unassisted (the instructor keeps their hand under their back just in case) and being able to not cry/be content without the caretaker/parent in the water. 

Chris got a really good video of Kaia jumping into the water on Monday. The instructor asked her to jump in, and seconds later, without even a hint of fear on her face, she simply jumped in, then rotated onto her back on command from the teacher. Her usual teacher was doing admin work that day at that pool, but he’s in the background of the video watching. When she eagerly jumps in, his whole face breaks out into a huge grin. Clearly, Chris and I are not the only ones proud of Kaia Pookie! 

I played the video several times and marveled over her bravery and eagerness in the water, and she’s not even three years old yet. I feel so happy and proud that she’s done so well with swim lessons so far and that she’s quite fearless overall. I was never as lucky as she was when I was her age to have swim lessons this young. I didn’t even learn to swim until I was 15, and to this day, I’m still terrified of open and/or deep water. In my summer swim classes I took after sophomore year, I never graduated from free-style swim strokes to diving. So I’ve never properly learned to dive either. Even though I didn’t have those things, I’m so happy to give Kaia the opportunity to have what I didn’t have. I can live vicariously through my baby. And I’m also grateful she has teachers who are clearly passionate about her achieving swimming mastery. 

Bo kho and lemongrass

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I had two pounds of beef chuck leftover in the freezer from a Costco run back in the spring from an original bulk purchase of four pounds of beef chuck cubes. I used the original two pounds for beef rendang using the Sambal Lady’s rendang spice blend. The second two pounds were TBD what I wanted to use it for, but after being reminded of bo kho, or Vietnamese beef stew with lemongrass and five spiced powder, I decided that this would be my next stewed beef dish. 

I’ve had bo kho a few times in restaurants, but I’d never actually made it before despite it being fairly straightforward to make. It’s made with beef chuck cubes, five spice powder, whole spices like star anise, clove, and bay leaf, aromatics like garlic, ginger, and freshly pounded lemongrass, and fish sauce as seasoning. You add carrots and pureed tomatoes for additional flavor and body. It’s braised for several hours until the beef is fork tender and the liquid is reduced down into a thicker liquid, great on top of noodles and rice. Oftentimes, if you order this dish in a restaurant, it will be served with a fresh baguette to dip into the stew juices. 

While I was preparing this dish, I realized that I actually hadn’t purchased any fresh lemongrass since we lived on the Upper East Side. I had forgotten how aromatic and delicious it was. The reason I haven’t bought it is that lemongrass is pretty annoying to prepare. It’s hard, woody, and annoying to chop properly so that you can actually eat it. In this stew, you don’t eat the lemongrass pieces; they need to be plucked out because they’re used just to flavor the stew. I ended up having to spend all this time manually picking out all the pieces after braising so that I wouldn’t have to annoy myself or Chris later with picking it out while eating. 

After several hours of braising and reducing the stew liquid down, I tasted the stew and decided it was done. As I started ladling it into my storage containers last night, I realized that in a time when I feel like I have little control over the world and life events, the few things I do have control over include what I cook and eat. And cooking is something I enjoy all the time, and it especially provides comfort during a time when I feel like the world is loveless. So I will savor this stew tomorrow and try to hope for a brighter tomorrow. 

The reasons to keep fighting

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It would be easy to write off the 74 million-plus people who voted for Dipshit and just sit here and be disillusioned… if I didn’t have a child of my own who has to inherit this world and live in it. But now, I’ve been sitting here, reading headlines, different publications, points of view that outline what the Democratic Party potentially did to create the total annihilation it has experienced this past week. Lots went wrong. A lot needs to change with the Democratic Party. A lot needs to change with education and disinformation and how it’s handle and addressed that will not be fixed in the next two, four, or 10+ years. But we have to keep fighting the good fight… even when those against us are just trying to kill us all.

I had the day off from work today for Veteran’s Day, as did Kaia from school. So this morning while Chris was on a call, I took her down to our building’s play room and brought along her favorite bubble machine (which I procured from my local Buy-Nothing group). I watched her gleefully run around with it and spread bubbles everywhere. She giggled, squeaked, and ran around endlessly to spread bubble literally all over the freaking room. I documented her joy through photos and videos. I stopped and just watched her in all her youth and innocence. And I just thought… she deserves a much better world than this. When she is older, how are Chris and I going to explain to her that the first presidential election she was around for, this country elected a convicted felon with a track record for spewing hate? Is this going to teach her that you can get away with literally everything you want as long as you are some rich White man?

This last week, my limbs have all felt heavier. Yet when I check my weight on the scale, I’m the exact same freaking weight. Even walking around and doing day-to-day tasks feels like it’s all been such an effort. But I have to throw myself into life and the future for the sake of my Pookster. I have to set an example for how she should be. The last thing I want is for her to repeat the line that I’ve said about my parents, the line that I read in Julia Child’s book My Life in France, which she wrote about her own regressive father: “He is an example of how not to be.” I’ve done a bit more cooking and food prep. I started reading a book that I’d been on the Libby / NYPL wait list for, for nearly five months, called Against the Loveless World, by Susan Abulhawa. It documents the life of a young Palestinian woman who lives as a refugee in Kuwait, then Jordan, then goes back to Palestine and becomes “radicalized.” I thought the title of the book was quite fitting for my general sentiment the last week, if not moving forward.

The internal family relations continue to deteriorate

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My cousin has spent the last several days texting me constantly to complain about our Trump supporting uncle and how consumed with disinformation and conspiracy theories he is. While my cousin is obviously angry and in strong disagreement with our uncle’s political (and well, intellectual) stances), the part he is most consumed by is how he believes our uncle talks to all of us like we’re imbeciles and don’t understand anything about the world. He’s stopped responding to my uncle’s political rants talking down to him and my other cousin. He said he’s likely going to cut him off completely. It’s a fair thing to be upset by, and for the most part, I’ve chosen to ignore it and avoid topics pertaining to politics as a result of it with my uncle. Because like with most of my family, while I love him, I do not like him as a person. Any unbiased bystander who knew what my uncle has done in his life would say that he’s not a good person, as unfortunate as that may sound.

His sexism stems back to his hatred of his mother. He’s made many generalizations about the intelligence of women over the years. For some reason, this is one that stood out to me as the stupidest and most inaccurate: He once said that when a car crash happens, a man and a woman will never have even remotely the same account of the events that led to the crash. A man will tell you how the accident happened, who hit who, from which lane/side, approximate speed. A woman will focus on what the person was wearing, what kind of makeup or hairdo they had, and all the superficial details that don’t have anything to do with the crash. I remember making the comment that I had never heard of anything like that, and he brushed me off, saying I hadn’t experienced enough of these situations.

My uncle has also repeatedly made comments about how much I shop at stores and malls, even though I’ve repeatedly told him that I actually detest shopping and trying on clothes. If you know my shopping habits even remotely, you will know that I hate in person shopping for clothes. And he has repeatedly laughed me off and said, “Suuure, you don’t! All women love to shop!”

As for how he treats other women? He once intentionally poured boiling hot oil over a sewing job that my grandma had worked on for weeks, simply to spite her. He once threw a knife at my grandma. While my grandma spent six months laying on her death bed, he declined all our invitations to visit her. He claimed he went to see her alone just one time in that six months. She was paralyzed on the left side of her body, and he said that when he tried to hold her hand, she barely responded (maybe that’s because she was… paralyzed and could not speak???!). He has accused my mom of stealing with little proof. And the one girlfriend we know lived with him around the time of my grandma’s funeral confided in my aunt and told her that he was verbally abusive to her. He constantly belittled her, told her what to do, and eventually, as everyone saw coming, the relationship ended and she moved out. When I was an adult, I asked my uncle why their relationship didn’t work out. He told me that she was an illicit drug user, and while he tried to get her to quit, she refused. Who knows – that may have been true, but I am sure that the part his ex told my aunt was also true, as well.

My cousin is 17 years older than me, so this year, he is 55. While I’ve always looked at him as a kind, generous, good-hearted person, I have not always looked at him as a particularly deep, introspective person who can see nuance. I saw all these flaws about my uncle ages ago, yet it took all this time for my near-retirement cousin to see all of this just now. I suppose late is better than never.

Family and politics: The nasty gets nastier

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People oftentimes wonder why politics divide families. I think it’s quite simple as to why: politics cannot simply be separated from the rest of life unless you identify with an extremely privileged and wealthy class. You may consider your politics personal, but are they? Your political stances reveal what matter to you as a person and how you see yourself in the midst of a society of people. That is telling of your psychology, your sociology, and ultimately how you treat other people in your life and other people you work with and pass by, and in the world. And in many ways, your political stances reveal your life view and your morals.

So when I think about my paternal grandma’s three living children, as in my dad and his younger sister and brother, while they are all very different personalities, they do have these elements in common:

  1. They always assume they know everything and are the smartest person in the room and want to assume you know far less. They can be pretty condescending and make it seem like you have the intelligence of a rock.
  2. They are all wealthy and are extremely cheap, yet all in their own ways.
  3. They are racist and really look down on Black and Brown people in general. My uncle is likely the most racist since he’s extremely anti-immigrants and has spent part of his career oppressing immigrants coming into this country, something he has truly relished and happily shared awful count-by-count anecdotes of during awkward family dinners.
  4. They are all right-leaning/far-right on the political spectrum.
  5. They all had a far less than ideal relationship with their mother.

My aunt and uncle voted for Trump in 2024. My aunt explicitly told my cousin she voted for him for her financial portfolio. I think she is planning to be buried in her coffin with her millions. I am uncertain whether my dad voted since he’s sat out the last couple elections, but if he did vote, it also would have been for Trump since he used to audibly complain about Kamala Harris as San Francisco district attorney.

When you do enough therapy, read about therapy, and interact with enough people who have done therapy, you find out that the majority of people’s ills can be traced back to one thing: their childhood and upbringing. My aunt and uncle hated their mother so much that they decided that they would hate immigrants and people of *other* color than Asian as much as possible. They grew up poor, barely had enough food to eat, and had to take care of themselves because my grandma and grandpa were always working during the day. They are deathly afraid of losing all their money, so that’s why they barely spend any of it and are all sitting on massive cash piles. So, once you combine the woes of a traumatic childhood with a poor education and even worser media literacy, it’s a disastrous equation when it comes to future politics. They will always want less for others than they have for themselves. They see the world as a zero sum game: if others thrive, that must mean I will starve? If others gain, I will have to lose.

My aunt told me many times, over email and in person, “One day, when you have accrued enough wealth and earn enough income, you will also come to your senses and vote Republican.” She admonished me on this topic many times, and I insisted to her that was unlikely to happen. While it may be easy for me or anyone else to simply vote in my own self interest, I recognize that as a citizen of this country and world that the world and this country do not fucking revolve around me or my family. We cannot simply vote for our own self interests, as we all coexist in one world. We all have to contribute to the world to make it a better, kinder, healthier, cleaner place. We have to care about our neighbors, those around us who are different and have less than we do. Because if we do not, then what kind of world are we bringing our children into – a place where everyone simply fends for themselves and we can no longer trust anyone? Who the hell wants to live in a world like that?

I keep seeing people saying that it’s hard to care about the world when you are living paycheck to paycheck and barely able to afford your rent and mortgage. Do these people think that Trump will make them wealthier? Really?!

When your mother decides she has an opinion on politics

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I hadn’t called my mom in several weeks. The truth is that I really dislike calling her because we never have anything that is truly substantive to say to each other. We check in on things like health, my work, Kaia, and then… that’s it. The conversation rarely lasts more than five minutes. But it’s five minutes of inanity that I always feel either bored or annoyed by.

When I think back to all the conversations I’ve had and enjoyed with friends’ parents who I respect, with former teachers who I keep in touch with, with people who are a generation or so ahead of me, the conversations were always so fun and thought provoking because there was some semblance of an intellectual exchange, a discussion of ideas. On their part, they always treated me like my opinions mattered, like the things I was learning about and sharing with them were fascinating to them. They made it seem like they also had something they could learn — from me. I never felt like I was being spoken down to, as though my thoughts, opinions, or knowledge were lesser than simply because I was younger. But that’s generally how my parents, and especially my mom, make me feel on the majority of conversation topics. And the most ridiculous thing is: my mom is not educated, worldly, well traveled, or well read. If you gave her a copy of a world map and asked her to identify where the continent of Europe was or even where her home country of Vietnam was, she wouldn’t be able to answer the question. Yet somehow, she always insists she knows more about pretty much *everything* than me simply because she is older and “has wisdom.”

My mom is a Vietnamese American woman, born into a family as the youngest of ten children who was never wanted because she was the youngest and a girl. Because she was a girl, she was seen as worthless. Her mom (her dad died when she was 6) refused to pay for an education for her. She experienced the terrors and pains of the American (Vietnam War), married into a Chinese American family where the matriarch oppressed her and made her feel ashamed for being Vietnamese, and then experienced endless racism, sexism, and classism at her office job, which gave no opportunity for growth, for 26 years. So, while I do not agree with my mom’s internalized sexism and racism, I see where it all stems from. She has experienced so much hatred and oppression from White people who are “above” her on this so-called race ladder that she eagerly delights in putting down anyone “below her” on said ladder who is Black or Brown.

After talking about a bunch of nothing on Tuesday when I called her, she asked me, point blank, if I voted for Trump. “Why would I vote for an incompetent, racist convicted felon?” I responded.

“Why would you vote for that idiot Black lady and not Trump?” she retorted back. My mom doesn’t vote and has never cast a single vote in her entire time being American. And frankly, given how little she knows, it may actually be better she does not vote.

“You know, she’s not an idiot. And why do you have to be so racist and call her an ‘idiot Black lady’?” I said back, as calmly as I could.

“Why can’t I call the Black lady an ‘idiot Black lady?” my mom cackled back. “She’s an idiot Black. She’s stupid. She does no good! She has no face now. NO FACE! What is she going to do now? Nothing! Trump won because he’s better than her! Who wants a Black running this country?”

I have oftentimes thought about the things I would say to my parents if I truly, truly wanted to cut off all contact with them and go nuclear. And in this context, what I would have loved to have said, but refrained from and simply told her that this conversation was done and hung up, was this:

“At least ‘that Black lady’ never drove any of her (step)children to suicide like you did. You are really the one with no face.”

I may not have said it, but I mean every word of that statement.

We all succumbed to a car crash

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I have not really felt emotionally all there the last couple of days. It’s been a little surreal going through life as though everything is fine when it really isn’t. And my feelings were pretty much summed up well when I woke up from a dream last night that was quite disturbing.

Chris, his brother Ben, and I were in a car. We were driving along some windy road on a cliff’s edge. It may have been Highway 1 in California or something similar, but the exact location was uncertain. Underneath each wrap of road was another road directly underneath us that also wound around a mountain. And there wasn’t much a rail on the side of each cliff to “protect” your car from going over. Chris and Ben were having a heated conversation about a topic I couldn’t hear, but I could tell that they were getting particularly feisty. Chris was driving. Ben was in the front passenger seat. Suddenly, Chris’s phone rings, and he stupidly decides to answer it with his hand. He reaches down to turn it on while Ben yells at him that it’s dangerous. And as Chris turns the phone on and says “Hello?”, the car immediately swerves off the road into thin air. Our car is falling and falling, and we fall on top of the road below us, and then we bounce off it and continue to fall onto the next road underneath THAT road. All the while in the back of my head, I am wondering, “Are we going to actually survive this, or are we all going to die? And where in the world is my Pookster?!!”

I never have falling dreams. They are very common for a lot of people, but I can barely recall the last falling dream I had. Falling dreams, as most “experts” would say, indicate a feeling of helplessness, worry, and fear.

I am definitely on edge. I’m not sure how long this is going to last, but above all, as my friend keeps reminding me, “Protect your peace.”

I have no words to say today

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…Other than that I am deeply disappointed in the American electorate — for those who were too lazy and disillusioned to come out and vote, for those who decided that a convicted felon would be better to lead this country than an accomplished female politician, for those who voted with complete disregard for civil rights and for the rights of those with a uterus. I try to be optimistic because I have a female toddler who is inheriting what is supposed to be one of the world’s great democracies, but it feels less and less like that is something to be proud of and stand by. And for those who vote against their own self interest… I honestly just feel sorry for you, as many of you probably have zero awareness you are doing so.

Hope and dread today

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It is scary to think that today, the United States of America could be electing a convicted felon to a second nonconsecutive term of president. Even after he denounced the 2020 presidential results. Even after he’s shown clear examples of blatant sexism, racism, and classism. I don’t have a lot of hope to be honest, especially given how close the presidential election was in 2020. But, I do have a toddler who is growing up in this very divided country where her rights are eroding every single day, so I have to be optimistic for her sake. Because… I am definitely NOT optimistic for mine.

God bless, America. Sort of.

2024 is coming to a close, and there’s so much more food to make!

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I remember when I was young, and I used to think that each day, especially the crappy and boring days, were so, so long. And now, each year in my adulthood, I keep thinking time passes too quickly. It’s exactly as people say: the older you get, the quicker you think time goes by because so much has already happened in your life. The younger you are, the less that has happened in your life since you’ve lived fewer years, so time feels like it takes forever to pass.

I looked at the calendar late last week and was shocked to see that I have only four more weeks in New York for the remainder of this year. We’ll be in Europe Thanksgiving week. Then, we have barely one week left before we head to Australia for the Christmas season. My immediate thought was: What are all the things I need to get done before we leave for the Southern Hemisphere? And what else do I really want to cook before the end of the year? What do I want to use up in my freezer?!

For the last part, I know I wanted to make bread at least twice before the end of the year, so I started that process on Friday. I started my brioche dough, which I did 60% white flour, 40% whole wheat flour for variety/health (I mean, yeah... you CAN give brioche more nutrition by using whole grains, believe it or not!), on Friday night. I let it rest (and ferment) in the fridge until Sunday afternoon, when I rolled it out, proofed it a second time, then baked it last night. The house, as always, smelled like heaven, and for two weeks, we have fresh, homemade brioche to enjoy. I will likely freeze one loaf to either enjoy the week before we leave for Europe, or our only week here in December.

I also wanted to make shrimp scampi, so I have defrosted my wild gulf shrimp from Butcherbox in the fridge for tomorrow. I want to have some of our Borgatti’s porcini ravioli, and also make the Italian sausage from Calabria Pork Store in a pasta dish (with butternut squash?) before end of year. If I have time, I also want to try out a garlic knots recipe, maybe challah again if I’m feeling super ambitious with time. If I did that, I could freeze a challah loaf so that it’s ready for defrosting in January upon our return. So many possibilities!

Our freezer is stuffed. And I need to un-stuff it before we leave. A full freezer is always a sign of richness to me. So right now, I feel very, very rich. We’re very privileged to have a full freezer and pantry.