If I get fired this week, it’ll be because
I keep spacing out for half-hours at a time, deeply involved in cutting off my hairs’ split ends. The sunlight catches one of the tiny forked strands in the corner of my eye, and that’s it. I’m off, desk scissors in hand.
I keep asking my stylist to trim it all off, but then she says, “You wanna keep the length, right?” and leaves most of them on. Either that or the ends of my hair are very dry and just keep breaking. That’s the more likely explanation, I guess. I need to cut off an inch of hard-earned length, then. I can’t stop thinking about it. That need runs along the bottom of my mind like a dumb Top 40 song. (This morning it’s “Confessions” by Usher. Hate the song, can’t stop thinking about it. But at least it’s not “My Hump” anymore. Oh, no… Why did I type that?)
So my boss walks by, and I’m holding up the tips of my hair in the window, squinting at them cross-eyes, scissors held up like a sword. Mumbling, “Just when I thought I was something… Something, something, got one on the way… These are my confessions…” He looks askance. I can’t blame him.
In other vanity-related news,
I’m running a little contest to see how long I can go without buying new work clothes. All my pants (which are all black or gray) feel too short. I only have six or seven tops, 90% of which are pink or green. I need new clothes, but the stores don’t have any good ones in my size. Plus, I don’t really see the light of day here. So I’m rebelling, and saving money, by buying nothing. I only buy weekend wear. Screw the rest.
Now I know why the women here dress the way they do (which is to say, shabbily). Because, seriously, who cares? We don’t see clients, and no one looks at us. No one to impress but each other. Everyone here compliments my purses, but they don’t buy new purses for themselves. What’s the point, right? All we need to do is count the minutes…
Oh, man, that’s getting depressing.
I’ve been wanting to bust out my sewing machine and make perfectly fitted clothes that I’d like, but that really is a hobby I don’t have time for. As the Peanuts kids would say: *sigh*. I should quit whining and lose some weight. But it’s so much easier to write books, instead. That’s how hard losing weight is – so hard that you’d rather write books. Easier than both of those, however, is playing World of Warcraft and filling virtual shopping carts with things I’ll never buy. That’s the easiest thing of all, especially if you eat snacks while you’re doing it.
Happy Chinese New Year.
That is to say, “Kung hey fat choi.” I memorized that so I can say it to my boyfriend’s parents as I hand them a bag of oranges or tangerines this weekend. Rest assured that I will forget it when the time comes. I’m getting to where I can understand lots of little words and sentences in their language. But I can’t ever pronounce them with the right tone.
So I thought I would learn Vietnamese, instead. His parents speak about 37 languages, English and Spanish being the ones in which they’re least fluent. Vietnamese is the Asian language I’m exposed to most, being that I have a medical condition that causes me to frequently crave Vietnamese food. So I’m learning the words. Com means rice. Pho is the beef soup. Bun is the vermicelli noodles. Except picture all those words with little punctuation marks all over them. Thit nuong is the most important phrase in the Vietnamese language. It means beautful, lean, vinegar-y sweet barbecued pork. Gah-(oi) (don’t know the spelling) means my favorite vinegar-y salad. Meh-(ee) means Latino.
So… I can’t pronounce any of those right, either. So many long dipthongs and tripthongs. But the waitresses are willing to understand me when I try. “Pho! Tai! Lung!” I gulp at them like a tertiary character in a bad Kung Fu movie. They smile and write down the real words that mean “beef soup, large.” Not even my boyfriend pronounces it all correctly. But they don’t smile when he gets it wrong. “Sell-out,” they think, mistaking him for Vietnamese, instead of the one-of-a-myriad-million-types-of-Chinese that he is.
“That’s good,” Hoa tells me. She’s one our Vietnamese friends. “You almost know how to say it. I can’t get this idiot to remember anything,” she adds, lightly punching her boyfriend Rick. He’s Salvadoran. I smile sympathetically. Rick says he’s looking into language courses at a local community center. He and I may not ever speak Vietnamese for shit but, as Latinos, we share the innate desire to show respect for the parents of our significant others.
I found a “Learn to speak Vietnamese” CD-Rom, but I haven’t had time to get into it yet. It promises to have me speaking the language within a week.
That’ll be nice. It’ll be a relief to be able to say “Hello, how are you” to my boyfriend’s parents, without them turning to him and saying, “What did your girlfriend just call us?” Also, I’ll be able to order all the barbecued pork I want, however far I roam. Also, I’ll be able to get even more gossip from the women at my pedicure place.
I’ll let y’all know how it goes. I’ll make a graphic that indicates our progress. Rick’s avatar will be a tortoise, and mine will be a hare.
Just kidding, Rick. Kung hey fat choi, y’all. Happy Tet. Prospero ano nuevo, tambien.
