tollipop

lunching with friends

A few days ago my friend Jen texted to ask if we were still on for lunch that day.  I blinked at the text, trying to remember what month this was.  If I had a dollar for every time Jen's texts have saved my bacon, I'd have enough overhead to start up my own fizzy lemonade stand.  

Lunching with friends is a rare event for me...you're more likely to spot a narwhal than see me lounging at a café, dwarfed by Jackie O. sunglasses, viciously stabbing a salad.  

At any rate, there wasn't enough time to doll up so I pulled the just rolled out of bed, two days since a shower look, which should be coming to runways any day now.  I programmed the address of the restaurant into my phone and it promptly led me to a landfill out in the middle of nowhere.  

Franchement, that could have been the end of me.  This is Las Vegas, you know.  All the rumors are true.

Instead, I texted Jen my distress and she directed me back to civilization.  She is very good like that.

There are so many ways to write this story, so many angles.  I could regale you with my ineptness, with the frumpiness of my appearance, I could describe the brilliant spareness of the restuarant, I could rave about the nirvana that is Korean food on a chilly winter day.  The Koreans know how to warm you up, dear reader, they know how to bring you in from the cold.

But what I really feel like talking about is my friends.   

One was born in Korea and immigrated here in the 2nd grade.  The other was born in Vietnam and was airlifted out the day the communists took over.  When I listen to the stories of their childhood, of the sacrifices made by their parents to pursue greater opportunities in this country, I am filled with a deep respect.  I also have my own generations who made sacrifices to come here.  It's a legacy I think about often.

We sat there sipping mugicha and enjoying the crispy grains of rice sizzling against our hot stone bowls. We talked and laughed.  Our children take music lessons together, so there is lots to laugh about.  Jen ordered more kimchi.  I tried not to be jealous of the fact she spoke in Korean.  I mean, she deserves it, right?  But the fact is: I am always jealous when someone speaks another language.  Not bitterly jealous, mind you. Just...wistful to the point of being bitterly jealous.  

As it happened, none of us had gotten terribly dolled up that day...a freedom between us and an interest in deeper things which I truly appreciate with these friends.  

One is a doctor.  One works with musical instruments.  Both run circles around me with their blinding competence, their multitasking and tapestry of schedules.  It's amazing they let me hang with them. 

They would bend over backwards to help me and I would do the same in return.  

Yes, it's my friends I feel like talking about.  When I think of what matters most, when I reflect on life's greatest gifts, certainly one is that of friendship.  Of having good friends and being one, too. 

I feel blessed when it comes to that.

ramen sora

Dear reader, as the holidays approach and the temperature drops, there's only one place to find yourself and it's not Starbucks, even though I have nothing against a good cup of hot chocolate.

I'm talking about a noodle house, dear reader.  

Ramen Sora will do nicely.  

These friends make ideal noodle house companions, especially as one is Japanese and could discreetly steer me with such insider tips as: men may slurp their noodles like hogs, but women are expected to be a tad more...how do I say in Japanese?  Discreet.

Too bad she told me that while I was channeling my inner hog!  Oh well--one full body wipedown later and I was practically ready to perform a tea ceremony, franchement.

It's not that I can't be discreet, dear reader.  I can.  Granted, it's a bit more difficult when the food excites me, but Japanese culture has nothing on this Canadian farmgirl when it comes to reserve.

Just let me chain my inner wolf to a rock out in the middle of nowhere and it's game on.   

A word about the broth.  Typically I believe there are three options: miso, shio, and shoyu.

If I were you, I'd chose the miso.  Not that I have anything against shio or shoyu, because I don't.

It's just that the miso is...how do I say in Japanese?  Sensuous.

Can a broth be sensuous, dear reader?  Can it make you blush, look down at the floor, and titter?  Can it make the room spin, can it make you forget what you were talking about, can it hold you spellbound with its unmistakeable look of desire?  Can it make you forget the time?  Can it make you lose your breath? Can it make you speak Japanese?? 

That's miso ramen, dear reader.  It doesn't come on strong, but trust me.

It comes on.  

wherein I demonstrate math prowess and sterling business acumen

In case you're wondering whether Tollipop is sufficiently monolithic that businesses approach me for endorsement, I assure you it's just the two of us at this tea party, dear reader.  

Just the two or three of us.  

In other words, if I happen to recommend a product such as this darling address stamp from Paperwink, please know my only incentive is to coax more loveliness into the world.  

Just whisper paperwink and the loveliness begins...it's the type of word that lets you end on a smile.

Moving along, Sophie wore three inch heels to school the other day.  Let's see...she's 6"2.  Can someone please help me with the math? 

6"2 + 3 inch heels = one incredibly confident girl
 

Next up.  Out of nowhere, Caroline has begun matching her socks, which may be estimated as follows:

Caroline + matched socks = one slightly crestfallen mother

Finally, there is Izzy.  The other night she was invited to perform with a symphony orchestra comprised mainly of professional and teaching musicians from the community...an experience which required hours of rehearsal and the opportunity to be on stage at the Smith Center--a stunning venue here in Las Vegas which hearkens back to the great opera houses of old.  

Izzy + a full symphony orchestra + being on stage at the Smith Center = a girl happier than I have ever seen her to the power of ten

Can levitation be expressed in algebraic form?

what kind of bird are you?

Autumn in the desert is like everything else in the desert: sparse, subtle, spare.

Still, there is a way to love it and here's my secret: be cool.

Just be cool, dear reader.  What's the big deal?  

Just, like, wear skinny jeans and an ironic tshirt...but not on purpose.  Don't let your face register emotion under any circumstances, even during a bear attack. When you see a friend, nod imperceptibly.  Perceptible nods are so eager.  So uncool.  If someone bursts into the room, screaming: Anthropologie is going out of business and everything's on sale!, don't break a sweat.  Don't show how much you want it.  

That would be uncool.

Once you have this down, you and the desert are going to get along just fine.

No one will even know you're friends.

If you'd like things to be more obvious, if you want things to be more rich, exuberant, excessive, abundant, and vivid...you know where you can go to get it.

But don't expect it to be any more breathtaking than this.

This is autumn in the desert, dear reader.  

Did you see it?  Did you nod imperceptibly?

Of course, I don't nod imperceptibly.  No way.  I could never be that cool!  

Darling, when I said be cool, I wasn't talking about me.  I was talking about you!  You do it.  You wear the skinny jeans.  I'm past hope.  If someone bursts into the room, screaming: Anthropologie is going out of business and everything's on sale!, I will register emotion.  

I will break a sweat.   

There's nothing subtle about me and the desert, dear reader.  Not even close.  I bound around in it like a freshman with a crush on the most popular boy at school.  Is it painful to witness the adoration written all over my face while he hangs out with his friends, never once looking in my direction?

Who's to say?  Who's to question the balance of such things? 

All I know is someone has to do it.  Someone has to be cool.   

Otherwise, what would happen to all the ironic tshirts no one wears on purpose??

island style

Dear reader, you know on those nights when you and your husband are trying to figure out what to eat and you finally narrow it down to two choices: Hawaiian or Korean, and no one is willing to budge beyond that point??

Well, Island Style is here to save the marriage.  

It's fusion, dear reader...not hip, mincing fusion which makes you feel like a dolt for saying you'd prefer tap water when the correct response is sparkling, forcing the entire restaurant to inhale so sharply they choke on their purple carrots and all the candles flicker and die??

No, this is Island Style, where the guys call each other brah, the Hawaiian equivalent of bro, which is much cooler than bro but doesn't really affect me anyway since I'm not cool enough to use either.

This is the melting pot of all melting pots, this is where the first dish you see someone eating will be what you want to order because if you don't, you'll never stop wishing you did, this is where if you get the cold wheat noodles the cook will cut them up in front of you using a pair of kitchen scissors that could decapitate a moose.

This is where the kimchi will make you wish Willy Wonka had lived in Korea so you could be reading a book about a kimchi factory instead of a chocolate factory, so you could dream about kimchi grass, kimchi flowers, and an enormous kimchi river that the chubby boy would fall into and get sucked up a pipe to the radish room.   

This is where you'll get the best fried rice of your life.  Yes, your life.  Don't roll your eyes like fried rice doesn't move you, like it's not purple carrots.  Don't foist your ennui for fried rice upon the rest of us simply because you haven't tried it island style.  

Don't be so jaded and world weary, brah.

Because you will leave Island Style feeling happy.  

Why?  Well, the food has a lot to do with it but there's something else...

Just go and you'll see what I mean.  

i'm doing that thing again...overdressing for the season

It's called seasonal denialitis, dear reader, an obscure malady wherein you dress for the weather you want and not for the weather that is.  It's a legit diagnosis, also known as high hopes pox. It generally affects Canadians living in desert climates and possibly vice versa, though I cannot imagine anyone stepping out in a Canadian winter sporting daisy dukes no matter how much she wishes it were warmer.

I have a sneaking suspicion all these sweaters, cardigans, and button up shirts did very little to help me kick last week's fever, by the way.  

Seasonal denialitis is a strain of a larger subset, common denial, wherein just about everything you do and the way you proceed through life in general glosses over what's actually happening in favor of the reality inside your head.  

The cure?  Why, darling (cue glittering, coloratura laughter), who said anything about a cure?!  Just ignore my flushed cheeks and brace me up with some more of that marvelous fizzy lemonade.  

It's the perfect yellow cardigan, darling.  

And you would not believe the glorious fall day I have while wearing it.  

there's the sweetest little old man behind this corner, i'm telling you

This afternoon I popped into Trader Joe's to grab a few things before picking up Caroline from school.  The store was busy and I immediately encountered a gaggle of shoppers in gridlock, each one staring at the selection of olive oils or simply trying to decide which way to go.  

Ahead of me, in the direction I wanted to go, was a little old man.  He wore a fisherman's hat, glasses, a faded short sleeve shirt, shorts, socks, and sandals. He looked a bit like Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond, only smaller and sweeter.  
We regarded one another and I smiled, because my day had just been made. He raised his eyebrows and it almost looked as if he had to remind himself how to smile back.  But then he did and in the midst of the bustle, the world stood still. 

Have you ever shared a smile like that?  

Of course we both yielded the right of way and laughed, then he insisted I go first, and I practically skipped off to the bananas.

Later on, as I rounded the last corner of the store, there he was again, perusing almonds.  He looked up at me and I said, "I'm following you!"

He laughed and reached out and touched my shoulder. 

He touched my shoulder!

"You're sweet," he said.  

And I had this crazy moment, like when I tell Caroline what a good girl she is and she sort of pretends she didn't hear properly so I repeat myself and I can practically see the happiness travel through her body, wherein I wanted to make him say it twice.  

But luckily I pulled myself together, said thank you, and kept going with a ridiculous grin plastered across my face.  

To have lingered in the moment might have ended up with him inadvertently having to adopt me.  

Then I wondered, would it be okay to take his picture?  Like, surreptitiously?  Unfortunately there was no one accompanying me who could frown and state what a breach of etiquette and possibly the law that would be.  

Not to mention creepy.    

To my credit, I exercised restraint and merely took the above shot as a reminder of this moment: how the kindness of a stranger may touch one deeply, how it can seem like a gift, how the feeling it creates will stay long after the almonds have been eaten and the bananas peeled, because most things cannot last forever but the things which do are the very most important of all.

happiness is having a big brother

The other day I stopped by my brother's office for a quick visit.  Also, because I needed his help.

But more for the visit than the help...at least that's how I felt reflecting on it afterward.

I was probably there no longer than 30 minutes since it was a busy day for us both.  We said hello and I made him give me a hug and he seriously squeezed the living daylights out of me.  We talked and laughed and made plans for a trail run when my hamstring stops feeling like a piece of beef jerky and he gets fast enough to keep up.

When it was time to go, I practically skipped out the door.

Why?

Because I was so happy.

Happy to have a big brother.  This big brother.  Happy for him for everything he's accomplished in his life. He has a beautiful wife and four awesome kids. He speaks Thai and Laotian.  He is an amazing cook. He is honest, generous, easy going, funny, and smart.

And he is an incredible doctor and surgeon.   

It's hard to explain why Tim is such a great doctor without sounding dismissively biased as his sister but if anything, that's why I'm such an authority on the matter.  I'm not trying to say he's perfect, mind you.  I've watched my brother like a hawk since I was a kid and believe me, while I thought the sun rose and set on him, I didn't exactly notice a halo hanging over his head.  But Tim always wanted to be a doctor.  And I am telling you, since we were little, he's had the hands of an artist.  Or a counterfeiter. Or perhaps a very skilled pickpocket.

Somewhere on that spectrum.

Was it a picnic growing up as Tim's little sister?  That depends.  If you call being forced to retrieve homemade boomerangs from a wasp nest in order to hang out with him and his hooligan friends then yes, it was quite the picnic.

But I digress.  The point I'm trying to make is beyond his natural gifts, I've watched my brother work like an indentured servant to become the doctor he is today.  Throughout our high school and college years he took grueling summertime jobs to fund his education: bringing in the harvest on ranches in Alberta, planting trees all over British Columbia, working up north (as in, the Yukon) in remote gold mines.  During this time he also took a two year sabbatical to serve an LDS mission working with Thai and Laotian immigrants in Oakland, California.  

I've watched how these and other challenging experiences have shaped my brother.  I wish you could meet him so you'd know what I mean, but he is just a very genuine person.  He doesn't fawn over you but he doesn't talk down to you, either.  As a doctor, he is curious and intent on helping his patients.  And he has the knowledge and ability to do just that.  

In a way, you can get a sense of my brother by listening to his weekly radio show Friday nights at 6:00 p.m. PDT.

The station is Talk Radio AM 720 Las Vegas, or you can listen to it online at  kdwn.com/streamer/.

I'm going to try to be better at announcing his show on my blog...maybe this is the biased sister in me, but I wish everyone in the world knew what a great surgeon he is.  The difference he's made in people's lives who suffer from chronic nerve pain is nothing short of miraculous.

Something else that would be helpful to Tim, if you feel so inclined, is to take a moment to like his Facebook page.  Social media...it's a great way to get one's name out there.

If someone were to ask me, back when I was a little kid, would I be surprised to know my brother would one day grow up to be a great surgeon, I would've looked that person dead in the eye and said I never had the slightest doubt.

Maybe I would've been surprised if Tim had walked on water.  Not very, though. But for sure I always knew he was going to be a great surgeon.

I'm telling you.

what i see while driving around :: 4

Is anyone thinking I do a lot of driving, by any chance?

Yeah, well.  It is what it is.  Somehow I have wrangled myself into a life where much of my time is spent in the car.  

On the upside:

I am very grateful for this life.  

I have the most interesting conversations with my girls during these moments.

I see about a million people every day for three seconds and look into their faces and wonder who they are.

But Izzy's music camp is finally over and that will mean a temporary end to criss-crossing the city twice daily.  We've listened to her crazy pop music, cast spells on the traffic lights, talked about life and how we want to live it, and at the end of each day I've listened to her burst with enthusiasm over the music she's learned.  

I'm glad Izzy participated in a volleyball camp earlier this summer.  I think it helped her to appreciate her inclination toward music.  She loves it.  She is getting older and more advanced, visibly maturing in her ability to master difficult compositions.  

I watch her now and realize in some ways she has already left our little nest.  

She will always be my dear, sweet Izzy, but she has ventured beyond where I've guided her and has made a place for herself in a world that seems to resonate with the most ancient part of her soul.  It is quite something, as a mother, to watch the journey.  

I will enjoy our moments in the car for as long as I can have them.

what i see while driving around :: 3

As I mentioned, dear reader, your kind responses to these photo essays may have been too encouraging.  I'm having fun capturing the images I see every day.  

In some ways your surprised reactions are a surprise to me...especially to think I may have unwittingly portrayed myself as some sheltered innocent who drifts exclusively between the untamed desert and manicured lawns.  

Dear me, what other inaccuracies have I promoted?? 

We do know about my inability to keep track of time, right?  The emergency swear vials?  Clumsy small talk?  Lack of sleep?  

My irrational fear of sharks?  They bear grudges, I know they do.

My earnest yet easily sidetracked desire to be more useful in all things physical rather than metaphysical?

My penchant for little old men?  And candy?  And paper?  

My inability to stop wishing for a tiny talking turtle, even though I know they don't exist?  

My suspicion the girls are concealing a hamster farm in their room?

My recalcitrant hair, which is a rude affront to the way I envision myself (flowing tresses, scintillating small talk)?  

My love of solitude yet aversion to loneliness?  

This cluttered desk??

Ok.  Just checking.  

In other news, while I am giving my hamstring a vacation, it does not appear to be getting better.  If anything, it feels like some mad scientist performed an experiment while I was asleep, switching out my hamstring for a rabbit tendon.

If there happens to be a breaking report of a monster on the loose who can run like the wind but is more inclined to stop and admire the scenery, then we'll all know it's true.