25 things about yourself (2009)

facebook recently changed it's layout and somewhere on my page a "Note" that i had written in February 2009 popped up. hidden away in the archives was one of those chain things where if you are tagged, you complete the survey and tag more people. this one in particular just asked that you write 25 random things about yourself. i vaguely remember writing this years ago so it was fun to go back in time a little bit and compare what my thoughts were back then vs. today. reading through it four years later, all but one fact still stands to be true. interesting, Regina....verrrry interesting.

1. sometimes i think i'm the most boring person and i bring nothing to the table 

2. sometimes i think i'm crazy awesome, in the most unconceited way...if you can imagine that 

3. i loved my old dog, Shortie, so much so that part of the reason i opted not to apply to a school away from home was because i'd miss him too much. 

4. i don't have checks, which makes me being an adult kind of difficult    so have checks now!! still don't quite feel like an adult though. 

5. some days i obsess about caloric intake and other days i gives a shit about it and can probably out eat most people i know 

6. i love to take photos and think i'm decent at it, but am completely too lazy to figure out photoshop or how to properly use any function on my brand new spiffy awesome camera. it's about angles and simplicity for me. 

7. i am mediocre in all aspects of life. i stay the middle ground. it makes life easier and keeps me grounded. 

8. my mom is the person who i most admire and i aim to be quite like her. 

9. i live by "it's never what a person said or did in their life, the only thing you remember about them is how they made you feel." 

10. i don't care for football, however "dun dun dun duuuuu....duh duh duh duh duuuuuhh" was the one song i thoroughly remember from my childhood. you know, the song from the NFL at the beginning of games. 

11. i love food so much that if a piece of delicious food drops onto a not-so-cleanly table i'll pick it up, put it on the side of my plate as if i'm not going to eat it and then eat it anyway when nobody is looking. 

12. i'm not the most friendly person, but i'm a good friend. 

13. i can't stray away from honestly. it's a blessing and a curse. 

14. i am ecstatic about the career path i've chosen, especially in this economy where most feel unstable about their positions. x-ray, you've done me well. 

15. i want to own a rent-a-dog shop. someone already stole my idea, bitches! 

16. is always, ALWAYS early or on time. it's considerate! you should probably think about that. 

17. right handed but swings like a lefty (golf/baseball....and i would skate and snowboard goofy too) 

18. thinks all the exercise she's done in the past few years has ruined her back and posture more than helped. 

19. used to be a fat kid, and remains one in her heart/mind 

20. doesn't waste her time on bullshit in any form if possible. 

21. likes to be spontaneous, but only when i'm sound and everything is done and i've got nothing to worry about. does that make any sense?? it does in my world. 

22. hated santa claus for a while because when i heard "i saw mommy kissing santa claus" for the first time i thought santa was a bastard. 

23. would rather eat a beetle than lick any portion of a foot. 

24. sleeps in livingroom if a spider is present and dominating my room 

25. sings annoyingly in the car, so much so that i laugh at myself often and then drive with a smile on my face for miles.

an ode to my mom / Quince for her birthday

do you know who the MVP in my world is? you'd be right if you're thinking that i'm going to say "my mom." if you've ever been in the presence of her you'd instantly see why. she's perky (but not in an irritating way) and gets along with pretty much every type of person. even my friends think she's funny, so there's that. she's easy to talk to and super down to earth. i attribute a lot of who i am today because of her. she's instilled that logical mindset in me and has always taught me that i am no better than others, just different. growing up, she was always quick to humble my brother and i. want an example? when i first got my driving permit she picked me up from school and let me drive home. i backed out of the spot in the school parking lot sort of recklessly and she immediately said "what was that? i've never seen you back out of a spot like that. are you trying to be cool because you can drive now and you're trying to show off? you know that doesn't actually make you cool, right?" "oh damn, she's right," is what i thought and quickly changed my driving manner. as kids, instead of just yelling at us and telling us what we did wrong, she would always tell us why what we did was wrong. this was in the form of hour long lectures which ultimately made me view things in a logical way so that i wouldn't repeat the wrong. and if i don't repeat the wrong, then i would never have to hear that same lecture over again. see! logic! anyhow, she's more than just someone who raised her children right. she's a pretty amazing person overall.

so now that i've rambled on, let's get to what this post was intended to be about. it was my mom's birthday earlier in the month and i wanted to treat her to a nice dinner. i brought her to Quince and it was awesome! they've got a 4 course/$95 per person or an 8 course tasting menu at $140 per person. we opted for the four course but got different dishes so that we could try eight varying dishes all together for less than the cost of two same tasting menus. that's called street smart, guys. anyhow, i am very happy to wine and dine my own mom. there's nothing i could do to ever pay her back for guiding me into becoming the person that i am. 

1st amuse bouche: squid ink crisp and truffle somethingorother.

2nd amuse bouche: green apple foam with beets and sunflower seeds

1st bread course: the most buttery brioche

3rd amuse bouche: i pretty much completely forgot what this was. some sort of cream with a sorel granita

2nd bread course: grain bread and a rosemary buttermilk bread

both very good!

1st course: Maine lobster with apple and celery

cooked perfectly. lightly sweet and oh so very balanced

1st course: sea scallop with romanesco broccoli, kaffir lime and prosecco 

the most perfect scallop. i'm not sure i've ever had a better scallop dish.

2nd course: cappelletti with squash, chestnut and sage

light and sweet with a browned butter sauce. mMmmm

2nd course: triangoli with burrata and burgundy truffle

very delicate, creamy and savory

3rd course: black sea bass with parsnip, porcini and red wine sauce

a decent dish but nothing great. but i'm not huge on fish soooo....

3rd course: suckling pig with quince and broccoli di ciccio

tender and very nice. the small square bite of roast pork was absolutely better than any roast pork i've had Chinese style. there was a perfect fat to meat ratio as well as the delicately crisp skin.

we added the cheese course because i thought my mom should have a legit cheese course some time in her life.

who knows what kinds these were. i completely forget, but they were all very good. accompanying the cheese were two types of bread, almonds, raisins, an apricot(?) mustard seed compote and rooftop honey.

the palate cleanser. a berry spritzer. underneath it was a floral panna cotta with cranberry and some type of gelatin 

4th course: coconut napoleon with pecan praline, honey crisp and black tea ice cream

wow, that black tea ice cream was amazing. it was vibrant with flavor and really balanced out the sweetness of the dish

4th course: dark chocolate pave with coffee cous cous, hazelnut dentelle and roasted banana ice cream

a nice dessert with maybe too many elements

a small birthday offering. passion fruit and vanilla cake

mignardise

hazelnuts covered in six layers of chocolate

happy tummies! 

dim sum: the Choy family way

a lot of people ask me to take them to dim sum because they don't know what to order. but quite honestly, when i eat dim sum or Chinese food in general, it's usually with my parents because they know the good stuff. true, i know food, but when it comes to Chinese they are the experts. you know chow mein or hot and sour soup? yeah, those types of items are never ordered at our family dinners. not because they're not good,  but there are better things to order. and truth be told, i wouldn't even really know how to order these things because written in English the dishes seem obscure. but spoken in Chinese, they make a lot of sense and only my parents (really only my dad, as my mom is pretty Americanized.), aunts and uncles know how to order these things. plus, i don't mean to brag (just kidding, yeah i do) but my family gets preferential treatment when we eat Chinese so i leave it all up to them.

see, my grandpa opened up King Tin restaurant in Chinatown decades ago and before that he was matre'd at various restaurants. the Chinese restaurant community within the Bay Area is small. everybody within the community of immigrant restaurant workers (wait staff, matre'd, chefs or busboys) are probably acquainted by no more than two degrees of separation. people change restaurants or roles but they remain in the restaurant business until they're elderly. because my grandpa as well as others shuffled around a lot, he's well known in that community. but mostly it's because he was a very likable and personable guy. but i think i've told you this already. our family would walk into a crowded restaurant and the moment they saw my grandpa, they'd clear a table and have us seated. my grandpa or my dad would go to the kitchen to say "hello" to the chefs, or waitresses would come to the table to ask how we they were. often times we'd get special dishes or what i'd call "bonus dessert" because desserts would come to the table that we'd never ordered. now that my grandpa has passed, my dad has taken over that role. people recognize him as my grandpa's eldest son and treat him the same way they would have treated my Yeh-Yeh. i don't know how to describe it, but somehow it brings out a pride in me. 

today i went to dim sum with my family because the chef had called my dad a few days prior and said he had a moon cake to give him.  i asked my mom "why would this guy call dad to give him moon cake? i'm sure lots of chinese people have ties to chefs/restaurants so are they giving out moon cakes left and right to people?" then my mom said that it's a special thing that he would only give to a select few. she said that our family has been following him from restaurant to restaurant (wherever he cooked at) and that he's also probably grateful to my grandpa for giving him a start early in his career. my dad went to the kitchen to say "hi" to the chef, collect the moon cake, and to ask him to make us his specialty, and one of my late grandma's favorite dishes. it's a dry fried pork dish tossed in a sweet sauce with pineapple. after we were done eating an assortment of desserts magically appeared at our table and i felt that awesome feeling about my family again. 

wow, i just went off on a crazy tangent. the whole purpose to this post was supposed to highlight some dishes that non-Chinese wouldn't be aware of. so let's get back on track...

i generally let my parents do the food picking for the most part and i just know what to eat and what to stay away from based on personal taste. for instance i am not a fan of the steamed meatballs (texturally they disgust me), siu mai (pork dumplings that are not tasty to me), chicken feet and/or duck feet and any cold dishes. but here are a few that i love!

please excuse the blurry pictures as these were taken with my phone.

oh, and i would've taken photos of everything but that shit gets eaten up quick fast and also, i was hungry.

chinese doughnut wrapped in flat rice noodles, served with sweet soy sauce and peanut sauce.

the doughnuts are crispity crunchity with a chewy center. the soft noodles surrounding it give it an extra textural element and the peanut sauce rounds it out. i loooove this dish and any time it's on a menu i'm all for it!

salted egg yolk "lava" inside a sesame pastry

i'm sure most of you haven't had salted eggs but just FYI, they're pretty bomb! so what they've done here is taken the salted egg yolk, added some sugar and liquified it. the exterior is a thin crispy layer of dough that's been covered in sesame seeds and deep fried. it's crisp, chewy, salty, sweet, runny, and just perfect! i've actually never had this before, but i've had similar things. seriously, soo good! 

sliced pumpkin battered and deep fried, then tossed with salted egg yolk.

f*cking YUM! i love this stuff. any time i see it it's a MUST. sounds weird, i know, but most Chinese food sounds weird. just give it a shot! 

mochi rolled in coconut flakes with a fresh mango filling.

dude. soft fluffy mochi and coconut? AND mango? hells yeah. 

not photographed was geoduck, tripe, those gross steamed meatballs, har gaw (shrimp dumplings), siu mai, pumpkin in a puff pastry, beef wrapped in flat rice noodles, lo bak go (turnip cake) and my grandma's favorite dish. we also got mango pudding, herbal pudding (gah-ross!), tofu pudding and that mochi you see above as our "bonus desserts!" oh, and dim-YUM was had at Champagne Seafood Restaurant in San Mateo.

chronicles of a chunk: part V

you know how when you were in middle school and you went to summer camp or camp with your class for a week? you had fun meeting new kids your own age, roaming the woods, tasting the random forage that the nature guide pointed out, getting scared on the night hike, sleeping in a cabin for the very first time, chasing squirrels and understanding the meaning of the word "homesick?" remember that? all good times, right? wrong! remember those trust and team building games/exercises? they were supposed to teach you to let go and trust others, as well as teach you to work together. well there are two in particular that i hated with a passion.

the trust fall- you are standing on a plank or a table or something that is high above the sea of people behind you. you're faced away and they are supposed to stretch their arms out to catch you when you completely go limp to fall directly into their arms. most people have a fear that they're going to be dropped on to the floor causing bruising and embarrassment. for me, i was terrified that all of that heaviness i was "hiding" underneath my baggy sweatshirt and baggy jeans was going to be discovered once each persons hands would feel the weight of me when never failing gravity would plow me into their weak little arms. poor arms, they didn't stand a chance. i truly hated it. and while i was never aware of anybody really making fun of me for my size (aside from my brother, but he was a tiny little twerp anyway. love ya, bro!), i was always fearful that they might start.

get each person over the wall- so you have, i don't know...ten people on one side of a wall and you need to get everybody over the wall with nothing but your own strengths. the point is to work as a team. at this point everybody is sizing everybody else up. who is the shortest/tallest, who is the strongest/weakest, and worst of all, who is the heaviest. it's necessary to figure out the statistics to strategically get everybody over the wall. but to me, not only did i just fall into a bunch of peoples friggin' arms but now it's forced upon me to have them lift me up like dead weight? who thought this thing through? why didn't they think of the self esteem issues people are going through when they thought up this "team building" stuff? did they not realize that i was basically the equivalent of a large log? and worse off, what about the people who were even bigger than me? the reason i'm crying inside while you all attempt to raise me over your shoulders is because i don't want you to realize how gigantic i am.

so, to this day i don't like it when people try to pick me up. call it a complex.

the eulogy

my yeh-yeh standing in front of his restaurant, King Tin, in Chinatown which he opened decades ago. i remember frequently visiting him there and thinking he was extra awesome for owning his own restaurant. plus look at the way he stands, all happy and badass! i love this picture of him.

years down the line, i am positive that i'm going to want to remember what i said at my grandfather's funeral. nervous, with hands shaking, i read the eulogy. i was afraid my lip was going to quiver like Elvis', much like it always had any time i had to speak publicly. but this time that didn't happen. instead, at some point, with tear filled eyes,  i threw my hands up and proclaimed that i couldn't even read the words anymore because everything was blurred. but eventually the collection of tears dropped and fell upon the page and i could make out the rest of the words well enough to finish. and this is what i said for my grandpa:

i always knew i had a cool grandpa. he was often dressed in a blazer, a hat and sunglasses. his clothes always matched and he walked through every door with confidence. whenever we'd enter any chinese restaurant, immediately somebody would recognize him and greet him. it seems we never had to wait more than five minutes for a table because EVERY time we ate out more than likely the matre'd or a chef was his friend. and once we were sat, someone dining at the restaurant would see him and come to chat for a moment. to me it seemed my grandpa was popular. he was always cool, calm, collected and respected. and i don't think anybody can argue the fact that yeh-yeh was a generous man as well. whenever we went out for dim sum he would always order extra dishes to take to his friends for their mah jong games. and it was evident to me that he almost always paid for dinner when dining with friends. he treated everybody equally. during Chinese New Year, it didn't matter whether you cooked him dinner or just smiled at him. you instantly got a red envelope. he was always considerate and thoughtful towards the people he loved. once he heard that i liked jelly fish, jelly fish would appear at every dinner.  he made sure that if there was an extra bowl of shark fin soup, i would get it because it was my favorite. sometimes he would joke and tell my brother that he should take his grandpa out for dim sum or pay for dinner that night. he was only trying to instill good values in his grandson and make sure that we knew to respect and value our elders. he always cracked jokes and had a way about him that made everybody like him. 

years ago during a family function yeh-yeh had to go to the emergency room and for the first time in my life i saw the hint of tears in my dad's eyes. in that moment i realized that there was a bond between the two of them that i'd never noticed. then every time i saw the two of them together i started to see the similarities between them. their generosity, their humor, their ability to always seem calm and easy going. my mom has always said that i am very much like my dad and if that's true, then i must also be very much like my yeh-yeh. and if i'm anything like my yeh-yeh then i feel honored. he was a man who surrounded himself with friends and family and valued anybody who crossed paths with him. he's always tried to instill good family values in myself, my brother and my cousins. for years i've watched my mom, dad, aunts and uncles take their dad out to dinner or dim sum every sunday not because they had to but because they wanted to. he built a family who respected him. before his health began depleting, he always had a smile on. but more than anything, he was always a truly genuine person. 

unfortunately our time with him has ended but our memories are forever. a few weeks ago he had said that he was ready to be with grandma. before she had passed, they were inseparable so i am sure that he is happy to reunite with her. may they rest in peace together. 

this is the last picture i have with my grandpa. it was taken at his last birthday dinner. i'm not sure what he's doing with his hand there. but like i said in the eulogy....hat. sunglasses. blazer. smile. sharp as ever!

why they call me Tracy

sometimes people want to hide behind another name. sometimes they want to portray themselves in a different light from what the world currently knows them as. people will make up a whole new character to present to the world. alter egos have been around forever, wouldn't you say? from the early days when Samuel Clemens wished to be author Mark Twain, to comic book characters such as Clark Kent and a super version of himself, Superman. nowadays they seem to be popping up everywhere in the celebrity world. Beyonce has Sasha Fierce, GaGa has Joe Calderon, Nicki Minaj has Roman Zolanski, Martha Zolanski, and The Harajuku Barbie among other alter egos. and hell, she isn't even really "Nicki." she was born "Onika."

for those of us who aren't celebrity or have no real reason to have an alter ego, it seems silly to make up a fake name just for the fun of it. but as a woman i think it's fair to have a going-out-name. these days people can take your name and in an instant figure out your life story by sifting through everything on the internet and i find it's important to protect yourself from creeps and crazies. i think it's pretty common for a group of chicks to make up fake names for when they go out and aren't looking for anything but a good time with the girls. a random guy asks you for your name and you're far from interested? good thing you have your very own semi-alter ego to freely blurt out because you sure as hell don't want to be found the next day.

my friends, as i've alluded from the title of this post, my alter ego-esque name is Tracy. it'd be easy to come up with a random name or a different name every time i went out, but it's so much better to have a solid standing name. you might wonder how i got that name. see, when i was a wee little one in elementary school there was a classmate tyke of mine named Tracy. i don't remember anything about her or think there was anything particularly awesome about her but somehow i recall really liking her name. in my little kid mind i somewhat cursed my parents for having not thought to name me Tracy. i even asked my mom if i we could make it my middle name, as i don't currently have one. for some reason i always thought that i was meant to be a Tracy. then one day i came home from school with a note from my teacher attached to my backpack. the note read:

Mrs. Choy, Regina can no longer write her name down as "Tracy." it isn't acceptable for her to use a different name than her own.

Thank you,
Dream-Name Killer




okay, the note wasn't exactly signed by "Dream-Name Killer," but i can't remember what teacher it was and it's not really important. my mom obviously hadn't been looking at my homework because for weeks i'd written Tracy Choy as my name. she then told me i couldn't be Tracy anymore and all hopes and dreams went out the window.

fast forward to current day and i've adopted Tracy as my going-out-name, though i don't go out that often so it's not used much in terms of avoiding random guys. however, upon hearing my elementary school story, my coworkers have begun calling me Tracy whenever we go out for drinks and get a bit tipsy. they have even brought it to the workplace for days when i get overly sarcastic or sassy. i'll say something blunt and i'll hear "where's Regina? all i see is Tracy!" haha!!!

so there it is. i introduce you to my alter ego, Tracy!

hey, uhhh nice to meet you!

chronicles of a chunk: part III

a lot of people who never knew the Former Me somehow can't believe I was ever fat (which amazes me because to this day I have never been skinny. average at best.) often times if a fat kid story exits my mouth, people question the validity. they either ask to see a picture or ask how old i was and if it was just a little baby weight that stuck around a little too long. keeping baby chub for as long as you're still a toddler is one thing, but being hefty twelve years after your birth is another.

so because people seem to need proof of fat, I present to you a few photos from my younger years. please refrain from laughing too hard. it might hurt my feelings. aaahh just kidding. they're pretty damn funny.

this first image is to show you the sheer size of me. oh and btw i had two of that oversized gray Costco sweater jacket thing so that i could alternate and wear it nearly every day. and those pink sweats you see under my awesome gray jacket were a staple to the Reg-wardrobe. i wore those as often as possible as well.

now here are a series of two pictures that are quite possibly the most hilarious pictures i own.

exhibit a:  a pyramid made from myself at the bottom, my brother in the middle and my beloved and very missed other brother, Shortie. check out my brother, looking fearful of what's to come. he probably knows we're going to do a switcharoo.

exhibit b: the same picture, except that the base is now my brother and i'm in the middle. it seems his body has disappeared. you can clearly see that when we swapped positions my brother ended up squashed into the cushions reaching for for help. he obviously was crying for anybody walking by to save his life before he lost all oxygen supplying his brain.

no, seriously. these pictures of my past probably make me laugh more than any pictures i've ever seen in my life EVER. well......except for my passport picture. also, note that in all three pictures i'm wearing the same pink sweats. on different random days. see, i tell no lies.

running a half marathon

when i was in middle school, i was a big chubster and ridiculously out of shape. every so often we would have to run the "turkey trot," which was one mile, starting at our school, through a residential neighborhood, park and up a hill back to school. one mile at that point seemed like it was to Egypt and back for me. i would walk most of it, except for the downhill portion of course. oh, but even then the course went right by my house and on occasion i would hide some juice or small bag of fruit snacks in a bush before i left for school so that while i was meandering and walking the turkey trot, i could grab a snack. i was so out of shape that by the time it took me 16 minutes to walk a mile and get back to school, i couldn't breathe. the extent of the amount of non-breathing i experienced was that of a person with asthma, except that i've never had asthma. i distinctly remember it feeling like i had a  fish bowl put over my head and the only air that got in my lungs was thick, hot and lacking in oxygen. it was pretty scary, but i had no desire to get in shape. i didn't even know what running really felt like.

eventually i started working out, losing weight, and becoming fairly obsessed with those things. i have done cycling, spinning, jogging, elliptical, P90x, Insanity, Slim in 6, a capoera bootcamp class, etc. mostly it was cardio.

but never in my life have i ever had the desire to run a half marathon. last year a friend asked if i would do it with her and i agreed to do it as a means to up my running abilities an opportunity to keep me on the track to weight loss. let's be real, i didn't give a crap about the ability to run 13.1 miles straight. all i cared about was the fact that it would help me either maintain my weight or lose more weight. prior to training for the half marathon the most i ever ran was 5 miles. through training it eventually became 7, then 9, then 12. in 3 months of training i tracked 218 miles of running.

 i don't generally care what i look like when i run, as you can clearly see above! what an outfit! haha!

on June 17, 2010 i ran the most i ever have in my life.  it was the Giant Race Half Marathon (aka Plate to Plate). 13.1 miles without stopping. not even for water. on that very hot morning i just grabbed Dixie cups with water or Gatorade and practically threw them in my face hoping that some of it would make it into my mouth. my time wasn't fast. i clocked in at 2hrs and 12min. that's just about 10min/mile. but the fact that i was in motion for that amount of time was a feat for me. naturally i was tired when i crossed over the finish line however i didn't feel like i was exhausted. they say that you get a "runner's high," and in that moment i definitely did. but just because i felt great about myself and how far i'd come didn't mean i ever wanted to run another half marathon. i felt like what i'd accomplished was enough for me, and i was happy with that.

fast forward to yesterday. i went to run Lake Merced which is 4.6miles according to my Garmin. the second i finished running once around the lake i wanted to stop. i felt defeated, as i initially wanted to run it twice. but considering i haven't been running like i was when i was training, i can't say i was incredibly surprised. i know in order to maintain the ability to do something you've got to continue with it. essentially if you don't use it, you lose it. a little more than half a year has passed since i ran the half marathon and now i want to ability to run it comfortably again. i think i'm going to run another one. this time it's not about weight loss (well okay, any exercise i do is usually meant to counteract all the food i eat), it's about ability and strength.

how could they let me out of the house looking like that?

we all have bad pictures, right? usually the most embarrassing pictures are the ones in your teens because that's when you were trying your damnedest to look "cool" or whatever you want to call it. or maybe i'm wrong. maybe the most embarrassing are somewhere between 9-11. you know what i'm talking about. the awkward stage. let's take a trip back to the 80's. 


hello world, meet the former me!

day 29 pic.

good god are we serious right now?? i was rummaging through old things and found a very VERY old passport of mine. how in the world did my parents let me out of the house looking like this? this picture makes me laugh hystarically. and please, let’s name all things wrong with this pic!!

1. first, let’s just  touch on the most obvious thing. my face looks like a balloon that’s ready to pop! i purposely took this pic with a slight angle upwards in hopes that it could potentially serve the same purpose as someone lifting their chin a bit when taking a photo.  you know what i mean? stretching the chin a bit? turns out it doesn’t work that way! haha j/k!

2. i know i never went to a hair stylist to get my hurr did. actually, i remember my mom cutting my hair for years. she only stopped when i lost all trust in her hair cutting abilities. but that's a story for another day. so that slant with an incline from right to left that you see is her doing. i don’t know if she thought it didn’t matter, or if she was trying to cover up the fact that my left eye is slightly bigger than my right eye, but those bangs look ridic.

3. as a child of the 80′s it was really cool to wear your hair to one side. some people wore a high side ponytail, some wore it low. either way, it was cool, i promise!  i precisely remember messing with my hair in a mirror right before taking this picture. tie it up. take it down. repeat. i was trying to get it right and was really frustrated my hair wouldn’t stay. at the veeeerrrrrrrry last minute it was perfect! and look what it turned out to be. “perfect” turned out to be a hot mess! my hair was too short for all of it to stay all the way on that side of my head, i guess! i like to think my locks were soooo silky smooth that it slipped out of my hair tie to free itself from constraint in order to keep it's lusciousness. yeah, let’s just say it was the latter. =)

4. whoa there buck-o!! i know every kid goes through the awkward teeth sizes stage but in combination with all of the aforementioned, it just adds fuel to the flame. it looks like i've got a checker board in my mouth. 

let's not even get into the giganator shirt i've got on. that too, is a post for another day. that'll be my "fat kid" post. 

well i hope you had as much fun picking at my old passport photo as i have! do you have old embarrassing pictures? i urge you to show me so i feel better about myself. haha! 

mommy and me

day 28: you know how kids have blankets or “binkies” that they don’t let go of? some of them keep them into their adulthood as a security or just for memory sake. well this is my version. i remember we got this stuffed animal at Costco. it never had a name or anything but it was special to me. i slept with it, played with it, and there’s even evidence that i got marshmallow on it’s ear!!! i definitely remember that. i'm pretty certain that while my mom was making rice krispie treats my kid-fat-ass was eating the melted marshmallow and somehow spread it on mama bunny's ear. it always reminded me of my mom and i so i couldn’t let it go. to date, it’s the only stuffed animal i keep around.