A Christmas Gift for the World

Hey peeps!

I hope your holidays are being lovely.  It’s going to be Christmas in a couple of days and I thought it’s just the right time to remind you that you can make one awesome gift that all of us can enjoy.

As you already know, Syria is going through a very hard time right now and we should all come together and help.  There are several web pages with organisations that help in different ways.

I found one here. 

And another here.  

Choose one and donate.  Each survivor is someone, just like you and me, and they need us.

I donated to the White Helmets.  Please choose the organisation that you feel should receive your help and do your part.

Thank  you so much!

Not home

I couldn’t call it home.

The place broke me.  I walk around now holding the pieces of my spirit, trying to keep them all together, trying to not loose them anymore, but I barely remember who I was am.

I tried, but I couldn’t call it home.

There’s a rule written up somewhere that if you suffer enough, you don’t have to stay.  I know because it kept coming up everywhere;  “go away”.  “Be brave”.  “Get out of here”.  “You hate this place.  Leave.”  

I tried.  I really did try, even if no else saw.  I gave it my all.  I loved the peace, the nature.  But it isn’t enough.  I also need love and the comfort of knowing someone cares.

It’s not home if it feels like no one cares.

“you can’t keep doing things the same way and expect different results”

someone said.  Probably a scientist.  I like science.  And it’s time to try a different way.

The hard, crappy kind of days

There’s something about the hard days.

View this post on Instagram

It's going down. ##sunset

A post shared by @ naramilee on Apr 29, 2016 at 3:36pm PDT

Somehow, hope never fails.  I might refuse it and ignore it, but somewhere -even when I seek solitude and try to find the loneliest place – someone appears and asks “are you OK?”

One time I was a second from breaking down crying, carrying mine and Baby J’s food -while pushing her stroller- in a mall, having a really bad day, and a lady left her turn in line to carry our tray to a table.

That has happened three times.
I would be internally crying because I seldom have help or someone to do things with -I can count with the fingers of my hand the times manfriend has helped me-, and someone comes up to tell me it’s OK, they’ll give me a hand.

It’s a bad day today and I don’t know if it’s going to work out our if it’s going to be OK, but I can feel in the colors of the sunset, the love shining down on me.

And I refuse to ignore it.

Houston: Airport card is off

There’s a salamander behind the desk as I type this, which is proof of how much I want to get this post out and also why I might not do this again.

There was one on the way here too (the overwhelming heat is bringing them all out.  It’s so hot now that we can see them in the wood roof of the balcony during the day.  Yeah, that was me screaming) and I walked with the cell phone as a flash light and a Windex bottle as a gun, movie style, arms crossed in front of me and everything.  It was an action packed scene.

Just to let you know:

My 9 yr old MacBook blew the airport card so no connection for me. Posting schedule will most definitely be affected. #computerproblems

— Lee (@naramilee) October 4, 2015

Have an awesome day!  Enjoy your WIFI.

PS twitter and instagram are on my mobile so they’ll probably have more game during this WIFI-less time.  @naramilee on both.

PSS While writing this the salamander came out twice and I had to stand up to spray some Windex.  She was laughing at me.

The only time when VIP treatment is not a good thing

Phew.

Did you hear a faint sigh yesterday?  It was me.  Yesterday was the first time I was able to draw breath hard enough for it to reach my toes since last week and I’m sure I sighted so hard someone heard it in China.

It all started last Thursday when manfriend… oh, I tweeted it:

Manfriend and I decided it was the best idea to eat entire papaya's straight from the trees. He had 2, I had 1. The stomach ache is GRAND.

— Lee (@naramilee) April 24, 2015

It was a stomach ache somewhere before one am but it was the end of the world after two am, though I must add he first puked at around nine pm and that should’ve been a warning sign that things were not going to get any better.

He ate two papayas in their entirety but exuded about four thousand of them.  Multiplication of the bread but not in a miraculous awesome way.  At around ten am the next day manfriend was unable to do anything but moan as any forty year old man with an ache would.  He sounded like a wounded bull.

He was throughly dehydrated and nauseous so I had to take over all the business tasks, and of course, it was one of the fuller days because life.  I put on the hats of production technician, secretary, merchandiser, mom and care taker and I must say to all of the people who do it on a daily basis:  you are superhuman.  I relapsed for coffee because of that day and it doesn’t look like I’m gonna be quitting any day soon.

We were saved by a phenomenon that I have only seen in these parts and that is live networking.  Manfriend’s sister (who is a head nurse/supervisor) called someone and that person called someone and within a few hours a friend who also happened to  be a nurse was here with a Merry Poppins bag.  Manfriend was hooked to an IV line and administered a shot for his nausea, in the comfort of his bed.  Where I come from if you don’t endure the hassle of an emergency room, you don’t get an IV.

He was able to eat (the chicken stock I made for him, my grandmother’s recipe – I thought I had shared it, must do!) a few hours later  and continued to improve during the next day.  I’m sure it all had to do with how he wears himself to exhaustion so often because getting up at four am several days a week, having twelve hour workdays (as we did Tuesday when it was only the two of us working the packaging of the week) and not getting enough sleep hours at night had to take a toll on his body at some point.

And now we are back to normal, whining about how it’s so  hot we can barely tolerate it but so very thankful we are fine.

Have a happy one!

In memoriam: For Tutty

The past seventeenth of March, two days before my birthday I began mini vacations (as I like to call them) on my grandmother’s house.

Traditionally, I spend the first day back in my hometown in her home until my mother arrives there from work.  She loves the time she can spend with Baby J and I love the time I spend with her.

That day though, she received a sad call that made me really glad I was there.  The only cousin she had alive passed away after a battle with a couple of health issues.  It was still very much a surprise for everyone because she was only eighty one.  The women in my maternal family live to be over a hundred on average.

I met Tutty too late in my opinion, having only met her and her wonderful husband in 2012, but she was such a character and had such a spark that she really went straight to my heart.

Such was her personality that on the day of her passing a friend replied to all recipients of her demise announcement telling the story of how she had actually never met her in person, but corresponded with her for many years and got to talk to her on the phone.  She described her as a force of good and positivity through all her challenges (she was in a wheelchair after a brain stroke).

She and her husband (who passed away last year;  I believe she just had to go join him) left an incredible space in this world.  I’m both extremely honor that I got to meet them and incredibly sad that I didn’t got to spend more time with them.

In her funeral one of their grandkids read a beautiful piece she wrote for her grandmother which tells me that maybe the youngest generation she left behind might be able to carry at least some of her legacy.

This post is my humble way of leaving her a place here.

This one is for you Tutty.  Thank you.

Wilt away

I don’t know about you, but I’m sure glad and happy to see the back of this last week.

It started good enough and then manfriend had to attend a trial for a situation about a house he built with his ex-fiance (and by with I mean the house that he built while she was canoodling with her lover).  She was in attendance and took the opportunity to apologise and congratulate him on all his achievements.  Such grace, such display of manners!

And then a few critical things came up in the business and it was like a lethal game of dodgeball between us and a full football stadium.  In fact, we are still trying to stabilise damages.

Anyway.  Here’s to fallen flowers.

Have an awesome weekend!

Another move. Because I’m trying to make a record or something

I mentioned we had another move, this time a surprise one, to yet someone else’s house.

Well.  How can I put this delicately… manfriend’s brother asked him to evacuate his house?  Except there was not so much asking and we had to move the same day he felt those feelings.  In two days we hauled all our things out and stuck them all (well, nearly all of them, I have a few bags in my car. And by a few bags I mean I can barely fit in there) into one room (manfriend’s old room) of his mother’s house.

There was magic involved.  I’m very glad I am a big Harry Potter fan because without all my wizarding knowledge we had been screwed.  Actually, I should admit that manfriend basically did it all on his own because he’s half super hero.  And wizard.
The magic involved a tractor, two saving lives helpers and the moto of throwing away anything that looked like it hadn’t been used in the past days.

And so here we are.

Everything is pretty tight and uncomfortable (in more than a few ways, and if I go medically crazy you’ll know it’s because I’m living with my mother in law) as you might imagine, but I’m not whining about it.  This is not whining material in my book.  I mean, it sucks but I just keep on going dreaming of the day when we finally have a place of our own.
I have to admit though that moving (specially this harshly) shakes something on the inside. It moves the core a bit.

It all made for a very peculiar way of celebrating the end of the year and the beginning of the new one 🙂

Is there a big change approaching your way this new year?  I’d like to hear about it so I can feel like there’s other people in this boat 🙂

I hope you have a great day!

Gone but not forgotten: Those that I miss specially on Christmas time

December comes and there are a few faces I keep thinking about during the holidays.  I can’t see them anymore, but they are all engraved in my heart and I carry them through all the happiness and nostalgia of this season.

My Julia.  The woman who anchored my sense of family unity.

My dearest grandfather.  The only man who was always there for me, adoringly sharing my moments.

(And yes, I have to work on getting a photo of them here.  I have none with me right now.)

My dame, Shay.  Her playful spirit still lifts me up when I think about her.

My prince, Kennie A.  I’ll never stop missing that face.

You can share your thoughts on the ones Gone but not Forgotten with the community of the Weekly Photo Challenge and see other stories as well.

Have a good day everyone.

 

Signs: Hope in a door

Shared in the Weekly Photo Challenge. 

After almost four years waiting for a government agency to process a request for manfriend’s business they called him last week to tell him it had been cancelled (ETA:) on account of them not processing it within their own time limit. It does not affect the business running, thank God.
(I had detailed the whole thing in my first draft but it became the length of the bible.)

And this comes to no surprise to him or me or anyone that lives in this island where we know that the government doesn’t work in favor of the citizens.  In fact this is the tenth time something has gone horribly awry and one of his requests has been cancelled.   He could write a book.

I almost expected it.  But it doesn’t make it any easier and it certainly does not reduce my desire to go there and eat someone.

A few days ago I saw this on the entrance of his business plant.  He says it’s there almost every day.  In Spanish we call it esperanza which means hope.

I took it as a sign that even though it seems so terribly difficult, we can hope to get over this too.

Have a great day.