Patricia Danielle

interesting how so many things i detested while i was growing up, are practically my favorite things ever right now….such as:

*talk/sports radio-i used to HATE when my dad would listen to it while i was in the car. hated it. but these days i love it. i crave it. i need it. if im not on a constant information overload, i go into a panic. kind of like today when i got back from lunch and learned that every streaming audio radio station online has been blocked by the place where i work. are you kidding me? i almost had a panic attack. i checked every website that i had saved. none of them worked. none of them. then i started freakishly checking the rest of the internet world…….nothing would work. until i finally hit the jack pot. thank you IOWA you saved my life. if only i could have taped the whole thing to really get you to understand the short breathing and panic that was running through my blood. imagine me with no chapstick within arm’s reach and you’re seeing the picture clearly!

*no calls after 10pm- if someone is calling me after 10pm, it better be someone who is drunk and needs a ride, or the lord god himself. if im not asleep by 10pm, believe me, i should be. and by ‘i should be’ i mean, i shouldnt be held responsible for anything i say after 10pm or before 510am. i thought this was the stupidest thing in the world when i was in high school. EVERYTHING happened after 10pm. i HAD to be out or on the phone after 10pm. had to. but 10pm these days means in bed and under the electric blanket, not sitting next to the phone waiting for boys to call. thank god for growing up.

last week, while i was down at the beach, i missed a couple of calls from gina. i tried calling back, but there is something about urgency that disables my phone from correct usage.

the next morning at work, i called her back. as i started to explain about the nonfunctionality of my phone the previous night, she broke in with:

“he asked me.”

“when? how?”

“yesterday, in vegas. he asked if i would go to italy with him, then he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.”

i started to cry. in a happyway. and in a sad way too. 

i love steven with gina. i love steven for gina. and i knew engagement was on its way. my prediction was that it’d be by Christmas.

as i listened to the rest of her engagment story, i grew selfish. i started thinking about our silly spend-over nights together. the ones where she brings out silly old pictures and letters from high school. the ones where she asks me to re-tell her stories from india and from spain. the ones where we talk about her trip to see me in japan. and then we turn off the lights, ready for bed, and talk and talk until one of us drifts off. but those days are soon to be gone. we wont be sleeping together anymore. they will have a marriage bed and i will have to stay in “trisha’s room” on ‘trisha’s bed” in the new house. the wedding, which will take place in italy, wont happen until sometime next year in late spring, so ive still got a couple of nights left with her and laughing. ill have to take advantage of that.

i remember when my old roommate tracie, who got married in peru, came home for a visit with her husband last christmas time. after sitting at church listening to them do question and answer time with some of their partners and friends, i drove home in a daze on the verge of tears. it had finally hit me that she was MARRIED and that those nights of sitting at the dining room, talking about EVERYTHING, were forever over. there will never be another night of her and i in that apartment as roommates, who were basically at the same point in life. she was MARRIED…..it kept hitting me.

so, the last week, ive been thinking the same thing about gina. she’s ENGAGED. soon, she’ll be MARRIED, too. there’s not one tiny bit of me that is jealous about that. but there is one tiny bit of me, ok its bigger than a little tiny bit, that is having to “deal” with it the whole fact. bratty….i know.

last night i went to her house with feelings in tow. the family was at the dinner table, steven too. we sat there and talked about their trip, their plans, their house, their love. later, she pulled up the wedding dress that she wants on a bridal website and we talked about how skinny the model wearing it was. then she turned to me and asked me, her best friend, to be her maid of honor.

“yes. of course.” then i got misty eyed again. just like im doing now.

when i got ready to leave, i hugged steven and told him that he was now part of the family, and that includes me. he smiled and said that he knew, and that it was a good family to be a part of.

is there any question that i happen to think the same?

these days, marriages seem to be ending like classic sitcoms on the WB. i dont like it. it messes up my understanding of marriage. and my one time belief that most american men and women would make good husbands and wives. the basis for this belief is that most of the guys i know would make awesome husbands/dads and most of the girls i know would make great wives/moms.

but now, things are all fuzzy. “perfect for each other”, may just not be.

and when did people start to use the word “divorce” as a bargaining tool. as if that is a bargain. divorce seems pretty expensive to me. its sad. and i can see how much relationships need something WAY beyond love or fun in order to last. they need god. they need belief. they need a committment to more than just each other. there needs to be a belief that someone higher and more in control than a simple human, knows that two people belong together….forever.

it makes me sad. and mad. and heart-broken. mostly because i come from the line of thinking that any two people can make it work. but thats the key word, WORK. of course im one of the last people that should be validating marriages or the work i think it takes to keep them in tact, considering i am not married and have never been.

so here’s the the world of married people:

 i need you to work on it. make the rest of us believe that we have a hope. make us believe that our marriages are not doomed from the get-go because of the horrible statistics.

love, the “still” singles of america

i used to have another online diary, but sometime in july, the whole thing came up missing one day. i just found a few entries on a random disc in my desk (im cleaning!) and im posting them here, now:

My green raver pants

Geez Im so antsy right now. There is nothing for me to do unless I want to prepare for lessons next week, and if I do that now, what will I do then? So, Ill sit and write. I have ben reading my open-diary while I sit at my desk, since I downloaded it to my laptop. I like readin about all thethings from 2 years ago! Boy how things have changed. You know, I am not kidding when I say that all I used to eat is candy. So much of my diary is filled with some comment about candy~I love it. But, Im trying to tone it down. Its not as easy as you would think, considering this last weekend was Easter and 4 people sent me Easter packages! I keep thinking that I will stop, and then something else with more candy comes along. I am thankful for it all, but I kind of want to think that everyone is sabbotaging me?!!? I think I am doing better because I am wearing a pair of pants that were tight on me before. These particular pants have to be a little tight in comparison to the way I like my pants to fit……but they also have to be loose too. This is why. I lost the button. So, I have a safety pin holding them in place of the button. Well, if they are too tight, I cant pull them down to go to the bathroom…I d have to go through undoing the safety pin and then redoing it….and with the amount of times I have to pee in a day, this just wont work. Then, again, they have to be tight enough to stay up with the safety pin. So………I was thinking on the way to school today that it may be time to sew a button on the bad-boys!

We’re moving

Apparently, April in Japan is a time for change! I could go into a bunch of reasons why I say this, but Ill just include one. This one. The one about the desks in the teachers room. Mine hasnt changed locations. I have to admit that the idea of looking at the window all day sounds way better than staring at he school servant, but then again, its nice to be in a familiar location. Well, yesterday brought a change of location for the 3 desks that blong to the school manager. Im not sure why he needs 3 desks, 2 computers, and 2 full size printers on his desks, but thats the way it is. Well, yesterday the moving began. It bacame a major deal. It took him a couple of hours to figure out the best way. I dont think I would agree that the way he decided on is the best……and here’s why. One of the desks is about 18 inches from the door. Its takes some major diving in order to not be hit on either side as people try to use the door to get out of the teachers room. In America, this would never do. I myself find that I am a larger size than most everyone here, just imagine someone who wighed more than me. Iguess no one else thinks anything of it, like its normal to have to dodge sides of desks as you walk. Whatever, I guess it is fine. It certainly not fire-dept approved, thats for SURE! But, its school manager approved and thats all that matters.

Trade

Today I traded a bean-jam filled pastry thing for a green bread cream filled cake.Believe me, I got the better end of the deal~

the cousin i am closest to, amanda, got married 5 years ago. today, kylee, her oldest child, is turning 4 years old.

when i heard amanda was pregnant, i was super-duper excited! it was the first time someone really close to me was pregnant. i visited amanda week after week while she was pregnant. i called her all the time to be sure she was ok and always sat and listened to her talk about baby things.

on june 4, i got the call that she was on her way to the hospital. i got directions and after work, i headed straight over. but before showing up, i had to stop to get SOMETHING for her. i hate showing up to anything empty handed. this was a big occasion so i grabbed a bag of those reeses peanut butter bites, her absolute favorite, and a stick on bow.

i showed up at the hospital around 7pm. she had been there since 4 or 5 and wasn’t near delivery. she sat there just as happy as could be. (she had had drugs by this time!) the hospital room was pretty big and at one time, there were up to 10 or 12 people in the room just hanging out. im pretty sure i didnt stop talking from the time i showed up, until the time finally caught up with me and i started to doze after mid-night. i couldnt stay awake any longer.

the baby came within an hour or so. when i finally saw her, i didnt want to leave. she was tiny. she was also nameless. by this time it was between ’emily may’ and ‘kylee may.’ it didnt take long for ryan and amanda to settle on kylee may.

that first week, i saw her every day. the following couple of months, twice a week. up to a year, about once a week, sometimes more. i spent nights watching her and dragging her in her carseat all over with me. i was in love. around 1 and a half or 2, I spent my first over-night with her. it consisted of lots of her hitting me (mostly in the face) and kicking me, too. she would wake up every so often, start to cry, and i would just say her name over and over, cuddle next to her, and she would settle down.

being away from her for the last 2 years has been hard. im connected. i think about her a lot. she is the #3 reason i want to be at home. #1 god.  #2. grandma. #3.kylee.

today she’s 4 years old! i love her. miss her. when she got the bday package i sent, amanda called me in japan and left a message saying she had gotten it. then she passed the phone over to kylee and by the promptings of her mother, her raspy little voice said “i love you. i miss you. come home soon!” it was a message that made me want to rip the tape out of the answering machine,  and save it forever.

then i remembered, im going home. soon ill have all i can take of that little voice. of that little girl.

can’t wait.

moka is dark at night. really dark. not many street lights and hardly any stop-lights either. the only way i can run at night is because i know the path. that and i know i am safe here. super safe. i used to run at night down by the LA fair. in pomona. with head-phones blaring a fast run mix of music. stupid. one of those things i am sure my parents faught with me about, told me not to do it, and then i looked at them and said something about how old i was, that it was fine, pressed play on my water-proof sony walk-man, and took off for a 4 mile run.

one time i invited jeremiah gill to go running with me. we got a mile and a half into the run and i gave him the option of making a U-turn for a 3 mile run, or running all the way around the fair-grounds for a 4 mile run. he chose the 4 miles. as we got further and further into the run, he went faster and faster. this is not my norm. usually, i find a slower-steadier pace as i reach the end of a run. the whole time i was running to keep up with him. it made me feel like a girl. here was this guy who never ran, who could go the same distance i ran every day, and run it faster than me, all the while making it look effortless.

once we got back to my house, jeremiah went straight to the bathroom and stayed in there for a good 20-25 minutes. the toilet flushed a bunch of times and the sink got turned on and off on and off. every so often, i would knock lightly on the door and ask him if he was ok. he always said he was. when he finally emerged from the bathroom, he looked as if he had just run a marathon with his shirt, neck, head, face drenched in sweat and/or water. ill never forget the look he gave me when our eyes finally met. it was a kind of “i hate you right now” look.

he got over it. but he never forgot it. we never ran together again. a few years later, i ran into one of his friends in town. we got to talking about high school and people and other sllinesses of the times. i told him how i was doing bikram yoga and he asked me if i still ran.

“yeah, i do. how do you know that i run?”

“jeremiah gill told me that one time you took him on a long run and ran so fast that he got super sick trying to keep up with you.”

funny, because i figured he had just taken time in the restroom to catch his breath and wash his face with cold water. i didnt know he was trying to save face from being out-run by a “girl.”

i love being a girl.

my nights swimming at the gym always remind me of the swim teams i swam for when i was younger. it seems that every time i have been into swimming, i have had really long hair…. 6th grade, freshman year of high school…now. and, as sure as i am that there are children sizes an adult sizes for caps, there is positively no cap size for “adult with extra hair” cap. there just isnt. i remember all of the times before swim meets that my mom would be stretching out my swim cap, determined to get it on in order for it to last, at MAX, four laps, before I was out of the pool, yanking it off after each race. it was one of those things that called for additional help. like the time when i was 12, and I had to get a shot before getting stitches in my hand. nurses….doctor….mom, all holding me down…for A SHOT.

since the long hair is back, so are the issues with the stupid swim cap and trying to fit my hair into it.ive come to the realization that it just isnt meant to be. if it were, im sure the cap would stay on for more than one lap. so, ive had to do some adjusting, but now i seem to be on track. well, that is until i swim 14 laps. because once i finish that 14th lap, all logic and reason goes out the…..my head and body. my flips start coming unwound and my breathing sequence gets all………mumbled up. i usually like to swim 20 laps in a row before taking a rest, so those last 6 laps are just, me looking kind of like a dolphin on crack preforming at sea world. in other words, not good. but, i can usually push through those last 6 laps with the help of all the chuckling i am doing underwater at how my swim techniques are unraveling.

that’s  why, tonight when i finished my laps (around 40 total) and was getting out of the pool, i was shocked, giddy, and suprised to hear, “swim good, very good” from a japanese “water-walker” man in lane 1. im telling you, sometimes these people just knock off my socks with the nice things they say. other times, id like to knock them out for the not-so-nice things they say. i guess its all about give and take.

I just returned from a month long trip in India. It was a life-long dream of mine to be able to trek the Himalayas in India. My trek began in Song, a very small village in Uttaranchal, and ended in Jageshwar 3 weeks later.

The experience was more than memorable, it was life altering. I am an American, currently living in Japan, teaching English at a junior high school. Though I have traveled to other third world countries, including Mexico and Egypt, nothing could have prepared me for the daily life of the Indian village people. It was shocking and beautiful all at the same time. I found beauty in the tanned faces of the people and the sarees and gold jewelry worn by the women. I could see it in the pride of the citizens for their country and the very developed educational system. Beauty was in the temples found every hundered meters and the Himalayan mountain range that sat in their backdrop. Still, there were shocking views too. Most all of the physical labor was done by the women and children, whose hands showed every day of it. The poverty of the country should not be summed up in words, but left to pictures of children wearing the same clothes amd flip-flops, if any shoes at all, for months at a time. All the while, they feed their tummys with the same thing for every meal, every day. When I used to see commercials stating that a family could be fed for $0.40 a day, I was always sceptical until I walked through villages where I realized half of that amount is a fortune in their eyes, and even ate some meals myself for a mere $0.03.

I was lucky, in that, I was able to spend one whole month in India and over half of that time trekking. Beyond the beautiful faces I saw, and warm hearted people I met, I fell in love with the colors and sights of India’s mountain region as well. The first time I saw the clouds part and the Himalayan peaks break through, it was quite simply, majestic.

I encourage everyone to visit India. My recommendation is to read about the country, its politics, culture, and the major religions of each region before going. English is spoken in almost every inch of the country and having knowledge of the things of India will give you a wide array af topics to discuss with the nationals.

i used to have this idea. this idea that, i would fall for ANYONE who would find and then tell me about a song that be could use to eplain his feelings for me. that is, until Brad W. did it senior year. He brought me a dozen roses in a vase, a card, (the best card EVER…on the front was a boy sanding on the beach, looking out to a whale in the water, and on the inside it said “wish you werent so far away”) and the Clint Black Greatest Hits CD.

Inside the card he wrote:

Listen to #1.

Love, Bradley

Turns out, number 1 was, Like the Rain….here are a few ofthe lyrics that were supposed to touch my heart:

I never liked the rain until I walked through it with you
Every thunder cloud that came was one more I might not get through
On the darkest day there’s always light and now I see it too
But I never liked the rain until I walked through it with you

Like the rain I have fallen for you and I know just why you
Liked the rain always calling for you I’m falling for you now

Surprise Surpirse, it didnt do the trick. The moment I knew I didnt want to be with Brad was when we were in his moms firebird on the way to senior prom, and i looked down at his hand while it rested on the shifter. I thought, “I dont want to hold his hand forever!” It was set from then on…..if I didnt want to hold his hand forever, I sure as heck wouldnt have wanted to hold it just for awhile as we dated. There was nothing wrong with his hand, it wasnt dry….he didnt have dirty nails….he didnt pick at his cuticles like I now do……but there was something in that instant, that just MADE ME KNOW. Looking back, I think there were times when he and I held hands. I mean, we went to prom together, so Im pretty sure I dragged him by the hand ALL OVER that place, I seem to do that a lot.

All that said, I was listening to the The Postal Service, and really LISTENED to the song “Such Great Heights.”

I, I’m thinking it’s a sign
that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images
and when we kiss they’re perfectly aligned
I, I have to speculate
that God himself did make
us into corresponding shapes
like puzzle pieces from the clay

I began thinking…..”if someone EVER said something like that to me, I would melt like chocolate between a graham craker and roasted marshmallow.”

someday…..my little “if he, then i” wishes will come true. i just know it.

on 27 already.

i havent been crying….but something last night did cause a tear. right now i cant remember what it was.

ive never, as far as i can remember, been an extemely emotional person. though, when i look back to the times in my life when tears were a flowin’, my mom has been there…..

exibit #1- in 6th grade i joined the fontana swim team. my mom, like always, was very involved. she helped tally the times and the scores and all that jazz, though she always stopped to watch me in my freestyle and back-stroke and breast-stroke races. My very last race of the season, i looked up after swimming and noticed my mom was sitting at the little table, clearly not paying attention to me and my race. i remember walking over to her after it and telling her she had missed my race. i cried.

exibit #2- in 8th grade, my family moved to laverne. since i was used to attending a new school at the start of every school year, it wasn’t new to be finding myself dropped off by my mom at Ramona Middle School on the first day of school as the new girl. when we pulled up to the curb i stared at the school, grabbed the door-handle, and waited about 15 seconds before tears started to fall. im pretty sure it tore my moms heart out. it was the first time i wasnt excited about everything being new and there was nothing she could do about it. i remember me saying something like “dont make me go” to no avail. i got out of the car and ended up spending the next 5 years of school in laverne.

exibit #3- in July of 2001, michael and i broke up. it was a big deal. a big deal. it was my first (and in my head/heart, my last) “grown-up” relationship. he and i were friends, boyfriend/girlfriend, and we worked together. the break-up was torture. every day. i cried every day for 6 weeks. in defense of myself….you know, to show how tuff i am, after the 16 or so times that we got back together….for a day, a month…or heck, a phone-call…i was the one that threw out the final “you are not who i want to be with. its really over.” anyway, i think i made it through a week or so of “im tough enough to deal with this myself” before i broke down and called my mom….at work….at a job where she COULD talk on the phone but only for like 3 minutes. 3 minutes of me sobbing….unbreatheable….untalkable….no-sense-making crying. the phone call ended with a “i love you hunny, but i have to go.” she never thought he was “the one” ayway!

last and final exibit #4- during christmas break, the whole tsunami thing happened. as i heard about it…and the numbers/casulties/horrible things  rose……i watched….listen….heard. then, one morning, while watching some coverage about it on BBC. i lost it. between gasps for air while i cried, i prayed. then i picked up the phone and called my mom. all i could get out was “we should pray.” we did, she did. when we hung up, the tears had finally stopped.

crying…..my mom…..sad times….good times…needed times.

i was thinking about all of these times the other day while i was in class. at first i started thinking….why do the times when i have been crying, remind me of my mom? then, when i thought about it, it was for good reasons. mom reasons. daughter mom reasons.