Thought that Counts – Tell Me Another One

How many times in our lives have we heard that particular phrase, “It’s the thought that counts.” Be that as it may, how often do we actually appreciate the thought behind some of the things that is phrase is often applied to? Seriously, not many people actually appreciate the thought and effort that goes into doing things.

I have determined that next year, if any one gets a gift from me at all, it will be in cash. Probably no more than $10 or $15. I am not being cheap, I am poor so I really can’t afford to actually give a lot of money to people and I try to spend no more than $10-$15 on presents per person, with some exceptions. Children are easier to buy for than adults so they will still get actual presents, but the adults are getting fussy.

And by adults, I mean one person. One person who believes in name brands and stuff that I just can’t bring myself to care about. I don’t care about Gucci sunglasses nor Louis V’s purses.  In her case, the thought doesn’t count. How do I know? You should have seen her face when she opened my present and when her husband opened my present.  It’s always great to see the look of disgust.  Which I don’t understand, because it was a really pretty shirt.  The best part came when she told her husband that he was not allowed to wear his present in her presence.

Oh please. The thought that counts? Indeed. Nope, I think next year, I’ll put all my effort into the homemade Christmas cards I didn’t bother doing this year (much to the disappointment of a few family members shockingly enough.)

Am I being vindictive? Just a little. But, you know, I am sick of this accepting gifts graciously to your face and bad-mouthing behind the back. So, commercially, screw Christmas. It isn’t about presents but about love and remembering the importance of the holiday anyways.

Word of the Day

Being the nut that I am, I watch a lot of anime and Asian drama, even some Asian reality shows.  The more I watch, the more I pick up on certain words.  With subtitles, and understanding the situations these words are constantly being used in, I garner understanding  and am slowly building up a (pathetically puny) arsenal of words in Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin.

Today’s Word of the Day:
Chingu (chin-gu) 친구

After watching 12+ episodes of Taste Sweet Love, I have come to learn the word “chingu” which means friend in Korean.  I am excited every time I can recognize a new word. Maybe my capacity for learning languages isn’t as deplorable as I thought, then again, probably not. My German and Spanish are practically nonexistent.

Unnecessarily Complicated

“Love and marriage, love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage . . .”

Ah, the good old days of watching the Bundys.  Not that this has anything to do with what I am talking about.  I just find the expectations placed on people amusing. And by expectations, I am referring to love, marriage, and children. Quite honestly, I do not understand the attraction of either marriage or children.

Gasp! Heaven forbid that I as a female would say that I do not believe in marriage and children. That makes me unnatural. Well, not that I truthfully care what others think, but I believe being “unnatural” is better in this day and age.  With an absurdly high divorce  rate, I have no intention of jumping into marriage or even getting married at all.

I have seen marriages fail. Multiple times. I have seen people together who should never have married in the first place and now live together in misery because they don’t want to admit they made a mistake. Divorce is wrong.  No, divorce is not wrong. Rushing into marriage before discussing the important things is wrong. But what would I know?

Well, let’s see. My parents were extremely incompatible and probably should have never married. When my dad remarried, it was like repeating the same mistake over. So, at the ripe old age of 39, my dad has been thrice married, twice divorced, which is better than my cousin’s track record who has been thrice married, twice divorced at a much younger age.

Even though I grew up in the loving two parent home of my grandparents, I have come to realize that I have no desire to get married. I really also have no desire to have children either. I like kids, but I know that I am not mother material and that I honestly do not want to raise any. People believe I will change my mind. It is entirely possible, but not foreseeable for quite some time at least.

My elder sister is happily married and is now expecting her first child. I am happy that she has found love and is fulfilling her dream of becoming a mother. I am not envious of her and her spouse. Marriage and motherhood have always been her dreams, never mine. At one point I thought I had those dreams too, but really that was me accepting what other people thought, not what I actually desired.

I know that I am not alone in feeling this way, but it always irks me that people think that this mentality is not normal. Friends tell me I have to get married and have children, so our kids can be friends and grow up together. Unfortunately, for them, I don’t plan on changing my mind. If I do, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, but I have realized in the past few years, I honestly do not desire the institution of marriage nor do I wish to bear children and as the years pass, that seems to become more firmly  rooted, not less.

Let the chips fall where they may. No one knows what ride life has in store for them.

Experiment # 2

This experiment was one with rhyme. Internal versus end rhyme. I know how people today tend to dislike rhyme, mainly due to nursery rhyme and sing-song schemes which make reading poetry annoying.  So I challenged myself to see what I could do, and I thought I didn’t make it to childish.

 

And so now we are here:
I no longer me,
you no longer thee,
two combined to we

And yet . . .

I am still me, still she
you are still thee, still he.
Nothing has changed.

Everything has changed

We – two individuals.
We – two halves of the same whole.
This is where you and I end
because this is where “we” begin.

Codependency is fine
as long as I am still me, still she;
as long as you are still thee, still he.
As long as we don’t lose ourselves
in this amalgamation.

I (she) can live without you
I (we) does not want to.

This is the same for you (he), you (we).
That is you. That is me. This is we.

Teacher say what?

2/3, 2÷3. No matter what way you slice it, it means 2 divided by 3, which means the 2 is going inside the division box and the 3 is going on the outside.  I told my students the numerator of a fraction is always on the inside, the denominator always on the outside of the division box.  And if it is written out like the second one, the number to the left always goes inside and the number to the right of the sign always goes outside.

It is a pretty hard and fast rule. But I have that one person who loves to challenge me. And he isn't asking 'why,' but rather he is challenging me by saying that it isn't true. No. It is ALWAYS true. But for whatever reason, he and most of my students have a tendency to due the exact opposite, especially when the dividend is smaller than the divisor.

In developmental math we deal with positive numbers only, so my students know they always put the larger number first when subtracting.  They apply this logic with division as well, which makes no sense.  Sometimes you are going to get things that are less than one. Fractions and percents are technically less than one.  Heaven forbid.  I give them 7÷12 and ask them which number goes inside our division box. Their answer: 12.  They don't like to have numbers less than one apparently.  No. You have to deal with parts of wholes and not always wholes, which make them less than enthusiastic.

A whole semester has now passed, finals are looming and one of my fears (besides people royally screwing up area, perimeter, circumference, and radii/diameters) is that they'll go back to dividing wrong. We shall see, I suppose.

I have another student who challenges me, not with division, but saying that I have not told him how to do something properly.  I spend an entire half hour instructing these students on how to work things out step by agonizing step.  Granted, that is not a lot of time, given the amount of questions they have some days, but I go over formulas and setups, stressing each and every one.  When he said that the other day, I was like I just went over and over how to do these for an entire half hour.  And what, praytell, was he doing during that time?  Either listening to his MP3 player or messing around on his laptop.  So how is it ME not telling him what to do?

One day he got so fed up with me.  There was a breakdown of communication regarding finding the area and circumference of a circle and he was getting snotty with me telling me I was not explaining it right, that he was only doing it exactly the way I told him to.  And I must admit, my patience has run out with him (and with one or two others as well).  I got a little testy with him.  Not a solution, but by that time after explaining and re-explaining and doing more examples, I was just a little peeved. What to do?

Thank god the end of the semester is here.  There are students I'll miss and students that I can't wait to never see again.

Picture of the Month

http://bit.ly/6lsqi2

Seriously, I love this picture, it is awesome. This was taken in Overland Park, KS.  I found it on Bob Sommer's Uncommon Hours as I was adding it to NewPages Guide to Blogs by Poets and Writers.  Priceless and clever. Take a look.

Musing #1

I sometimes wonder what they are doing, how they are. Sometimes more than I am ever willing to admit. They were there, we were friends, but in the blink of an eye, all that seems to have disappeared. Apparently, absence does not make the heart grow fonder. No. It makes the heart forget. Or maybe it has shown that what you thought was real may have never existed. The great thing about that being that you will never know because it is doubtful the person will ever tell you themselves.

I am thinking about her again. Thinking and thinking, but not talking. I don’t know what to say anymore. ‘I am sorry’ doesn’t seem quite right, I don’t think I have anything to apologize for. ‘I miss you’ sounds so inane, but it is surprisingly true. I miss her. She was my best friend for so long.

So what do you do after you lose touch? After a friendship has grown cold? I actually ventured onto Facebook to try to talk to her, but I just couldn’t figure out what to say. “Hi.” It is really inane and she probably won’t reply to me, she never has whenever I have tried talking to her before. I am sorry for that.

I wish we hadn’t grown apart. I wish we hadn’t stopped talking. I wish I knew why things ended up this way, but I don’t have a clue. So we remain as strangers who were once friends. High school acquaintances and nothing more. I wish it were more.

Another mystery that hurts my brain entirely too much.

You’re Beautiful

http://wiki.d-addicts.com/You%27re_Beautiful

In reference to the Korean drama, not the James Blunt song.  I have just finished watching the drama and was please with its outcome. At first I thought it was silly and ridiculous, but it hooks a viewer in.

The eye and ear candy helped of course. Jang Geun Suk, Lee Hong Ki, Park Shin Hye, and Jung Yong Hwa did an excellent job posing as a band and their singing was awesome.  I love the soundtrack. The only bad part is like all soundtracks, it doesn’t have all the music you want, but at least it has most of it.  I really want the Jang Geun Suk version of “What Can I Do?” a very poignant song about losing the person you love and watching helplessly as they do so.

Now, if only I actually understood Korean a little more than I do. I really do enjoy their dramas.  Taiwanese and Japanese dramas are good too.  And why I am watching foreign dramas versus American?

1. Most of the American dramas I like get cancelled

2. The rest turn to crap because of interminable seasons where writers manage to screw up what was once enjoyable.

Definitely something to check out.  There are a lot of websites with English subtitles now.