Pet Peeve: People Who Don't Cover Their Mouth When They Cough

You'd think that with all the scary news about swine flu, people would be more vigilant about covering their nasty coughs or sneezes when they're out in public. Not so, unfortunately. It just repulses me how self-centered people are that they don't think they need to cover their mouth or face when they sneeze or cough. And it doesn't matter if they have allergies and are not technically sick- no one wants to breathe into someone else's snot or spit. A few recent examples:

My husband and I were in Mountain View a few weekends ago. We decided to have lunch at a Chinese restaurant. So the waitress seated us and a minute later, she came out of the kitchen with this bowl of kim chee in her hand. She was coughing right into the bowl as if somehow the bowl was the substitute for her hand. And then she set the bowl on our table- I guess the pickled vegetables were our free appetizer. Um, no, thank you. And then the waitress just continued pacing around the dining room coughing into the air without covering her mouth. I told my husband that if this is how they treat the food in front of the diners, I didn't want to know what goes on in the kitchen. So we just told the waitress we had to leave and she looked offended.

Just last week, I was having lunch with one of my friends at a restaurant in Santa Clara. Both my friends and I are in our third trimesters of pregnancy. Anyway, halfway through our lunch, this woman who sat across from us turned to us and sneezed right in our direction. My friend had this ew expression on her face. Apparently, it was a big sneeze, the kind with snot flying all over the place, and that woman didn't bother covering her face. I just said aloud, "It's so rude how some people don't cover their mouth when they sneeze. Don't they know that's how germs get spread?" That woman was totally oblivious to what I'd just said and just continued stuffing herself with food.

And then today, I was at Andronico's in Palo Alto picking up some ready-made sushi (just a California roll made with imitation crab, nothing raw of course) and then a well-dressed man came up next to me and coughed right in my face- I actually felt the wind from his cough on my cheeks. Gross! I just walked away, but I was really itching to say, "Cover your mouth, asshole."

So I went home and read an article published today about how five pregnant Bay Area women have contracted swine flu. Now, I know a lot of people say that the swine flu has been hyped up, how more people have died from the regular flu each year than the swine flu. And I can certainly see this point. But you can get vaccinated for the regular flu- at this time, there isn't a vaccination for the swine flu. The article prudently advises people who are sick to just stay home or at least cover their coughs. For some reason, I don't think sick people are actually doing this, just because it appears that the disease is not being contained.

For anyone who cares, here's a link to the Cover Your Cough posters- what's cool is that they come in a variety of languages. You can print them out and hang them out at your work, or school, at the grocery store, at restaurants.

From Yahoo!-- 8 Toxic personalities to avoid

I just read an interesting article/blog post on Yahoo! about toxic personalities.

The author, Brett Blumenthal, writes about 8 types of people: the Manipulative Mary, Narcissistic Nancy, Debbie Downer, Judgmental Jim, Dream Killing Keith, Insincere Illissa, Disrespectful Danny, and Never Enough Nellies. Knowing and having known some people who fall into these personality types, I agree with the author when she said that the more these people get away with, the more they will continue their toxic behavior. What I've learned through the years is that I have a choice in the role I play in most relationships when I simply choose to avoid contact with someone who is toxic. I was quickly skimming the 600+ comments left on the blog post, and I could empathize with some of the posters who said they have had experiences with co-workers, roommates, friends, and boyfriends who fit these toxic personalities. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I see myself as being a fairly nice and flexible person, and perhaps being the Friendly Fanny that I am might have made me a magnet for toxic types in the past.

Notice that I have said I have a choice in the role I play in most relationships, but not in all relationships. Sometimes you don't get to choose. Some of the other posters lamented about their helplessness from being in a relationship with an individual that they're related to. Many complained about their parents, usually their mothers. I can relate. I love my mom, but growing up and even now still, my mom has always been a Never Enough Nellie with me. There's almost always something she needs to nit-pick about me, from my handwriting to my hair to my hobbies to my style of clothes to my posture to my bedroom furniture.

At times, my mom has also been a Manipulative Mary. When I was planning my wedding years ago, she criticized and needed to be in on every single decision I made, from the invitations to the guest list to my bridesmaids' dresses to my make up artist to my bridal gown. The original gown that I'd bought was a creamy white Grecian-styled dress that made me feel like I'd descended from Mount Olympia when I was wearing it. The dress was elegant and sophisticated with a simple form-fitting cut. I wanted to steer clear of the typical poofy Disney princess-style ballgowns. But day and night, night and day my mom insisted that the dress I chose did not look like a real wedding dress and therefore I wouldn't look like a real bride, that people would talk about me behind my back for wearing a dress that was cream-colored versus a blinding starchy white that real brides wore, that I was going to ruin my own wedding by blending in with the guests wearing the "dull" dress that I selected. You have to get a new dress! You must get a new dress! Her constant nagging was like a broken alarm clock with a shrill 24/7 ring challenging my delicate ear drums.To make her go on snooze, I finally agreed to return to the bridal store where she aggressively insisted that I go home with a typical, poofy Disney princess-style dress. So the dress I wore on my wedding day was the dress of my mother's dreams, not mine.

I can't change who my mother is, but I've learned that I can change my response to her Manipulative Mary or Never Enough Nellie-like tendencies. Borrowing the motto from the late Ronald Reagan's passionate war on drugs, I've learned that I can "just say no." Easier said than done when it comes to dealing with my mom though. Shortly after my husband and I moved into our new home, we spent the first couple of months sleeping in an old bed in the guest bedroom while we window-shopped for a bed suitable for our master bedroom. My mom kept insisting that we get a queen-sized bed for the lame reason that our house would look bigger to visitors if we had small pieces of furniture. My mom worries a lot about what others think of her and my sister and me, but I don't give a rat's ass. It also bugged me that she was being so pushy about what bed my husband and I were to get because when you think about it, the choice of a newlywed bed is actually a private decision. Much different than say, choosing a magazine rack for the guest bathroom. So my husband and I splurged and got a spacious Cal-king bed where I could spread myself out on Sunday mornings and make mattress sheet angels without whacking my sleeping Hunky Hubby in the face. Shortly after we got our bed, my mom called and asked me if we had purchased a bed yet. So I told her we'd just bought a big Cal-king bed. I also told a white lie and added that the store doesn't accept returns, (just in case she was about ready to wind up that shrill alarm clock again). She was silent for a moment and then quietly said with disdain, "I wish you spoke to me first before you got that bed."

Maybe I sound like an Ungrateful Ursula right now, but I do appreciate my mom in certain ways. And I try to see that she behaves the way she does with me because she wants to feel as if she's important in my life. And there's other stuff too, mostly because she worries about what others think and I don't....

....So now that I'm going to be a mother, I think a lot about the kind of parent I want to be. I don't claim to know how to be a perfect mom, and I don't plan for my child and I to be "best friends." There will be days when I'll have to be tough. But I know what my general objectives are. Unlike my mom, whose main objective seemed to be to teach me how to be a yes-girl, my parenting objectives would be to teach my child to be assertive, confident and focused so she could develop herself to her fullest potential. I also want to teach her to have a thick skin so she would not let allow the Narcissistic Nancys, Judgmental Jims, Manipulative Marys, and the other toxic personalities of the universe bring her down.

Today I Feel: Thankful

I was just corresponding with another fellow blogger via twitter recently, and she wanted to know if the dreaded medical condition I was referring to last fall was in fact my pregnancy. The answer is no. The medical condition I had and still have was something that gave me a slew of unattractive, uncomfortable, and at times embarrassing symptoms. My OB/GYN says these symptoms become "silent" during pregnancy, but they're going to return after I have my baby and am done nursing. ICK. But my doctor has told me to just worry about that later, and to enjoy my pregnancy in the meanwhile.

When I think about how far my body has taken me, from the dysfunctional pit it was in last fall to the sweet and promising pre-natal stage it is at now, I feel very thankful to God and medical science for taking me as far as I have. When I pray to God, I constantly tell Him how much this means to me. All I can hope for now is to continue on with a safe and healthy pregnancy, and like my doctor said, I'd just worry about the other stuff later on.

Neatness...by Nature or Nurture?

Chaos is the natural order of the universe. I'd always referred to this proverb to justify why I didn't need to clean out my desk, book shelves, make-up bag, lingerie drawer, e-mail inbox, you name it.

Organizing now= means later having to dig out everything in search of something that I'd neatly tucked away

But now that I'm expecting a baby, the neat freak that had been dormant inside me all these years is coming out. My big project has been to clean out my home office to make room for a nursery. So recently, I cleaned out the huge office cabinet that I used as a book shelf. From that, I gathered three boxes of stuff to donate. But I still have about seven boxes of stuff, mostly books, that I intend to keep- two boxes are filled with textbooks, teaching materials and lesson plans that I'd like to have around and five boxes are filled with the books I can't bear to part with- pleasure reading books, writers' reference texts, binders of semi-useful materials I'd printed from my online writing classes, and my prized collection of an old school Time-Life book series that I got on a ridiculously high bid on eBay. The two boxes of teacher stuff is going back into the office cabinet, which will all relocate to the musty dusty garage. My husband's stuff would occupy the other shelves in the cabinet later on. But still, I have five boxes of books plus half-a-dozen unboxed scrapbooks without a place to go. My husband suggested that I put those in the musty dusty garage too. And I said, hells naw.

So right now I'm trying to find a small bookshelf in the house and perhaps a stylish storage unit for my scrapbooks and photo albums. I've been visiting furniture stores, office-supply venues, even going on Craigslist, and I haven't seen anything that really caught my eye. My ideal bookshelf would have sliding doors- my inner neat freak wants to prevent my stuff from collecting dust. And the anal part of me doesn't want the grimy hands of children or careless guests going through some of my more treasured books lest they try to borrow one of them and return it with *GASP* a dented spine, a beaten-up cover, or dark unidentifiable muck in the crisp white pages.

Surprisingly, I found some decent models for shelves and cabinets online at Ikea. I say surprisingly because my husband and I got our nightstands from Ikea shortly after we moved into our house. They were about fifty bucks apiece, and I remember thinking then, what a steal! I wasn't suspicious of the quality of these nightstands even when my husband said that a lot of the assembly required simply Elmer's glue. Weeks after the nightstand was assembled, I reached for my nasal spray in the top drawer one drowsy morning only to have the drawer topple out of its frame. What a way to wake up. More touch-ups with the Elmer's glue later on didn't fix the problem. So if I were to buy anything from Ikea again, I'd proceed with extreme caution.

I also need to work on my powers of persuasion to get my dear husband to clean out the stuff from the soon-to-be-nursery and our Harry Potter closet underneath our stairs. My husband is an avid Lakers' fan and he keeps the team's gold and purple t-shirts, jerseys and gear in the soon-to-be-nursery's closet. But he doesn't actually wear this stuff out. So I suggest, why don't we just frame this stuff on our bare walls? And my husband gives me his version of hells naw. And I say, why not? And he says he just doesn't want to. So then I ask him to clean out the Harry Potter closet, which is eventually going to be home to a plastic Christmas tree, seasonal decorations, children's Halloween costumes, board games, pool toys, and the such. Right now, it's filled with my his old high school and college work and boxes of textbooks. I ask him to keep one valued item from each class and throw out the rest. He says, he can't. The teacherly part of me wants to declare, "There's no such word as CAN'T!" But instead, I drop the subject and revisit it again later on, and then we have the same conversation all over again.

I guess the neat freak bug had only kicked in for one of us so far.

Changes and News

Thanks to Nicci and Shirlene for commenting on my last post. Reading your comments gave me a chance to reflect on how much I've changed, how much things have changed from years past. I appreciated your insights.........

.....I really admire people who can blog regularly because I'm not one of them. Since the beginning of this year, I've been struggling to decide what to do about my other blog, the fun blog (this one here is my serious blog). So much has been happening (and more on that in the next paragraph) that I just haven't had time to write about my shopping, eating and spa adventures on that other blog. Not to mention that I notice that I've enjoyed some of my experiences much more when I'm not eagerly taking pictures of everything or jotting down mental notes of how to recapture the experience in a blog post later on. Reading in the news about our struggling economy and hearing all the sad stories about people who have lost their jobs makes me less eager to write about indulging in $25 eye shadows or five-star dinners. So I recently came to the conclusion to put that other blog on hiatus. I still own the domain name for about six more months and during this time, I'm going to decide whether to keep it, do a 180 degree remodeling of the site and/or change the focus of the blog. I've also considered selling the domain name, if I can figure out how to do this. (Besides, anyone who knows me knows that I'm not just about makeup, spa and food. I have other hobbies too!) Decisions, decisions! But I'm definitely going to keep Cyncake around. Wish blogging existed when I was in high school and college. Recently I was cleaning out my old room at my parents' place and I came across a few old diaries I'd kept through my adolescence. So much energy, excitement, rage, angst and wonder buried in those pages, so much that I'd kept only to myself during those years. How nice it would have been if I'd had a blog then.

I've also been extremely busy. Been busy getting rid of the clutter at our place. Been busy clearing out space in my home office for a nursery. So the happy news is that my husband and I are expecting a baby in the summertime. It's our first, so we're pretty excited. That's also why I wasn't eating out or even going out much in the beginning of the year because I had some major morning sickness, which was actually 24/7 sickness. Also why I couldn't blog about eating out if I wasn't doing it. And for the few times that I was eating out, I would chuck it all up right afterwards. Didn't want to mention that in my sunshine blog. Any pregnant woman would tell you what you can do at a spa is pretty limited once you're expecting, so I don't have much news to report on that end either except for the one mid-winter pregnancy massage and milk bath I had at Burke Williams. Haven't been investing in new beauty and pampering products at all lately- I suppose that happens when you decide you're rather save money for the new addition in your family. So all that explains why I haven't been girly blogging. I suppose when I'm done with this post, I'm going to head on over to my other blog and give a more general explanation about why I haven't been doing anything there. That's assuming that anyone still visits, as I haven't posted in almost half a year.

So I'm going to be a mother. I have so many juicy thoughts and feelings about this-perhaps that could be for another post. Or many other posts from thereon.

Things that hold me back, Part 1

Sometimes there's this nagging feeling that follows me around. It comes and goes and it seems like it's gone for good, and then it comes back. Think of how it'd be like to look at a really awful school picture of yourself from years ago (gaaaaaaaahhhh) and magnify that feeling to the square power, and that's how I feel about my past self sometimes. Except sometimes when I look back, it's not at pictures of myself that I find fault with, but it's at how I was like before as a person. A lot of frustrations I have with myself have a lot to do with how I wasn't always able to articulate what I wanted for myself while growing up. And repeatedly, I've found that when I didn't assert myself or firmly state what I wanted, I made myself a target for being hurt by others.

Growing up, I've had some good experiences with my parents and some horrible experiences. Notice that I don't say bad experiences, but horrible. Although it wouldn't be completely fair for me to blame my parents for why I was the way I was, I'd be lying if I said they had nothing to do with any of it. Without getting into specifics, my parents made a lot of so-called "parenting choices" that didn't exactly benefit me. I knew it then, and now that I look back on it, I can really see how certain things they did to discipline and raise me were wrong. As in Dr. Phil-would-shake-his-head-at-you-and-click-his-tongue wrong. And yet, after all they put me through, I still care about them, though I care more when I don't have to see them all the time So what I got from the weirdness of my upbringing is that I could still have affection for people who mistreat me. So imagine how this notion transferred itself to the way I related to peers.

It's kind of funny how when I meet people nowadays and I try to hint at how I used to be so un-social and un-witty, some people wouldn't believe me. So I guess the good news is that through the years, through moving out of my parents' house, and finally living my life for ME, that has helped me a bit. There are still days when I regress a little, but I think I've made progress.

So why has that nagging feeling been coming back? Oh, I don't know... sometimes I worry about running into people who knew me at my worst, which unfortunately, was not a one-time affair. Just the anticipation of seeing these people makes me feel like ugh, like I want to become invisible in the worst way. Maybe I fear that just seeing one of them would be enough to take me back to how I used to be. Sometimes I think about certain things, and I'd be mad at certain people all over again, for how they treated me, and then sometimes I'd be mad at myself for letting some of that crap happen in the first place.

I've worked hard not to let myself be defined by who or what I used to be. But sometimes, little reminders pop up and then I'm there again. I pray that God will give me the strength to move forward and make progress with all of my current pursuits. I pray that my past wouldn't hold me back. I hope that someday, I can look back fondly on those dark times and see how they helped prepare me to become the level-headed and thick-skinned person I strive to be today.

Newsweek Guest Columnist: Chris Buice

Earlier this week, I was flipping through my Newsweek magazine when I came across a guest column written by Chris Buice, the minister of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville. Over the summer, I had written about a church shooting that occurred in Tennessee where two people died. Buice is the minister of that church. What had struck me about Buice's essay was his tone of reason, in spite of the irrationality he and his congregation had suffered when, during a Sunday service, a gunman came and started shooting away at members of the congregation. The gunman had chosen Buice's church for its liberal views. So Buice goes on to defend liberalism by writing:

"Far from being evil, we liberals aspire to overcome evil with good. If you walk into a liberal church and open fire on its members, we will still defend your right to due process, access to an attorney and a fair trial."

Holding the legal system to an accused man's Constitutional rights should not be considered a liberal thing, as much as it ought to be an American thing. But in recent years, the last seven to be specific, that certainly hasn't always been the case. I agree that liberal-minded people tend to show more awareness of the Constitution's Bill of Rights than say certain wingnuts who think that some people are not entitled to rights just because of who or what they are. Having said that, I don't necessarily believe that self-proclaimed liberals are always more "open-minded," as I've certainly met "liberals" who are unconditionally accepting of one marginalized group while being very condescending towards another. Some liberals are really closet wingnuts. But that's for another post...

Buice points out that the gunman had targeted the church because he blamed liberals for the horrific acts of terrorism America has endured. So Buice makes a valid point when he writes:

"Of course, the question keeps coming back: "Shall we return hatred for hatred?" Anyone who has endured a brutal act of violence will know the temptation. Our congregation's experience, however, offers a cautionary tale. The man who brought violence to our church hated liberals. But in his desire to defeat terrorism he became a terrorist himself."

It appears that Buice's congregation is coping the best way that they can. It also seems that Buice is a level-headed, strong, and competent church leader. You would think that after enduring such a tragic and senseless act of violence, the leader of the church would be more angry, more hysterical, perhaps even more suspicious and distrusting of outsiders. But Buice says that his church still welcomes everyone, as it always has. It seems we have here a true man of God.