I got that PMA - I got that Annatude.

I went to a funeral last week for a childhood friend, Anna Greenberg. She and I first met when I was 13 and were on the same cheerleading team. She was always encouraging, happy and easy to talk to. During a road competition, Anna and I were assigned to the same room with two other girls. We all stayed up late telling jokes and putting rollers in each others hair - you know, middle school cheerleader stuff.  The following year, I started high school and rebelled, setting out on an angst-filled search for my (pre)teen identity - I skipped class, shaved my head and smoked pot for the first time.  Anna, already sure of who she was, didn't rebel like I did and not uncommon for middle school friends, we drifted and our interactions from that point were never more than exchanging smiles in the hall.

We reconnected again about three years ago when I received a friend request from Anna on Facebook. It was great to hear from her and catch up - I was living in New York working as a Operations Director for a beauty company, she was in Tucson working for the American Cancer Society. Anna was on a path for a healthier life - working so hard to get into shape (and lose 90 lbs!) and spread her knowledge for healthy living. She would post her "Health Tip of the Day" on Facebook which included anything from dietary advice to emotional wellness. Her personality shining through as she would always add a little bit of humor to lighten the mood.

It wasn't long after that when Anna shared with us that she had been diagnosed with cancer. Sending her well wishes, I followed her battle for the next year and half via Facebook. She and I didn't have a lot of contact with each other besides commenting or liking the other's status update or recent photos but I followed her journey closely, as so many others did too. I pulled for her when she reported bad news and I celebrated for her when she shared good news.

I fell in love with her approach - always strong and always funny. There were never any moments of "poor me" from Anna - I was amazed. I learned at her memorial service that she would tell people that she got cancer because was so passionate about The American Cancer Society and spreading their message. I couldn't help but think, how would I react? What would I do? Would I become a recluse or would I become an advocate for youth and young adult cancer? Anna had a choice - she could have easily buried herself in her pain but she chose to use her cancer as a soap box to help others. Her outlook was appropriately coined "Annatude" by her family.

 

Her treatment was a roller coaster full of ups and downs - an aggressive chemo schedule followed by news of the cancer spreading. I remember one post when she was asking for volunteers to accompany her to her treatment session. I remember thinking "if I lived in Tucson, I would take her." After John and I decided we were moving to Tucson, I knew I would volunteer to take Anna to her treatment sessions whenever I could. Once we got here, I told myself, "as soon as we get settled, I'll check with her and see if she wants my company."

"As soon as we get settled" - it's been 2 months and we're still not settled.

I was at home, cooking dinner with John after an evening walk with the dogs when I heard that Anna had passed away. I told John, we talked about it, I told him about her and her fight against cancer. I was mad at myself for not reaching out to her since I got back to town. I wanted to do something - anything to help, I just didn't know how.

The memorial service was announced the day before it was held. I decided I'd go to pay my respects and lend support to her family and friends - those who were there for her when she needed them. That morning, I put on my funeral outfit, went to work and took a long lunch to say good bye to an old friend.

The service was beautiful. The positivity Anna's family exuded was remarkable - Annatude in every sense of it's meaning. Before going to the service, I was sad and upset but I was ok. I hadn't seen her in years - how emotionally connected could I really be? I wasn't the slightest bit prepared for how incredibly affected I was the second I walked into the synagogue. As each of her brothers went up to the podium to eulogize their baby sister - to remember her strong personality, her witty sense of humor and her complete selflessness - I felt absolutely broken.

Once the service was over I recognized some girls from our cheerleading team and high school - I quickly looked down and rushed out of the synagogue alone. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I got back to work and stared at my computer screen for a few hours and went home.

That night John and I had plans to meet my family for dinner. My uncle and cousin were in town from New York and traditionally with out of town guests, we took them to our favorite Mexican restaurant. I ate a cheese drenched salad and focused on my family - grateful that I had them. When we were done and walking to our respective cars in the parking lot I gave my mom hug good bye and that's when it happened - I absolutely lost it, crying in her arms, telling her I loved her so much.

I know it's cliche and I know it's something we hear all the time but it's so true - don't ever wait to do the things that are important to you. Don't ever wait to tell someone you love them.

"Thank you," said the rainbow vomiting unicorn.

Learning Leisure hit 1,000 views after yesterday's post! This rainbow vomiting unicorn wants to say "THANK YOU!"

Seriously guys, thanks for all the support. It means so much to me. This is such an exciting yet unsure time of exploration and adventure for me. It's awesome to have so many wonderful people to share it with. Love you all.

Are you guys talking in code or something?

I got back from Tucson last week. While I was there, I spent a lot of time with my sister, Tina - easily the most time we've spent together, just the two of us, in years. It was awesome. Smack dab in the middle of my trip was her baby shower so a lot of our time was spent doing very awesome sister stuff - shopping, baking and eating. We ran around for two days on a never-ending search for lavender striped paper straws (which, by the way, don't exist in Tucson), stayed up until 2:00AM baking cupcakes in an oven not much more advanced than a fire pit and shared meals at my favorite Tucson restaurants. We even took a break to play arcade games at Golf n' Stuff. My sister and I do that whole non-verbal-communication-thing that sisters (and best friends) are typically known for. This form of communications is most commonly used by darting looks at each other from across the room to show our approval or distain for something. We were at Party City the morning of the baby shower, I was at the counter getting our balloons filled with helium, Tina picked something up from across the store and held it up for me to see - my reaction was sour face and I shook my head no, we both smiled. The employee helping me with the helium picked up on our little transmission and asked, "Sisters?" I was shocked, blown away, in total awe. In the past 29 years of us being sisters, no one has ever - not once - instinctively picked up that we are sisters. We look nothing alike - I take after our Armenian mother and she takes after our Irish father. I'm short and curvy with dark eyes and olive skin. Tina is tall and slender with green eyes and pale skin. Normally when people discover we're sisters, we're met with total disbelief. "What gave it away?" I asked the helium lady. "You guys were just talking in Sister Code," she replied matter-of-factly. Yes, yes we were. I couldn't help but smile. It's kind of crazy, but I really think that now that my sister is having a baby, we've become closer. Little no-name baby has tapped us into our sister sub-conscience and uncovered some sort of hidden bond that I've always known was there.

In between planning the baby shower and getting lassoed up, we squeezed in nursery furniture shopping at Ikea, painting the baby's room, picking out only the cutest of baby clothes and going wild at Babies R Us with the registry scanner (those things are awesome, by the way). While she was at work one day I even squeezed in a tattoo appointment with the insanely talented and awesome Ed Slocum. Other than that, there wasn't a whole lot of time for much else. This presented a problem because I had my two week Skillcrush 101 course that began Monday February 4th. I knew I wouldn't be able to work on any of it until at least Sunday the 11th, meaning I would have to squeeze 5 days worth of classes into one. At that point, I didn't care - I was bonding.

Fast forward to Sunday - I wake up early at my mom's house, set my computer up on the breakfast bar in the kitchen, pour myself some cereal and dive into Skillcrush to learn some code. Before I had signed up for the class, I checked out the website and was instantly impressed by the incredible, aesthetically pleasing design - it's just beautiful. After perusing the site, I had very high hopes for the course. I began my first lesson and was blown away by how user friendly the class was. Every lesson begins with a video tutorial led by the very likable and easy to understand Ada (of the site's Ask Ada column). The video tutorials are smart, funny and direct. The tutorial is followed up by a visual example and practice of the lesson, then another video recap and after that you apply the learned lesson on your mock-site. I built my own website! The course taught me HTML (everything from tags to attributes, elements to meta tags), CSS (to add style and design to our content we covered a whole lot here - colors, fonts, borders, margins, padding, etc), layouts (floating and positioning), cross-browser troubleshooting and how to buy my own domain to launch my site. Check out my mock-site here (I know it's ugly but I built it from scratch)! On top of it all, they give you awesome tools like boilerplates, recommendations for different web building programs and I get continued access to the lessons, videos and class materials even after the class schedule has concluded. When I had questions my instructors were just an email away. I was absolutely floored. I highly recommend checking out their class schedule and taking a class. It will not disappoint.

What else did I do in Tucson? I went into diabetic shock from too much Eegee's and I don't care.

Technology 101

Since I started this blog in December I've been overwhelmed by the amount of positive emails, texts, IMs, comments, etc I've received. Everyone has been so incredibly supportive and I couldn't be more appreciative of that. However, possibly to your surprise (or not), not all the feedback I've received has been all kittens and roses. I've gotten some negative responses too - all to do with the design/layout of Learning Leisure. "It's really ugly" "You need to change it" "I've already drawn up some new layouts for you" were among the most direct comments I received (all from my boyfriend). I can't pretend that I was offended though, his constructive criticisms were warmly welcomed - "make it pretty" were my exact words. Buuuuut we started watching The Tudors and 20 episodes later, we still haven't gotten around to it.
Last week, I was reminded of how awful my design skills are when my dear and lovely friend Adda messaged me. Adda is one of my "genius friends." "Genius friends" are the ones you would add to your phone-a-friend list if you were on a trivia game show. Hopefully, everyone out there has at least one in their life - if you're lucky like me, you have a few. As CEO of a company called Skillcrush, Adda definitely tops my list. Skillcrush is an amazing website that brings tech knowledge and harmony to those of us who run and hide when IT subjects arise. If you know me, then you know that I am likely the least tech-savy person in Brooklyn. I was shocked with myself when I started this blog but I figured I had enough techie people in my life to fix anything that I might break in this venture. Aside from a small mishap on my last blog post where an entire paragraph is a different font color then the rest, I think I've avoided fucking anything up too badly. Thank you Blogger for being (almost) idiot proof.

Skillcrush was created for technology tenderfoots such as myself. They offer services that will teach you everything you need to know about tech. But how? Through daily newsletters (sign up here), tech terms glossary, tech articles, on-line group classes and my favorite Ask Adda (advice column). Here's the kicker - it's not a snoozefest - the articles are relevant, the terms are explained in an easy to understand way and the site is beautifully hip. Seriously, just go check out the site because they do a way better job than I can of explaining what they do.
Adda messaged me on Facebook last week to say that she read my blog. Then she gently suggested that I take Skillcrush 101: How to Create Your Own Website, a class designed to teach students HTML, CSS and Web Hosting. Though I could just have John do it for me (as I originally intended) learning how to do it myself sounds way more interesting and at the very least it's a new skill to add to my resume. I enthusiastically signed up. Here's how the class will work - every weekday morning I will receive an email containing a new lesson, each lesson is scheduled to take me no more than 45 minutes. I can do the lessons as they come in each day or I can save them all for the weekend. There are office hours where I can communicate directly with my instructors and a Google Group where I can communicate with my classmates to share progress, discuss lessons, etc. At the end of the two week course Skillcrush promises I will be the proud owner of one beautiful website. I received my first lesson this morning and can't wait to get started. I'll keep y'all updated as I go! Wish me luck!

My sister is having a baby.

I have a big sister. She's less than a year older than me - that's right, we're "Irish twins." Growing up we fought a lot. I was always the annoying little sister and she was always the annoyed big sister.

As we've gotten older we've grown to appreciate each other. I've recently learned that what I always read as emotional incompetency was actually her ability and strength to show restraint under duress. She recently came clean to me that what she always interpreted as my flightiness she now identifies as fearlessness and decisiveness.

Not only do I love her a lot but I actually really like her. She's been with this really awesome guy for a couple of years and I really like him, too. This is great news because they're going to have a baby girl soon and odds are that since I really like both of them, I'm really going to like her.

It's going to be a cute baby, right?

According to morphthing.com, this is what my niece will look like.

I woke up last night in a panic - what if I'm not a good aunt?! Granted this is technically not my first rodeo - I have 3 half-brothers who all have children and I have 2 child-aged cousins. My brothers have always been cool older brothers to me and my sister. They're about 20 years our senior so we didn't grow up with them but they made it a point to show us some love - Danny used to always take us to ride dirt bikes and ATV's in the muddy mountains after the monsoons; Tommy dealt with us for an entire parent-free weekend full of pizza partying and amusement parks; and Ronny well, Ronny would buy me beer when I got a little older. Like I said, my brothers are cool but the bond I have with my sister is a result of us growing up together, of her kicking me in the face with her soccer cleats on when I was 5, of me pushing her through a window resulting in 100+ stitches on her face when I was 11, of her asking me to go to the mall with her just so she could ditch me and hang out with the (bad) friend she wasn't allowed to hang out with when I was 13. Our bond has been built on all the fucked up shit we did to each other when we were kids and there isn't a bond stronger.

Here's my family - my mom, all my siblings, their significant others and their children.
Guy in the middle with the mustache is Danny, next to him in glasses is Tommy,
all the way on the right looking like a wannabe Jax Teller (it was Halloween) is Ronny. 

That said, this is different than my brothers' kids and my cousins, this is my sister. My sister is having a baby...seriously, what if I'm not a good aunt? Waking up in a panic at 3:00am with this thought running wild through my post-REM brain, I was about to reach for my computer and Google "how do I be a good aunt?" but then realized, I don't need Google for this one, I have first hand knowledge of what a good aunt does because I have one.

Me and my aunt.

My mom is the oldest of 5 children with 3 younger brothers and 1 younger sister. Growing up I never lived in the same city as my aunt and uncles so seeing them was always a special treat. We'd go visit, they'd take time off work and we'd spend our holiday sightseeing the skyscrapers, window shopping on 5th Ave, going out to Broadway shows, fancy dinners and having pizza/movie nights. I watched my first rated R movie with my aunt. She taught me how to wax my own legs. When my sister and I were 13 and 14 we even went to my aunt's bachelorette party to a dinner club in Manhattan - pre-teens at a bachelorette party IN MANHATTAN. There were no other kids there - just my aunt's friends all drinking a cocktail out of a scorpion bowl (while we sipped on virgin coladas) in a hip jazz bar in Hell's Kitchen.
To put this into perspective - I've had my 9 year old cousin's friend request pending for over a year now because I don't have the heart to reject it but I refuse to accept it because I don't want to have to adjust the "adult" language/nature/content of my Facebook posts.
So here it is - #1 reason I loved hanging out with my aunt was because she never treated me like a child. I always felt like an adult. As far back as I can remember, she always talked to me like a grown up - never dumbing down her vocabulary or raising the pitch of her voice the way most adults do when they speak to kids. Even as an adult, she always trusts and encourages my decisions - always giving advice but never overstepping boundaries. In between all of that she alway gives plenty of hugs, kisses and cuddles.
Reason #2 - she was cool. In the 90's she wore denim jackets and wayfarers. She shopped at the Gap and listened to The Police. She had cropped black hair and wore bright pink lipstick. She could draw any Disney character. She worked for a non-profit teaching computer skills to women re-entering the workforce. She wasn't just cool, she was the epitome of cool. My aunt was an original hipster.
Reason #3 - she was so much fun. Every summer my aunt and uncles would take us to Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey. They'd rent a minivan, make sandwiches for lunch and drive 3 hours there and 3 hours back just so my sister and I could ride some roller coasters. My aunt was the only adult who would ride the coasters with us kids (even though I'm pretty sure she didn't like it).

My sister and I were texting each other this morning. I told her about my 3:00AM anxiety. I said, "what if I'm not a good aunt? What if the kid hates me?" To which my sister replied "Haha. How do you think I feel?!"
I guess knowing that the therapy needed to overcome a bad mother is WAY more intense and expensive than the therapy needed to overcome a bad aunt leaves me feeling a bit less anxious. Really, when it comes down to it, I know this kid is going to turn out awesome. She's going to have an amazing family to turn to if she ever needs anything. Just like I have an effortlessly cool, fun, respectful aunt to look to for support and guidance in my new role, my sister has our fantastic, born-to-be-a-mom mom to support and guide her in her new role. As long as the baby doesn't come out looking like the morph from above, I think everything is going to be ok. I can't wait to meet her.

Broken English

Since my last post I went on an epic road trip to Florida for Christmas. I met John's family for the first time, spent Christmas with them, ate the most amazing sweet potato tater tots ever, went to Medieval Times with John's best friends where we singlehandedly offended every family in our section with soccer hooligan-esque songs about jousting, convinced three of his very radical Florida friends to road trip back with us to spend New Year's Eve in Brooklyn, swam with wild manatees, got attacked by swans, was named go-cart champion of Funland and ate my first "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake.

On the drive back, the aforementioned awesome friends + John had to rush me to the hospital in Richmond, VA due to extreme dehydration setting off my bum ticker. After 8 hours, a state of the art heart scan (only available at this hospital in Richmond and Harvard), three bags of fluid and a couple of shots of intravenous sedatives (I'm a nervous wreck), we were back on our merry way.

 After spending the next week and a half in bed recovering from the being the sickest I've ever been. It was time for me to face the world. 

First stop - Arab American Family Support Center to tutor women immigrants taking the citizenship exam. Still a little shaky from over a week of bed rest, it took me a little longer to get moving that usual which resulted in me being late. I hate being late, a lot. That mixed with the fact that this was my first time volunteering on this project made me really nervous. Before every project begins, the team leader goes through a quick orientation with the newbies. I knew I was missing the orientation. As I rushed from the train to the center thoughts of just turning around and going home flooded my brain. How was I going to know what to do? How could I possibly participate? What if I messed up? Fuck it, do this. 

Surprisingly, nothing terrible happened. It actually went really well. Even though I missed the orientation the team leader was able to quickly review the project with me, gave me a packet and set me up with Hafsah from Yemen. Hafsah lives in Bensonhurst with her husband (who became a US Citizen when they first moved to the US) and her 5 sons. She's lived in the same house for 14 years. Her husband owns a grocery store where her older sons work. She is the only one left in her immediate family who is not an American citizen. Hafsah is modern and fashionable - well dressed, wearing make-up, with a leopard print scarf covering her hair. Through long pauses and broken English, she introduced herself. 

The naturalization exam is comprised of three components - writing, reading and speaking - so for the next 90 minutes we reviewed a practice test of the written exam, Hafsah practiced writing the answers in English and we did a mock interview like the one she'll have on the day of her exam. Though she knew the answer to almost every question it was clear that she didn't understand the meaning to all the words. Since I don't speak Arabic it was a challenge to explain the translations of things like "separation of power" and "petition the government" but with help from some of the more advanced students in the group and an Arabic-English translation dictionary Hafsah was able to really understand the meaning behind the words she was studying. She had been reviewing this test for months, memorizing all the answers, learning how to read a new language and write with a new alphabet but it took her communicating and connecting with other human beings to make sense of all of her hard work. To see the excitement and pride on her face when the lightbulb went on was absolutely incredible. 

This project is very special and amazing - it gives women the opportunity to help empower other women. This is paramount considering that in Hafsah's native Yemen it is estimated that only 64% of all grade school girls are actually enrolled in schooling - of that 64% it is estimated that only 50% will complete the first 6 years of schooling.

I'm signed up for this project again next week and am looking forward to finding out Hafsah's exam date - which she should have found out this week or last. I'm excited to continue to prepare her and other women for the exam, to help them become more confident in their ability to communicate in English and most important to help facilitate what could possibly be the most attention to education these women have ever experienced.