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Strawberry Farm Boy Mike works for United Way. Specifically he works on homelessness. When I see the work that he does and his passion for the community I am always amazed. Why? Well we both were twentysomethings when we started volunteering and community organizing in Los Angeles. I always had my passions (FilAm Arts and FPAC), while he had his (JFAV, Tuesday Night Cafe, Sessions LA). We've always found ways to support each other in our volunteer work. When I was logistics director for FPAC, Strawberry Farm Boy Mike was there by my side helping me out when I was in crisis. This November I'm walking in the United Way Home Walk to support Strawberry Farm Boy and his work. If you are free on Saturday, November 23rd join Mike's team the "Ewokers," you can sign up at homewalk.kintera.org/ewokers you can burn off some calories before your gorge on Thanksgiving dinner the following week! Home Walk will be held at Exposition Park, 700 Exposition Park Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90037. For more info on it click here: United Way Home Walk If you can't walk with us, can you help me hit my goal of $100? You can click on the thermometer below and make a pledge! Every thing helps! Thank you from my oblivious heart!
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In college I had a phase where I would go "snowboarding" with my friends. This was the thing to do and I was willing to try it. I forgot that there was one big problem with that plan. I have absolutely no balance. When we got to the mountain and the ski rental dude asked me "Are you goofy or regular?" I looked at him like a deer in headlights. I had to think about it and I second guessed what I was. To this day I have no idea if I am goofy or regular! Eventually I would go up the mountain with my board and try to make my way down. It was a nightmare and on my 3 or 4th trip I simply gave up. I took my boots off my board and rode it like a sled all the way down. It was ridiculous. My time snowboarding was finished. It really shouldn't have been a surprise to me. When I was a kid I had a similar incident with a skateboard. As a kid, my cousins house would have bikes, scooters, and my nemesis a bright green skateboard. 
Not the board, but from google and this looks exactly like my nemesis!
I don't know who's skateboard this was. I was barely 4 or 5 when I had my traumatizing experience with it. My uncle probably got it from a friend or it was gifted to my cousin Sean who would've been 6 or 7. I remember my older cousins Norm and Bryan would take turns on it. They made it looks so simple! Charlie and I would kneel on it and kick with our other legs, using the board like a scooter. I was tired of kneeling and decided I could do what my older cousins did. I could stand up on the green monster and ride it like a big kid. I was wrong. i was so wrong. My toddler oblivious legs got up and pushed on the board and then I remember my whole body flying in the air and landing on my ass. The other kids I was with were riding bikes around the neighborhood, so no one saw me fall. I proceeded to dust myself off and get back on the green monster. I steadied my leg on the board and tried to kick off and repeated my trick of having my whole body fly in the air and landing on my ass again. This time an older cousin did see me fall and went up to me. Tears followed and I eyed the green monster with disdain. The board would sit in the garage. I'm not sure anyone learned how to ride it. Give kid oblivious a bike and I would jam on it. A scooter? No problem. The green monster? FUCK THAT NOISE. 
I've seen a resurgence of this board and even thought about buying one. I thought, "I'm a grown up! I can do this! I can learn how to ride one of these things." Strawberry Farm Boy's response? "Who's taking you to the hospital when you fall and crack your head open? Do you have good insurance?"
Yes I do have insurance and he should be the one to take me to the hospital! But frankly cracking my head open does not sound appealing. Plus my memories of my nemesis, the green monster, came flooding back. This Oblivious Nerd Girl has no balance. I can wish all I want that I did, but skateboards, snowboards, etc. Not for me. I can barely balance my life, let alone myself on something with wheels. I'll just enjoy skateboarding videos and call it a day. Oblivious (Un)Balance Out 
Yard sale right now in the valley! 22728 Clarendon St., Woodland Hills, CA 91367 Come by!!! 
From the DodgersBeat Facebook page
My oblivious heart broke today. The boys in blue are now out of the World Series run. Growing up as an LA sports fan has it's ups and downs. I have cheered for the Raiders and the Rams. Now that both teams are gone USC Trojans are my football team. Being a Kings fan has been rough. I got my heart broken in the 90s and then suffered through some rough seasons. I fully admit that when they won the cup in 2012 I cried tears of joy. I can remember watching the Lakers on our sony tv with the wood panelling. I was raised in the era of Showtine Lakers. Magic, Kareem, Big game James, Byron Scott, Michael Cooper. They were THE team. I have stuck by them though the highs and the lows (Cedric Ceballos, that was rough. Eddie Jones, you will always be one of my favorite Lakers). RIP to Chick Hearn. I miss him every season. He is still forever the voice of Laker basketball to me.l But the Boys in Blue. They have caused me the most heartache. Pops doesn't really like baseball, but because they are the LA team, we watched them. Vin Scully is the soundtrack of summer baseball. I was only 1 when the Dodgers won in 1981, but I still remember 1988. I remember kneeling in front of that tv with wood paneling and seeing Kirk Gibson's homer. Our townhouse shook. I heard all my neighbors cheering. It was sports happiness in its perfect form. As a child I didn't get to go to Dodger games, but I've made up for it since. Pops would get discounted or free tickets from his work and I would always take advantage of it. Every time we drive into Chavez Ravine it feels like coming home. Sitting in Dodgers stadium for a game is special. In 2009 I went to a couple of playoff games. They broke my heart then. Afterwards we had to deal with the McCourt drama. This year, this year felt special. 
From the Dodgers Instagram
Koufax passed the torch to Kershaw. It felt like magic was in the air and in the stands! (Yes I went there!) Even Vin seemed to get misty at what he was witnessing. But then today happened and the boys in blue did it again. They broke my heart. I am so sad, but also thankful for an amazing season. This team was last in June and then they turned it around to make it to the NLCS. My oblivious heart hurts, but it still bleeds blue. Forever Blue. Go blue. Dodgers. October is Filipino American History month. I racked my brain for ideas on how I could tie it into the Oblivious Nerd Girl world, but I'm drawing a blank. October is also Halloween time and it's also fall TV time. There is cheap candy on the shelves and witches on TV. Last night was the premiere episode of American Horror Stories: The Coven and it was ridiculously awesome. This season of AHS covers a coven of witches. And it lead me to remember an Oblivious Story that Pops once told me. As an Oblivious Nerd Girl I was surrounded by my maternal side of the family. These are the people who saw me in all my early obliviousness. I learned about Pops' side of the family through stories. Pops would regale me with stories about my grandparents, my great grandparents, and his siblings. These stories weave our family history with Filipino Folklore. Many of these stories surround my great grandmother, Lola T. When Pops was little he would get into fights with other kids because they would call Lola T a "babaylan." According to wikipedia this is the definition of a babaylan:  Babaylan is a Visayan term identifying an indigenous Filipino religious leader, who functions as a healer, a shaman, a seer and a community "miracle-worker" (or a combination of any of those). The babaylan can be male, female, or male transvestites (known as asog, bayoc, or bayog), but most of the babaylan were female. Now to me this definition sounds awesome. When Pops revealed this I thought COOL! But to Pops, babaylan was a slur. Babaylan meant witch. He didn't want his Lola to be called this and he frequently got into fist fights over the word. Lola T got this reputation because she was a bad ass lady. One example of her bad ass ness was that she was telekinetic. She could move things with her mind. Pops shared that she could move a glass of water from one end of the table to the end. Lola T could make pencils levitate on their tips. As a child I would concentrate so hard on cups at the dining table. I would try to move it a centimeter on the table to no avail. In class I would balance a pencil on my desk and try to have it stay up with my mind. I always failed. 
Lola would eventually have to give up these powers so her son could be ordained as a Jesuit priests. I do not know what Jesuit bureaucracy existed in the the early 1950s, but some entity prevented my grand uncle from becoming an ordained priest because his mother, my Lola T had these powers. She had to vow to never use her powers. She had to put away her tools. One item that Pops recalls is a whip made out of sting ray tails. Apparently the whip had an extra snap to it. This sting ray whip had some kind of power attached to it. I always imagined it was like Wonder Woman's lasso of truth. You could not lie if it struck you! When Pops moved to the States he tried to find it, but it was lost forever.
As I watched American Horror Stories: The Coven, I thought about Lola T. The story line in the show explained that sometimes powers skip a generation. Lola T's power skipped over me. Instead the stories of her actions and her powers resonate in my mind, in my family history. One day I will tell them to my own children and they will learn our family stories. And if my child can balance pencils with his/her mind I will be both jealous and stoked. Until then, I'll keep trying. 
Oblivious Confession. I've been in some form of therapy since 2007. Yes this is a post about depression. No this is not inspired because my birthday has recently passed and I am now one year older. More so it's inspired by the fact that I've come to a point in my oblivious existence that I've accepted my own bouts with depression. At UCI, I distinctly remember an episode where I could not cope with stress. Instead of talking to a professional, I completely shut down. I didn't want to hang out with anybody. I went to class, work, and home to sleep. Sleep was my main coping mechanism. It allowed me to ignore all the pressures and anxiety I felt. With the help of friends who drew me out of my bubble of sadness, I snapped out of that episode. I tried to never go back to that dark place. But in doing so I turned to self medication. The Anthill Pub was my favorite pharmacy that specialized in cider, guiness, and snakebites. It was an expensive way of stress relief, but socially accepted because I was in my early 20s and in college. Drinking was the norm. There could be nothing wrong with a pint of cider at lunch, at dinner, or whenever. When undergrad was over drinking daily stopped, but binge drinking began. Going out on the weekends and blowing off steam meant partying hard and drinking too much in one sitting. Eventually this stopped because I didn't enjoy the party anymore.  Going to grad school made me face certain emotional issues that surfaced when Moms got sick in 2003. Moms was the rock for our family. She ran the ship. When she got sick, it was a rude awakening that Pops and I would need to figure out what our new normal would be. The bottom line is that I never really processed Moms illness. She got sick, specifically she had a stroke. I graduated from college and went back home to do my part in taking care of my family responsibilities. I found a job at a mortgage company in the meeting and events department. While I enjoyed it, corporate life was never going to be my end game. I knew I wanted to go to grad school, I just had to figure out what I was going to study. Eventually this lead to a student affairs masters program that made me a Trojan. I was excited to start school and figure out the next chapter of my life. But with the excitement came panic, self doubt, anxiety and fear. When my first year of grad school started there was a hiccup with my financial aid and I lost it. I panicked and succumbed to ugly tears. Now I know I've mentioned that I am a cry baby, but I would normally not lose it over something like financial aid. It was then that I realized I had no idea what I was doing and it was because I had always relied on my mom's accountant sensibilities to guide me to the right place. In grad school I thought I was older and wise. I thought I could handle my shit. I thought I could handle everything on my own if I was on my own island and concentrated on school. I was totally and utterly wrong. In my first year of grad school I went through anxiety and depression that I hadn't felt since my undergrad days as an anteater. The anxiety I felt turned into extreme self doubt. I questioned my academic self worth which led to a case of shingles at the end of 1st year of school. Ate L, my cousin, suggested I see a professional, but I didn't think it was necessary. Even though I was in a program that is a "helping" profession which taught about the necessary aspects of counseling and therapy, I completely bought into the stigma of seeking mental help. I bought into the Asian American mantra of handling problems on my own. I shake my head at how ridiculous and hypocritical all this is. I didn't heed Ate L's word until my 2nd year of grad school. I began seeing a therapist and unloaded all my emotional baggage. I also started writing, which was an extremely cathartic process where I put down a fictional story inspired by mom's stroke. It exercised the weight of those emotions through therapy and writing. I know that there are more things that I need to let go, so I continue to see a therapist who allows me to process life. There are times where I stop and think I can do this on my own, but I stop myself from going down that lonely path. It's not fun. It's not helpful and most of all it's not me. Thankfully Strawberry Farm Boy is here to keep me in check, to give me hugs when I'm going through ugly tears, and to be the touchstone I need to let me know that it'll always work out. Also a thankful shout out to my cousins and bffs who help this oblivious only child feel less only child-like. The oblivious tip for today? If you feel the cloud of uncertainty and depression, get help. Talk it out with a friend or a professional. There's always someone out there who's willing to listen. 
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#ColorYourTroublesAway Organizer of coloring events in Los Angeles|#TFAL#TFALpodcast This Filipino American Life podcast @tfalpodcast|Writer of ObliviousnessFollow me on instagram (@obliviousnerdgrl) for daily obliviousness and teaser sheets for Color Your Troubles Away! Archives
July 2017
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