"Why are you such a nerd? Why do you have no friends?" she always asked before. "I do have friends. I'm just never allowed to go out with them." "Why not?" "Because you won't let me!" "Oh yeah." ---- "Why are you so ugly? Why am I so beautiful? How did I spawn such an ugly child?" "Thanks." "No, I'm serious! I'm gorgeous!" "..."

my mother called me at 9 oclock this morning to tell me about what a fuck up i am in life. she also called to tell me how much more of a fuck up i could have been if she hadn't 'saved' me. saved me from what? myself? i don't know if she realizes that i'm running away from her -- have been running away from her. that the reason that i don't call isn't because i'm busy, but because i don't miss her. i feel heartless. i'm not one bit homesick. i hate the way i feel after talking to her. it's the feeling that i'm an inconvenience to the world. this, coming from the person who bore me. yeah, it's a pretty awful feeling.

As quoted from Katie as I was making mommy observations:

"Relationship too short make for whore. Relationship too long make for wife!"

Ah. My mother exactly.

There's a reason I'm 'frugal'. There's a reason I can't bare spending much money on anything from clothes to food to shoes (my only exception being Sanrio stuff). I was raised that way by example.

My mom worked hard for money and saved it and only spends big amounts of money [over $50] on "Important Things" like... You know, a car, houses, restaurants, and buddhas. But when it comes to things that aren't really necessary, fugalness is the key.

Which is why it was such a suprise to me that my mom was encouraging me today to buy the top-of-the-line parts for my computer that I want. I had already spent approx $1500 on this new beast and was trying to slim down the last $300 that is ALMOST mandatory in order to use my computer.

$1800 for my new computer. That's a lot of money for me. I got ONE website deal this summer and that was $3000 total. I was debating, my mom was saying "BUY BUY BUY".

And then I realized. It was my money.

Hahha, not to say that she would never buy me a $2000 computer -- she has in the past.

It's funny, though, how much MORE my mom encourages me to buy things now that I have to spend my OWN money.

My mom loves to show off the fact that she can speak and read English well. After all, as soon as she came to America, she went to college and got a Comp Sci degree at a university in Connecticut. However, there are some points in time when she suddenly "forgets" her English.

When there are solicitors at the door. "No English!" *slam* The funniest was when a friend of mine showed up in a suit and my mom said that before he even said anything and he had to bang on the door and yell "No wait! I'm here for Kim!"... She opens the door and says, "Ohh! You're Kim's friend? I thought you were a salesmen, come in!" -- all in English of course.

Whenever it's mail but not bills. She insists on handling her own bills because she knows I'm not responsible enough to handle those on my own. However -- whenever she sees something that doesn't seem worth her time, she automatically puts it on top of my keyboard. When I get home and pick up whatever it is that had landed on my keyboard that day my mom says to me "I can't read!"

When she doesn't want to listen to me. "What is it? I can't understand what you're saying!"... Now, I speak Vietnamese almost fluently, however being born here in America has brought its drawbacks... There are just certain words in the vocabulary that I don't know... Whenever that happens I just input an English word into the sentence. When this happens and my mom doesn't want to listen, she says the aforementioned phrase.

So there you go: How my mom selectively reads/speaks English as a second language.

"You should stick with one guy so you don't seem like a slut, but you shouldn't stick with one guy too much or else all the other guys will run away."

"Mom, that makes no sense at all."

"It makes perfect sense to me!"

So I get this order form in the mail for Extra-Long Sheets for college. We were just about to order them, when she suggested going out and buying some. I agreed -- after all, if we save money, all good, right? I'm paying it out of my pocket anyway.

I'm now convinced that she's my devil. We went to the store just to look at bedding for college and came home with not only a BRIGHT MAGENTA sheet set but also a LEOPARD PRINT sheet set. O_o My roommate's gonna think I'm a freak!

Not only that, right as I was paying for some clothes [Couldn't help but look at the clothes before the linens...] My mom runs up to the register and says "You haven't looked at the shoes yet! We have to go back!"

20 minutes later I'm paying for 3 pairs of shoes and she's paying for 3 pairs of shoes. I don't know how it all happened! ;_; It's all her fault, I'm out of money.

My mom can be so funny, sometimes. She'll prance around the house naked, flashing me at will. She'll walk around in skimpy lingerie as my entire AP English class comes to my house to study. But she freaks out at the thought of anyone catching a glimpse of her in the Jacuzzi naked through the Japanese door separators.

Now, the funny thing is, even if the separators are completely open, if you were looking straight on, you wouldn't see her at all. She has more danger of being seen by someone walking around the yard and stumbling across her little corner than actually being seen naked with the screen open.

And yet, she still freaks out when I leave the screen unclosed a crack. This same woman, who just came down and flashed me. Again.

The other day, we had this conversation that I can't get out of my head. We were watching something on TV, when a commercial came on with black people and white people. She asked me, in all seriousness:

"Do people date black people at your school like that?"

I was like, "What?!"

"Are black people and white people friendly like that?"

"Of course!" was all I could reply, flabbergasted.

"How weird!"

I could feel my temper beginning to rise, "You can be so racist sometimes, mom."

"I'm not racist," she replies, "Don't you think it's gross? It's so dirty!"

"If you weren't racist you wouldn't say stuff like that, mom," I said.

She looked at me, "I don't like your tone. You're always so rude to me."

"I wouldn't be so rude if you weren't racist," I replied.

And then she yelled me into submission. It became all my fault in the end.