New Year: 2014

This new years eve we made a soft confirmation to go to a friend's house party, but Jose and I were in bad shape. Him with a cyst on his tonsil and me with a cold. We showered and started getting ready, but laid down and it was highly likely that neither of us were going to get up. Then Kenny called with enough motivation to get us going. We had a mild night of drinking and playing Catch Phrase. It was quite fun and a low key way to say goodbye to 2013 with friends. 

My one resolution is to set better boundaries and stick to them. I'm too much of a people pleaser and often times give in to what others want while sacrificing myself. I can't do it anymore. I'm looking forward to an amazing year of strength, love and connection. 

Elsa Manuela Alonso

This is one post I needed to write, but didn't want to sit down and reflect on it. Everyone went through their own grieving process and for me being in control and expressing it through writing, video, and photos has helped me cope, better than bawling in public. That's just me, I feel more comfortable suppressing things and having a hard exterior, even if I'm crumbling inside. It doesn't mean that I care less or hurt less, it's just my way. 

Sunday morning at 7:45 AM my phone started ringing, it was my father-in-law, I don't usually answer if I'm half awake, but it was unusual for him to call me, especially that early. My brain had time to process two things, either they needed a babysitter for Anthony or something happened to David. I answered, he said, Priscilla your friend Elsa has been in a bad accident. Car accidents are one sensitive topic for me. I've been in too many and I've dedicated this portion of my career to injury prevention out on the road. I uncouthly asked if she was dead. He said yes. I wasn't processing, I just wanted to know why, when, how. I  love and appreciate him for making that difficult call. 

This is the 2nd call I've received when I'm half awake that someone has passed way. Both times I reacted the same. I take the call, hang up, and realize in a mess of tears what's actually been said. I saw my brother outside my window and immediately ran out to tell him about the call. Hearing the words come out of my mouth made me cry. I love that guy, and I'm glad he was there to hear me. I could tell I was grasping for control because I put laundry in the dryer, went to the bathroom and put toilet paper on the roll. Jose came in and asked what I was doing, I told him, but wouldn't stop to talk, just kept being busy and crying. 

You know how when you hear bad news, and keep hoping that as the day progresses you'll find out that you were given the wrong information? That's how I felt. Elsa's grandma and aunt live a block from me, so I walked over to see how true it really was. Angie was sitting outside, more clouded than I was. We cried in each other's arms as we tried to piece it all together. The day was long and heartbreaking as many of us met at the crash site to leave flowers and balloons for our fallen friend. Hearing all of the chatter of what people thought happened was unsettling. I am all about logic and facts and will only believe the police report and examiners report, not someone's exaggerations. Again, coping mechanisms for me. 

It was a long, hard week leading up to the funeral services. I just wanted to keep in mind that I was hurting, but it wasn't about me, it was about showing support to her parents, brothers, baby, and Paris. Even to this day it still doesn't feel real. I hate checking Instagram and not seeing posts from her. The last time I saw her was at the Ludacris concert August 15th. We texted a few times after that. 

One thing I found very interesting was that all of her friends had distinct experiences in Elsa's timeline. My strongest memories are of our youth days at church. Everyone's memories mean something to them and are valuable. They are all a piece of her. 

I'm left with this weird feeling of not knowing whether I should love more or love less. My one comforting thought is that Elsa's free. To me that means she's in this perfect space, stress free, and oh so happy. 

If I could get one message across it would be don't drink & drive.

Here are the Fox 13 and Standard Examiner articles about the accident. 

Here's are  several videos, one of her memorial, one of old pics I had on a hard drive, and one our mutual friend made with recent pictures from the last few months.

3rd Anniversary

My husband and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary. I'm not the type of person to pour out mushy stuff all over social media, but I'll get a little more sentimental here. I wasn't very emotionally stable since my friend had just passed away, but I knew I wanted to go home and dedicate the evening to celebrating our marriage. To me it was the perfect evening, we took a nap, then got dressed up for dinner. I'm not going to lie, it was hard not to be sad, but I also couldn't help but feel lucky to have my husband. We had a lot to reflect back on this year, mostly good things. We had an amazing vacation, started new jobs, and found a hobby we both like. I'm most appreciative that he let's me live an independent lifestyle, where I can go to school and do my own hobbies. This year I really want to dedicate our efforts to becoming better communicators. My masters program has given me refreshing ideas of what it means to communicate effectively and I want that for us. 

A little something I want to remember is how we often banter back and forth about whether we're soulmates or not. I found this meme that made me laugh because as much as I don't want to believe in soulmates this is so how I feel realizing that indeed we are soulmates whether I like it or not. We were meant to find each other because I need someone to keep me lively and crazy. 

Lunch With An Old Friend

My friend Brook-Lee is in town from Georgia. I don't think we've seen each other since her high school graduation in 2006. Since then we've become much nicer girls than we were in jr. high. We reminisced and reflected on life back then. We are both proud to say we didn't become another statistic that dropped out of high school or got pregnant at sixteen. We both have our bachelors and are working on graduate degrees. May we continue to be positive role models for each other and other girls who are minorities like us. 

Safe Kids Conference

Going to the Safe Kids Worldwide Conference in Washington D.C. was a blast. It was nice to be in a room full of other safety advocates, or safety police as some see us. One impressionable thing Gary Karton, the director of communications, mentioned was that we're not out there to police people, we care. We understand that kids are going to play and get hurt, but by taking a few precautions we can make sure injuries aren't life threatening. He mentioned that he doesn't make his son wear a snowboarding helmet because he's trying to be over protective, but rather he's giving his son the freedom to play hard and have fun. 

Here's a really cute video with an intense message that was released at the conference. 

I'm all about this because with my strong feelings towards education I know today's children are our future leaders that will create further change in this world.

As a new coordinator the conference was really helpful for me because now I have an idea of what I need to do with my coalition in order to help the community. The top issues I've been passionate about are car and road safety and heatstroke, but the conference introduced a lot of other great safety topics that I look forward to exploring with my coalition members. With my communications background I really enjoyed the workshops about branding, social media, and other media. 

Lunch with the Today Show's Jeff Rossen & Robert Powell

I recommend that you check out the Safe Kids Worldwide website. It's got a ton of great info. 

Ingrown

I went to get a pedicure that end up taking two hours, because they were busy. I think they wanted me to feel like they were attending to me so they let me soak my feet, then the guy proceeded to pick at my toes for awhile. At one point he yanked on my toenail and it hurt. He pulled out a chunk a nail that he said was an ingrown. First of all it wasn’t hurting like an ingrown and second I didn’t ask him to remove it. I was a little upset about it, but moved on.

The following day my toe was throbbing and started looking infected. Since I’m working in a new area I had to find a new doctor closer to my area. I made an appointment and went in, the nurse listened to my story and said okay I’ll get the kit ready for the procedure. Whoaaa hold on lady. I told her there was no way I was going to get my nail cut because, no offense, that looks so ugly. She said, “I’ll still set up just in case the doctor changes your mind.” Excuse me, my body, my choice. That made me so nervous that  my high pulse concerned the doctor. I assured him I’m just an accelerated person and I’m either really excited or nervous. I started feeling desperate tears coming on, because what if that was my only option and I had to have an ugly toe. Vain I know. Anyway I really appreciated the doctor looking at it and understanding that I was worried. He said it just looked a little infected, but he didn’t think he needed to cut anything out. Thank God! He gave me an antibiotic to take four times a day for ten days. I feel better already. 

Motorcycle Diaries

I finally registered the new motorcycle. I’m a little embarrassed to admit some of the stupid moves I made last Friday, but I’m human so here goes. I was at a stop light, at a really busy intersection in Clinton and when the light turned green I killed the engine and almost dropped my bike. Super embarrassing, but I’m glad I was able to hold it up and not cause a big traffic mess. Second, my co-workers wanted to see her so we went out and when I started it up I wasn’t on it and didn’t check if it was in neutral. It wasn’t! I could’ve taken off, but I was holding the brake so it only jerked enough to scare us all. I was pretty disappointed in myself by the end of the day and dreaded riding home in traffic. I took HWY 89 home and it all worked out.

Saturday evening we rode to the movies. The night ride home was my favorite. It’s nice riding without any pressure to be somewhere, just riding for fun. I like being able to follow my husband, he gives me confidence, because I want to be his badass wife on her own bike.

I want to get all of the practice I can so I rode to work this morning. I decided to be daring and take the freeway because even though I'm scared to go fast I feel safer on there than passing through a million intersection. When I was getting ready to go this morning I saw two criminal looking men walking down the street in my direction. I’m not usually scared of people, but I got a panicky feeling. I was just going to hurry , put my helmet on and take off before they could approach me. I also had time to quickly think about what if they came up to me in a threatening way, how would I beat them up? I turned my back to them and while I was putting my helmet on one of them grabbed me by the lonjas (love handles). It scared the shit out of me, but it turns out it was only my brother.  

Here's a picture of the shoe collection under my desk. Boots because I rode my motorcycle, heels because I'm a professional, and Vans because I'm in and out of cars installing car seats and carrying other random heavy things. 

Waiting In The ER

Nothing too serious just brought my brother-in-law because he has a gnarly infection on his tonsils. I know better than to ever go to the emergency room unless it's a real emergency, but we've been to two other places and finally got referred to the ER.

They're going to poke his tonsils with a needle to release the puss and infection, if that doesn't work he may have to have them removed.  I hear that's a pretty painful recovery for adults. I had mine out when I was five. I remember the recovery consisting of watching Thumbelina and my grandma making arroz con leche for me.

Twenty years later I'm still holding on to my tonsils. They were always fun to take for show and tell.

New Phones

Our phone contract is up in March so we've been planning on getting new phones. When the iPhone 5 came out we really thought we wanted it, but as the time got closer we started exploring all of the options. We stopped by the mall to check out phones and to get an idea of how much we were going to spend. Of course the salesman told us we were actually eligible for the upgrade at 20 months rather than 24 months. We liked the HTC DNA, but after reading more about it the battery life sucks and it doesn’t let you add extra memory.

This is strange but after we looked at phones we noticed that our current phones started messing up more and more. Everything would force close and they were going really slow. Facebook just kept shutting down, and it had never done that before. What if it’s some kind of conspiracy that when you’re due for an upgrade your provide fucks with you OR it could’ve been all in our heads because we wanted the new phones so bad. I suggested we wait until March like we planned so we could finish saving up. Once Jose sees something he wants he CANNOT wait, every day I would hear about some new feature on some new phone. I think it got to me because I caved and we went to buy phones.

We decided on the Samsung Galaxy Note II. It’s huge when you first hold it, but now I don’t think I could go back to a baby screen. The large screen was appealing to me because I like to read on my phone. Jose watches a lot of video on his so it’s perfect for that. It comes with a stylus which is fun. You can draw and it converts your handwriting into text. It’s fast with its quad-core processor. It has cool motion and gesture features that let you make calls just by rotating it or screen shots by swiping your hand across it. I love the 22 hours use battery life. There are probably so many more features that I’m not taking advantage of yet, but I have two years to discover all it can do. 

Old Thunderbolt next to our new phones

Easy Pulled Pork

The idea of Crockpot cooking is convenient, but sometimes I don’t like the texture of meant made in the Crockpot. I found a recipe on  Bodybuilding.com for pulled pork sandwiches. It was appealing because all of the ingredients are real ingredients. 

In the Crockpot

I debated whether I wanted to grab buns on the way home from work or just use the corn tortillas I already had and make tacos. I was craving bread so I went with sandwiches. The recipe calls for red pepper flakes and cayenne pepper so if you don’t like spicy, you should probably skip those ingredients, because it has a kick to it. I was pleased with how it turned out.  My husband, who doesn't care for pork and doesn't want anything too healthy, asked for half a sandwich and ended up eating one and a half. I recommend trying the recipe, I know I’ll be using it again.

Recipe 

Three Years of Service

January 7th marked my three year anniversary with FJM. I was working for the Northern Utah Autism Program when my school schedule became too hard to work around so I had to resign. That was one of my favorite jobs, so I was sad to leave, those kids gave me a sense of love and fulfillment that no other job has. I was only without a job for about a week when my aunt told me that TAB was looking for a graveyard Spanish-speaking representative. I went to the interview and was offered the job the immediately.

I am the type of person who once it gets dark I'm ready for bed so you can imagine how horrible I was at working the graveyard shift. They good thing was that it was a very slow, easy going position. When I got off work in the morning I would nap in my car for a bit before class started. My sleep schedule was so messed up and I was grumpier than usual. I did that for a year until I graduated and immediately applied for a day time position. I started working in the loans department after Martin Luther King Jr Day so I think the 19th. I've been here ever since. I don't want to bash on this place because it's been a really good job with lots of extras and great connections, but I didn't expect to be here this long. I'm still searching for that dream job, but it's just not my time yet. It's also getting harder to leave this place because I don't want to take a cut in salary. I suppose maybe after I finish my masters program I'll choose love over money. 

Two people have mentioned to me how nice it is to be acknowledged and my friend did her research prospectus on organizations showing their gratitude for employees. With my aloof attitude I've never bought into the idea because it doesn't really matter to me, but maybe there are some people that need it. Then again, deep down maybe I do like it because here I am sharing with everyone. I guess I just don't like the recognition, it's embarrasses me, and why should anyone be praised for doing what their expected to do? 

Anyway,

2013 Calendar of Love & Gratitude

My boss gave me a calendar for Christmas, since I already have two at my desk I thought I'd hang it at home and use it  as a tool to stay positive and share my gratitude throughout the month by writing my thoughts on the monthly image. 

I hung it behind the bathroom door because it's a private place where you always have time to read and reflect. Maybe it's a fresh new year or me being nice and resisting the negative that are making things at home enjoyably comforting and fun. 

The three things I've written so far this month are about my husband taking care of me while I've been sick, he warmed up my car before work, and he made omelets for breakfast on Saturday. We don't always take the time to thank each other so I wanted a low-key way to let him to know that I notice and appreciate him. 

Bringing In the New Year

I wanted to stay home and have a very low key New Year's Eve, because after the party we went to for Halloween I never, ever wanted to deal with drunk people again. As it got closer I got more excited about getting dressed up and going out. Jose and I had a great time at our friend Truyen's party. I enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting new, interesting people. 

Time passes so quickly. I look forward to a new year. Click the link to read about the lifestyle changes I will make in 2013.

I Made It To Cali

Getting to Cali worked out really well. Since Jose rode his motorcycle we didn't have to worry about getting him a flight. My cousin hooked me up with a buddy pass on Jet Blue so it was only $22 for me to get to Long Beach from Salt Lake City. There are about 4,000 Jet Blue employees in Utah which makes getting back into the state hard so there is no guarantee that I'd make it. I used airline miles from my Venture card for the flight home because I HAVE to be to class Tuesday night to present my research prospectus about breastfeeding communication. 

Jose & Lani were waiting for me at the airport. We got pulled over on our way home because the plates on the Denali have been expired since August. Oops! The cop let us go since it wasn't our car. When we got back to Mira Loma the power was out from 4:30 PM to 5:00 AM. Jose and I went out to grab some wings and catch up. I was exaggeratedly cold in 55 degree weather. I doesn't make any sense since I had just come from colder, wetter weather. 

I'm happy to be here and for all of the fun we're going to have. 

Grateful for Lunch With My Husband

I love meeting up with my husband for lunch. Lucky me, it's been two days in a row.

2 x 1 tacos on Wednesday

Grateful For My Rights

It's crazy to think there was a time when women weren't consider equal to men when it came to voting. I'm grateful to be a Chicana who uses her right to vote. 

I voted today for many reasons, number one being that it's a privilege that not everyone has. I have friends and family who are very involved in furthering their education, uplifting their community and building a strong future for their families, but they don't have a voice in the election yet. 

I was so anxious yesterday thinking about the election. The only way I could calm myself was to meditate in prayer that the right person would be selected. It's relieving to know that after today a decision will be announced.

While reviewing each candidates' plan I couldn't help but get emotional when I read the immigration section. Many of my friends came here as children and America is all they know. Many have bachelors degrees and can't work because they don't have that 9-digit number. Our young people deserve the chance to contribute their talents to this country. 

Next topic of interest that really gets me is all the negativity towards LGBTQ rights like same sex marriage and the right to have children. Seriously if you've ever been in love could you imagine someone telling you what's acceptable in your relationship. You wouldn't stand for it. Everyone deserves love so please have an accepting heart. 

Finally, my health decisions are mine! I have been going to Planned Parenthood ever since I made the decision to be sexually responsible. Everything I stand for has to do with health prevention. Limited access to health care and preventative measures like birth control, mammograms, and other screenings would hinder progress in early detection and family planning. Back off! 

I know there are many other issues, but these are a few that really matter to me. I hope you get out and exercise your rights today. 

Grateful For The Birthday Girl

Day 5
Today is my sister-in-law Susie's birthday. I'm grateful to have her as an example in my life. She's pretty badass when it comes to being a mother, sister, and a friend. Distance is keeping us from celebrating with her today but we'll be there in a few weeks for a double celebration of Thanksgiving and getting older. Love you!

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