Here are your GIF-infused 2018 Resolutions!!!!!

HELLO, 2018 ENTHUSIASTS! How do I know you are a 2018-enthusiast, you ask? Well, you are a person who is alive in this year. That pretty much means you qualify. Anyway, since it is imperative that I avoid doing any real work this evening, let me flood you with a slew of nonsensical New Year's resolutions.

NUMBER THE FIRST: Buying a piano.

Spending a thousand dollars on an electronic piano (otherwise known as an expesive-ass keyboard) will ensure that I discipline myself enough to practice my scales every day. "C-dawg, you can't not practice tonight... you spent bloody ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS on this gadget!". It will work just as well as my 18-month membership to Gold's Gym! I mean, have you seen my muscles?!?!?!?

NUMBER THE SECOND: Beach body!!

Let me clarify: I do have a beached body. I would like a beach body. I will accomplish this by finally turning up at the gym two months before my 18-month contract expires, eating industrial amounts of protein, and then complaining that society is too focused on unattainable beauty standards that objectify women.

NUMERO TRES: Finding the positive everywhere.

That should be easy, right? Everyone is obviously doing it! I see it on all of your social media accounts, ya'll. You guys are turning herpes into beautiful unique stripes, like those of a majestic Bengal tiger, and diarrhea into organic fuel and eco-friendly flower food. I want to be like that. I want to leave this God-forsaken world where all these refugees drown and Donald Trump tweets at 3 in the morning and go hang out in gorgeous wheat fields and white-sanded beaches that are riddled with inspirational  #wordporn. I hereby declare that every time I am drowning in paper work at 6pm on a Friday night at a school where they turn off the A/C after 5, I will play some Tina Turner and dance around the room, praising life for a fulfilling job. 

FOUR OR WHATEVER: Be more compassionate and kind.

When another student asks me "what do you mean a verb?" or exclaims in disbelief as did the previous ten students that walked in before him, "we have a test today??!!" I will not clench my fists. I will not clench my jaw. I will not clench my arsehole. I will smile and nod and tell myself softly, "they are just little. This one just turned 16 last week". I will then levitate to my desk and do yoga for five minutes while they obediently do their warm ups. I will go home at 2:45 every day to meditate for two hours and will my head follicles to resurrect and produce lusciously thick Indian hair. 

FIVER: Open my heart and date!

Michael Phelps will have nothing on me because I will turn dating into an Olympic sport! I will finally listen to everyone around me and ditch my ridiculously impossible standards, loosen up, and be the little dainty lady I was always meant to be. It will be like being a newborn baby all over again, except with boobs and a moderate laugh. The creepers of the internet never had it so good! 

SIX: Lock it down, fam!

From the pool of men I meet after marathon-dating, I will choose the one who showers most often and marry that sucker. My momma ain't turning younger. She needs grandkids! Plus, someone has to pay for that ridiculously expensive piano I just bought!

LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN: Buy a house!!

I will stop worrying about crippling debt and a 30-year commitment to pay off ridiculous amount of money and just YOLO this shenanigans. There will be shutters, a picket fence, mold hidden behind the walls. I will not chicken out like the last time I was about to buy a house (oh yeah, I almost bought a house, ya'll... but I chicken out...not gonna happen again). This house will literally become the inspiration for me to go to work every morning and to never let my clean yet creepy husband touch me after the second kid (we are Catholic, people. That's how things work). I'll be living the dream.

So, 2018, I am coming for you! All of you, brace yourselves. I have clearly lost my GD mind. 

-Cris

Gratitude

Oh, hi there. Fancy meeting you here! So, Thanksgiving was yesterday and I have been thinking about writing something along the lines of being thankful. This week, however, I started reading Dorothy Cummings’ brilliant book, The Closet Is All Mine. In it, she talks about being single and how we really should embrace it. You know, standard thing I would read. In one chapter, however, she talks about man-hating and how irrational that is.  Then she goes on to talk about the great men in her life. So I though, you know what? I want to express my gratitude to the men in my life that have made up for the countless ones that were horrible (exes and nice guys included). Moreover, as I was writing these snippets, I realized that the presence in my life of these men are what makes me embrace my “pickiness”.

The reason why I am picky:

When Hurricane Rita hit Houston, thousands of people found themselves stranded in the congested freeways trying to run away. That night as the hurricane made landfall on the coast, my dad took our family van and drove to I-45, which is about 10 minutes away from my parents’ home. He parked the van on the side of the road and walked up to people waiting for the storm inside their vehicles, asking them if they would want to leave their cars behind and go to a shelter. For several hours, he took many people to our parish for shelter.

***

My grandparents were married for over fifty years. In the last years of her life, my grandmother suffered from different ailments and was, with reason, cranky at times. My grandfather retired and learned how to cook, clean, and to help her around the house. A Mexican man bred in the old-school gender binary, he never once hesitated to take on the role of homemaker. Moreover, he constantly teased grandma and tried to make her laugh, even when this would back fire and make her even crankier. He was with her every day of the 60-day hospital stay before she passed.

***

My brother has a way of lighting up a room whenever he walks in. People are drawn to him for conversation, advice, or simply a good laugh. It wasn’t always like that. There was a time of his life when darkness clouded his mind. But when he found himself semi-buried in the thick mud of his sin and depression, he took God’s hand and let himself be pulled out of that. God blessed him with a keen sense of kindness and compassion for those who suffer. He sometimes goes door to door on the streets of Detroit asking people if they have a need for prayer or conversation.

***

My friend Raja lost his mother last year, unexpectedly. The first time we spoke about this tragic event, I realized the profound emotional wound that his mother’s passing had had on him. It was as if the beautiful light of his soul had been blown out. I realized how deep and enormous his love for his mother was. He was incredibly distraught and he didn’t attempt to hide it. But it didn’t stop there. His fervent adoration for his mother became his sole motor. From the pain of this loss he drew strength to carry on. He couldn’t disappoint her. He couldn’t give up. Everything he did had to be done to honor her memory.

***

I grew up living next door to my mom’s sister and her family. Since my immediate family was not inclined to sport-playing, watching, or anything remotely having to do with sports, I often found myself next door at my tia’s house. Her husband, my Tio Roge, taught me many things about soccer and would even take me to watch our favorite team play at the stadium, or to his own soccer matches. He never once questioned my desire to play, watch and learn, or told me that it “wasn’t for girls”, or discouraged me in any way, even when other people in the family raised their eyebrows in disapproval.

***

When I was in Poland in 2016, I made the terrible mistake of having a horribly heavy backpack on our unfortunate 20-mile walk. About six or seven miles in, I knew I wasn’t going to make it because my feet were completely blistered from the previous days and my bag was easily thirty pounds or extra weight. One of the guys in our pilgrimage group, Daniel, could see the pain in my face, and, without asking me, took my backpack away from me and threw it over his back-- for the next 12 miles or so. This person wasn’t really my friend. He was just an acquaintance I had met during the pilgrimage. Once we got to the site where we were resting for the night, he fell to his knees with exhaustion and I embraced him as we both cried for a long time, overwhelmed with emotions.

***

When my friend Michael confessed to me that he liked my friend Elisabeth, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if she liked him back, or if he would be able to ask her out, or how anything would work out (they were both introverts and quite shy people in general). Somehow, he managed to do it. Three years later, they are married. Michael is not precisely the most openly effusive of people. But when he is around her, ah... When he talks about her, his face lights up. When he looks at her, everyone else disappears. He is warm, sweet, proud. Watching how he loves her is endearing. Seeing them together is like basking in the glory of the sun shining when it’s cold outside.




These are a few of the men in my life. They are kind and brave to love. They make this world better in their own small way. I love these men, and will continue to hope that, if God's will for me is marriage, I may find someone with a heart shaped similarly to theirs.