Google Stalking

Here are a few updates:

• See this diva? *Somebody* has a temper.  Hilly is happy as a clam in her jumparoo for hours....until she isn't.  Then she screams as loud as she can until you remedy the situation.  She's lucky she's such a knock-out, this one!  I suspect this is a good quality for a younger sister.  She was sleeping through the night and then regressed and now gets up 2x to eat.  I'm on autopilot in the middle of the night- exhausted.  I grab her (she's still in our room) feed her and then all the sudden I wake up and panic: Where is she?  Turns out, I've finished feeding her, changed & re-swaddled her and put her bad to sleep all without realizing it.  This freaks me out every time.  Anyway, she turns 6 months this month and it blows my mind. 
• I am going to ramble now.  You may want to move along to the next blog:
• My friend TheBlind (who now has a big time job as a pros*ecutor, so I'd like to send a shout out of congratulations) told me that this girl we went to elementary school with was caught shoplifting at Walmart recently.  Her family was fresh off the boat from Tawain (sp? I know... I really should look this one up, but.. whatever) and she had a younger brother and sister. I became best friends with her in 2nd grade and we were friends until like 4th grade.  She even went on vacation with my family (to our family beach house).  I remember she brought my great grandmother a canister of Nestle quick as a thank you gift.  I thought it was so freaking weird and hilarious.  But in retrospect, I find it very sweet.  For starters, it's great that her family let her come along.  If we picked up and moved to Asia, I wouldn't let my girls out of my sight- I barely let them out of my sight here!  I know they are 6 months and 2 years and I will probably feel differently when they are 8, but still.  And then they sent her along with a gift to show gratitude that they thought the kids would enjoy, as there were 6 of us in total. Both of my brothers brought a friend.  So while I did not outwardly mock her for bringing it and she was my best friend at the time, I wish my mom would've sat me down and explained to me that it was actually a very sweet gesture.  
• Anyway, I remember a lot of unusual things about the family- I spent a TON of time there.  They had barrels of clothing.  Seemingly random clothing.  After dinner her mom put like the top of an umbrella over the food.  They ate tofu (this is where I learned to like tofu and dumplings).  I celebrated the chinese New Year at some local hall and it went late into the night and I was bored.  I went to some weird foreign film with them and was bored out of my mind.  They would buy like 4 or 5 of the same toy if it was on sale. Her dad would make her read bits of an Encyclopedia every day during the summer, which I thought SUCKED, but as a parent, I get- especially as the encyclopedia was in English and she was first generation here in the U.S.  One time I was at their house and I had a headache and her mom rubbed some sort of minty oil on my forehead and it made my headache go away.  As a college aged binge drinker, you can imagine how often I've dreamed of this magical oil.  Her parents spoke very broken English and not much of it.  Ste*phanie (my friend) did a great deal of translating and also taught me a lot of words in Tawainese.  For some reason, they got video games before they were out here.  So I was playing the Chinese version of Mario 3 well before it was released in the US.  I also remember we weren't all that nice to her siblings all the time, but I loved her little brother because he was a toddler and really cute and I was 8 or so and I feel like little girls always love babies and toddlers. 
• Around 4th grade... maybe 5th? but I think 4th, we grew apart.  I would occasionally see her in the bathroom at school- she spent a lot of time in there- and she would always ask me about my cat and my great-grandmother.  I feel like I could've been nicer to her but I didn't realize until I got older that she probably didn't have many friends.  Maybe she did, though, and I just didn't know better.  Even in high school, she would ask me about my great-grandmother and my cat and she was really sad when I told her my great grandma had died. She always had a very odd body shape too.  I know you're going to think I'm a real a$$hole for bringing this up, but it was like boxy.  Not heavy or too thin but almost as if she wore a box under her clothing.  TheBl*nd, do you remember this?  Did it incite your curiosity as well? I never made fun of her or anything, I just noticed it and was confused.
• When TheBl*nd texted me with the news that she was in our town's crime blotter I took about an hour, neglected my husband and children and Google stalked her entire family.  I could find virtually nothing on her and it frustrated me- no idea on where or if she attended college, no evidence of social networking.  It looks like she dabbles in real estate- but no picture or real online activity.  Her little brother is this gay, tech-savy student with a ton of personality at one of my old undergraduate universities.  Her little sister went to another huge university in my home state and did a lot of speaking on issues that Asian-Americans deal with and is also very religious. And I found this long article on her mom which made me realize just how much I either underestimated her as a child because she didn't speak English or simply never thought about her (probably the latter) because I was a kid.  The article said how before they moved to the US, she was an elementary school teacher, but after they moved for her husband's job, she stayed home with the children.  Every night she would peruse this Chinese newspaper looking for a job that would enable her to work from home (which I totally relate to).  She found this ad looking for a reporter, was hired for her energy and started writing cool stories about the experience of Chinese people over here in the US.  For example, I think a bus load of illegals or something was "captured" or whatever and she went to the prison and interviewed those that were on the bus.  I guess she ended up opening this Chinese grocery store in my hometown and got to know many local Chinese people that way.  In the article she said that when she has a story in the works, she won't sleep for like days at a time because she can't stop thinking about it- "almost like when you are pregnant."  I had no idea she was such a cool lady and I was kind of blown away by how much is truly lost in translation.  I also envy her passion for this writing career that she developed (she only makes like $300/mo or something, so she's not in it for the money, but isn't it just a cool development for her?).  If I understood Chinese I would read every article.
• Suffice it to say, I'm tempted to sit outside their house with binoculars to catch a glimpse of St*ephanie.  I want to know more.  But the beauty of my childhood neighborhood is that it is deep in the heart of suburbia and there would be nowhere to hide.  Sometimes when we pull up to my mom's house and there are lawns and wide roads with little traffic and houses with the windows open and you can see the old lady wallpaper in the room, I'm tempted to move right back.  There are garages and spacious yards along a golf course.  But I don't like the idea of my kids graduating with a class of like 700 students- geez, maybe this is why I have no clue what happened to her in high school.  Those numbers are kind of f*cked up.  But I like the spacious neighborhoods.