Daily Archives: 28 June 2008

CafeWriting: Helpful

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Sometimes, there can be much joy in helping someone else…and since my own prompt at CafeWriting for May and June called on me to list seven ways I’ve helped another person, I thought I’d get this down for those times when I’m feeling useless and stupid.

  1. My Mother: She went back to school in her thirties, and I used to help her by editing her essays, and suggesting stronger word choices. Later, when she had to learn a 100-page flip-chart presentation, I helped her with that as well. I think I can still recite it in my sleep. And she helped me, and continues to help me, all through my life.
  2. Various friends, and Fuzzy: I’ve helped them re-write or tweak their resumes. They’ve helped in return by critiquing my work.
  3. My grandmother: While I never learned to knit, I helped straighten her knitting bag, untangling yarn, and matching pairs of needles, more than once. She helped me by teaching me that a gift of the hand is a gift of the heart.
  4. My friend J. in Colorado: I held her hand when she came out, answered her three AM calls when she first began dating women, and stood by when one of her relationships became abusive. She returned the favor, letting me agonize about Fuzzy, answering MY three AM calls, and always offering a safe haven when I needed to escape.
  5. My friend G who sometimes drops in here. We helped each other survive high school, which sounds petty but really isn’t.
  6. Zorro Dog: He isn’t a person, in the literal sense, but he means the world to me, and we gave him a home and love, and in his name, we’ve driven partial journeys to help other small dogs find their “forever homes” as well.
  7. My grandfather: I baked bread, went fishing, and gardened with him. He helped me with everything from the concept of leverage to understanding negative numbers.

Of course, I’ve also taken friends to lunch, helped them move, sent letters to soldiers overseas, and any number of other supportive things, all of which have been returned many times over.

It’s just…nice to remember, sometimes.

Explorations

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We originally set out this morning to refill Zorro’s blood pressure medication, and maybe find lunch. We ended up first driving to downtown Grand Prairie, which is all of a block long, trying to find a Filipino grocery store that’s supposed to be there, but isn’t.

We gave up on finding macapuno ice cream today, after all, and went to Piranha for sushi. I was craving their wasabi crusted tuna roll, which is to die for. Our waitress said that roll alone accounts for between three and five percent of their business, and I believe it. (I also had a dragon roll, because I was desperate for unagi). Fuzzy, had teriyaki salmon.

On the way to lunch we also stopped at the library, which was depressing, and will get it’s own entry.

After lunch, we went to this part of Arlington we’d passed once that had a gate labelled Village Lake Historic Area, or some such. At the time we found it, it was closed due to flooding, but we’re in a mini-drought, so we thought it might be open, it was, but it’s just a park. Now, I like parks, but I was not dressed for walking on trails, it was 101 degrees, and we had no water with us. Fuzzy failed to see why this was a problem, and why I got angry with him when he said, “I’m just going to go look at the marker,” and then was out of sight five minutes later, leaving me in the car. I called him, and he said, “Well I wanted to see what was here.” It took him twenty minutes to return.

Next, we drove to Irving, in our ongoing quest to determine if any part of the metroplex has a cute, functional downtown (so far, the answer is NO). We got jamba juices and sipped them as we looked at funky houses, and mocked the different businesses on the old main streets, emblazoned with signs for modern furniture and the like, but clearly long-since out of business.

Today was one of the days when I sorely missed our old condo in California, and the surrounding neighborhood, and being able to walk to Starbucks and a bookstore.

I still have to go to a bookstore and do my Algonkian prep work, and I still have to write this weekend, and I feel like we wasted a day when we could have done something productive or meaningful.