A Sad Day at work

Friday was a very tragic day at work.
I have a co-worker who is really a nice girl very strong and positive. She has two daughters and had a little boy. Two years ago she got pregnant without any plan anyway she delivered a pre-mature baby who had not fully grown and had longs problem and some other problems too. She used to take him to doctors all the time and the little poor thing even had a surgery too, but he was doing better and even started to walk and mumble words recently. She was happy and hopeful, every time we would talk about him I all the time would give her lots of hope that he would be fine and so forth.
She told me last week that he should get another surgery to fix some problems with his ears and she was hopeful that it would help him a lot.

On Friday I heard my boss talking to some one on the phone very nervously and asking the other person if she was sure that the baby is already passed a way!
Any way soon after her phone call, she called us all to her office and let us know that the little boy was passed a way. My Co-worker had got up in morning to pick up the kid and saw that he was cold. He had been fine the night before!

I started crying, I could not stop myself, since I have a little boy I know the feeling. I know how awful she must have been feeling at that moment and how difficult it is to lose a child. I am truly sorry for her; I saw how hard she was trying to save the child and make his life better and easier. May be this was better for him to be more restful this way but it is very difficult for the parents to believe it and accept it. It was such a sad day and I have been thinking about her all weekend. I wish her lots of patience and strength to pass this stage. I know that is so hard!

A pleasent break!

There was a sign in our office building elevator saying that there would be a little concert by Andrew Shapiro in Mc Donald’s today at 3:00 p.m. Me and two of my co-workers decided to take 15 minutes break and listen to him playing piano. I could sit there all day a long. He was performing so well. For a minute I closed my eyes and imagined myself at Cancun (a very nice city in Mexico), I was imagining that I was lying on the beach in the sun and a nice breeze was blowing. After that I went back to the time to when I was younger, when I was just 21 years old and I fell in love for the first time in my life. It was love in first glance some thing that I don’t believe in it any more. It’s amazing that meaning of the words changes so much for you by getting older! I don’t know why I remembered all that out of the blue! It’s very interesting that our mind can move so fast and so far in time and just 15 minutes can bring so many memories to your mind without even wanting to think about them! May be it’s our sub-conscious that sometimes wants to go back and rewind every thing!
Any way it was a nice 15 minutes break! Where in the world you see a great pianist playing in Mc Donald’s just around the corner and you can take a quick break to go and listen to him! May be just in San Diego!!

My Mom got her apartment

My Mom has got her own apartment. It is just 5 minutes (driving) from my house.
I had put her name in Low-income listing apartments less than 2 years a go. Here in US there are low-income apartments almost everywhere in the city even in the best neighborhoods but their waiting list is very long because they are a lot cheaper than regular apartments.
We did not have any hope that my Mom can get one soon but she told me about two weeks ago to call the apartment leasing center and just double check with them, it was amazing that they had a kind of emergency notice from a tenant and they wanted some one to move in right a way. It was like a miracle.
She is so happy and excited, she already has got every thing she needs and has moved stuff there. I am happy for her too. She needs to be independent and living with us for long could create some conflicts between her and my husband, although they get a long well but still little things come up and I would be the person in the middle!! You know what I am talking about!

In less than 4 months my Mother-I-law will be back again, god knows what would be the story this time!!
I really don’t know how people could live together before, about 30 years a go most of families in Iran would live with their in-laws in the same house, still in small towns and villages, people do that. I am sure they had lots of conflicts or still have, but may be they did not have any other choice! The thing is in today life it is almost impossible to have extra people living with you for long time even if they are your own parents. Every body needs privacy, when you work from morning until late afternoon you cannot go home and see some one there that may be you don’t feel like walk in front of her/him with your shorts, bath towels, etc…
These family issues are almost resolved and cleared in west but we are still working on them in our own culture! The best way to resolve these type of issues is to try to imagine ourselves as the other person and try to understand how we would feel if we were in stead of them! It’s hard for most of people to do that isn’t it?

The whole out-source issue is back again. About 6 months a go or so I wrote about outsourcing issue at work. They wanted to give all the IT projects to the contractors so we would work for contractors, after so many meetings and lots of stress that our unit went through they said it was not approved by state (I work for a government agency which works under the state of CA). Every one was relieved because we are all kind of settled in our jobs and the government befits are great. God knows how contractors would deal with us. Any way suddenly after Couple of months, they told us yesterday morning that State has approved the Outsource project and we will be all outsourced by January 2007.
I am not really stressed because it is possible that they change their mind again. Although it seems very serious this time but I don’t want to worry for the whole next year. I have just decided to go with the flow. I should keep my eyes opens on new opportunities but taking it easy! That’s life; every day things change and we cannot do much about certain things so stressing on them is waste of life!!

My Blog anniversairy

It is exactly 1 year and 2 days that I have started my own blog. It’s been a great experience for me and whenever I had a problem and I wrote about it in my blog it made me feel a lot better. It’s been like a mini therapy for me!
It’s amazing that Internet provides so much information for us and can be used as great communication tools and this blog thing is a great feature of it. You can have your online diary for free and share with others and get feed backs. I love it!
I should thank Jan here. He is my fateful reader. His comments are supportive and helpful. I should confess that every time I write something I am looking forward to seeing his comments. I am so used to it! It’s amazing that some one in another country from different background and culture can read your experiences and opinions and relates to you and understands you even better than people around you!

Pagosha

As I said in my last post, we were the next one to throw "pagosha"(Party after the wedding) for my brother-in-law. My god it was too much work. Persian parties are nothing but too much work for the host especially if you make all the dishes yourself. We should have at least three different foods at the dinner table, lots of Hour d’ouvre and a very fancy desert table. I myself am very picky when arranging parties, I like the house to look very clean and nice and serve the guests in the best way, on the other hand my husband is picky about the amount of food and their varieties, he thinks people have the cow appetite and we should make too much food otherwise we won't have enough food for them!! Every time that we have a party we will have extra food at least for a week to eat but he never gets his lesson. Just imagine with all these conditions plus having a 2-year-old boy at a house, how difficult was it for me last night. We had about 30 guests and I told my husband lets remind people that it is an adult party and ask them not to bring kids (Iranians, mostly take their kids to the parties even the late parties at night!) but as usual he did not listen to me, there were 5 kids and god knows how active they were! I put my son in bed while he was crying and wanted to go down stairs and playing at 9:30. I knew it was impossible to serve the dinner with him. Any way it was too much work and I was very tired and stressed. I had two people to help me with serving food and stuff but still even if you bring the help you need to manage them yourself! The party was fine and I think guests had good time and dinner was tasty too. Me, my Mom and my husband made different foods, so we had three delicious dishes, Gormeh sabzi made by my husband, Zereshk polo and chicken made by me and Baghali polo and lamb shang made by my Mom. The last group of guests left our house at 2:00 am, Can you believe it? Any way I am happy that it is over but as usual my In-laws had attitude, they think what ever we did was our duty I could see it in them, that's the part that made me more tired but it is OK, I did it for my husband because I know how much he likes to have guests and how much he enjoys having people over. I like it too but with baby it is hard for me. Thank god my Mom is here and helps me like an angel. Some times I think it is hard to be an Iranian woman, especially here in California that we have all the customs from Iran and we follow them and at the same time we should work hard as an American woman out side of the house!!