Sad news && Persepolis

-The first news that I saw this Morning on MSN.com was the death of Randy Pausch! He was a computer science professor who gave an amazing speech “last lecture” to his students last year and millions of people worldwide watched it on Internet. “A dying man gave speech about how to live”.
He appeared on some TV shows like Oprah and there is a book named last speech about him as well. He was diagnosed with cancer and doctors had told him he would live up to six months before he gave this speech. He was a father of three kids. May be most of you already watched and listened to his speech and I am sure that you were amazed by that. How one person can be so smart, positive and wise at the same time and it is so sad that he had such a short life. Reading the news of his death broke my heart. I truly wish blessing and patience for his family. It must be very hard for his wife and his kids to get over such a loss! I think no man ever can replace him for his wife. If you have not watched his speech here is a link to it:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
In part of his speech he says: “We can’t change the cards but we should see how we can play it right” (may be this is not the same exact sentence but meaning is right).
-My husband was scheduled for some checkups and procedures (he is fine just wanted to do some extra checkups) that needed him to be unconscious for an hour this morning. After waking up from the sedation he could not drive so I took off from work and accompanied him to the Clinique. The first magazine that caught both of us eyes was this month’s National geographic with the cover of Persepolis pictures and article about Iran. My husband said: “we have to buy the magazine and keep it”. I read the whole article while I was waiting for my husband. I got shiver several times when the article was describing about glorious days of Iran and how Persia was the first super power of the world. The Article describes how great Cyrus started the kingdom with peace and eliminated discrimination and freed all the Jews who were captivated as slaves. It says also how we were the first civilization who believed in only one god and when Arabs attacked Iran they were forcing us to believe in what we already had believed for more than one thousand year!!!!!!!! It talks about how Arabs, Mongols and others occupy Iran and how we saved our language and some of our culture through all these attacks. I was emotional and sad. No matter how happy and successful you are as an immigrant you always miss your roots and origins. The land that you left behind always attracts you and anything about it makes you concerned and gives you shiver unless you have completely cut the cord from your past and deny your true identity! I never read such a good article about Iran in any western magazine before. Iranians really need this. Iran is not just a third world country with an idiot president who does not know Sh??t about anything! There is a 2500 civilization behind it that is like a fire under the ash and a good wind can blow to the fire and bring it up again. I pray for that day.
Any way after finishing the article and looking at the beautiful pictures I thought that I have to buy the magazine as my husband said. When I went back to the office I got an email from my ex-colleague and always sweet friend that she had seen the magazine and thought of me so she bought it for me and now she needed my office address to send it to me!!!!!!!!!! Isn’t it something amazing? She is so sweet and I really appreciate her friendship. She is the only person that knows me in person and I gave her my blog address so she could read it! I think our souls are somehow connected!

Mother-in-law!

My Mother-in-law is still with us, she finally got her swearing letter and is scheduled to take part in citizenship swearing ceremony on July 23rd. Her ticket is for August 4th.
I have been married for 8 years now and every year my mother-in-law has been in US from 3 months to 11 months and she has always been at our place for a while during her visitation. She never really wanted to get a place for her own!
My other sister-in-law treated her really bad while she was at her place for 2 months recently but I decided to be nice and welcoming more than ever for couple of reasons:
First of all I am more mature now and have become a lot more patient recently. Part of it is because of reading the book New Earth and practicing its advises, Second: I thought, when she will be a citizen she won’t have excuse to come and stay long here and most probably this will be her last long visit so I have to bear with it one more time. Third reason is I thought to myself, If I need to go and stay in one of my son’s places for a while in future (which I really avoid!!)Do I like to be treated not nicely by their wives? Any way I am putting up with some comments that I don’t like and lack of privacy! This too will pass. That is a sentence in New Earth book! It is good to remember that every situation will pass in its own time, if we keep our patience we can pass through it and we will be fine!
I have to confess that I am getting wiser and I am glad that I have chosen to work on myself and my inner self. I know I still need to work more, definitely by the day of my death. Everyone needs that!

Single or Married?

-I have a friend that I have written about her here before. She is my best friend. I don’t know that we are still best friends or just old friends. We know each other from 5th grade and we were so close when we were both in Iran, she was the first one to move to US and then I moved two years later. She got married first also. She lives one hour away from San Diego in Orange County. When I moved to US we were both very happy and kept our friendship close. When I got married we tried to make our husbands friends so we could hang out more. My husband is pretty friendly so we could hang out as couples as well but after five years of marriage she got divorced about five years ago and after that she had a single life style and found new single friends so she could have fun with them. I have been happy for her to be able to run her life happily after divorce. Obviously we don’t see each other as much because I am married and have two kids and am very busy and worst of all we live one hour away from each other. Even this one hour trip makes it harder to see each other but we are always in touch and see each other whenever we can.
In these last 5 years she has been dating different guys but none of those relationships ended to marriage. I was talking to her the other day and she was telling me that she is very happy as a single person and does not feel like getting married. She goes out with her single friends almost every weekend and they are going to south France in August.
I have to confess that I was jealous. I was thinking to myself that when was the last time that I went out to party and have fun. Recently we just go out as a family and with two kids it can be very challenging! I feel like I don’t have personal fun. I enjoy my kids a lot and am happy to have them and spend time with them but I miss going out and having fun. I know you say so why don’t you go out sometime? Because I get so tired of the outside work and home work that by the time that is Saturday night don’t have energy to go out. For example we wanted to go out for a dinner or movie last Saturday but I had tons of laundry and other works to do so by the time that was evening I was so tired that I did not feel like going out. My husband is not as helpful as he can be. I need to remind him all the time to help more! And sometimes I get tired of these reminding!! Any way Sometimes I think may be staying single and live the life all on our own is more fun and is a lot easier. I get lots of love from my kids and don’t trade them for the world but what about me and my young days that are passing by so fast? My mom says you have family and kids, when you get older you have two sons and that will be joyful, imagine if you be only when you are old! But in a world like US they will leave the house and will go to other states for education or work and I will see them may be once or twice a year, they won’t fill my loneliness when I am old! If we will end up being alone when we are old, isn’t it better to at least be single and enjoy our life when we are young without too much responsibility and hard work?
I know that I don’t like to be single and personally I am a family person so I should be happy to have my own family and try to have fun every now and then and don’t compare myself with my single friend! But sometimes especially when I am tired I cannot stop that kind of comparison!!!!!!!!!!
-By the way my mother-in-law is staying with us since last week until at least mid August! She is in process of becoming US citizen and is waiting for her swearing ceremony! I am very patient about it; she is more helpful than before and is appreciating me more because my other sister-in-law treated her really bad when she stayed with them for a while. I feel sorry for her. She has been waiting for her citizenship process in last few months and she has been back and forth to her son’s houses. She could rent a place temporarily but she is a little bit stingy for that!! But I am trying my best to be nice and understanding.