Nevergirl's

My 20-year-old sister will be graduating this March. I am proud of her. She is intelligent, hardworking, and kind. She’s pretty, too, but we both know that’s nothing to be proud of. Looks are either a happy or an unhappy genetic accident; no credit is due to her.

We very rarely talk about relationships but we did one time, and I’m happy she shares my views. When it comes to the boy who claims to love you, drown out what he says and focus on what he does. You won’t ever go wrong with that (and some day, when you’re 40 and overweight, you won’t find yourself googling “which diet pills work” because he’d love you anyway, flabs and all). And well, I’m glad she gets it. I’m glad she gets that she should only give her heart to the boy who will take the best care of it. After all, the point of being a couple is that it’s with each other where and when you feel the safest. You should be each other’s greatest fans, nurturers, dream enablers, and if the need ever arises, each other’s fiercest protectors.

But how do you find this boy who will care for your heart as if it were his? This can be tricky. There are too many boys, too little time. Read more »

I’m a pessimist.

I see the glass as half-full, going on empty. I think if something can go wrong, it will. If opportunity comes a’knocking, I’d probably whinge about the noise it’s making and then check out the security cameras to make sure it was indeed opportunity who knocked, not some robber. I read the horoscope to “anticipate” the future. What accidents will I be meeting tomorrow? What dark, dismal cloud should I make allowances for in the future? Which Zodiac sign is most likely to make off with my bag, hold me up at gunpoint, stab me in a dark alley?

I read this line once “May I be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble” and I felt like taking a shower after, to wash off some of the gushing happiness. I’m suspicious of happiness; I think it’s best bite-sized. Too much of it weakens people and leaves them vulnerable. Yes, you can tie me up, hang me upside down, turn me inside-out, and the prognosis will stay the same: I am a pessimist. I am a worrier. If you ask me to come up with a creed spontaneously, I will most likely end up giving you something like this:

What if I drown in the pool? What if I get run over? What if I’m allergic to that flower? What if it rains stool? What if I die in the shower?

I am a worrier, and it doesn’t help at all that I am accident-prone because all my dire prophecies end up becoming self-fulfilling.

The upside to being such a bleak ball of doom and gloom? Your heart rarely breaks because you’ve long made room for disappointments. Whenever I see a sister crying, I tell her, “Okay, cry. But when you get dehydrated, we start doing it my way: you put one foot in front of the other and make like you’re okay. Eventually, you will be.”

There is, of course, a downside to all this pessimism, and it’s this: it’s highly likely you will lie awake at 2:30am googling where to sign up your family for the nearest survivalist camp BECAUSE being the pessimist that you are, you have figured that the polar ice caps will melt fully during your lifetime. Your family needs to learn to survive extreme heat, extreme cold, and an extreme diet of seaweeds, snails, and porcupine (which you will need to catch yourself, using driftwood you had to swim two hours to acquire) this 2010 because the Mayan doomsday prophecy had just been shot to pieces—and who knows when the world would really end?

I make a great risk manager, I tell you.

I don’t just plan for risks; I invent them.

And now that I’ve thought of this, I just may add this skill in my resume, too.

I’m a war junkie—and it’s an obsession the man doesn’t get. It’s no Branson vacation, he pointed out once, so why do I persist? I don’t know. What I do know is that I once bought a world map and stabbed it with loads of pins, to mark Hitler’s march across Europe. My father took it as a sign that the force is alive and well in me (he would; the guy has a black belt in judo; he thinks it’s excellent morning exercise to fight an atis tree using nanchucks); my stepmom thinks it’s proof I’m a dingbat.

In senior high school, my favorite books were—and in this order, too:

1. Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day
2. Walter Winward’s The Judas Cloak
3. Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides

I admit to weeping every now and then over a few Judith McNaughts in high school, but those were diversions. What I really cried the hardest over was The Judas Cloak. It’s a good thing I had to return that book to the library; I do not doubt I’d still blubber over what happened to Alphabet Soup and his brothers-at-arms now.

Anyway, the obsession with war and war stories live on. I just finished reading up on Swiss wars. The long and short of it is that Switzerland was never invaded during World Wars 1 and II. Good thing, too, because

1. without Switzerland, where will all of the world’s crooked and rich open and keep dodgy bank accounts? Read more »

1. I’m waiting for Facebook to change my surname to Decimator.

2. I’m adding two more possible exits to my “Zombie Attack Contingency Plan” map. The man doesn’t think it’s necessary, but I do. I’m all for constant readiness, and I have several maps to prove it including a “When Plants Become Monsters Escape Plan” and mind you, we’re not talking of computer games here. These are real-life blueprints that I drew up. I’m made of genius and win yeba!

3. I’m reading up on the best acne treatment just so I can satisfy my curiosity if it’s possible for one to get acne in the eyeballs. Don’t judge.

4. I’m doing a little quality control witch dance on a few projects that need to be sent off pronto.

And yes, in that order because I know my priorities.