Jen Frankel and I were moaning last week about how we have to fix our websites. I had a terrible cold/flu this past week but while recovering, for some reason I thought it was a good idea to do. I don’t have a lot of money to spend on a website, so I just went with a free theme aimed at photographers since book covers are visually appealing works of art.
While compiling all the stuff I’ve written, I realize I’ve spent a lot of time writing for Ricepaper magazine and need to get back to writing books. Over the course of the last few months I had taken a novel writing course at Ryerson University at night to kick me in the butt, so I am back to work on writing my second vampire book. The course was very literary and the instructor and I were like cats and dogs talking about magic. They are an award winning Canlit author and my writing doesn’t fit into the “normal” categories. We agreed to disagree and spent time working on character development which they were great at.
My blog hasn’t been active lately because I have become a “sandwich generation” caregiver. Basically it’s a person who has to take care of children and aging relatives at the same time, so they are caught in the middle. Since my father died, I have been taking care of my 102 year old grandmother (oldest in the family) and my son (youngest in the family). My mother needs checking on to, she is like a teenager so I have to make sure she is eating properly among other things (like see a doctor after she broke her arm, she told me to piss off at the time). I am grateful that I have a supportive husband who lets me take care of people as in some Asian families, daughters are considered “water poured” out, meaning that once a daughter is married, they are only supposed to take care of their in-laws.
My siblings have been great as well and the three of us work together to help grandma as much as we can as she is unfortunately declining. We have hired two sitters to help (almost like nannies) as the nursing home staff can only do so much with a 1:10 ratio of staff:residents. I also had several breakdowns when asking for help from older generations in regards to grandma and getting rejected. While sobbing, my husband just told me that I was too idealistic, that not everyone is altruistic even if blood related. This makes me very sad. So much for the stereotype about Asians taking care of family. My dad’s death has made me bolder in asking questions about the family hierarchy and it’s made me very unpopular with older generations. The resistance to change has been appalling.
Thanks for reading and please be well! Although life goes on with or without us, doing good helps everyone! And I will be an eternal Peter Pan/Wendy…instead of turning into a cynical rock…blah!
Musings of a Generic Asian 