Category Archives: Casa420 and Familia

And everything is plastic, and everyone’s sarcastic

Weather that just can't make up its damn mind
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz

This is just a public service announcement/placeholder post to let you know I’m here! and alive! And I have bajillions of stories to share with you all, but not nearly enough time to type them out. So, give me a few days. Also, I’m sorry for being such a bastid about never replying to the comments you all leave on this weblog; please know that I do appreciate every single one of them. Thank you for being such rockstars, and putting up with me.

In case you’re interested, this was my itinerary for last Saturday alone:
– Memorial service
– Baby shower
– Wedding reception

And then, on Sunday, I tried to finish up a project for a work deadline, but didn’t make much progress. Two days later, I’m still in limbo and not going anywhere with that, and all I really want to do is crawl beneath my desk and sleep for several days. Meanwhile, the world is falling apart – as always, and in so many, innumerable ways – and this is my wish for you: That you may never have to attend a memorial service with your little brother, and watch him watch his 22-year-old friend in a coffin. Parents should never have to see their children in coffins, either.

But still, the glorious mundanity continues. This GMail IM from my sister made me laugh yesterday:

I was walking behind this dude who had the price tag still flapping out behind his shorts and it made me think of you

Here’s hoping you’re finding things to laugh about, too.

Your light shines brighter than the best


Pencils so pretty, it makes you want to eat them, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

My (3 or more) Beautiful Things posts always contain snippets from a single given day of the week, but, in this case, I haven’t written in a while, so the following is a compilation of things from the past couple of weeks:

one. While driving to work the other morning, I saw a car with a bumper sticker pasted to its back corner. The long, thin strip simply stated mournfully, MY LIFE IS IN RUINS. Seeing as how the driver was at the wheel of a Jeep Cherokee and in seemingly good health, I felt it was safe to smile. Something I thought of just now, while typing out this paragraph: Maybe he’s quite a dedicated archaeologist? (Where’s Ayan with his puns?)

two. Although it’s been two weeks, thinking about the email from my friend about a recent halaqa trip in which I couldn’t participate still makes me laugh. The subject line: WE NEED YOU! The email:

i was just thinking that we can’t do this trip without you.
who will take the photos of every little thing that everyone else will not think about taking a photo of???
yasmine!!!
who will remind us to eat everytime our stomachs growl but the rest of us are too embarrassed to admit that we are hungry… again…

It’s good to know that even though I’m infamous amongst friends for often forgetting to eat real meals, I’m also paradoxically infamous for my shameless love of food. Oh, and at least someone doesn’t make fun of me for taking photos of seemingly trivial objects (like the evening at the Berkeley Marina, when my friend’s sister said snidely, “That’s just a water faucet.” I felt like stabbing her with someone’s fishing pole. Okay, must concentrate on beautiful things…)

three. I saw a man at the San Ramon gas station who was completely absorbed in leaning against his drivers-side door and reading a book while gas was being pumped into his car. Oblivious to the rest of the world, he remained standing like that for minutes after the pump clicked to signal that his tank was full.

four. Two weeks ago, I walked up to a familiar-looking young man at an event and asked, “Did I meet you at a conference in Oakland?” We established that I had not. He emailed me a few days later, asking if we could meet, since he was curious about my work as well as about my everyday life as a Muslim. I suggested we meet one evening for coffee and talk; we agreed on a time and place. (And I was pleased when he appended his note with, I like the endings to your emails. “Have beautiful days” seems to ensure that there are more to come.)

“I’m going to a coffee meeting with a guy,” I told my work buddy, B.

She was puzzled. “You don’t even drink coffee.”

“Yeah, I know. But saying, ‘Let’s meet over hot chocolate or cranberry juice’ doesn’t have quite the same ring.”

The guy and I met up yesterday at the gorgeous San Jose Museum of Art downtown, and walked over to the Peet’s down the street, where it was quickly established that neither of us are really coffee fans. We laughed and shrugged and ordered frozen blended drinks anyway, then walked back to the outdoor patio tables at the Museum, where I tried to answer his questions about my work and Islam to the best of my ability. In return, he told me about growing up in Iowa (“I have a friend from Cedar Rapids!” I said), the three weeks he spent in Spain (someday, I, too, will visit), and the summer he traveled to Greece to meet his relatives for the first time.

Also, he mentioned the time he and his college wrestling teammates were in the Czech Republic for training, and ran into an Arab team from the UAE, also training for some sporting event. He invited them to dinner with his team, they accepted, and the evening was mostly filled with nods and laughter over good food, since there was only one translator and he couldn’t fulfill everyone’s verbal communication needs. My new friend shrugged, “We didn’t have internet access, so I couldn’t Google them to see what the UAE team was doing in this tiny little city in the Czech Republic.”

I laughed. “Well, if it was three years ago and you still haven’t gotten to it, then just consider it serendipity, and a rocking evening spent making connections with strangers, while eating. You can’t go wrong if there’s food involved.”

Flipping radio stations while driving home, I came across another form of serendipity: KQED Radio broadcasting the Spirituality and Social Change: An Interfaith Roundtable, inspired by the papers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that was held at Stanford University in January. [Audio, video, and transcript are available on the website linked above.] Imam Zaid Shakir clearly and articulately touched on so much of what I had been struggling to explain to my new friend all evening. I drove home captivated by each speaker’s thoughts on spirituality and social responsibility, compassion and human connection. I remembered telling my friend that in Islam, we are encouraged to think critically, to question, to seek and analyze answers as one way of deepening our own spiritual growth. During the course of the Aurora Forum roundtable, the Rev. Dr. Warnock said something (in reference to Dr. King) that resonated:

For me, critical reflection is an act of worship. It’s part of what it means to be a person of faith, and he’s a thinker, but he’s an engaged thinker. I do think the first act, in a real sense, is what the liberation theologians call praxis: you’re engaged in the world; you’re actually involved in the effort of trying to make a difference.

five. Over dinner, my father was grousing about his recent speeding ticket, which he received while driving with his colleague to the Friday congregational prayers. “I gave him a guilt trip,” said the daddy-o. “I told him, ‘I always drive too fast, but you heading out of work only five minutes before the sermon begins doesn’t help matters, either.’ ”

“Did he offer to pay for part of the ticket?” I asked with interest.

“No,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t even think of that.”

My friends would have been more considerate, and offered to pay half, I bet you,” I said smugly.

“Oh, yeah?” He raised his eyebrows. “Would you offer to pay, if you were with your friend?”

“If they were running late and speeding because of me?” I almost said, Hell yeah!, but swallowed those words and added instead, “Of course!”

The daddy-o laughed and raised his hand for a high-five. “See? That’s because I raised you well.”

Hands up!

Hands up!
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Cross-posted from flickr, because I CAN. And also because I doubt the Blogistanis check out my flickr photos, except for those I post right here on the weblog. Lazy kids.

The following email came straight to my inbox this afternoon:

Everett High School
Message sent – 1/18/2007
Attendance Message

Hello, this is EVERETT HIGH SCHOOL calling to notify you that your child, BETHANY, was absent from EVERETT HIGH SCHOOL on 1/18/2007 for periods 1, 6. In order to waive an absence the parent/guardian must submit a waiver application form with appropriate documentation attached. Thank you.

First of all, I never knew that I had a daughter named Bethany all along. Seriously, why does no one tell me things? Secondly, BETHANY? She’s probably blonde. I bet she’s on the cheerleading squad, too. Clearly, Bethany did not inherit any of my genes. Finally, the hell was Bethany doing, skipping class during periods 1 & 6? (I like to think she inherited some of my genes by sleeping in through period 1 and sneaking off-campus for lunch during period 6.)

Maybe I should ask Bethany if she could teach me how to dance…in return for signing her waiver application form for periods 1 & 6.

PS: Everett High School is in Michigan. It’s hella freakin’ cold in Michigan, I hear. If I had a daughter named Bethany, Bethany and I would not be living in Michigan. I think we just might live in the UAE instead, where apparently it’s sunshine-y and warm year-round.

PPS: The above email reminded me of Jamelah’s post from last year. Jamelah is on flickr, too, by the way. And she’s a ROCKSTAR! who merits all capitals and an exclamation point.

PPPS: Most importantly, those are my nieces, pictured above. They are also rockstars. You can see some of their silliness in action – on the same day as the above photo – here.

Three Things: The Home Edition

Chukairiyaan
Chukairiyaan, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

1. Waking up at 8am, realizing it’s a Saturday, and burrowing back under the warm covers to sleep in until 10:30. Washing my face, and then promptly sitting down at the computer. I check emails and weblogs while my mother pulls up a chair beside me and flips through catalogues and coupon books. We discuss an impending visit to IKEA (she’s never been!), and she tells me The Sister is on a newfound campaign to add a cat to our household. A cat would be nice, says my mother wistfully. She fondly recalls our previous next-door neighbor’s cat, Daisy, who used to keep my mother company in the garden.

2. I wash and condition my hair, then actually take the time to comb it out, too – albeit abruptly, top to bottom rather than the other way around, so that my impatient tugs result in lots of gnarled hair in the wastebasket. Still, it got combed. Since I’m a firm adherent of the “I don’t believe in combing my hair” philosophy, today’s effort is highly newsworthy and must be mentioned, especially considering I have conversations about hair quite rarely anyway (my favorite conversation is still that latter one, with a four-year-old, no less). I then sit in a pool of sunshine on the living room floor, willing my hair to dry while reading the last few chapters of John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, a book I love but have never reread since finishing it in one evening for my tenth-grade English class, eight years ago. In one passage that makes me smile, Gene says:

After the lights went out the special quality of my silence let [Phineas] know I was saying [prayers], and he kept quiet for approximately three minutes. Then he began to talk; he never went to sleep without talking first and he seemed to feel that prayers lasting more than three minutes were showing off. God was always unoccupied in Finny’s universe, ready to lend an ear any time at all. Anyone who failed to get his message through in three minutes, as I sometimes failed to do when trying to impress him, Phineas, with my sanctity, wasn’t trying.

3. Lazily sitting around the dining room table after we’ve just finished dinner, The Sister looks around at each of us individually and asks, wide-eyed, “Anyone want chocolate cake?” I laugh at her excitement, and she adds, “I’ve been looking forward to this all day!” Our mother, ever the practical one, advises that we save the dessert-consumption for after taraweeh [the nightly congregational prayers held during Ramadan], but the daddy-o – never one to refuse dessert – overrules that suggestion with an authoritative, “Well, in that case, we can have two! – one dessert now, and another one when we get back from taraweeh.” A quick peek into the refrigerator makes me laugh at all the choices available to us: apple-caramel-pecan cake, chocolate ganache torte, apple pie, chocolate-orange sticks, and, in the freezer, two pints of ice cream, one of which (my new favorite: Ben&Jerry’s American Pie) merited an excited email from me to fellow ice cream fan 2Scoops months ago, raving about how it was “basically exactly what it sounds like – apple pie with ice cream!” Just for 2Scoops, I would like to add that the American Pie ice cream is still SPECTACULARICIOUS.

Edibly adorable crackstar kids

In case we didn’t already think Z is a cool dude, I am indebted to him for reminding me about what a wonderful weekend I had recently. When he asked me the other day, “What was the last fun thing you did?” my immediate response was, “Saturday, sitting outdoors for most of the day with my nieces [they’ve grown up!] in Sacramento, taking photos and recording videos of them while they threw flower petals all over me and the rest of the front lawn.”

Click below to see their botanical carnage. [Or check here if you can’t view the video properly.]

PS: All the dialogue is in Hindku. It’s okay, you don’t need to understand the language to know what’s going on.

[Oh, yeah, and YouTube? I feel like I’m going over to the dark side. I don’t even watch anything on YouTube. But maybe the dark side would be darker if I had been using Google Video for this.]

My name is…

I watched Walk the Line with the parents a couple of evenings ago, and now my dad thinks it’s the most amusing thing in the world to wander around the house and repeatedly mutter in a deep, distinctive voice, “HELLO, I’M JOHNNY CASH.”

Worse yet, he’s been blessed with a daughter (that would be I) who thinks this is equally hilarious. Every time I respond to his new favorite catchphrase with yet another resounding bout of laughter, he grins slyly, “You like that, huh? HELLO, I’M JOHNNY CASH.” Then he walks away, only to sneak up behind me a few hours later to repeat in a gravelly tone, “HELLO, I’M JOHNNY CASH.”

I foresee this continuing for the rest of the week; therefore, I think it’s time to watch another movie. Like, maybe, The Godfather or something. “Mikey, why don’t you tell that nice girl you love her? I love you with all-a my heart, if I don’t see-a you again soon, I’m-a gonna die.”

[Oh, and then we went to Sears to get a brand-new dishwasher (seriously, I know you’ve always thought my life is so interesting and important, see?), and the Daddy-o glanced around and remarked, “Look at that, Yasminay! Maybe we should get your ummy that red tractor for Mother’s Day…so she could mow the lawn.” What kind of crack the man is smoking, I don’t even know.]

You wear the day around you like it’s yours to stay around you

I ate it all This ain't henna, kids
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz. [Photo on the left taken by my friend A, cropped by me.]

The other day, I slipped on my green jacket (the one my father always glances at sidelong before asking rather scornfully, “What sport are you playing?”) and throughout the day I kept sniffing at my wrist. The perfume still lingering at the cuffs of my green jacket reminded me that I last wore it a couple of weeks ago, while spending our first real sunny (in the SF Bay Area) day with my lovely friend A, whom I first mentioned here, back when we initially began hanging out regularly outside of school, and later again here.

It was a gorgeous day. A and I hung out in town in the morning, and really quickly hit up Andronico’s to see what all the fuss is about (is it as cool as Whole Foods? I don’t really know, since I do my grocery shopping at neither). On my way out, I took pictures of the sunflowers, because roses are damn overrated, and you can’t go wrong with pretty sunshine flowers.

We headed up to the town of Martinez to pick up my brother, who was returning by Amtrak from a weekend spent in Reno. He called just when we got there: “My train’s running late. Why don’t you guys just go ahead and get some lunch in Martinez, and I’ll give you a call when I get in?”

“Alright,” I said, but little had I realized that Martinez is one of those quintessential small towns with perhaps some sort of quaintness that locals find charming (and it contains the county courthouse and the Amtrak station!), but none of the attention-grabbing sort of appeal that out-of-towners would be looking for. At least, not this out-of-towner.

We drove around (and around some more) and could find no place suitably intriguing enough at which to eat. Finally, I parked and we wandered through the Main St., where I photographed a beautiful brick wall and we decided to just duck into a coffeeshop for some cold drinks while waiting for my brother.

“What’s the difference between French sodas and Italian sodas?” I asked, and learned that French are the ones that contain cream. Next up, trying to figure out what flavor to order. I squinted at the flavored syrup bottles, some of them hidden behind others, and asked the guy at the counter for clarification. He rattled off the flavors – all fifteen of them, counting on his fingers – while I continued standing uncertainly. My lack of decision-making skills is well-documented (here, for example, amongst other places).

The guy looked amused at my still-confused expression. “Should I repeat them?” he asked.

I shook my head and made a split-second decision, bypassing my usual cranberry-flavored obsession in favor of my latest try something new philosophy, and opted for peach. And it was damn good, is what.

The brother called while we were paying for our drinks, so we hightailed it down the street to pick him up from the Amtrak station. He threw his bags into my car and settled into the backseat with a weary sigh.

“How was Reno?” I asked.

“It was snowing,” he said shortly.

Gross. Well, at least you picked a good day to be back in NorCal, buddy. It hasn’t been this sunny for a hella long time.”

“I know,” he said, looking more cheerful. “Maybe I’ll keep my mohawk after all. It was such a long winter, it seemed kind of pointless having a mohawk, since I had to wear a hat everywhere.”

[There was so much beautiful sunshine, I drove around with the sunroof open all day long, and it was hella rocking.]

We stopped for lunch, where I devoured pasta and french fries and the brother kindly let me eat his share of fries as well. (If he weren’t already related to me by default, this is the part where I would have decided we were friends for life.) He also scribbled his rendition of my signature on my credit card receipt while I was in the restroom, and nothing made me laugh quite so much as returning to find him nonchalantly presenting me with the forged signature when he handed me my own copy of the receipt.

I dropped the brother off at his place, and then A and I headed back to my town for dessert. We parked and took a shortcut through Macy’s, where I insisted, “Wait! I needa smell good!” A, being patient as usual, stopped while I quickly spritzed on the first thing that smelled yummy to my discriminating nose (turned out to be Miracle by Lancome). Weeks later, I can still catch the faded scent on my green jacket.

We stopped by Ghirardelli for ice cream sundaes, then walked down the street and ate them while sitting at the fountain. Too soon, I had to head home to help my mother with some gardening I had promised.

So, I traded my friend and the fountain for my mother and vegetable plots. Tomatoes and jalapenos and squash it was. I HATE squash. But the gardening wasn’t as horrible as I was expecting it to be. (I always expect gardening to be horrible, because I’m lazy and I hate physical exertion and I admit it.) I had to deal with too-large gloves falling off my small hands, until I impatiently tossed them aside and dug through the dirt with my bare hands. And I didn’t even scream like a girl (not that I’m wont to do so anyway) when I noticed the snail making its slow progress up the side of my rainbow-striped skirt. But I did make a face and brush the snail off with one of the previously-abandoned gloves.

“How’s my little gardener?” said the daddy-o affectionately when he returned home from work that evening. “Wasn’t it so much fun?” I resisted an impulse to roll my eyes. I could almost swear he was more proud of me gardening for an hour than he was of me graduating from college.

(Just kidding – he totally got all teary-eyed at my commencement ceremony last year; I have it on video, thanks to the sister.)

But I did enjoy getting out of the house, being outdoors, reveling in all the fresh air and higher temperatures after the nearly every single freakin’ day of rain drama we had had going on for a seemingly longer-than-usual winter. And I enjoyed the feeling of sunlight shining down and warming my back, of using the muscles God gave me to plant tomatoes that I can hopefully soon use in made-from-scratch guacamole (mmm, guacamole!), the feeling of ants bravely forging up my bare arms (so nice to have a private yard/garden with no fear of prying eyes).

Which brings to mind some beloved Wendell Berry poetry, with thanks to Baraka for her recent post that reminded me how much I like that man:

Finally will it not be enough,
after much living, after
much love, after much dying
of those you have loved,
to sit on the porch near sundown
with your eyes simply open,
watching the wind shape the clouds
into the shapes of clouds?

No taxation without representation: Gimme all your money!


Coffeecup calculations
Originally uploaded by
yaznotjaz.

A few weekends ago, I hit a milestone: Doing my taxes (almost) all on my own, for the very first time! How exciting, seriously. No, it was, I promise! But that’s only because I’m such a nerd, and I kinda like numbers when they’re related to how much money I made/have/never save. Clearly, I am my father’s daughter (except for the part where he color-coordinates his funkycool-designed and otherwise brilliant Excel spreadsheets. My Excel skills are subpar, in comparison).

On the Sunday before taxes were due, the daddy-o and I procrastinated together and put off our respective tax paperwork by driving around town. We hit up the flowers and gardening paraphernalia at Wal-Mart, YardBirds, RiteAid, and, finally, at Navlet’s nursery, where I gave up and opted to stay in the car.

The daddy-o shook his head and sighed, “You have no imagination, Yasminay.”

I bit my tongue, since I didn’t want imagination anyway; all the warmth was making me drowsy and I wanted to take a nap in the sunshine, dammit. So I ignored my lack of imagination and instead sank down in the passenger seat, closed my eyes, and soaked up the sun while he checked the plants and garden supplies at the nursery.

Next, we hit up the Afghan store for naan. My dad asked the same question he always asks the proprietor: “Don’t you have any Pukhtu music?” Nashahnaz just wasn’t cutting it, though. We consoled ourselves by eating nearly the entire hot naan on the way home, where the daddy-o finally buckled down and spent hours in unsuccessful attempts to submit his tax information to said CPA through her website, and finally emailed her with:

Attached worksheet has all the summaries for my 2005 tax return. I will also fax you approximately 15 pages of documents.

I spent an enormous amount of time entering data on the website, and failed miserably. I can accept part of the blame, but I think this website process is sick!!!

One question: Is Yasmine still considered my dependent?

Note those multiple (three!) exclamation points. Way to give someone a headache. Also, he meant “sick” like “disgustingly twisted,” not “sick” like “that’s the bomb, yo!” because we don’t talk about bombs on this blog. At least, I think we don’t. Right?

CPA’s reply:

Yasmine is still your dependent if she is still a student. If she is not a student and has made more than $3,000 in the last year then, no, she is not your dependent. Let us know.

Daddy-o’s email to me:

Here is your answer – translated in Hindko, it means that yes, you were my dependent in 2005 because you were in school.

So, I tackled my taxes, and wondered, Why is the CA resident income tax form longer and such a process, compared to the federal one? I would have thought it would be the other way around. Also, I had three different W-2 forms to go back and forth between. Thank you, deathly boring Sacramento job last year, you sure did increase my federal refund amount, and I am suitably grateful. (Although, quite ironically, it completely killed off the state refund. Stupid state job.)

I made several mind-numbing attempts at deciphering such basic but confusing mathematical equations like, “Subtract line 5 from line 4”; by the time I got to “If line 9 is larger than line 10, subtract line 10 from line 9. This is your refund,” I was damn well going to get it right. Because I like the idea of tax refunds. It makes me feel like the government is giving me money for no reason at all, and I love free money, even though it’s MY OWN MONEY, dammit.

Fun conversations:

Daddy, exasperatedly looking over my tax forms: “Yasmine! This one’s supposed to be a NEGATIVE number!”
Yasmine: Oh. Right. Just kidding, then.
[So much for my onetime calculus skills.]

Annoyed Yasmine: “Where’s the stupid worksheet they keep talking about?!”
Daddy: “On that second page you’re holding in your hand.”

Sister, curiously: “Are taxes as hard as everyone makes them out to be?”
Yasmine: “No, mine was hella easy. But maybe that’s because I’m single and I don’t own any houses or any of that stuff.”

We celebrated the thank-god-it’s-over end of tax season with ginger-flavored gelato. (It was pretty good, except for the chunks of candied ginger.) Made faces at the candied ginger. Tried strawberry cheesecake ice cream instead. Made more faces, because there weren’t any chunks of cheesecake, as I had been expecting. Blasphemous! Now I know what my tax refund won’t be going towards.

Just like a child filled with the sun

The daddy-o and I just sat side-by-side – each of us reading our respective The New Yorker magazines [the Feb. 27, 2006 issue has a fascinating article entitled “Pursuing Happiness: Two scholars explore the fragility of contentment”] – and finished off a huge bowl of ice cream together.

Earlier, soon after we had finished dinner, the daddy-o grinned like a little kid and asked me, “Want to have some ice cream?”

“You’re still sick!” said my ever-pragmatic mother. “You shouldn’t be eating ice cream!”

I grew up around injunctions that eating cold foods, and food containing butter, would worsen one’s sore throat/cough/flu/etc.

“Yeah, Daddy,” I said worriedly, watching as he got up, removed the ice cream from the freezer, and intently began scooping heaping spoonfuls into a bowl while studiously ignoring my mother’s anxious prattling. “The ice cream might mess up your cough even more. You sure you want to go for it?”

He looked up just long enough to reply scornfully, “No one has ever gotten sick from eating ice cream.”

Word.

"Daniel…with an L"

A few evenings ago:

I have to go to the mechanic’s shop to drop off one of our cars. This means that we have to drive over in two cars, drop off one of them, and return home in the other. It’s about 10 p.m. already, and the mechanic’s shop is fifteen minutes away. Also, intriguing spy maneuvers are apparently involved, such as juggling the lock on the mechanic’s gate and then sliding open the gate in order to park the car inside. Finally, the mechanic’s shop is on some dark, narrow street filled with warehouses (aren’t they all?). The daddy-o is therefore quite reasonably – in his opinion – concerned for my safety.

He insists on going with me. I attempt to placate him by pointing out that the sister and I will be going together. He continues insisting.

“We’ll be fine,” I say.

My belief that the daddy-o is worrying far more than the situation calls for is demonstrated when he retorts emphatically:

“No! You haven’t had your karate lessons yet!”

(How could I argue with that? Mr. Miyagi ends up accompanying me.)