holistic healing

My youngest keeps getting ear infections. The first time it happened, I dragged him to the doctor, who put him on a full course of antibiotics. I dutifully followed the directions and gave him his medicine daily, in addition to the prescription ointment applied directly to his ear. Although there was no screaming or crying, he would run around in circles, shaking his head vigorously and rubbing his ear on the rug. It got to the point where he would see me grab the ear ointment bottle and start backing away, looking for somewhere to hide. If he was trying to get out of the medicine, that wasn’t going to happen -- I simply put him in a headlock and made sure he got the ointment in his ear. I was determined to beat this ear infection, even if it took a little bit of brute force to make it happen.

After about a week, the symptoms seemed to subside. We were triumphant. The ear infection was defeated!

Or so we thought. A couple weeks later, it had returned. Back we went to the doctor and repeated the cycle. My little one dreaded the medication, I dreaded giving it to him, and the dreaded ear infection went away for a few weeks until it returned again.

By this time, I was ready to try something new. I made an appointment with the holistic doctor. When we got there, I was impressed and terrified by the beautiful waiting room that doubled as a store. My little guy found everything to be fascinating and went around “investigating” all the little stuffed animals and snack bags that resided on the shelves. By the time we got into the examination room, I was exhausted from restraining him. The room was beautiful, like a massage room at a spa where the decor theme is vaguely “zen.” I sat down on the brown leather chair. My guy plopped down next to me, forcing me to scoot over for him.

When the doctor arrived, he got down to my little guy’s level and took a sniff. “Smells yeasty,” he diagnosed. That was the end of the exam. Was I crazy to expect a little more? Perhaps. But I decided this must just be the way it is in holistic doctoring, so I let it go. Next, he introduced a young woman and introduced her as the acupuncturist. I knew she was going to be at our meeting, but assumed it was just to give an opinion – but I was wrong. She came with her little box of needles and was ready to go.

My dog was about to have acupuncture.

I could not believe this was happening. My mind raced. How much was this going to cost? How does she know the dog will stay still for this? How the heck is acupuncture going to cure an ear infection?

“Ummm … I didn’t realize you were actually going to perform acupuncture on my dog today …” I stammered.

“Oh! Well, we believe this would benefit your dog. Let’s see if he’ll let me do this,” she said in an optimistic tone.

She was already kneeling next to my 65-pound puppyish dog, who was very happy to meet this nice lady. The acupuncturist deftly slipped the first needle into a spot in the middle of his forehead, where it bobbled about precariously. He looked like a unicorn. I was impressed. She worked quickly and got a few more in. With each jab, my dog looked back at her with his big toothy grin. She was scared. I continued to hold his collar to keep him facing towards me. “He’s very treat-motivated,” I offered. She quickly left the room and brought back a frozen yogurt cup. It was like a giant push-up that didn’t need to be pushed up, since my dog has a very long tongue. My dog was very happy.

Well, for a little while. Yogurt only goes so far. She managed to get in about ten needles, I think, before my dog finally just looked at me, glanced back at her, back to me again, and then -- as dogs are known to do -- shook himself, from head to tail, as if he had just jumped out of a bath. The needles flew off of him, exploding out of his fur like a giant fireworks display. It was awesome. It took all the self-control I had not to burst out laughing.

“Okay. Well, I guess he didn’t like that. Let’s try the electronic acupuncture. Let’s see if he’ll let me do that,” said the acupuncturist. She left the room and returned with what looked like a large transistor radio with a cord and a probe-like wand attached to it. She proceeded to take the wand and press it to my dog’s body parts. Whenever she placed it on a specific part of his body, she would press a button and a beep would come out of the radio-like main component. Touch, beep! Touch, beep! Touch, beep! This went on for a few minutes, with my puzzle dog looking at me for an explanation. I had none. If I hadn’t felt ripped-off already, this was the clincher. I felt like I might be being punked, so I glanced around to see if there were any hidden cameras in the room. Surely the cameras would show the word “SUCKER” stippled into my forehead, as if written in tiny needles.

When it was over, I paid a lot of money for the treatment, some Chinese herbal medicine to help combat my dog’s “dampness” which was contributing to his ear infections, and some Zymox, a topical medicine for yeast infections.

I believe in acupuncture for humans, but I felt pretty stupid about my dog’s session, since I was pretty sure the traditional acupuncture needles were not in long enough to have any impact, and the acupuncture machine seemed like a complete hoax. We drove home in silence. My dog seemed unaffected by any of this. To him, it was a place where he got a big yogurt cup.

Once home, the dog went to sleep, which is was not particularly unusual. He seemed completely normal until the doorbell rang – and he lay there, barely lifting his head for a pathetic, monosyllabic “woof.”

What is wrong with my dog? Was it the herbs? Was it the Zymox? Was it his ear?

The dog had lost all of his personality and energy. He resembled a giant sack of rice. When he did not even react to food with his usual enthusiasm, I was concerned enough to call the holistic vet’s office and ask if this was normal. “Well, ummm, sometimes the acupuncture is a little draining and they get kind of wiped out.”d

Okay. This sounded like somebody just telling me what they thought I wanted to hear, and I didn't believe my dog had an effective acupuncture treatment, so I was still left to try to figure out what was wrong with my dog. I was back to watching my dog lie around, lifting only his eyelids and the tip of his tail when I walked in the room. While I was busy worrying about the dog, the phone rang. It was my mom. I told her that my dog just had hari (literally, “needles” in Japanese), and she said, “What? Oh my gosh! Oh, I remember I did hari before and it made me so tired … I couldn’t get out of bed for three days!”

What a relief. Apparently, the acupuncture treatment did have an effect on my dog. I felt less ripped off. The “SUCKER” label on my forehead was fading. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to appear on some viral hidden camera video. My dog was just sleepy because of the acupuncture.

I was so grateful for my mom's timely phone call. Now I could go back to just worrying about everything else, and not just my dog! The dog perked up after about 36 hours, and the Zymox seemed to address the ear infection, and all was well. Doggie acupuncture is not something I thought I would ever have done to my dog, but he doesn't seem to be upset about it. I don't think we'll be going back anytime soon, though -- if there is an acupuncture treatment in this family's future, it will definitely be on a human.

last minute wishes

'Twas the night before Christmas and in spite of myself
Not a creature was stirring, except for me, Mama Elf.
The stockings were hung, but have yet to be filled --
The kids won't get coal, so they should be pretty thrilled.
There are still presents to wrap ... some hidden away
I need to find them quick, since it's almost Christmas Day!

When all of a sudden, I heard a great roaring!
I breathe a sigh of relief when I realize it's just my husband snoring.
It's been a long, fun day, filled with good food and cheer,
A little hosting and toasting, with friends and family from far and near.
So now as I attempt to finish my list
(I have to admit, I am procrastinating a bit)
I want to take a minute to say just one thing more --
Wishing you peace, love and happiness
shared with those you adore

cake boss

We decided several years ago that we would stop having "kid" birthday parties at age 10. My son has been fine with that, but for various reasons, I have not held the line as much with my daughter. This year, my daughter became a teenager, and that seems to be a big deal. For me, I always thought of turning 12 as the "big" birthday, since that was the year that you celebrated your -- in my case -- Japanese zodiac sign. It only happens every 12 years, so I was raised to think that that was a pretty big deal. In Japanese (and Japanese American) culture, you get a big celebration after you've traveled around the zodiac wheel five times, on your sixtieth birthday.
My husband, however, did not grow up with that same consciousness about the zodiac years -- even though he will be the first to point out that it is the Chinese zodiac which the Japanese stole and used as their own. Since my daughter was with all of us on a family trip to China on her 12th birthday, she did not get a typical "party," so letting her have a 13th birthday party seemed like it was not caving in too much.
In any case, my daughter usually has big plans for her birthday, even though they tend to evolve during the course of the year. She starts thinking about the next one almost as soon as her birthday is over. Looking back, it's a little sad that we can't remember all of them -- none of us can remember what happened at the 3 or 5 year birthdays. For the others, we've been to Build-a-Bear, learned gymnastics at Golden Bear, gone ice skating at the Oakland Ice Rink, had a virtual + reality party at our house with Webkinz, scaled fake rocks at Ironworks, watched a show and had tea at American Girl Place (just with me, a couple aunties, and my mom), had ice cream at Fenton's and extended family and friends parties at home.
"What do you want to do for your birthday, Mika?" I asked a little over a week ago.
"Uhhhh ... I want to go to Homeroom Mac+Cheese, and then maybe a sleepover."
"Okay, you realize you can only invite a few friends, especially if it's a sleepover. Who do you want to invite?"
"Oh. Hmmmm. That's sooooo hard," my daughter groaned. It was hard. Not wanting to offend anybody, yet knowing there was no way she could invite everybody she wanted to, we made a very short list and went from there. We were already very late, sending out an electronic invitation on Monday for the party on Friday. Fortunately, everybody was able to make it for at least the cake & ice cream portion of the evening, and most could even spend the night.
Since Homeroom does not take reservations, and standing out on the corner with a bunch of girls for an hour to wait for a table was not my idea of a good party, I was relieved to discover that the restaurant made party portions to go. I ordered the Gilroy Garlic and the Mack the Goat macaroni & cheese dishes, plus an order of Minty, Buttery Peas, at my daughter's request. (She is not a person who likes peas, but she loves these peas. As she says, "They must put fairy dust on them. Or nicotine. They are so addictive.")
With a phone call, dinner was taken care of. Now came the tricky part. My daughter had been asking for a Funfetti cake for months now. For those of you not familiar with Funfetti, it is a boxed cake mix that has little "confetti" sprinkles in the white cake. She also wanted chocolate frosting. This didn't sound too hard, but I was not entirely sure how I was going to execute this birthday request. Messing up on the birthday cake would be pretty bad. Okay, worse than pretty bad: it would be a birthday disaster. I decided to attempt making chocolate frosting from scratch -- I'm not sure why I thought this would be a good idea, but it seemed like one at the time.
Grocery shopping done, I unboxed my newly-released-from-the-storage-unit stand mixer and got it ready for battle. First, the cake mix. I felt like a TV chef with my barely broken-in stand mixer, adding ingredients as it mixed away. It was like magic. I poured the batter into the dusted pan and set the timer.
I cleaned frantically while the cake baked, then came running when the timer beckoned. Stuck a toothpick in it to check for doneness and let it cool. After a while, I decided to flip it onto my foil-covered cutting board so I could get ready to frost it. Oops. A large crack opened up, and then I suddenly had two pieces of birthday cake. I jigsaw puzzled them together and stared. Maybe if I looked at it long enough, the cake would miraculously heal itself. Heal thyself! Sigh. It wasn't working. Besides, the cake was not only broken, it was very flat. I decided to add a layer of cake, but realized I had no other cake mix. I thought about making a brownie layer, since I have six different boxes of brownie mix, but then had an inspiration: ice cream cake. Ice cream, check. M&Ms, check. Now, a little melting time to soften up the ice cream, a little muscle to spread it around in the cake pan, a sprinkling of M&Ms, and then ... a little bit of luck in getting the cake layer back into the pan ... and into the freezer it went.
Now it was time to make the frosting. I fired up the mixer again, and threw in lots of butter, some cocoa, a splash of vanilla, and some milk, and suddenly I had chocolate frosting! I had never used frosting that I hadn't bought at the grocery store, so it was a revelation to me that it was actually not that difficult to make. While I had been mixing, girls were arriving and I couldn't hear the doorbell, the dog barking, or the daughter opening the door. They eventually all arrived and sat down for dinner, eating far less food than I had planned for, and sounding happy the whole time. The bits and pieces of conversation I heard had to do with teachers, school, and times when they had heard other students fart at school. After they finished eating, they scurried away to the family room, where I had put twelve bottles of Hello Kitty nail polish out, and the girls paired up and did to do each other's nails.
Dinner was past history, and it was time for me to work on the cake again.
I filled a large roasting pan with hot water and dipped the ice cream cake pan into it for a short time. Then, imitating the motion my mother uses when plating a pan of gyoza, I flipped the cake onto my foil covered cutting board and ... exhaled when I took off the pan and discovered that the cake actually looked pretty good! The ice cream had molded itself into what looked like a layer of vanilla ice cream ganache, smooth and seamless, nearly encasing the broken Funfetti cake inside of it. Back to the freezer it went. When the final party guest arrived, I set to work frosting the cake. I had no pastry bag, so I clipped a Ziplock bag and went for it. Why, oh why, did I not take classes at Cake Dec like my sister did? What the heck am I doing? I shoved the words of doubt down to where I could barely hear them, and starting piping a ribbon of chocolate frosting along the edge, hiding the glimpses of cake from view. I was doing pretty well until the cake started melting. "It's almost cake time!" I shouted to the girls and my husband. I needed some help, now. "What do you need?" asked my husband. "Can you put the candles on the cake? They are right here, on this counter ... buried in this vicinity somewhere ..." I motioned in a vague circle next to the stand mixer, and run off to find the plastic Japanese letters I had found during some recent unpacking; my kids never used them much, and I knew they would be the perfect finish to personalize the cake with my daughter's name. I dumped the box of plastic letters on the guest bed, fumbling through until I found both a み and a か. There. I ran back to the kitchen, announcing as I ran, "O-kaaay -- cake time! Hurry because it's melting!"
My husband had arranged the HAPPY BIRTHDAY candles perfectly, and I finished off the decorations with the Japanese letters.

"It's Funfetti cake!" my daughter announced to her friends.
"... and it's ice cream cake, too!" I chime in, to explain why I had been running around saying the cake would melt.
The girls watch in anticipation as my husband lights the candles. "Now ... everybody sing, really fast."
Girls sing. A wish is made. Candles are blown out. Cake is served. Girls eat.
"Ooooh, this cake is good!"
"Wait, is this an M&M in here?"
"Whoa, it's an ice cream cake!"
"This is delicious."
Whew! Sigh of relief. I have averted a birthday cake disaster.
But wait, there's more -- my husband breaks out the Ben & Jerry's Schweddy Balls, which he has driven all over town to find, just for this occasion. Schweddy Balls are eaten. My daughter tries to explain the SNL Schweddy Balls skit. Girls chatter amongst themselves.
I look around the table and marvel at all of them. I've known one of the girls since she was 3 years old, and the rest since they were between 5 and 8 years old -- and now, with my daughter passing this milestone, they are all teenagers.
I take a picture, knowing that I will probably forget this birthday party otherwise, even though I really do hope that I always remember this day.
Happy birthday, baby girl.

not quite undercover

 "Mom," my son reported, "I have to bring Chinese doughnuts and soy milk to Mandarin class on Tuesday."

"Oh -- okay. I know what Chinese doughnuts are, I think, but what kind of soy milk is it? Just the regular kind I can get at the grocery store?"

"Uhhhhm, I don't know."

"I'll send the teacher an email," I say, letting him off the hook.

"Okay. Thanks, Mom."

My son is at a distinct disadvantage in Mandarin class, all because his mother is ... Japanese. Most of the kids whose parents aren't immigrants at least have a mother of Chinese ancestry. Except for my son. I think it is a source of amusement for the teacher, since my son has a Chinese surname, and she seems to appreciate my effort to get the food assignments right. She is always careful to try to give us food assignments that we can handle, and explains things to my son as much as possible. This time, I was familiar with half the assignment -- the Chinese doughnuts, which I learned to enjoy because of my love of jook, that savory, soupy, comforting concoction that my roommate, Alice Wong, introduced me to the day after Thanksgiving back in college. Turkey jook. That's what turkey leftovers become in a Chinese American household. And Chinese doughnuts are the perfect partner to a bowl of jook.

The soy milk, though, had me confused. My cousin (actually, my husband's cousin, but I have adopted all of his relatives as my own) told me that there is actually a soy soup that is commonly eaten with the doughnuts, and it is different from the standard soy milk I might buy at Trader Joe's. I emailed the teacher and asked her to send me the name of the type of soy milk, with the Chinese characters, just in case I needed it. 

Okay, who am I kidding? I knew I would need to go straight to the email when I went shopping for this. I walked into the market in Chinatown this morning, holding my phone up tentatively and asking, "Excuse me ... do you have soy milk? Dou Jiang?" I say, in my best invented Mandarin pronunciation. I point at my phone to the characters: 豆浆. The clerk nods her understanding. "Ohhh ... yes, dou jiang. I'm sorry but the delivery is not here yet from San Francisco. They make it fresh everyday. I'm sorry. You can come back later."

I have to explain that I cannot come back later, because I need it by 9:30 am for my son's Mandarin class. Plus, I need Chinese doughnuts, which they will dip into the soy milk. Does she have the kind of soy milk I would dip a Chinese doughnut into?

"Doughnut? In soy milk? Hmmm. Doughnut is very sweet. You don't want sweet soy milk," she gestures as if eating a round, American doughnut.

"Oh -- no, not that kind of doughnut. Chinese doughnut --" I gesture what I think indicates a long, tubular object, "-- like you eat with jook."

"Ahhhh! Okay. Soy milk. Uhmmm, this kind is good."

She directs me to a vacuum sealed box of soy milk with pictures of black beans on it. 

Okay, looks good to me. I scan the nearby shelves to see what else I might want to buy, as long as I'm here, since I don't come to the Chinatown markets very often.

The clerk notices my gaze, and apparently has noticed something else about me, too. "Do you want anything else?" she asks, pointing to the shrink-wrapped confections on the counter, "Do you want some mochi?" she says with a smile, "It's good." 

Of course, mochi. The only Japanese thing around. Try as I might to blend and at least come close to seeming ABC (American Born Chinese), my cover was apparently blown, no need to perpetrate. How did she know? Do I just look Japanese? Whatever the case, I found it amusing. I very politely say, "No, thank you, but they look very good," and make my purchase, thanking her and bowing my head slightly as I leave.

cars that go boom

"It's so embarrassing when Dad drives around with his music blasting," bemoaned my teenaged son. I chuckled and said, "He's been doing that your whole life, and you just noticed it now?"
"No, I noticed it before."
"Oh, okay. He's been doing that your whole life, and you were just never embarrassed by it before."
My son nods, then gives my husband a little credit, "At least he plays the right kind of music most of the time. It's usually some rap song. But sometimes he's like blasting something else --"
"-- yeah, like NPR!" chimes in my tweenaged daughter.
"Yeah! But most of the time, he's, like, this middle-aged Asian man in a suit driving his car boomin' some rap song ..."
I want to say something reassuring, to make them feel a little better about their dad, but all I can manage is this: "Well, he's been doing that pretty much since the day I met him. Although back then, he was a twenty-something year old Asian guy with his car boomin'. At least he's consistent."
What I really want to do is burst out into an impromptu version of Tigra & Bunny singing "We like the cars, the cars that go boom, we're Tigra and Bunny and we like The Boom ..." but since the kids are already bummed out about their embarrassing father, I decide to try to be The Less Embarrassing Parent and keep my mouth shut (and my bootie firmly planted on my chair). I think I am winning in The Less Embarrassing Parent contest; to be fair, I don't think my husband realizes there is any kind of competition going on. (Although, even if he did, I believe I would still be winning.)