Pedicure Friday

We have a tradition, my sis and I. Every Friday we try to do something together. Most of the time it's dinner somewhere new or an old fav, or we go shopping or do Walmart and Wendy's, but this Friday my sis proclaimed that she had had a really rough week and nothing else would do but to get Pedicures! Well powder my butt and call me Princess....that's one of my fav things.

We went to one of my fav places, Top Nail.

And since it was our special Friday treat we went for the whole enchilada...the Spa Pedi!

I know, it looks intimidating, but if it were a man I would marry it! This amazing chair treats your feet. You relax while your feet soak in warm, aromatic water. While your feet are soaking, pressured jets gently massage away those aches and pains.

This amazing chair also has a state-of-the-art shiatsu roller back massage system. The roller back system works on applying pressure to all the right spots providing several different functions: compression, kneading, percussion and rolling.

We sat there and chit-chatted while soft spoken Vietnamese women pamper our tootsies, *sigh* sheer bliss!

Once all the pampering is done, we get our little tootsies massaged, decuticled? (is that a word) and polished.

And Wa-la, here are the results!

My Sis's tootsies. She was going to a Black Tie fundraiser the next night so she opted for the dressier polish job with the flower and the little crystal ruby on the big toe.

Here's my tootsies. I opted for the more casual polish as I didn't have anything to do the next night *sigh again*.

Pretty huh? I wish we could have gotten manicures, but that wasn't in the budget for this Friday as we still had to have dinner.

Just a quick note on dinner. We went to one of our favorite Mexican places, Mexicali. I had two margaritas and I felt them both! I was slightly tipsy which made the rest of the evening oodles of fun, for me anyway as Lisa was now the designated driver!

Ok, so then as Lisa had this special event the next night we decided to go shoe shopping. Now I know there are many that would not be caught dead in a Payless Shoe Store, but I love, love, love that store. I've bought many expensive shoes at other places and they have always hurt my feet, but for some reason any shoe bought at Payless has never, ever hurt and they last forever!

My Sis ended up with these beautiful black, strappy shoes. They looked great with her dress and her new pedicure.

I tried on several shoes and really liked these, but as I didn't have any special event to go to, I didn't buy anything *sigh*. My Friday was just one big *sigh* fest!

So after shoe shopping, Lisa decided that she would like to color her hair. She'd been trying to get me to color mine a kind of burgundy color but I don't know, it's just not me, so she thought she would try it. We went to Longs which was in the same shopping center as Payless (now mind you, I'm still pretty buzzed so it was all fun for me). We bought the hair color and came back to my house where I colored her hair and we called it a day. I think it took me longer to write this than it took to do all this.

So here she is with her new haircolor and new shoes the next day off to go to her Black Tie Event. Beautiful, don't you agree?

Here's a closer pic so you can see the new haircolor. It really doesn't show up too well here but I does in the picture above because the sunlight is shining on it.

Reflections from a Mother's Heart

Several years ago, I found this really great journal and I bought it thinking how much fun it would be and how well I would use it. The journal was entitled "Reflections from a Mother's Heart" Your life Story in Your Own Words. Each page has a different question or idea to help you write.

Sad to say I only wrote on the first page and never picked it up again. It's just been sitting here for years next to my PC. So today I felt like blogging but couldn't really think of anything that would get my creative juices flowing, so I thought, "Hey...why not try writing a page in that journal on your blog once in a while?" So that is what I am going to do. Maybe it will also get you to thinking how you would have answered the questions or remembered certain moments in your life....here goes.

Alicia...
A Latinization of Alice, which is in turn from the Germanic Adalheidis (from the Germanic *adal, meaning noble, and *heid, meaning type), via the Old French Adelais, via Old High German.

Alicia Trivia...
Alicia Foster, better known as Jodie Foster, U.S. Actress
Alicia Appleman-Jurman, Polish memorist of the Holocaust
Alicia Moore, better known as "Pink" U.S. pop singer
Hurricane Alicia, devastating hurricane in 1983
Alicia Submarine, a six-seater submarine
Alicia, California, a city in California, also a city in Arkansas
Alicia Spinnet, fictional character in Harry Potter stories

Why all this info on the name Alicia? Because the question is:

Who gave you your name and why? Did you have a family nickname? How did you get it?

My name was given to me by my mother, Tomasa. She tells me that when she was a little girl living in a labor camp with her parents and about 12 siblings she used to hear a women that lived in the same camp come outside of her door in the evenings and yell her daughters name to get her to come home. She would hear... ahleeseeah, only stretched out as mothers do when they call their children at the top of their lungs.

Every time she heard it she would think that someday when she had a girl she would name her Alicia because she herself didn't like her name at all, Tomasa.

And that is how I came to be named Alicia.

About nicknames, I had a few. My entire name is Nora Alicia, so on my dads side of the family they all usually called me Nora. On my mom's side of the family they usually called me Licha or Vachecha. Lots of people have also called me Guera because of my light complexion. One of my dad's favorite nicknames for me unfortunately was "chingada enanita" translated to mean roughly a swear word followed by midget, like damn midget..sort of. I'm not the tallest of people, standing at 5'1". Most recently all my nieces and nephews have taken to calling me Tia Ale and my sister Lisa calls me Al or White. It's funny because sometimes when we answer the phone with each other she'll say "Hey White" and I'll say "Hey Black" because I am light complected and she's dark complected.

And thats how I happened to have this beautiful name that I love so much!
That's my story...and I'm sticking to it!

The Office

Today was a good day at the office. We got a surprise visit from one of the big bosses from the Fresno office. Brian came by to bring me more work. Why would this make it a good day? Well for one thing because it shows that he has faith in me and that he feels I can handle more work.

Another thing that made it a good day is that he took us to lunch, well he invited but my immediate supervisor Michele paid...odd huh?

We went to one of my fav places, Tokyo Gardens. It's like a Benihana where you sit around a table and the chef cooks right in front of you. The cool thing is he doesn't just cook but he does these cool tricks with the food, my favorite is when he puts some type of flammable liquid on the cooking area and he lights it with a lighter and the fire leaps into the air, you practically feel your eyebrows being burned off (but they're not).

Another favorite is when he takes the spatula in one hand and takes a raw egg in the other. He spins the egg on the cooking area and while its spinning he puts the spatula under the egg and pops it onto the spatula and then he tosses the egg up in the air a couple of times and catches it with the spatula before finally letting it fall onto the spatula cracking the egg. Then he does the same thing again with another egg but when he breaks it he does so by turning the spatula so the egg hits the sharp edge cracking it, but it doesn't crack all the way through, only half way. He lets you enjoy that before finally shaking the spatula and cracking it all the way! It's awesome!

The food was great, the show was great and I had a good time with my coworkers, plus we left the office at 11:30 and didn't get back til almost 1:30!

Class of 2008!

Well ok, finally I'm doing my Congratulations Blog to my nieces and nephew that graduated this year from high school.

And here, from the Shafter High School Class of 2008 are

Alicia and Sean Anthony

These two started out together in Kindergarten and were together right up to Graduation. I am so proud of both of them! They're great kids.

Alicia graduated with honors and is a Lifetime Member of the California Scholarship Federation...just like me :-)

Sean played Football and his mom and I were there every Friday night braving freezing and hot weather just to see him play.

And here from the

West High School Class of 2008 is my other niece

Sarena

Sarena is into sports as well, just like Sean. She played lots and lots of Soccer. I remember picking her up at Daycare and bringing her to Shafter with me when she was just a tiny girl...time flys.

I know these three kids are going to do great things and most importantly they're all going to do the right things because they had great parents who set good examples.

And remember...I love you all,

Tia Ale

Some favorite quotes

I have always loved quotes, especially in school when I had to write papers. Starting a paper with a quote was a "catcher" and sure to impress almost any teacher. Here are a few of my favorites:

• "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."


• "He who dies with the most toys is, nonetheless, still dead."


• "No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap."


• "Some people exist just to annoy me!"


• "If I could wish for one thing, it would be to have nothing to wish for."


• "Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths"


• "To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice."


• "Integrity is doing the right thing, even if nobody is watching."


• "We do not remember days...we remember moments."

I have another favorite, one that I want to someday paint over the door into my dining room, but my sister Lisa is guardian on that one and she always forgets to email it back to me.

Lisa, send it!

Titere con bonete

get this clock

The Sisterhood of Women

Ancient Chinese Proverb say:

A hundred men may make an encampment, but it takes a woman to make a home.

What is it about women that makes them so special? Today I spent the day with my two favorite women, my sister Lisa and my mother Tome, and it was like spending the day at a spa, or meditating, I feel refreshed, happy, calm and blessed. And the strange thing is that I spent the day working like a dog.

We painted my sisters kitchen and we started early, by early I mean like around 9am for me, 7am for her.

We cleaned the walls, scrubbing them with de-greaser and soap that was hell on our hands. We taped up the kitchen cabinets and counters with newspaper and blue painters tape. We used primer on the walls and while this was drying we ran both our cars over to have the oil changed and the fuel injection system serviced. We also picked up some lunch not only for ourselves, but we picked up some pizza for her two boys.

We had a lovely lunch outside under her patio on her kitchen table. It was a breezy, cool day and perfect for spending time outside, but of course it didn't last and finally we went in to begin the real painting.

Side note: The night before we had gone to Walmart and my sis picked out the paint she wanted, she was going for a Tuscan Decor such as you see below:

Pretty huh? She wasn't going to do the faux painting on it this one has but she did want that kind of golden yellow color. The color she asked them to mix I think was called Citrus, it was by Dutch Boy. It seemed kind of yellow to me, but she wanted something different and I thought, "Well why not, if that's what she wants" (we're a white walls type of family).

So back to the story, the paint was nothing like what you see above, it was baby "caca" yellow and it was hideous. The minute she slapped it on the walls she knew it wasn't what she wanted and she was going to be miserable if we continued.

She called Walmart, and wonderful Walmart said they would take the paint back even though it was custom mixed...I love Walmart!

Now we're primed and pumped and ready to paint, but we have NO PAINT!
So we went to our local TrueValue Hardware store in Shafter and the nicest man named Ron helped us. We found a little old hispanic man in the store wearing a strawhat and my sis knew that was the paint color she wanted. We told Ron and he held paint swatches up to the old man's hat and matched it! Was he great or what? And the old man was very nice to let us do that to him.

So now with paint in hand we returned to her kitchen and began. Right away she knew this was the perfect color...and it was, it was just what she wanted, warm and rich and soothing. And the weird thing is the name of the paint color on the paint swatch was, get this....StrawHat!!! She wanted it the color of the man's hat and the color was called Straw Hat!!

Anyway, we painted and joked and complained about our kids, our jobs, etc, etc. And then our mommy got there and she pitched right in and helped paint and we chatted with her and we laughed and had a great time, before we knew it, the kitchen was painted, the corners and bottoms were done. We tore down the newspaper and she and my mom put up curtains and hung pictures back and it was BEAUTIFUL. I wish I had had my camera, maybe tomorrow I'll take some pictures.

So as I said in the beginning of this story, women are so special and I'm so blessed to have my sister and my mother, there was nothing I would have rather done today then spend the day with them!