Author: jhseu

I have the good fortune to be family friends with The Linda Lindas, and I was thrilled to see them play Lollapalooza yesterday, after having seen them play Pitchfork and Riot Fest the summer before in my hometown of Chicago.

There was a moderate, steady rain during their set and for several hours during the afternoon, so my spouse and I created DIY rain ponchos out of garbage bags. They look a little like black leather 1970s clothes, right? 🙂 We ran into our friend, children’s musician Little Miss Ann, so it was a great synergy of Asian American youth music. Check out Little Miss Ann’s music; I especially love her recent EP Dim Sum for Everyone, and let’s just say that someone’s daughter may’ve helped sing on the title track.

Each member of The Linda Lindas has her own voice and style that contributes to the multifaceted whole. Lucia de la Garza’s lyric melodies on songs like Growing Up and I Remember; Eloise Wong’s full-throated roar on Racist, Sexist Boy and Vote!; Mila de la Garza’s power-pop anthems Talking to Myself and Too Many Things; and Bela Salazar’s tributes to cats and moving Spanish-language lyrics on Cuantas Veces, about loving our real and diverse selves (Todos somos perfectos/ En todas formas y hechos).

I came of age being really into punk and post-punk music in the 1980s and 90s. I searched for the few female punk singers and musicians I could find. Penelope Houston of The Avengers was one of my favorites; I wrote an essay for my ninth-grade English class about the lyrics to The American in Me, for which I received an A :). I wrote another essay for tenth-grade English class on The Replacements’ Achin’ To Be, and my teacher commented that it’d be better to write more of my own ideas rather than quote someone else’s so much (I did type most of the lyrics to the song into the essay, admittedly).

I went to college at UCLA (and met some of the parents of The Linda Lindas there) and helped put on indie band concerts, including several that featured female-dominant bands coming especially out of the Pacific Northwest, like Mary Lou Lord, Team Dresch, and Excuse 17 (Carrie Brownstein’s band before Sleater-Kinney). After a little while, people started calling these bands part of the riot grrl movement. The Linda Lindas recently did “summer camp” in Olympia, where many of their favorite bands started, as they write about in a Facebook post.

Like I said, I didn’t find many (white) female punk musicians when I was growing up, never mind ones who were also Asian American (and Latina). As many have stated, The Linda Lindas give us hope, resistance, joy, fierce intelligence, and fun in their damn good music and songwriting. May the circles continue to evolve.

About a month ago, I was diagnosed with moderate sleep apnea and started using a CPAP machine this week. My partner had been telling me for a while that I snored really loudly and sounded like I was choking or gasping for air. I wasn’t even aware of snoring at night, much less choking or gasping. I had an overnight sleep study done, a few hours with my “natural” sleep and a few hours with a CPAP machine. I had it done at a sleep center in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, and it was disconcerting and somewhat eerie to be woken up at 5:30 a.m. in an unfamiliar place and leave the center into the quiet dawn. But the room was comfortable and quiet, and I was groggy with sleep when the nurse put on the CPAP, and I slept fine with it.

I got the results back for my sleep study, and there was a lot of technical language and numbers; I only googled some of the acronyms. I didn’t get to discuss the results with a sleep specialist, and I wish I could’ve; the study had a lot of information and was somewhat overwhelming. Turns out I have moderate sleep apnea, having about 19 apneas and hypopneas per hour.

This diagnosis shook me up, because I wasn’t aware I had it. Since I have a major mental health issue, good sleep is crucial to my mental health. I was feeling really tired during the day, but I also thought that could be because I’m a busy working mom, busy academic/professor, just grumpy all the time :), love to take naps/nap all I can.

I started the CPAP machine about a week ago. At first it was cumbersome and unfamiliar; I do have a whole mask on my face connected to the tube connected to the machine. My connected app tells me that I’m having about 3-5 episodes (apneas/hypopneas) per hour now instead of 19, so that’s good. I do feel less tired during the day, like I don’t need to sleep more right after I get up or take naps the whole day, if I can. I think I’m less irritable with my family too. I’m going to try to be patient and see. I’ll keep y’all updated. Anyone else out there deal with sleep apnea? What are your experiences?

We got about 5 inches of snow last week. We may get up to 10 inches tonight and tomorrow, and maybe a few inches more this week. When it’s snowing out, there’s nothing much to do besides stay home, clean the house, hang out with Kaya, do her Chinese homework, heat up a frozen pie.

Wilson made a trip to Hmart in Naperville to get ingredients for Chinese hot pot. We’ve been doing hot pot since New Year’s Eve. We’ll do it over a few days or week until we get sick of it. Then we take a break, and then we do it again. It’s really comfort food, and communal, us three sitting around the pot on the table. Kaya likes it too; she’ll eat soft tofu, fish balls, napa and bok choy, noodles; I feel like we’re expanding her (Chinese) palate. And it’s super healthy.

I’m teaching all online synchronous this semester. I kind of think it’s good for a natural introvert like me, but then I worry that I’ll feel stuck inside too. It’s easier for those of us faculty and students who don’t have to commute, unlike my student whose car wouldn’t start in the snow, so he couldn’t get to campus for F2F/hybrid classes.

Waiting, for the virus to be limited by vaccinations, for Biden’s plan to work, thank goodness he won. Grateful for our advantages, to work at home, to have a job.

Not much to do, but wait it out.

Cuz I write so many, I may as well try to make it poetic for the people I send them to, little missives in the mail. Plus, they’re short, and we’re supposed to be concise, right?

So. many. Google. Docs.