Vacation

It was fun to spend time together as a family. I have noticed that when we travel we talk and interact so much. At home, we tend to drift off into our separate spaces. Force us into a vehicle together and we laugh and fight together. I really like my family, we all have so much energy, it is an amazing uplifting thing to spend time together. However, I have to really force it.



This week has been an at home vacation for us. Jeff went into work every morning but was home by 10. We bundled up the girls and went on some local adventures. The mall playground and video arcade, the bowling alley, the children's science museum.

It takes so much work to convince them all to be ready at the same time and to agree to do something together. It was worth all the forcing, in the end we had a great week. I got so many wonderful presents, so did Jeff and the girls, but it was the fun we had together that really made this Christmas special for me.



Next month, Jeff and Mandy are going down to Toyko for a couple of days to see a Sumo wrestling match. Jeff is going snow shoeing. Hopefully Mandy and I can get another ski trip in before we leave. Our departure date is scheduled for late March and I am hoping we will be here to see the Cherry Blossoms one last time. We will see, sometimes spring comes late here, but sometimes we see blossoms at the end of March.

I have to get back to homework and housework. Tonight is New Year's Eve here. We are having a family game night and watching the naked Japanese guy on the TV. Every year we watch him. We have no idea what is said, but a guy strips down to a loin cloth and dumps water on himself and does death defying stunts involving fire. There is always a bunch of Japanese people there watching and laughing. That is all I know. Our Japanese friend says that this year he might not be allowed to do his thing, because some people have complained that it is dangerous. I guess we will see if he get permission to do his crazy new year's stunt again this year. If he does I will try to take some video of it to share with you.

In Japan New Year's Eve is one of their most important holidays of the year. Many people go to the Budist temple at midnight for the ringing of the bells. The bells are run one time for every bone in a person's body and this is done to purify one of the sins of the past year. I have never been to the temple for new year's eve, I wish I had been able to go. Jeff and I feel it is important to be together as a family for new years. It would feel weird to leave Mandy and Lily and go out on our own, so we all stay together and enjoy the holiday with games. This year we got the Amazing Race DVD game, it is fun, Mandy beat us all the first time. I am hoping to talk the family into RISK, my all time favorite game. They don't like it, because I always end up ruling the world!

Happy New Year.

New Camera

I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas. Here is a video of Lily singing the ABC's made with my brand new digital camera! We had a very Merry Christmas here in Japan. I am looking forward to an amazing New Year. This week we have plans for lots of family adventures, and now I can give you pics and videos of Japan.

White Christmas

This is our last chance for a white Christmas for awhile. Here's hoping.

Most years we miss our families so much on Christmas that we try to find other lonely people and have a big family type Christmas with friends. We go to a lot of trouble to turn virtual strangers into family. This being our last Christmas abroad, and all of us being busy with school, and a bit intimidated by the move, we are having a quiet Christmas.

We did the work party. Other than that we are keeping it simple. Jeff and Mandy are both off the week of Christmas. We have decided that on Christmas day we will open presents, and then have a nice breakfast, and then just hang out the rest of the day. Watch TV, take naps, take turns playing with Lily, play with our presents, and then have a nice dinner. Just us. It always bothers me to be all on our own at Christmas, but this year it is like saying goodbye to an old friend, the family-free Christmas.

During the rest of the week we have decided to be on vacation at home. Very casual and leisurely however, we are going to try to do one small family event per day. Bowling, swimming, ice skating, arcade, jumpy castle - I have tons of ideas hopefully we can come to a consensus, or whatever I will force all this family fun on them.

I still have a ton of wrapping to do, batteries to buy, stocking stuffers too. But, for the most part we are ready. Except for the banana pudding, must get vanilla wafers. Merry Christmas.

Now tell me all about your plans.

Orders

We actually got our orders to go to Mississippi. There have been scads of rumors and such that all PCS's have been canceled due to a lack of funds, however, we are moving and that is that.

Having orders this early is a luxury. It gives us the opportunity to plan a smooth move. It takes quite a little bit of time for our belonging to be shipped from Misawa, Japan to the gulf coast of Mississippi. We have decided that we will ship the stuff early hoping it will be there and waiting for us when we arrive. We also have a car that has been in storage somewhere in America, a car we bought in Italy, we need to arrange to have it shipped to Mississippi and since it has been in storage for four years, we are thinking it will need a super-tune-up. It would be nice to have most of this arranged and taken care of so when we get off the plane, we have a house, a car, and all our stuff.

I am thinking this will help the girls, if the is less of a transitory time period. This decision means that the last couple of months here in Japan we will be without most of our stuff. We do get a second shipment, but this second shipment is of limited space, where we can ship the computer, some dishes, some sheets and blankets. And then we can also mail some things, and the rest we must carry ourselves. From Italy to Japan we carried a lot. As much as was legally permitted, two large suitcases, two large carry-ons, per person, and the cat. Now we have little little which means even more suitcases allowed. But, I have learned my lesson, less is more. I believe what I will be carrying is a toothbrush and a change of underwear. Plus, now we have a dog and a cat.

There used to be a plane that came here to the base and took us to America, due to budget cuts the plane no longer stops in Misawa. This means that we have to drag the kids, the animals, and all of that which we decided to carry with us from Misawa to Tokyo. The problem is that the airplane takes you from here to a domestic airport which is on the other side of Tokyo (1 1/2 hours drive) from the international airport. They do not allow animals on the shuttle bus between airports. There is a train one can take from Misawa and with three switched arrive at the international airport (Narita) however, they do not allow animals on the trains and there are many stairs. This is how we traveled one time on our trip to Alaska, it was hard with a lot of stuff. There isn't really any place to put your stuff on the train, and hey they don't allow pets. So what do we do?

It will be interesting to see how we get our pets to America. Most people are leaving messages on the bulletin boards around base, free pet to good home. We made the decision to keep our pets and to endure all the hell this decision will inure. I do think however, this will definitely mean that we wont be taking lots of suitcases with us on our move. We will arrive in Mississippi with the shirts on our backs and our two kids, our two pets and a smile.

What Ya Doing, Honey?

Lily's latest question. She comes up to me and asks, What ya doing, Honey? Or, What's wrong, Honey? She sounds exactly like me. It is so fun to watch her mimic me or Jeff.

Yesterday I was trying to get her to tell me her name, her whole name first and last, and my name and her dad's name etc. She didn't seem to be understanding the concept. I kept telling her our names and she would say her name is Lily, and that was it. She then asked me if she could watch Blue's Clues. So, I told her she could watch it as soon as she could tell me her name, my name and her dad's name. She rattled them off, followed by sister's full name, dog's full name, cat's full name and then she proceeded to get me the movie she wanted to watch.

That is the thing with Lily I can never tell if she is being defiant, bored, or just doesn't get it.

We have been playing hide and seek. At first she insisted on always being the counter, while I was always the hider. Finally, I convinced her we should take turns. So we take turns. However, on Lily's turn she always hides right next to where I am counting. As soon as I am done counting she jumps up, "You found me". My turn to count.

See my predicament, is she being slightly defiant (because she doesn't like hiding), is hiding boring, or does she just not get the concept? Yesterday, I told her to hide somewhere else, she did, and continued to hide in that new location, just around the corner, each turn for the rest of the game. She is a nut. I run the other way and pretend I cannot find her. I go to all the hiding locations I can think of. She chases me around, but I try to run fast enough that she cannot be found. And our dog always tells her where I am, is that fair?

This is what I have been up to, nothing very exciting. This and homework & housework. Life is pretty good, even though the snows, they have begun.

Bookwormsrus: The book club

Our book club is just finishing up the book, The gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson. One of the themes in the book is date rape, by a high school football hero or "god". After reading the book, which I loved by the way, I got to thinking that I probably need to discuss this topic with my 15 year old daughter. But, what do I say? What are the rules for dating or hanging out with popular boys? Avoid at all costs because they can do what ever they want, including rape, and you have no recourse, because they are "gods"? It is best to never be in a situation where you are alone with a boy, because this is considered to be consent to anything he wants, because he is popular and people will just assume that you said yes? I doubt she would even listen to that advice. So what do I say? Any thoughts?

Holiday Eating Tips

1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they're serving rum balls.



2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. Like fine single-malt scotch, it's rare. In fact, it's even rarer than single-malt scotch. You can't find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It's not as if you're going to turn into an eggnogaholic or something. It's a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It's later than you think. It's Christmas!



3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.



4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they're made with skim milk or whole milk. If it's skim, pass. Why bother? It's like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.



5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people's food for free. Lots of it.



6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year's. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you'll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.



7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don't budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They're like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you're never going to see them again.



8. Same for pies. Apple. Pumpkin. Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or if you don't like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? Labor Day?



9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it's loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.



10. One final tip: If you don't feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven't been paying attention. Re-read tips; start over, but hurry, January is just around the corner.

Remember this motto to live by:

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"

-author unknown, came to me via an email.

moving

Thanks for all the great advice. You have given me a lot to think about. I am surprised by how many of you said not to worry about the flooding. I am totally creeped out by the thought of living in a house that had been underwater, all that yucky toxic waste floodwater coursing through the walls and in the soil of the yard that my child plays in or that I grow veggies in. Disgusting. The more I think about it the more important it seems to me that I don't live in a house that was under water during Katrina or during any other hurricane. My understanding is they get a lot of bad storms in the fall.

Our plan is to buy, there are a lot of great reasons not to buy, and buying may not be the wisest thing we have ever done, still we are determined. Unless we absolutely cannot find a livable house, we plan to buy. There is great brand new base housing, because it was all completely leveled by the hurricane. There are a lot of really great houses to rent. Still we are going to buy. Hopefully it will turn out to be an good investment and help us save for our future home in Roanoke. But, even if it turns out to not be a moneymaker, at least we will be able to live in our own home, paint the walls, rip out the carpet, etc. With all of our animals and kids we want to be able to get off the plane and drive to our house. That is the goal. Hopefully we can make it come true. If not we have other options, so it isn't life and death. Still we are going to try to realize our dream.

My parents totally agree with y'all about renting for awhile. So everyone can tell us a great big I told you so when we end up making a poor decision. But, remember I have animals and kids who are not easy on rental properties. Plus, the lovely military moves all of our belongings, one time - If I decide to move say from a rental to a house in a year we would have to pay for that move ourselves. Who is to say the perfect house wont come up for sale while I am looking and we will find it and it will be ready right when we need it? It is possible. So we are going to try to do everything in our power to make it happen. If not, we will live on base or something.

About the traffic, many of the bridges and major highways were destroyed by Katrina so the traffic is bad right now. This is the reason that living on the outskirts of town is such a long commute. With everyone on the same road at the same time it is a cluster. Maybe someday the roads and bridges will get repaired and living in the country will be less of a commute.

I still think y'all are crazy to say not to worry about flooding, I don't think I could live in a house that was soaked in 10 feet of sludge, no matter how much bleach was used to clean it. Yucky! And what about my veggie garden? I was hoping to save some money by growing veggies as that is pretty much all Lily eats, we pay a fortune in potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, bell peppers. I was hoping to grow all that.

stresses

Slowly but surely I am trying to catch up in school. I have gotten so far behind. It is very stressful. I don't do stress well.

Searching for a house is turning out to be very difficult. There are literally hundreds for sale in the general area in our price range, it should be easy. However, it sucks. After seeing what happened during Hurricane Katrina, it seems obvious that we should buy a home as far inland as possible. Right? Nothing that was flooded during that hurricane or any other. Right? There is a slight problem, all the houses that we want to buy are close to the ocean. We want Mandy and Lily to go to a good school, those schools are for the people living in houses practically on the beach. Plus, there is the commute thing. Do we want Jeff to have an hour commute? He already works ungodly hours here with a 10 minute commute. Add an extra 2 hours per day to him being gone.

Mostly I just feel so frustrated. We did find this lovely house, well it was lovely on the Internet. Big, beautiful, good schools, good commute, never flooded, however - one of Jeff's co-workers took a look and said the area was icky and run down. Part of me thinks, who cares if the neighbors mow their lawns or if the neighborhood is rundown and the house is old, who cares. Good schools, good commute, no flood. I guess now I have to add to the list neighbors who mow? Is that an important indication of their good neighborliness? Do your neighbors mow? Does your neighborhood ever look rough?

I better get my nose back in the books.

PS Lily is so potty trained! She came and got me while she was playing at an indoor play area, way up in the slide, she came and got me and told me to take her to the potty. Where she actually pooped, in a public restroom. So proud. Maybe someday I will let her out of the crib. Not!

Hu's on First

Borrowing Trouble

Do you borrow trouble?

I have noticed lately that I get very upset over other people's troubles. When I see a child missing I am as upset as if it were mine. Even fictional characters and their fictional troubles can cause me to become overwrought with panic and basic upsetidness. Today is made up word day, didn't you know?

While I do believe that my ability to empathies is one of my best qualities, I also believe that it is not doing me any good to borrow the troubles of others. I am in the process of trying to learn how to separate your problems from my problems. Just saying that makes me feel bad, like I am being selfish not feeling badly enough for you and your problems.

Seems I have a bit of work left to do. I have no idea what the reason for this crazy borrowing trouble comes from. A) I suppose it could be that I am familiar with this feeling of panic and while I don't have it in my daily life anymore, there is a sense of home in that feeling and I am drawn to it. or B) My self esteem is so bad I feel like I don't deserve to be happy if someone else is not.

I don't think it matters the why? Just the knowledge that it is not a good idea and trying to let it go. This is my pre-new years resolution to try to only get upset over actual real life problems that effect me and to learn how to empathies without taking on the sorrows of others.

Home

Approx. 115 days until we leave. That is just over 16 weeks. Leaving me ample time to stress, so why am I stressing so much right now? I need to focus on my two new classes. We are on week 5 and I haven't really sunk my teeth in yet. I am falling farther and farther behind. Every time I try to concentrate my mind wanders to all the things I have to do for the move and for Christmas etc.

I got my scores for the two classes I just completed. In the Internet: A practical guide class which is basically an introduction to html I got 99.8 as my final score, pretty good. For my other class, Java programming II, I got an A. The teacher only graded 3 out of the 5 programs I completed for the class, I got 100, 95, and 100 on those assignments and a 95 on the final. However, I am upset that two of my programs he never bothered to even grade. I did get an A in the course, but that isn't the point, I would have appreciated some feedback on my work. Am I on the right track? Is there a different way of approaching the subject? It is all very frustrating.

Lily seems to be coming down with a cold. She is fussy and has a bit of a stuffy nose. I am going to buckle down and get some homework done today during Lily's nap. Try to quit dreaming of the lovely house I want to buy. I have been doing so much research, I found a fema map showing which homes were flooded by Katrina. I found several good school comparison websites. When I find a house we can afford in an area of a good school, I check to see if that house was flooded and then bookmark the house. So far out of about 2000 houses I have found 10 that meet my criteria. But, one of those houses is my dream! It is so perfect! But it is so long before I move and with there being so few homes for sale that were not flooded by Katrina I am afraid it will be scooped up. No sense getting my hopes up, whatever will happen will happen. I just cannot wrap my mind around the fact that we are going to be home owners. Back to homework!

Ugly Christmas Lights

I found a link to this site over at Busy Mom.

www.uglychristmaslights.com

It is very funny!

Reading

I had to take a standardized test for my college last week. I haven't taken one of those in quite some time. Instead of being the parent reading the scores of my child, here I was taking the test and having my intelligence judged, it was an eye opening experience for me. I haven't gotten the scores yet, so I cannot qualify this post by telling you exactly how smart this test has determined that I am or am not.

I noticed as I took this test that it was terribly boring. It was very difficult to focus in on the content because it was not at all interesting. The wording was not the type of wording that one can skim, it was complex sentence after complex sentence. While I can normally read, blogs, news, books, college text books at a pretty good pace and come away from the experience remembering most of what I have read, I had a very difficult time doing it on the test. I could feel the strain on my brain, a physical sensation of a strain on my actual brain, I did it and got threw it, but the effort was more difficult than the actual work. Basically the questions were easy but the sitting threw the test and reading the material was excruciatingly hard. Kind of like reading this post.

My point is learning to read and being a good reader is something that is hard to qualify with a test. This test I took was more a measure of my ability to have self discipline than my ability to read. I notice this with my girls as well. Mandy reads volumes of books every week. I estimate that she reads about 2000 pages per week in the form of several short books or a couple long books. When I take the time to read on of her books and we discuss, I find that she remembers every detail, even a year later. She is also quite good at inferring the overall meaning of the text, why the author said this or that and what the character would do in another situation. However, Mandy on performs average on those standardized tests. Sometimes less than average. I think it is an attention thing, and not a comprehension or ability thing.

The same is true with math. I have been tutoring on and off in math for more than 20 years. I have always been extremely successful at helping people. These people always come to me saying that they are horrible at math and they just can't do it, and by the time I get through with them, they get an A in their class. What is the secret? The secret is that different people learn in different ways, they understand the information and come to their conclusions in unique ways. Tutoring is more about listening than about talking. Listening to how they interpret the information and getting into their language and their system and pointing out a step here and there to help them connect the dots. Some people have a natural ability and for some people it takes some mental strain to connect the dots but most people can do math, even you.

I think the same can be said about reading. There is an element of intelligence, and element of the methods of teaching, and an element of is the material interesting. Basically what I am saying is that it is easier to learn to read when you care how the book turns out, than it is when you are repeating sounds on flash cards, or some other monotonously boring learning to read technique. Instead of presenting information that is at the reading level of the kid, I think kids do better when they are presented with reading material that is at their intelligence level. Mandy didn't learn to read no matter how hard I tried and how much we practiced until she was 8 and we read Harry Potter. We went from Courdory to Harry Potter. While she couldn't read Courdory she was quite able to read Harry Potter. Once she got up her confidence she was able to read anything. But, to this day she struggles with the ability to read things she finds boring like a standardized test.

Reading things that are boring and uninteresting is an important skill to have to be successful in life. School does an excellent job of teaching kids that self discipline that is necessary for this skill. Moms do a good job of helping kids get over the hump when they are having trouble with learning at school. So many people are arguing the merits of home schooling vs public schools. For me I think there has to be a combination of both. I am great at catering to my girls and finding ways of making the material interesting and explaining things in a way they understand. I know them better than anyone and I learn in very similar ways to each of them. However, I have not been successful all by myself in teaching them how to adapt themselves to the environment and read and succeed in ways that are hard. Life has a lot of layers, solutions are a little of this and a little of that.

Christmas Meme

I stole this from Capello

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
We do both. Jeff loves the egg nog, I make hot coccoa from scratch so Lily can enjoy it with us. Her corn allergy keeps her from enjoying the pre-made stuff.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Santa does not wrap the presents he leaves at our house.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
We have a white Christmas fake tree. Jeff went out and bought a fake tree the first year we were married. Mandy and I are allergic to the real ones. He came home with the cheapest tree the store sold. The picture on the front of the box showed a great big green Christmas tree. However, upon opening the box we found a 4 foot white Christmas tree. Jeff loves this tree, which we still use six years later. He believes it is our family tradition and therefore we cannot buy a green one.

All this to say that we have always had a green strand of colored lights on this all white tree, very tacky! This year I found a strand of white lights with a white cord. With some gold garland and lots of colorful ornaments I think the tree looks good for the first time. However, I prefer colored lights, maybe someday I will find a strand of colored lights with a white cord? But, for now, white lights.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No. But, I do kiss everyone a lot.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
Ours went up this year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It is different every year depending on what is going on in our lives.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
Ham and sweet potatoes.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child:
Every Christmas was wonderful in my childhood memories, it is hard to find a single one.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I don't remember. For the most part I still believe in Santa.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
We open one present on Christmas eve. We try to put out the presents early. And we all have weeks and weeks to shake the presents and try to determine which present we will be opening on Christmas eve. We try to fool each other by wrapping small things in big boxes, or burrying the cool presents way in the back underneath the socks which are wrapped in an enormous box. But, Santa always brings the best presents.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
I collect ornaments from our adventures and from the girls school projects.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
Dread it! The rest of the family loves it, I have been living in Misawa way too long to get excited about snow!

12. Can you ice skate?
Barely. Mandy and I used to ice skate when we lived in Fort Wayne, we would desperately hang on to one another and wobble around the ring. Does that count?

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
Merlin. It was this computer game, it looked like a red phone. It had 9 games, like tick tack toe, and memory, etc. Hours of fun.

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
The girls, giving them good memories.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?
Banana pudding.

17. What tops your tree?
A Santa Claus we bought in Italy, very European.

18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving?
Giving.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song (s)?
Jingle Bells.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum?
Yuck.

Trips

Oh good, blogger is back to English.

Jeff wants to take Mandy to see a Sumo match in January. This match is in Tokyo and would include staying a couple of nights in a hotel. Which would mean me and Lily home alone for a few days while the big kids get to go on an adventure. We are debating going as a whole family or just those two going. Most probably it will be just those two. Sucks for me. Lily and I always get left behind.

However, in February I am going all by myself to America to see to do the leg work of finding our new home. I get to ride a train, fly on two planes, stay in a hotel, rent a car and drive around AMERICA all by myself for a week, and then go home. Jeff is going to take the week off from work and take care of the girls. Sure hope he learns how to cook something gluten-free for Lily. I think she might get tired of peanut butter on bananas and hamburgers with cheese. But you never know. I cannot tell you how excited I am. I haven't been all by myself for a whole week in... Well by that time it will be 16 years! I wonder if my head will explode or if I will cut the meat of innocent bystanders? I wonder what it will be like to fly on an airplane without a kid? Scary? Lonely? Boring?

I feel a little bad for Jeff, but not really. I wonder who will be more frazzled when I return Jeff or Lily? Or Mandy? When Jeff takes care of Lily the two of them butt heads a bit. Lily and I have worked out the details of who is boss, but she is still not convinced that her dad is Alpha, so she fights him on everything all the time. Drives him crazy. His approach is to be a hard ass all the time, a hard ass who gives in a lot. My approach is to give her what she wants most of the time, but when I say NO I NEVER change my mind. Don't care if you head pops off and rolls down the street I will never give. He thinks I need to be firm more often I think he needs to be firm less often. Somewhere in the middle is probably best. But, Lily and Jeff at the end of a few hours together, they are usually both ready for a break. He, he, hee!

Jeff's future work mates in Mississippi are so nice and helpful. I am excited to meet them.

Let it Snow

Today Blogger, has decided to display in Japanese for me, thanks blogger so kind of you to see that I am in Japan and translate everything into Japanese for me.

It has been abismally misserable here lately. Rain, rain, all the time rain. It has been cold too, in the 30's and 40's. Then on Wedesday, in the middle of the morning the sky cleared and I saw sunshine. It was so lovely. I quickly bundled up myself, Lily and our dog Pixie and the three of us went for a walk.

It was incredibly lovely to go on that walk. Having finals, and computer trouble mixed in with a bit of Christmas stress was making me a crabby mommy. It felt so lovely to feel the sun on my face. We laughed, skipped, and sang.

The playground was still wet and icky. After our walk we went to the indoor play area, and found tons of Lily sized girls to play with. Often we find no one to play with, so this was an added bonus. As we were leaving I noticed that the gray skies and icky weather had returned. There was only about an hour tops of sunshine, just a brief little respit from the gray.

I heard on the radio as we were driving home that Americans typically call in sick 3 times per year on days they are not sick, the radio guy dubbed this "Mental Health Days". I was thinking to myself, this is what I love about my job, the stay at home mommy gig, that I don't have to call in sick for a mental health day, I can take all the breaks I need whenever I need them. It is lovely. Laughing with the sunshine on my face, what a simple thing, but it is the stuff that makes me love this choice I have made.

Jeff and Mandy came home from their days, indoors at work and school. Neither of them had even seen the sun. They were in gray moods, while Lily and I were giggly and happy all evening. This morning we awoke to a bit of snow on the ground, hopefully this means the rainy season is coming to an end. Hopefully my computer problems are coming to an end as well. I hope you get a bit of sunshine on your face today!

computer crap

My computer crashed badly. It took me a couple of days to fix. Now it is doing well. I deleted the whole thing and re-installed. Never knew my computer could be this quick.

All this during finals week. One final down. One to go, in five hours!

Spike's Pickleball Paddles

I have been busy making a website for my dad. I know I did this all before, but this time I coded the site on my own. It was a project for school, no web authoring tools. So, check it out and tell me what you think. I still have a day before I turn it in so I can make changes.

Spike' s Pickleball Paddles

Homework

Swamped in homework. Only two more weeks of class for two of my classes. Working on final projects, papers and studying for the final. We have decided to spend Turkey day out at a Japanese restaraunt and then finishing up our Christmas shopping. Otherwise Jeff is going to be pretty much in charge of the girls while I try to get all my homework and studying done. It has been fun to have so many deadlines and so much stress, not. I have been having nightmares. All about when I was working. I dream about situations which occured at the workplace that caused me a lot of stress and feel as if I am there and the tension is real. I wake up and spend the day all mad as if it is a current situation instead of something which happened years ago. Weird. I try to tell myself to put it out of my mind, but it is there. I guess feeling pressure is bringing back memories of the last time I was under stress and in an impossible situation.

The funny part is that I have nearly 100% of all the points possible in all four of my classes. I am stressing out over little things. Like learning every detail. It is crazy. I have to learn how to let some things go. My theory is that college is supposed to teach you how to prioritize, to learn how to handle impossible situations and find out what you are made of, but also to find out how to let some things go. But, when I know it is possible to get 100 I just cannot allow myself to submit something less. I am working on it. I also feel that this computer stuff is important because I want to find a job working with computers. So if I learn the stuff now, really well it will help me in the next class, and eventually in a job. But, still I am over stressing myself, to the point of craziness.

In other news. In just a few very short hours I will be taking Lily to gymnastics. She will be going in her "big girl panties" for the first time. I am so scared. She has been without pull-ups for a week. For two weeks before that she only wore pull-ups outside of the house. I know she is ready, yet, I am still freaking out, freaking out. I guess it wont be the end of the world if I have to scrub down the mats at gymnastics. Or will it?

Tokyo Disney Sea

We went to Tokyo over the summer and went to Disney Sea. I mislaid one of the rolls of film, and found it yesterday. So here are some fun pictures from our last summer in Japan.

Tsunami

Last night about 5 minutes before I was going to go upstairs to bed we had a Tsunami warning crawl across the bottom of the screen. Freaked me out, so I stayed up for hours watching the progress of the Tsunami. Nothing really came of it, a wave 20 cm high hit in the city just south of us. I am so tired. Thousands of people were evacuated from the coast. You can read all about it here. I guess there wont be any earthquakes, volcanos, or tsunamis in Mississippi.

Toe Socks

Do you remember toe socks from when you were a kid? Those socks with the individual little parts for each toe. The Japanese love those socks. Yesterday we had our dryer fixed. The repair men came into our home, took off their shoes, and were wearing toe socks. It always makes me have to suppress a little giggle to see grown men in toe socks. I have seen work men taking naps on their lunch breaks, with their socked feet hanging out of the window of their truck, toe socks. I have even seen fancy dress black toe socks on Japanese men in restaurants. Toe socks. You knew that we have to take our shoes off upon entering a home or even some restaurants, right?

Mississippi

We got our assignment.

Anniversary

Yesterday was our six year anniversary. Jeff took the day off from work. We were planning to go hiking at the Oriase Gorge, but the weather was not cooperating. Instead we visited the local fish market and then the mall. It was fun. Later Mandy babysat and we went out to dinner and to have a drink at a local pub. It was a lot of fun. I love dating my husband. We both wanted to have a drink at the pub and therefore took the shuttle bus from our house to a part of the base that is a bit closer to the city of Misawa. We then walked to the restaurant and pub. On the way back to the bus stop we discovered we were running late and had to run for it. We ended up missing the bus. We went to the base club and Jeff drank more while I played the slots. We made the next bus and got home just before 10. We had a blast. There have been very few moments during our marriage where we weren't with kids, every once in a awhile it is fun to act like irresponsible kids ourselves. Running down the street half drunk, missing the bus, drinking more, its all good.

We should be finding out where we are going to be moving in March within hours. I will keep you posted! We decided not to apply for the position in Alaska, we couldn't find out a yes or no on that one until the end of January. Plus, we are looking forward to being a bit closer to our families. Mississippi or California here we come.

Mommy will play

The family is out on an adventure without me. They just pulled away, I took pictures of them before they all climbed in the car and drove away. I packed a lovely lunch for Lily because it is hard to find Lily friendly food on the road. I packed her potty chair because I thought it would be hard for Mandy to take her into a rest stop bathroom and hard for Jeff to take her into a men's rest stop bathroom, so pee in the back of the SUV, whoopee. They will be gone all day.

I am supposedly doing homework. I have so much and spent too much time procrastinating this week. Goodbye family hello textbooks. hee hee hee. I am having so much fun and it has only been 15 minutes.

The picture is Mandy and Lily a couple of years ago, the last time we went to see the wild horses at the very northern tip of this island of Japan. It is lovely there, the wild horses are well fed by the farmers and very friendly with the tourists.

Thursday Thirteen # 6: Ice Cream

This TT brought to you buy the eldest child Amanda, her 13 favorite ice cream flavors.

1. Mint Chocolate Chip
2. Rocky Road
3. Chocolate Chocolate Chip
4. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
5. Fish Food, by Ben & Jerry
6. Chocolate Chip
7. Cookies and Cream
8. Kiwi Gelato
9. Strawberry Gelato
10. Chocolate
11. Vanilla
12. Tartufo Negro
13. Neopolitan

Happy TT. To find more lovely lists of Thursday Thirteens visit:
Thursday Thirteen website or
Technorati Thursday Thirteen tag.

Alaska

Jeff sent me an email today in which he inquires what I think of him applying for a job in Alaska. I have just got my mind wrapped around going to LA or Mississippi, now he want to apply for a different job and make me wait some more. Sometimes people in the military don't know where they are moving until a few weeks before they move.

Jeff, Mandy and I have all been having wild and crazy dreams. Perhaps the stress of the wait. We sit around the dinner table and compare our dreams. I guess it is nice to know we are all going through the same thing at the same time. Mandy looks at Lily and says, she has no idea, no idea her world is about to be turned upside down. Poor Lily, she was born here, this will be her first move. My Lily queen of the fit, I can only imagine what moving is going to do to her disposition.

Lily still sleeps in the crib. She is happy there. She doesn't climb out. Her crib converts to a toddler bed and then eventually to a double bed. We are debating if we should introduce her to sleeping in a bed now or just wait until we move. I really don't want to do the bed yet, we have enough problems with Lily I am not ready to fight with her at bedtime. However, I wonder if it will be slightly easier on her moving if she is already used to sleeping in a bed?

Snow Poles

Over the weekend we noticed that the snow poles have been going up around the base. These poles are about six feet tall with reflective tape along the top, they help one to know where the road is during a snow storm. When the snow is falling one cannot differentiate side walk from street, so you follow the reflective bits on the poles and are able to keep the vehicle on the road.

We are leaving Misawa in March. The snow is usually not melted yet in March. While there is snow on the ground, it snows between 100 and 200 inches per year here, we don't travel around very much. The roads get so much snow that many are closed, and the ones left open are difficult to navigate. We usually stick pretty close to the base during the winter.

It feels all of a sudden like we have to go visit all our favorite places one last time. I haven't had this feeling before, because I was thinking that we had all the time in the world to say goodbye to Japan. But, really, we have until the first big snowfall. Seeing those poles go up, makes me realize that the time I have in Japan is coming to an end.

This weekend is a holiday weekend and we have plans for each and everyday to go somewhere we love and say goodbye. Northern Japan is so lovely, mountains, lakes, nature trails, fields of rice and soy beans, rolling hills, it is just so beautiful. Saying goodbye will be bitter sweet. I am so excited to be going to America and so sad to be leaving Japan.

Off to gymnastics. . .

Answers

1. no
2. yes, amazingly yes! Lily is potty trained. Yeah, Lily.
3. no, sadly I ate way too much candy.
4. no, sadly I don't own a single pair of VS underwear.
5. no, Mandy, Jeff and I bought tickets to go into the pyramid. Jeff chickened out right away because the passage way was vertically about 5 feet high and he is 6 feet tall and thought that walking along bent over for all that distance would not be pleasant. Mandy and I continuted without him. The passage way to the center of the pyramid was so narrow that my shoulders were touching both of the walls on either side of me. We would walk up and incline and down and incline, around and around. There were so many people inside that they were pushing past me, in either direction. It was so dark I couldn't see the hand in front of my face. Mandy was behind me and started to freak out. I could have forced her to do it, for the memory, but frankly I wanted the hell out of there. So we managed to turn around and get the hell out of the pyramid. When we got out we told Jeff that the passage way opened up and he could walk upright after just a little bit, and so he re-entered the pyramid and went all the way to the core. He came out soaked in sweat and took his shirt off and possed like a body builder in front of the pyramids, one of my favorite pictures. Mandy and I went into the burrial chamber of another pyramid, an older but less popular pyramid several miles down the road. Did you know that pyramids include an elaborate maze of passage ways that lead to a burial chamber and sarcaphagus in the center? I didn't.

Egypt continues

Sammy told us a bit about Egypt today. He told us about their democracy, it is a little different than ours. According to Sammy, in Egypt today, the society is divided into villages, and each village has a leader, the leader is the only one who votes, he votes for what he believes will be in the best interest of his village. Sammy believes this gives the incumbent a huge advantage. Right before an election the incumbent goes around to all the village leaders and asks them what they need. Changes in government rarely happen in Egypt.

Medical care is free to everyone. However, if you are having a heart attack and show up at the Emergency Room you will surely die before a doctor sees you. So many people so few doctors. If you bring money and bribe the nurses, bribe the doctors, etc. you will get medical care.

The same is true with police or pressing charges against someone within the legal system, you need to grease some palms to get things in Egypt. Sammy felt the government was a bit corrupt. He is under the impression ours is the epitome of fairness and justice to all, rich and poor. I didn't say anything, but I really don't agree, ours sucks too, something we have in common, a sense that our government doesn't always have our best interest at heart.

There is a lot of poverty in Egypt, many people who cannot afford to feed their families or to own a home. Some interesting laws have come about in their attempt to work through this problem. For instance, it is illegal to evict someone from their home. So if someone happens to be living in a home, and that home happens to be on your land, well that is your problem, you cannot evict them. It is illegal to build a home on someone else's land, but once you are done, you can live there with no worries. This means that many people will build a rudimentary home by themselves, or with friends, in the middle of the night, knock something together quickly without getting caught. You see many homes that appear to have been built this way. Homes that look like someone with no knowledge of architecture or carpentry slapped something together in the middle of the night. It is also a law that the government is required to provide everyone with water and electric, so if you slap together a house the power company and water company will also come out and hook you up.

Sammy took us to see one such home in a small village outside of Aswan. It is there that he taught us about the Evil Eye. On the door there was a symbol to ward off the evil eye. For the life of me I cannot remember what that symbol was. As I said their were 25 American's in the tour group. We arrived at the door of the home, from the street it didn't seem that there was any way that we would all fit into this home. I was very anxious about the whole thing. As we entered we went down a narrow hallway and then the house opened up to us, what had appeared on the street as a poorly thrown together hovel was actually a lovely spacious home. The outward appearance of the home was meant to ward off the evil eye of envy. We had a lovely cup of hybiscus tea, saw the wedding photos, had a tour of the home, it was fun.

Lying Liar

One of these things is not like the others, too much Sesame Street?
I was tagged for this meme by meno from meno's blog.

I've made a list of 5 things I've done in my life, one of which is a lie. You get to guess which one is the lie. Please leave your guesses in the comments. I will reveal the truth in a day or so.

1. I vote republican.
   
   
2. Lily magically potty trained herself this week.
   
   
3. I was able to avoid eating way too much chocolate this Halloween.
   
   
4. I have a huge collection of Victoria Secret's underwear and bras.
   
   
5. While in Egypt I climbed inside the pyramids in Giza, the the very core and saw the sarcophagus.

Actually, I lied, only one of the above is true. Can you guess which one?

I am tagging: Kim, Angel, Laura, and you.

Egypt and the Evil Eye, part 1

In March 2002 we went on an adventure to Egypt. We went with an Italian tour group, there were 25 Americans from Aviano Air Force Base on the trip and more than 200 Italians. We rode a bus from Aviano to Milano International Airport where we got on a chartered plane with all the Italians. We arrived in Luxor in the late afternoon, having already been traveling for more than 12 hours. All of us were bussed from the airport to the cruise ship, on the Nile River. The adventure had begun. I was a bit out of sorts from all the traveling and all the no sleeping, but we made it there yeah! Our (the 25 Americans) tour guide offered to take us to see Karnack that night, right away that way we could miss the crowds and have a more leisurely day visiting the valley of the kings tomorrow. We all readily agreed.

There I was in Karnack just as the sun was setting. The sky was the most incredible color of blue, that I will never forget. Karnack is amazing, the size of a small city. Built 5000 years ago, intact in many ways. The hieroglyphics on the walls, the architecture, it was amazing. That moment was everything I came to Egypt to see, it will be with me forever.

Our guide who called himself Sammy (not his real name). Tour guides sometimes give themselves a name that Americans can identify with and feel secure with, it makes them seem more like you, less like one of them, a trick of the trade perhaps. He was very educated and imparted to us, over the course of our entire trip volumes of knowledge about ancient Egypt. None of the stories were about curses and legends, it was about the culture, the people, the traditions, what the translations of the hieroglyphics, the means by which the structures were built. Sammy was very proud of his ancestors, of what they had made, and how they had lived. I could write an encyclopedia about all that I learned of ancient Egypt that trip. It was incredible and fascinating.

This trip was as I said in March of 2002, six months after September 11. Egypt is one of our strongest allies, yet they are Muslim, and we were military. It didn’t take long for us to start asking questions about modern Egypt. We asked about their culture, about the Muslim religion, about the economy, about poverty. Sammy was prepared and ready to share with us, he loves his country and wanted very much to share with us his thoughts. He started taking us places not on the itinerary, to schools, and villages, and even inside of someone’s home.

This is beginning to get a little long, I will continue tomorrow.

Thursday Thirteen #5: Question

I thought I would ask a bunch of questions, things that I am always curious about, don't feel you have to answer. But, if you like to answer questions: answer 1 or answer them all.

1. What is your favorite color?
   
   
2. What is your favorite book?
   
   
3. Do you believe in God?
   
   
4. Do you go to church?
   
   
5. Why? or Why not?
   
   
6. How many close friends do you have right now?
   
   
7. When a friend does something that really hurts your feelings, what do you do? Tell them? Quit the friendship? Let it go so as not to hurt the friendship?
   
   
8. Which is more important: teaching children self reliance or teaching children they are loved unconditionally?
   
   
9. Are you afraid?
   
   
10. Is the elimination of poverty in the US or the world important to you?
    
    
11. Do you think it is possible?
    
    
12. Do you think it will be achieved or at least reduced via: teaching people self reliance or helping those who cannot help themselves?
    
    
13. When you know for sure you are right, do you feel it is important to make other people understand what it is you understand for their own good?

I'll put my answers in the comments if you are interested. Happy Thursday Everyone!
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So, No Way

Lily has been picking up some fun new words. Yesterday, it seems every sentence began with the word so...

So...Mommy, do you want to go to the playground?
So...Mommy, I'm thirsty.

It was extremely funny. When I take the time to read what I have written on my blog before I hit the publish button, I have to take out about ten instances of the word so.

She also picked up the phrase NO WAY! Instead of saying no, she now says NO WAY.

We had a great Halloween, lots of fun. We had a block party-pot luck dinner, followed by trick or treating. Lily lasted about 20 minutes, just around our street. We then went in the house and I traded her trick or treat candy for some homemade candy that was OK for her to eat. My friend went to all the trouble of making it for Lily from scratch.

Lily is not used to having sugar. She had two pieces of candy and went bonkers. We went outside with Dad to hand out the candy, Lily ran around like the Energizer Bunny. It looked like she was drunk. Her speech was incredibly loud and fast, every sentence beginning with the obligatory so...

I need to find a candy donation site to get rid of all the chocolate in my house before my head explodes.

While news of our next assignment could come any day now, the final deadline is in two weeks.

SO... two weeks is the longest I will have to wait to find out where I will be living five months from now.

I have become addicted to real estate websites, dreaming the dream of someday owning a home.

Happy Halloween!

New Book

This week has been completely frustrating for me. It felt like I was having a run of bad luck or bad Karma. Nothing serious, just everything seemed to have the anti-midas touch. Very frustrating, it is hard to find something nice to say when all I want to do is complain.

On Saturday, I had to stop by the library to make some copies and I noticed that after months of waiting they finally had Janet Evanovich's latest book on the shelf. I have been checking there daily for months because I am too cheap to shell out $30. I guess everyone else in Misawa had the same idea because the book has been checked out consecutively for months. I was so excited! Except when I went to check out the book, they told me I had overdue books and couldn't check it out until the overdues were returned. Damn.

Everytime I go to the library there are overdue books. One time they were mistaken, but usually it is Mandy. That child cannot seem to return library books. She checks them out 20 at a time, she reads 3 or 4 per week. It is so frustrating when I go there with Lily and we cannot check something out. Everytime I go to the counter they tell me know. It is embarassing.

It was an hour until the library closed, I called Mandy on the phone from the library and told her which book was overdue. I told her I was coming home and I wanted her to have the book ready for me when I arrived. I get home, she gives me the book, and she goes with me back to the libarary. We got there at 30 minutes until closing, we return the book, it is the wrong book. No book for me. So frustrating. Someone lost her library privelges and hates me. She had at least a dozen warnings. Life is hard.

The next day, I returned all of Mandy's library books, all of Jeff's library books and was able to check out my book. I read it straight through, cover to cover. I stayed up until 1 AM. Lily got me up at 5:30. She always sleeps until 6, what is her problem.

I read the first page of the book, it was like sinking into a warm bath on a cold winter's day. Lovely, engulfing peace and tranquility, an old friend. I love those books by Janet Evanovich, this one was Twelve Sharp, the 12th in a series. I laughed and laughed these books are so fabulous. I think my bought with bad Karma is over and I am back on the right path.

This week, I have two class, next week I start two more classes and will be trying to get through 4 classes all at once. All are computer classes and I really should be doing homework, so much homework so little time. If you don't hear from me for a month or so, don't worry I am just going crazy! Check out Fussy.org and see all the bloggers participating in a Novemeber writing challenge, NABLOPOMO, you should sign up too!

Thursday Thirteen #4: Travel Tips

I have often been told by friends and family that they would love to travel as much as we do, but it is so hard and they therefore do not.  Traveling isn’t really easy for me either, but I have learned a few lessons that make it a bit easier.  Here is a list of things I have learned the hard way. 

 

1. I used to bring a liter of water for each member of the family on every trip, carry it along with us and guzzle it down.  I was very worried about becoming dehydrated.  I used to have to pee every 15 minutes and spend the entire trip painfully holding it or pursuing all the creepy bathrooms around the world.  Now I hydrate a couple of days before the trip and for a couple of days after the trip, only drinking moderately while traveling.  I never carry water anymore and I rarely pee in strange places.
2. I used to bring snacks on trips.  Granola bars, nuts, trail mix, dried fruit would all be put in my bag with the 4 liters of water.  Heavy bag!  I always used to have a tummy ache while traveling.  I never could figure out why my belly always hurt on trips but never at any other time?  It was all the snacks, they are all gas producing snacks, which don’t mix well with hours of sitting on planes, trains and automobiles.  Snacks are no longer brought on trips.
3. I used to splurge on trips.  I would think to myself, that I am on vacation I should treat myself.  I would eat and drink with gusto, and feel icky.  Now I eat well at home, treat myself at home or near home.  On trips I eat sparingly.  I think of trips as fun time and eat to feel good physically.  While traveling I don’t really burn any calories and everything that I put in my mouth just sits in my belly and hurts, so I only eat two or three bites and I feel much better.  Surprising but true.  Even at hotels I only eat a little bit of plain boring normal food and I don’t get run down or belly aches.
4. I used to wear sweats or jeans on trips, dress comfortably.  Now I dress up, I am conscious of wearing something comfortable but I make sure it looks professional.  The quality of how people treat you on a trip is very influential on the quality of your experience.  People treat you better when you look professional.  I always wear a button down shirt, loafers and slacks.  I fix my hair and even wear makeup.  It really does make a huge difference in the quality of interaction with all the people, both other travelers and professionals.
5. I used to keep to myself.  I used to quietly stare off into space and not interact with anyone in the crowded airports and train stations.  Now I make eye contact and small talk with everyone.  It not only influences how they treat me, but it makes me feel better to have acquaintances.  It may be all in my head but smiling and saying hello to the people in line or the lady behind the counter really makes a huge difference in the quality of my trip.
6. I used to bring way too much crap.  This is a hard one especially with kids, you don’t want to be caught somewhere and need something and not have it.  But, really carrying a ton of crap you don’t need is worse.  I have really scaled down in what I bring.  One toothbrush, one extra pair of underwear and that is it.  Just kidding, but wouldn’t that be great?  If you really need it you can buy it, but really you don’t need it!
7. I used to bring a bag just for Lily, full of snacks and toys, and books, and her favorite blanket, her favorite stuffed animal, etc.  This never worked.  She would throw each item on the floor and scream louder and louder.  All the crap just got in the way and never helped her to feel better in the least.  So now I bring one coloring book and a couple of crayons.  
8. I practice traveling type circumstances for a couple of months before the trip.  I take her out to lunch, force her to take naps in her car seat while I drive around.  I take her to crowded food court type places and have picnics.  I make her take a nap in the bed with me, all kinds of things that we can introduce at home a little at a time to make the trip a little less difficult for her.
9. I make sure to let Lily run a lot when we have the chance.  We have one person stand in line while the other person chases Lily around the line or nearby.  We let her fun up and down the long crowded terminals.  We skip and hop and dance and basically act like idiots, but she does so much better when she is physically exhausted.  I cannot tell you how many laps I have run around airport terminals, but we take turns on Lily duty and it seems to work.
10. I used to want to sit at the front of the plane, to get off first.  Now I try to get tickets at the back.  With a little one the back is awesome.  There is usually a little bit of standing room in the back of the plane, for a screaming little one it is nice to have a place to stand up and rock them, a place that is out of the way.  We spent the entire flight from Japan to America and then back from America to Japan taking turns standing up and rocking Lily.  She just wouldn’t sit in her seat, she wouldn’t sleep, it was nice to have that place to stand.  There was a kitchen back there and the flight attendants were very nice about letting us pace around in a circle rocking Lily.
11. I used to just show up places and see what was there and see what I felt like doing at the time.  I discovered that doing research makes a world of difference.  Instead of buying a map when I get there, I buy the map ahead of time.  I pour over the map and memorize the how to get where I want to go.  Weather it is walking, or driving I know the way before I get there.  I know the land marks, I have the path highlighted on the map and the map in my bag.  So much stress, so many arguments have occurred because we were trying to figure out where we were going while driving down the road or while wandering around the streets.  We even would show up in a city in Italy, buy the map when we got off the train and spend the day not knowing where we were or what we were looking at.  Now I know what I am doing, where I am going and what I am looking at.  The rest of the family they don’t care but having one person lead the way makes it smooth, so do the prep work it really pays off.
12. I used to carry a backpack and not a purse.  Now I carry a small purse so that the essentials are easy to access.  Like tickets, a pen, id, money, toothbrush, the map, phone numbers.  It is very important to have easy access to these items, throwing them in the backpack and digging around for everything all the time is a recipe for disaster.  Leave the backpack at home anyways, less is more.
13. I used to have a lot of trouble sleeping on trips.  I would never be able to sleep away from home and this contributed to my feeling crappy while traveling.  Now I incorporate physical exercise everyday.  We make sure there is a gym at our hotel or nearby.  Or we will make sure we briskly walk at least three miles, everyday.  I think one of the reasons I had so much trouble sleeping is that I would spend the majority of the time sitting and exercise helps.   

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Hands Free Device

I don't know if you've heard, but starting Jan 1, 2007 you will no longer be able to use a cell phone while driving unless you have a "hands free" adapter. I went to Circuit City and they wanted $50 for a headset with a boom microphone for my cell phone. Having a friend in the cell phone business, I talked with him and was able to come up with an alternative, working through Office Depot. These kits are compatible with any mobile phone and one size fits all. He paid $0.18 each because he bought in quantity. I'm selling them for only $1.00. I've tried them out on Erickson, Motorola, Sony, Nokia and Verizon phones and they worked perfectly. Take a look and let me k now if you want one, and forward this to anyone you know who may want one!

Click to see photo

Laughter is better for your health than a chocolate candy bar. Thanks from my cousin Pam!

You've been Boo'ed

Last night as I was trying to prepare dinner. Lily was screaming, Mandy had just stomped up the stairs to her room, mad at me too. Jeff was rolling his eyes at the fact that everyone was screaming, including me. The door bell rings. It took me awhile to extricate myself from the pandemonium, but I eventually got to the door. There was no one there. It was dark, but I saw a bag, sitting there. I looked around and no one was anywhere to be found. I figured the gift bearer was frightened away by the noises coming from our home.

Inside the bag was a note, saying we had been boo'ed along with presents and candy. It said it was now our turn to secretly boo someone else. Wasn't that sweet? I gave everyone some chocolate, except the allergic one, who got stickers, and then we had some dinner and it was actually peaceful. Our first dinner at the table together as a family in more than a week. Twice baked potatoes and steak. I could cry, isn't that sweet.

Lily and I spent the day today making our boo bags, we are required to boo two people tonight. I am going to let Mandy do the actual booing, I don't think Lily is good at stealth. I love Halloween, my favorite holiday.

I love how on Halloween night when I am out with the girls, so many people are out and about, smiling and laughing. It feels on that night as if everyone is a big family a cohesive neighborhood. I love sitting at the door handing out candy as well, I love to give the kids huge handfulls and have a spooky doorway.

Last year because our house is in a relatively secluded part of the base we only had a handful of trick or treaters. Lily was not interested in trick or treating, so Lily, Jeff and I played tackle football in the front yard in between the kids. They must have thought we were nuts. I was jumping on his back trying to knock him down, and trying to teach Lily how to tackle her dad, Jeff was dodging us pretty good. Ahh, Halloween!

At least half of the Americans who live on the base put up signs that they do not participate in Halloween because it offends their religious sensibilities. I have never been particularly religious but spending an evening with the neighborhood, handing out treats and saying being kind to children, is against religion, no wonder I am not religious. I am rotting up some eggs this year for them. Just kidding, still that would be fun!

Pumpkins

I bought a couple of pumpkins for us to carve several weeks ago. We have to buy them when they come to the store, because that is really the only opportunity one has to get a pumpkin in Japan. Our two little pumpkins sat on the front porch for a couple of weeks. We were waiting until closer to Halloween to actually carve them.

One morning about a week ago I noticed that there were no longer two pumpkins on the front porch only one. I was incredibly distraught that one of our pumpkins had been stolen. For the next week, every one I encountered I told the story of my poor stolen pumpkin.

Walking to the playground with Lily,
my neighbor says: good morning, how are you today?
I say: My pumpkin was stolen.

My friend calls me on the phone,
friend: Hi Marsha, how are you doing?
me: My pumpkin was stolen.

A neighbor boy comes to the door,
neighbor boy: Do you have any old newspapers I can borrow?
me: My pumpkin was stolen.

You get the idea, this was all I talked about for days. I was the biggest baby. Yesterday, I noticed that there is now two pumpkins on my porch again. I cannot tell if this is my original pumpkin or a new one. They all look alike to me. I don't know if one of my friends or neighbors felt sorry for me and bought me a replacement or if the evil pumpkin theif, was actually just borrowing my pumpkin? I wonder if I owe someone a thank you? I think I owe everyone a bit of an apology for being such a cry baby. Still, My pumpkin was stolen - right off my porch.

You have to try Pandora Internet Radio.

Thursday Thirteen #3

1. Lily does not have strep-throat. By Wednesday she was starting to feel a little restless being indoors. Jeff got the afternoon off and we decided to take Lily to get a new puzzle.



2. We went to my very favorite store in all of Japan, a lovely children's store filled with lovely Japanese children's clothes, toys, and everything one could imagine. Luckily Jeff was there to pull me away from all the beautiful things and quickly pick the first puzzle we came upon. I love the Japanese puzzles, we get the 60 piece puzzles and they are very sturdy card board instead of the easy to bend and break American puzzles which only come in 24 pieces or 500 pieces with nothing in between.



3. We then stopped at the Japanese Grocery Store:
   
   



4. Mandy was expecting to have to take the bus home after volleyball practices because Jeff has been working so much and not sharing the car. His having the afternoon off meant we could swing by the school and pick her up. By the time we arrived Lily was having fits. I went inside the gym to make sure that Mandy was actually still there and to see how much longer. They were playing a practice game and the score was 3 to 7. Games usually take at least a half an hour.



5. I suggested to Jeff that we take Lily home and come back to get Mandy. I didn't know how to convey this message to Mandy as she was in the middle of a game, so we just left. I figured that the game she was in wouldn't even be over until after I got back. So we took screaming Lily home and I went back to the gym. This took 20 minutes.



6. When I got back I couldn't find Mandy. I waited for awhile. I asked some girls to check the locker room. I asked all her friends. Finally someone told me that she took the bus.



7. I hadn't seen her at the bus stop in front of the school when I arrived, so I checked the library to see if she was waiting there, I called home to see if she had made it home, I went back to the gym and asked around some more. After about an hour, I went home. She was obviously not at the gym, she must be on her way home. I just don't know how I could have missed her.



8. The bus comes every 30 minutes and as it becomes apparent that she isn't on yet another bus, I become more and more worried. She finally comes home, two hours later.



9. I rush to the door and ask where she has been. She bursts into tears. The bus she got on, which is a later bus than the one she normally gets on because practice was running late. This bus stops running at 7 PM. So this bus took Mandy to the bus depot and kicked her off. There is a second bus that runs the same route which runs until 10 or 11PM, but the one she got on apparently stops running at 7PM. They didn't tell her when she got on or when they passed the last stop she could get off, they just took her to the bus depot and then kicked her off the bus.



10. She was in shorts and a t-shirt, soaked in sweat from practice. She was carrying two bags full of books and clothes. It was below 50 degrees and misty. It was dark. She was two miles from home. There wasn't a phone or an open business along the way. No one stopped to offer to help her along the way. She walked home. She was upset.



11. I used to walk home from school much farther everyday, rain or shine. I can remember being soaked to my underwear. I can remember how lonely it is to walk and walk all alone, realizing that no one cares enough to wonder if you need a ride.



12. I gave her lots and lots of hugs, I cried. She got over it in about three seconds. I wonder if I ever will.



13. Lily's puzzle, the stupid puzzle that caused all this crap, ended up being all light blue and white, every piece looked exactly the same. Jeff couldn't even figure the dumb thing out. Lily spent all day Thursday engrossed in this puzzle, she spent hours working on it again and again. Sometimes she would let me help but mostly she just worked and worked. This morning she put it together four or five times and then put it away on the shelf, I guess she has conquered the puzzle and is finally ready to move on, evil puzzle.

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Depression

I was sitting at my computer happily typing away at a blog post when suddenly the window disappears, it closes as if it were never there. Last week instead of closing the window started opening new windows, one after another until there were hundreds of windows opened. I couldn’t close them fast enough. Sometimes computers suck.

Last week I was pretty depressed. I don’t think I suffer from it enough to seek medical help. I don’t feel like hurting myself or others, it doesn’t last for more than a couple of weeks. Just something I have had to deal with my entire life. I know in my head how to get out of the funk. I know that I have to make a list and start accomplishing things. Clean up my environment, eat healthy food, exercise, force myself to concentrate on the things I love and set aside the things that are causing me frustration, until I am in a mental place where I can handle those things. It all sounds so easy. But, it usually takes me a few days to struggle through all the murky feelings and start to fight for a lighter mental state.

There I was deep in the murk. No shower, sink full of dirty dishes, toys scattered around the dog hair covered carpet, when the mother of one of Lily’s friend’s calls and asks to come over and play at the playground near our home. We arrange a time, several hours later, and I begin to clean-clean-clean. I spent four consecutive hours cleaning my house, it finally looked normal. This is when she calls back to cancel the playdate. An hour later Lily came down with a fever.

Somehow cleaning the house, the furry of activity caused me to snap out of it, cleaning house, scrubbing my heart out, cleaning closets, re-organizing cupboards, is usually my depression ending method of choice. Perhaps I should NOT call it depression in deference to people who have actual depression. I don’t really have another word in my arsenal to describe it so I apologize. I was grateful that the fog had lifted and I was able to handle Lily with a fresh clear head.

I don’t have access to any fever reducing medication that does not contain corn. Truthfully, I haven’t done any research or tried very hard to find any, other than checking the shelves of the local stores and reading labels. It is all so overwhelming and she doesn’t get a fever very often. I tried to reduce her fever with a cool bath and sitting in her underwear. She wouldn’t eat or drink or move for that matter. I was able to keep her fever under 100 degrees so I thought it was best not to use the evil corn syrup containing Motrin or Tylenol. At bedtime I revised my opinion and gave her the Motrin. I worry that her fever would spike over night and I thought that danger outweighed the corn danger. The fever continued into the next day and resolved itself by evening. In total she had the fever for 24 hours. I have her some more Motrin at bedtime, just in case. The next day she was feeling much better, still a little sickly in the eyes, but eating, drinking, talking, and playing. She told me her mouth hurt so I looked at her mouth and throat with the flashlight and discovered her tonsils were red swollen and covered in white dots. I called the doctor and we got her in for a throat culture. We do haven’t gotten he results yet, Jeff checked the computer (he works at the hospital) and they hadn’t run the test yet, so we will see if it is strep. I think it probably is not because she is getting better, but one never knows.

I originally started this blog to get out of a depression that was lasting way too long. I thought that forcing myself to sit down and type something positive about my life would help retrain my brain to focus on the good instead of the mind numbing bad of being a stay at home mom. I also started school for this reason and sometimes it helps. I think that the upcoming move, all the anxiety and unknown is weighing on me and I have to redouble my efforts to keep my mind out of the murk. I keep feeling myself sinking under.

Potty Training

Lily has officially passed the 3 years and 3 months mile stone without being potty trained. I won't bore you with the excruciating details of our trials. It is hard to be the mom of a little one who is behind the curve. At every milestone, Lily is always behind her peers. She didn’t sit until well after six months, she didn’t walk until fourteen months, talking didn’t begin until well into her second year. Once she makes it to the milestones, she seems to catch up rather quickly. All the little ones in her playgroup who walked and talked before Lily are all running and playing at the same level with her today. So it would seem that she is not developmentally delayed, at least in my humble mommy opinion, it seems as if she just comes about her development at a different time table than EVERY other child on the planet. Plus she is stubborn.

She has decided not to sit on the potty at all any more. She is done. (She will sometimes sit on the potty for her daddy, but he is never home and she still won't go on the potty even for daddy). I tried coercion, bribes, screaming and yelling, naked all day, inviting over her potty-trained friends for peer pressure, blah, blah, blah. I have successfully potty trained before, even spent several years potty training other people’s kids as a career. I feel that I need a t-shirt that says, “I am not an idiot”. Maybe I am an idiot. Maybe someday I will look back and laugh about what a trial Lily can be. Maybe.

Lily and I have come to an impasse about sitting on the potty/toilet so I have stopped talking about it at all. When she asks to wear her regular underwear, I say ok. When she has an accident she helps me clean it up, but I don’t mention the potty/toilet. Let’s face it she knows, she is being stubborn and I have decided to give it a bit of a rest. I am thinking a month or maybe two. During that time, I am not going to mention the potty to Lily at all. There is a potty in the living room, a potty seat on the toilet, if she wants to use it she can. She pretty much hates her pull-ups. I have decided to make her wear pull-ups when we leave the house and to bed, but otherwise I let her wear her underwear and we just clean up the messes, and messes and messes.

In order that I don’t feel guilty about taking a step back and re-grouping before I try to convince Lily to try to be potty trained again, I have decided to focus on the other aspects of potty training. Like dressing herself. Right now, Lily will change herself, all by herself. She takes off the dirty, underwear or pull-ups and cleans herself with the wippies and then she puts on the new underwear/pull-ups and pants. She does this all on her own. I help her a bit with the hand washing afterwards. I guess my thinking is that when she gets past her stubborn fit about sitting on the potty she will be able to go in and take off her own pants and go to the potty all on her own. I think that this is part of the problem, she doesn’t like me to be so involved in her private potty stuff. I am hoping that when she feels confident in her ability to dress and undress she will feel better about sitting on the potty.

The other issue is the feeling of letting go of the pee or poop while sitting on the potty this freaks her out. She would rather go into when there is something against her skin, instead of just letting it fall into the potty/toilet. The letting go bit is a trial for her. Can’t seem to get it into her head that it is ok. During the naked all day portion, that lasted three weeks, she would scream as if she saw a monster and cry ever time the potty came out and there wasn’t underwear or pull-ups on her. Now she pretty much refuses to be naked, she will go and dress herself. I would have to hide all her clothes and listen to her scream for clothing to try the naked all the time method again. I am not willing to withhold clothing from my baby.

This is where we are on the potty training. We love our Lily. She is so precious, so happy, so sweet. She just doesn’t want to use the potty or toilet and I haven’t found a way to make her. Did I tell you she can count to 50 in English, 10 in Spanish, and 10 in Japanese? I have all the hope in the world that she will catch on to the potty and be fine someday or not. We are in the very largest size in pull-ups, I guess the next step will be depends.