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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