Word of the Year

I'm looking back at 2011 and I realized that I never posted my 2011 word of the year. It was Big. Yup, pretty uninspired, but at the time I was looking at big changes in my life. I was living with my MIL, giving up my jobs and life in Japan and starting again in Seattle. I thought Big would do it for me. I have not really heeded my word this year. I have lived small. And not in a good way.

So, 2012 awaits and I'm already thinking about this year's word. Right now it is a toss-up between make-up and re-make. Make-up was the strong leader until about an hour ago when I started washing rice and drinking mimosas. Re-make seemed better when served with orange juice.

Here's the logic. With make-up, I was thinking "make-up stories, make-up for lost time, make-up with folks I might be not exactly estranged from, but needing to touch base with." We are moving into a new home in two months and make-up seems we should be "Making things move up." Especially since we can move out of the rental condo and make our new house our home.

So why did re-make sneak in there? There is this part of me that doesn't like the fact that make up can also be cosmetics. Let's face it, I'm a minimal or none cosmetic kind of gal. Make up annoys me.

So, for that very reason, MAKE-UP is my word of the year. It embodies all the ideas I want to embrace and it also hones in on one of my vulnerabilities, my insecurities about my appearance. If something bugs me that much, I probably need to take a look at it.

Spiced Rum

I hit H Mart in Lynnwood today to stock up on Asian groceries. I scored gobo and kimchee and even Korean sushi, but I couldn't find any long onions or konnyaku (devil's tongue). I'm making buta jiru on Friday, so I will have to make another trip elsewhere to find those things. At least I don't have to drive 3 hours to get to a foreign food superstore, so I can't complain too much.

And what does any of this have to do with spiced rum? Nothing at all. But dinner will be a combination of bi bim bap (from namul I bought at H Mart) and Korean sushi, so I don't need to be on my game to cook it.

DS1's homework is done. (Well, all but Benesse, but I just didn't feel like cracking the whip on that today.) DS2 has had mental stimulation in a non-video format for most of the day. It was happy hour, but I'm out of cheap, decent Chardonnay, so I raided the liquor cabinet and since I only own gin or rum, I googled hot rum drinks. I settled on hot buttered rum. I am slowly imbibing whilst the boys are making books at the dinner table. To give you an idea of how slowly I am imbibing, I had to microwave my drink ten seconds since it was lukewarm buttered rum at one point. Of course, our rental condo is 18 celsius at the moment since I am too cheap to run the electric heaters and too lazy to change the thermometer to Fahrenheit on my pencil
stand.

And all this talk of rum makes me thinks of pirates and Japanese animated ones.

This Beautiful Life

I just finished reading This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman last night. I'd had it on reserve at the library since reading about it in some random magazine found in some random doctor's office. I was impressed.

I expected it to be high drama and the unraveling of an American family. Yes, there was an event that causes everything to unwind, but Schulman paints a realistic portrait of a family that loves each other, but can't figure out how to pull it together.

The mom in the story resonated with me. She's well educated, but gives that up to stay home with her kids. My favorite line, early in the book on page 11 after she gets her kids off to school is "...Liz took one look at her messy home and was overwhelmed by how much there was to do and how little she wanted to do it. Finding that first step into an amorphous day, a day without bones, was always the hardest."

My boneless day started several hours ago and so far I've started laundry, disposed of a rotting pumpkin, emptied the recycling, put futons away and made our bed. I've wanted to do none of that, but since yesterday I nursed my cold and read a book, I felt I owed it to myself and everyone else to try harder today.

Hope

One of my favorite movies is The Shawshank Redemption. The tagline for that movie is, "Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free." I haven't been very hopeful lately.

I went to a Women's Wellness Weekend on Orcas Island about 10 days ago. I thought it would help me sort some things out. Instead, I did crafts all weekend and rode the giant swing and the zipline. It was good, but it didn't necessarily give me the dramatic prison break that I was hoping for.

I did win $5 in camp bucks at bingo. I used them to buy lanyard lace for my boys and a cheaply made bracelet with a "Hope" affirmation on a silver-toned token. I've been wearing it daily and every time I see it, I send out a little karmic energy that we will find a house soon.

I know there is a house for us (or a small lot upon which we could build.) I am tired of living in the rental condo. I'm tired of the thumping bass of the person who lives beneath us. I am tired of the students who live across the street and party until all hours of the morning on Saturday night. I am tired of unpacked boxes stacked in our closet, waiting for a "permanent" home. I'm tired of the messy impermanence of it all.

I have hope, or at least a hope bracelet. Too bad it's not the Hope Diamond, or I wouldn't be worried about how much money we will have to spend to buy a house. Oh well.

Lick bomb

Just to prove that I can blog about something other than my own angst, I give you "lick bomb."

DS2, who had his 5th birthday last week, also had his check-up on Monday. His pediatrician was a little concerned about his speech and offered to write a referral to a speech and language specialist. I just assumed that my youngest talked like Elmer Fudd since he spoke only Japanese until February. Let's face it, people don't make "lice" and "rice" jokes for no reason.

I am working on getting him to say his Rs, but sometimes his speech is just hard to grasp. His preschool teacher has also commented on how hard it is to understand him sometimes. And so we come to "lick bomb."

Big brother is having orthodontic treatment to fix his crowded jaw and his underbite. He has a rash from his headgear and I have been trying to use lip balm to keep it under control. Tonight, Elmer wanted some lick bomb like his brother. I had to laugh because his speech gaffe had nothing to do with Rs, and everything to do with not knowing the right words. Of course he knows the word "lick" and since he is a boy, he definitely knows about "bombs."

Lick bomb may be my new favorite phrase. But we still will be working on those wascally wabbits.

A Dearth of Words

It is truly pathetic, that I, who wanted to be a writer has not even managed to blog in 3 months. So here's the bullet list:

• I survived the constant bickering, fighting, visiting playgrounds, taking swim lessons, and avoiding drug dealers and panhandlers that were our summer.
• My oldest started 2nd grade and is way ahead in math and way behind in English. The English language summer workbook I bought him was barely touched. The Japanese workbooks did get done, but under much duress.
  
• My youngest started co-op preschool last week. The economy has meant that we are under-enrolled and are scrambling to find kids to keep the program viable. Did I mention I am the treasurer?
• Still no house. We made an offer on an 83 year-old one and backed out when two separate professionals told us to "scrape it off the lot and build a new one." We opted to place an offer on a new house, not in our preferred location, but a nice neighborhood nonetheless. Our offer was lower than another person's and we did not get the house. We are still living in the rental condo. I am still trolling the MLS listings.
• My husband spent most of the summer telecommuting from our condo since he hurt his back and couldn't sit or walk for six weeks. Nothing like having to keep your children out all day so Daddy can work lying down on our bed with his laptop propped up off the floor.
  

Still trying to find the joy in our lives. It is there. In small boy hugs and art projects. In ice cream cones and caprese salads. In skype and on the phone. It just seems like such a small percentage of the hours in a day.

Radio silence

End of June. I want to say everything is better. It is, and it isn't. My oldest is out for the summer and I enrolled both boys in swim lessons every morning for the next two weeks, at least.

The groove I had gotten into has been wrecked. I was working out two mornings a week and volunteering one morning a week at the local Y. Now I'm schlepping the boys and getting less toned by the moment. (Is that even possible?)

I'm still browbeating my oldest into doing Japanese workbooks almost every day. I still have an exchange student coming once a week to work with both of them. I'm still putting way too many books on reserve at the library, like some kind of bibliophile junky. I know I won't read them, but like a piece of bread given to a starving orphan for nighttime reassurance, I keep a pile of books nearby.

I'm out of dinner ideas. I've cooked all of the dishes I missed while living in Japan. I'm still waiting for a house so I can buy a grill.

And the house, if it's a buyer's market, I sure haven't noticed. I looked at a craftsman that was used as a boarding house in our desired neighborhood. It needed lots of work and was still 479K. It sold that night. I spend my free time trolling the MLS listings and ignoring my cluttered and crappy rental condo.

And I'm reading books on happiness. I'm working on that too.

April

I have another 30 minutes before I go to pick DS2 up from the one morning away from me he has during the week. It is my sole child-free time on a weekday. I came home and picked up and started laundry and vacuumed and avoided doing my taxes.

I read an article online about parents at an elementary school in Ishinomaki who lost their children. Only 24 of the students at that school survived the tsunami. I cried. Not really a productive use of my time. I'm not even sure it will make me be a more patient mother with my own two boys. But I needed to know someone's problems are way more tragic than my petty ones.

It is April and I'm still floundering. I'm looking at teaching certificate programs online. I'm bickering with my husband about finding a house. I'm enrolling my child in a preschool 80 blocks north of here from September, because that's as good as it's going to get. I'm avoiding Script Frenzy since I know I will not be writing anything.

And yet, I know at some point, I will need to start celebrating the things I am doing. I got DS2's hernia surgery taken care of. I finally went to the doctor's office. I signed up for the Y so that DS2 and I can have a place to play and work out in the mornings. I emailed a friend with a University connection to try and get an exchange student to come over once a week and tutor my boys in Japanese in return for English lessons from me.

And I'm resenting not having an income. I don't like to be beholden to my husband. He would never begrudge me something I truly want. We consult each other on all the big things. But I miss not having mad cash that allowed me to pay for weekend trips to the noodle shop or the ice cream stand. I liked having a rainy day fund. Most of which we used to pay for expenses when DH was out of work for 5 months.

I will get there eventually. And I will start my taxes some other time, but before the 15th.

A beginning, really?

A month later and I really don't feel like I've begun anything. Okay, I did get DS1 enrolled in school which I am now agonizing over, since it seems way too easy. I did get DS2 to the doctor to look at the hernia which I've been ignoring for the past four months. Surgery is scheduled for March 22nd. But the rest of my life seems like just so much crap.

I can't get DS2 enrolled in any kind of regular preschool and he's acting out. It's the f--king fours, redux. I took him to a home-run Japanese preschool class today and he tried to escape for the first 30 minutes of it. I'll enroll him in it, but four Friday mornings a month costs me almost one third of what I was paying for full-time daycare in Japan and that included lunch. And the sad thing is, he wants to go. He keeps asking me when he'll start hoikuen again. All of the trips to the library and the supermarket don't replace being with your peers and having lots of fun activities to do. I suck at the whole home-schooling thing.

I'm hating the gurgling toilet in our over-priced rental condo. I'm hating the rain, the endless horrible rain. I'm hating the too tight parking space that makes me fear taking off the side mirror on a concrete column. I'm hating the moving boxes that are still stacked in the hall. I'm hating the chick on Craigslist who sold us an Ikea bunk bed that is missing the clamps to hold the ladder in place, and no, I couldn't get them from Ikea, I tried. She won't return my emails or calls.

I hate all of this right now. I knew this would happen, but no matter how much I try to blow sunshine, I really just want to bury my head in my hands and cry. I had a life. A flawed life, but a life. And now I have to go through the work to put a life together again. Yes, I didn't have to get a driver's license or open a bank account. We still had those things. Yes, I have a sister who listens to me and invites me over for wine. Yes, I have a partial life. It's a life and I need to live this life and stop being pissed off that I don't have the other one anymore. I'm working on that too.

iyo iyo saigo...

The end is here at last... (That's what the title means.) Today, DS1 said good-bye to his first grade classmates and I picked him up from school. His teacher gave him a kanji dictionary and I gave her a pound cake and cookies from the local pastry shop.

DS2 had his last real day of daycare. His teacher gave him minicars, a Pokemon DVD and stickers. I gave her gift certificates. I gave all the staff and teachers at his daycare rice crackers and cookies. I'm getting pretty good at obligatory gifts.

Tomorrow is happyokai, or performing arts assembly. My last one. Funny how three years ago, I dreaded it. Two years ago, DS1 was sick and I rejoiced at not having to be packed like a sardine into a tiny room to hear 5 year olds sing and watch them dance. Last year, I was nostalgic. DS1 was in his last year of hoikuen and danced and drummed and sang. DS2 danced with other three year olds. This year, I am weepy. Of all this is coming to an end.

I have been out to lunch or dinner multiple times this week. I am tired, strung out, and ready to burst into tears every time someone says good-bye to me. I'm still getting rid of stuff, packing bags and wondering how everything will play out on Monday.

It is the end and I'm sad. And telling me I should be happy that I'm going back to my home country doesn't actually make me less sad. And platitudes about "one door closing and another one opening" don't actually help with the sadness either.

I'll blog from the other side when it's "iyo iyo hajimaru." (At last, it begins.)

Three weeks later, four to go...

So, it's three weeks after the movers came and four weeks before we get on a plane to Seattle. I'm sitting on my futon in the middle of my mother-in-law's living room. These past three weeks have been tiring. I did Christmas. I did New Year's. I've had two sick kids on my hands, one week apart. I still have boxes of stuff that I'm getting rid of.

The oldest finally goes back to school tomorrow after winter break. I start work again tomorrow and for the next 3 weeks. I have one foot in two worlds. My husband google chats us everyday after work. He is lonely and not enjoying being single in the condo we have rented in Seattle. I want to be there with him, but I don't want to give up my job and life here. But right now I have half-a-life. I don't have my own kitchen, or computer, or even a room.

I'm stuck in grass-greener mode. My own space and life in Seattle seem greener, but I know I will be hating my return to full-time SAHM status. I will want my life in Japan back. I will suffer from reverse culture shock. I will struggle to find my voice and purpose again. And I will blog about it all, but very infrequently.