One year later...

It's been a year. A year since I've had a paying job. A year since I got off a plane in rainy Seattle with two tired boys in tow. A year since I walked into Trader Joe's behind our rental condo and was shocked at how tall and white everyone was.

And a year later, I miss not working. I volunteer at the YMCA. I work my parent hours for my 5 year old's co-op preschool. But I don't get paid. I hate not being paid. Money gave me validation that "thank-you" and "see you next week" do not.

And a year later, my boys are bigger, but are not any less challenging. The 5 year old needs to be evaluated for speech therapy. I just thought he couldn't enunciate clearly because he didn't speak English until last year. But after his pediatrician and his preschool teacher both thought he needed help, I have started making phone calls. In the meantime, he solves his communication problems with his fists and by willful disobedience. I spend my evenings reading more parenting texts.

And a year later, we are still in the condo, but hoping to close on a house on 2/28. The builder wants to push the date out, but doing so may cost us not only money, but a chance to get DS2 into the same elementary school as his brother. So we are keeping the pressure on to make that date.

And a year later, I still get hormonal and weepy. I hate being a woman if it means my hormones turn me into a sobbing mess. Yesterday was the worst, and yet, I couldn't tell you why it was any different from other days. DS2 and I had been in a pissing match in the morning, which isn't unusual. I dropped him off at preschool, for my 2.5 hours of free time. And I promptly fell apart. I tried chocolate. I tried a nap. I tried music. But all I did was weep and berate myself for my inability to get anything done. It was not a good day, but like a toddler after a temper tantrum, I fell asleep really fast last night.

I have more I need to write, but I will save it for a different post.

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.