Elegy

The first year I lived in Korea, I had a dream that my dad had died.  It scared me - I woke panicked in the night, so scared that the worst had happened that I immediately called home.  My dad answered the phone, reassured me that everything was okay, that a dream was just a dream, and told me to go back to sleep.

I wish it was still just a dream.

A week and a half ago, my sister-in-law called as school was finishing for the day.  It took me a second to realize that it was the middle of the night in the US, after which came panic, and finally heartbreak.  My dad was gone.

I've been trying to figure out how to talk about this for the last week.  When my siblings and I were trying to write his obituary, words failed me.  How do you sum up the life of the most influential man in your life?  How can you narrow down all the things he's done with just a few sentences.  It turns out, you can't really understand the impact your parents have on you until you're faced with losing them.  It feels like I never talked much about my dad, but when he got sick last fall, all the things he'd ever done for me hit hard.  He taught me how to gently pet a kitten, after my first cat had babies.  When I was a fifth grader obsessed with the Legend of Zelda, he made me a triforce in his tool shed.  I remember getting sick one night when nobody else was awake, and him holding my hair out of my face while I threw up.  There were so many little memories that I took for granted as they happened, whose weight I finally understood.

When I was in college, he would drive to Kansas City without a moment's hesitation, whether it was because I couldn't hear after falling down stairs or because my car window wouldn't roll up.  I also think this was one of the reasons he was so worried when I first decided to live overseas, but after he saw that he wasn't going to have to fly to Korea to get me out of trouble, I think he was proud of me for the life I chose.

While he was taking me to the ER or after fixing my window, he told stories.  Everyone in the family knew about the job he had driving the bread truck - he talked about it quite a bit - but I got the special Kansas City edition of his "misspent youth" - stories about fights in bars and how he used to live across the street from that radio tower, so he could always find his way home.  When I asked him if he'd ever told these stories to Shaggy, he just laughed.  I'm guessing he wasn't worried about them inspiring his innocent Mormon daughter to try and surpass them.  

My Dad was the second of four brothers, and he had lots of stories about them, too.  In spite of that - or maybe because of it - he never treated me any differently than Shaggy.  We both got to go on motorcycle rides around Kansas City - and own our own little dirt bikes, when we were a little older and living on the farm in Excelsior.  Me being a girl didn't change anything.  I couldn't fish to save my life, but that didn't matter.  I still got to go fishing with him at Roaring River when we went down to the farm, and if I spent all my time at the hatchery feeding the fish instead of catching them, he didn't mind.  We went on float trips, too - in fact, the love I have for nature and any of the skills that might help me to survive if I were suddenly dropped in the wilderness are because of how my dad raised me.

My dad loved animals.  I don't think I can remember a time when we didn't have pets.  When a Himalayan kitten was dumped on their doorstep, he proclaimed that it was his cat.  A few years ago when the black lab he got for Game Boy died, he got the same kind of dog I remember my own grandparents having - a Border Collie he named Joe and proceeded to spoil.  My dad drove that dog all over the countryside, to the point where he couldn't drive his truck without Joe wanting to go for a ride.  He grew up with Dirt Devil and especially Princess, and was the reason they came to call my dad "Grandpa Joe."

I never wanted for a thing, because my Dad worked so hard to provide for us.  Christmas was always magical - waiting to see what would be under the tree.  One year I begged for a piccolo.  I left the one gift that I thought might be my piccolo to open last, and I can only imagine how tickled he was when I fell for his trick - he put some shirts on top of it, so that I was disappoined and then ecstatic when I dug in and found it.  

The Christmas before the pandemic he messaged me before I came home to make sure I brought my camera.  He had this great vision for the next year's Christmas card photo - had even driven more than a hundred miles out of the way to get the most important prop - an honest-to-goodness toboggan long enough for all five of his grandchildren to sit on.  Only, we hadn't got much snow - there was only a bit that hadn't yet melted.  We did the best we could with it, and laughed about it later.

The last year I stayed at home, my dad retired from Union Pacific, where he had worked my whole life.  For some reason, Shaggy and Babysis started talking about a trip to Mexico with their spouses, and this turned into the last family vacation before the grandkids - the last one we all took together.  It was different from the way I'd come to travel, but also familiar.  He was always a fan of driving, taking the long way round and stopping at roadside attractions.

My dad is probably responsible for my love of spicy food.  When Shaggy and I were still the only kids, a Mexican place in Excelsior called El Lazarro was the dinner out of choice, and that became a theme that ran throughout the history of our family.  Even better was the salsa he made himself, using the tomatoes, onions, and peppers he grew in the garden.  It was a challenge for him to get his kids to help out with weeding and picking vegetables, which I think made it even sweeter when the grandkids enjoyed those chores and eagerly helped him out, the last summer that he put in a garden.

When I sat down to try and figure out my taxes again a week or two ago, I remembered how he did that for me the first year I lived overseas.  He researched the forms an expat needed, filled them out, and sent them to me in South Korea to sign.  Here it is twenty years later and I still don't really know what I'm doing.  But he knew.  He never did make it overseas to visit me, but I know he read this blog, because he told me once he was printing my posts to take to my great-uncle JD to read.  When I started looking for photos of my dad so that I could put this post together, I felt like an asshole, because I'd missed so much time with him.  Unlike Shaggy and Babysis, I didn't have a wedding or grandkids, or so many other moments of my life that he was a part of.  Unlike Gameboy, I wasn't here for him through these last few years, watching ball games and taking care of the animals. I know that's going to keep bothering me even as my grief becomes less sharp in the coming weeks and months.  But at the same time, he was always there to pick me up, and made more early morning trips to drop me off at the airport than I can remember.

As I sit here waiting to take one more trip back, I can't help remembering all the friends I knew who lost a parent living overseas.  It hurts even more than I thought it would, this great fear that has finally manifested.  But there's solace, too.  There's this week that was spent remembering him with my family, letting the grief sublimate into something less sharp, to become another memory of him, even if it's the first one marked by his absence.

I love you, Dad, and I'll miss you.

The Kids are All Right

 It was spring break, and after so long I finally took that trip to Japan that I booked three years ago.  I made one more attempt to see the hotaruika - and failed.  I stayed at a campground at the beach, and all the conditions were there...but the squid were not.  So I give up.  I'll stick to bioluminescent insects from here on out.  On the other hand, I got to do something I couldn't when I lived here before - jet all over the damn place using the Japan Rail Pass.  See, when I was here before, foreign residents weren’t allowed to use it, so all my train travel had previously been done the hard way…with lots and LOTS of money.  Not that the pass is cheap, but by day 4 it had already paid for itself (maybe…art teachers don’t do math on vacation, bitches).

So I wasn't stingy when it came to getting around.  Whether it was riding the rails up to Niigata to see the yaoi temple or hopping a train down to Kyoto for the afternoon to celebrate my best boy’s promotion to manager, the country was my oyster.  It only took me a couple of hours to make it to Kyoto…and ALL its tourists.  The Kawaii Kingpin admitted that he missed the pandemic a very tiny bit on that account, and I had to sympathize…the days when people didn’t bring their screaming children to restaurants truly were glorious, in at least that respect.

Of course, as I told him, it’s different when the children in question are your blood relatives.  My niblings are perfect, of course.  To demonstrate (and totally not because I have a lot of odds and ends blogs to catch up on), let me take you back to last summer.  I was planning to take Princess and Dirt Devil to the anime con, but a poorly timed water leak at the hotel I booked caused me to reconsider.  Instead, I took them and Monkey out for a day o’ fun with their favorite aunt.

We started at Barnes and Noble.  This is part of what makes these kids awesome; I can tell them I’m taking them to a bookstore and they’re excited about it.  After picking up some manga volumes, a movie, and some games, it was time for lunch.  Dirt Devil suggested sushi, so I found a place in West Omaha that had sushi, ramen, and a few other things, and ordered a bunch of food.  Monkey wasn’t sure about it, so we ordered a sweet and sour chicken to be sure he wouldn’t starve.  Guess what was the only thing left at the end?  They were especially huge fans of ramune.

After a quick stop at home for the bathroom we went to play mini-golf and waste money at the arcade.  Was there, perhaps, a bit of a Japanese theme going?  Whether or not I intended there to be, yes, there was.  I wish I could take credit for helping them to become the baby otaku that they are today, but in all honesty they have come to it on their own.  I mean, I DID show them Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Howl's Moving Castle, as well as a few episodes of Naruto and My Hero Academia.  But while Princess' tastes in anime and mine are nearly identical (Hanako-kun and Bungou Stray Dogs?  Yes, this is a girl after my own heart!), Dirt Devil likes One Piece.  ONE PIECE?!?  Also known as, the anime that I never even started - I read one chapter of the manga and decided this was not for me.  But he likes it.  And while Monkey hasn't gotten into anime much, he's definitely a gamer...his favorite character is Link, and when I asked him what I could bring him from Japan, he just asked for Pokemon everything.

After the arcade we went to my favorite ice cream place, Coldstone, and ate a shit ton of ice cream (Okay, I ate a shit ton...I think each of them took theirs home and stuck it in the freezer).  While this might be considered bad "mom" behavior - spoiling your kids by buying them whatever they want and loading them up on sugar - it seems like excellent aunt behavior.  Fortunately, my brother and sister-in-law are tolerant...if I want to take them out for the day, they're not too picky about where we are going.  They behave and we get along pretty well, and their parents get a day to do whatever they need to do, as responsible-type adults.  

Hopefully they'll still feel that way in a few years when they graduate and I take them on Le Grand Tour.  I'm pretty sure I already know what country they'll want to visit.

Take a Hike

Here is a lesson for you all, in a "Give a cat a cupcake" sort of way.  If you give an art teacher a primary lesson to teach on her so-called day of rest, she'll feel a little bitter.  If she feels a little bitter, she'll probably procrastinate actually preparing it.  If she procrastinates, she'll need something to do instead.  She might think about putting her laundry away.  If she looks in her closet, she will probably realize that she HASN'T EVEN STARTED PACKING TO GO TO SEOUL ON FRIDAY!!!*  That, of course, will make her realize she hasn't really thought too much about what she's going to do there (besides catching up with Belynda, her Dark Lord and Master, and shopping at the Dongdaemun Fabric Market).  She'll need to check out Atlas Obscura, since she lived in Seoul for three years already.  This will get her thinking about all the things she did when she lived in Seoul, that she didn't blog about because she didn't have a computer back then.  Knowing she didn't have a computer back then will make her feel lucky to have one now.  And if an art teacher feels lucky, she will probably sit down at her computer and procrastinate planning the primary lesson she's supposed to be teaching.

So a couple of weeks ago, when I, you know, had job prospects, I felt like there was a very real chance that I might be out of Asia next year.  (Now?  Who knows.)  This prompted me to crunch some numbers and decide that I should spend my last Tsagaan Sar not in Mongolia, but in Seoul, so I booked a flight for Friday.  I have waxed poetic on numerous occasions about how much I love Korea, but not actually written about most of the things I enjoyed there.  To get me in shape for the upcoming blog-a-thon, I'm writing about a few of those things this week.

Korea has some great hiking.  I was just about as lazy then as I am now, but the weather was nicer for more of the year, so I actually went on a few more hikes.  Smack dab in the middle of Seoul is a hill called Namsan, and one weekend my friend Anika and I decided we'd meet in Myeongdong and hike it.  Neither of us actually knew what the route was, but we figured if we kept heading uphill we'd get there by and by, and we did. 

It was a bright spring day, and we enjoyed the view at the top of the city.  After some cotton candy in the park around Seoul Tower, we decided to start hiking down the other side.  I loved being able to rely on chance like that when I lived there...just choosing a path and wandering along.  On this particular auspicious day, we ended up at the bottom of the hill where Noksapyeong Station sits, walking past a place called Chili Chili Taco, which stopped us in our tracks.  After our hike, we decided it was a perfect time for some food, and since neither of us had had Mexican in a long time, we stopped in and discovered their burritos, which I still consider to be one of my top five finds during all my years in Korea.

I loved this experience so much that when my mom came to visit me, right before I left Korea for the last time, I decided I would take her up Namsan.  Gracie is NOT much of a hiker, but when Anika and I hiked Namsan, I noticed the cable car, and decided it would be just fine. 

My mom did not agree with my assessment.  See, first you have to walk uphill a little ways to get to the cable car.  Then, of course, you have to ride the cable car up the hill.  Maybe this probably shows the self-centeredness of youth, but I wasn't actually aware that my mom was afraid of heights until she got panicky on the ride.  Oops.  But eventually we made it...to the exit.  Which was not, apparently, on the peak of the hill, so I heard a lot of complaining as we huffed and puffed our way up the last of the steps.  But we finally made it, and Gracie agreed that the view was very nice.

She hasn't visited me overseas since.  I wonder why...

*I've actually given more thought to the perfect wardrobe for me and Five's nerdy-nerdy Japan holiday than packing for Seoul.  It's how I roll.

Reunion Time

I badmouth the States in general and Iowa in particular quite a bit.  One has only to look at the huge debacle that is our presidential race to see why, and yet, it has its moments.  I was reminded of this over the summer, when I looked around and had to ask myself if I was in a motherlovin' Miyazaki film.  In the evenings, I'd go outside as the clock crept up on 9 to stroll through fields strewn with fireflies.  In the mornings, I'd go for walks.  These weren't always spectacular, but the morning that I left for AnimeIowa, there was a super-kawaii pink rainbow shining in the sky.  Another morning was layered in fog as I walked around the lake park in Glenwood, where every spiderweb was hung with dewdrops.  It seemed like any minute you might step through into another world.

There's a reason why the word for America in both Korean and Mandarin is literally translated as "beautiful country."  It damn well is.  Case in point: the M_____ family - or those descended from Leland and Elaine, at any rate - decided that this was the year and Grand Lake, Colorado was the place that we should all get together.  If you've never been to Colorado, I'd sum it up as proof that God is an artist and he likes to show off.  When they decided on the end of the first week of August, I didn't think I would be joining, because I had to get back to Mongolia and get my shit together...but then I kept seeing my cousins, aunts, and other assorted familial type people talk about the reunion on Facebook and in group emails, and I thought, "Well, damn.  I don't want to miss that."  So I emailed my aunts who were arranging everything and got myself in on the action.

This involved taking a very long car ride across two states and up over 12,000 feet of elevation with my parents.  I could've made a lot of jokes about taking long road trips with your parents at the tender age of 37, but it's been a month and a half so they've grown stale, besides the fact that it actually wasn't that bad (thanks to several books and my new cat-ear headphones to occupy myself - when my dad's behind the wheel it's nonstop audiobooks and old country music).

Family Portrait, by Uncle John

We stayed at Shadowcliff, a mountain lodge whose roots crossed those of my family tree at some point in the past.  From the room I shared with my aunt and uncle, I could watch a cataract of water tumble over boulders on its way down to the lake.  The internet worked fantastically, which was awesome, because as much as I love my family I would have hated to miss snarky late-night facebook messages from the other side of the world.  And it was perfectly situated...just a short walk down the hill to the main drag of the town, where a certain ice cream shop was selling basil lemongrass ice cream on the waterfront.  The walk back, on the other hand...

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of going to a family reunion, it involves a lot of sitting around and catching up.  Although we are all friends on Facebook, I hadn't seen most of my Dad's family in several years.  Being outdoorsy people who are into all that nature shit (unlike me), several people went out on the lake, and others seized the day with some hardcore hiking.  I spent most of my time battling for the title of "King or Queen of Bad Ideas," with one of my little cousins (he won) and entertaining Bunny, who - after all - only gets to spend a little time each year with her aunt Becky.

There was also the monumental task of feeding a legion.  My aunts assigned meals to different family groups, and for once being single meant that I got the awesome assignment to cook with my cousin Micah and his girlfriend, Nina.  Next-gen single dude, my Uncle David, was also assigned to our group, but he wandered into the kitchen as we were almost finished.  We informed him that since he was late, he could wash dishes.  "I could do that," he said, and apparently meant exactly that - he had that capability, but since we never actually told him to, he didn't.

While we were cooking we made plans to hike up to Adams Falls, which was signposted as being a mile and a half from Shadowcliff.  Since I sacrificed my morning walk in order to cook brekke, I thought this was an excellent opportunity to get my walk in and make the most of the lovely surroundings.  And it was - the waterfall was pretty and I enjoyed talking to Micah and Nina.  They then went on with the loop trail, while I listened to my feet and started back down the trail.  And then started walking back along the highway toward the lodge.  At some point, I realized I was going to have to walk back UP to the aptly named Shadowcliff, and was contemplating how much that was going to suck when my cousin Amanda and her family pulled up and asked if I wanted a ride back?

Family.  It means having someone come along and offer to haul your ass up a cliff.  I love these guys.

Set the Wayback Machine to...2014

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." 

I read Terry Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky in 2006 when I was doing my short, second stint in Korea.  It ends with the above quote, and even though I wasn't planning on moving home then (and haven't really been on planning on it since), I fell in love with it, because to me, it meant that "coming back" wasn't a failure or an ending...just a new chapter.

Of course, it doesn't prepare you for how hard coming back can be, and it definitely doesn't make it easier when you leave again.  The thing is that when you see people every day, they don't seem to change much, but when you come home twice a year (or less) the little differences add up.  And while you may get used to how your parents and siblings change after one year, niblings grow up quick.  The Princess (in Mongolian mode this summer thanks to Aunt Becky the Great) turns five this fall.  Five!  I have this fear that they'll forget me before I come home again, and this is probably why I've noticed that the leaving has become increasingly difficult in the last several years.  (Not that this means I'm going to stop, Mom...)

What I mean to say with all this babbling is that my "ten-years-an-expat" countdown ends tonight back where I started - in Missouri.  I was really looking forward to coming home and seeing the family, and through email we planned to come down to Shaggy's farmhouse (it has a pool in its favor!)  The only person who couldn't make it was...Gameboy (I just realized I've never given my other brother a code name!  How lame am I?!?)...who had to work, which was a bummer, but, you know what's going to win in a battle between true family togetherness and a pool.

Once your parents become grandparents, it's all over for the spinster aunts and uncles.  Nothing you do ever was or ever will be as cute as what your niblings will do.  Luckily for me, in my family the niblings are actually as cute and smart as my mom tells her Lunch Bunch buddies, and although it's kind of weird (even after five years) to watch my parents be grandparents, it's good to know they are enjoying their retirement years.

Last spring I had one of my darling juniors (now seniors!  I'm not ready to start thinking about them graduating!!!) tell me I'd make a great mom.  Since her statement was provoked by my suggestion that she use a better pair of scissors to cut the legs off her pants, I had to laugh and tell her I make a much better aunt.  Not only because my advice was somewhat dubious (maybe she shouldn't have been cutting the legs off her pants), but because I know what great moms look like.  Exhibit A:  Abby, my sister-in-law.  Sticky floors and happy children (except without the sticky floors).  Exhibit B:  My Mom - hell, she's gotta be great if she raised me!  Finally, Exhibit C:  Babysis.  My Babysis can be - how can I put it delicately?  I probably can't, so we'll leave it at, "Takes one to know one."  That said, I pity the person who messes with Bunny.  Babysis is organized and determined, and she would do anything for Bunny.  She's also a helluva cook and gorgeous - it's a good thing I'm the older sister or I might have an inferiority complex (the size of Canada's).

All that said, in spite of how hard it is to leave them, not only do I make a better aunt, I think I like it more.  You have the lack of full-time responsibility (like a grandparent) but you're young enough to have fun with your niblings (like a parent).  It's the best of both worlds...at least until I buy Dirt Devil his first bow and arrow.

Ode to Shaggy

I couldn’t be more proud of my older brother. 

Shaggy is a character.  I mean, we all are in my family, but Shaggy is truly interesting.  When I was very little, I loved him SO much and wanted to be just like him.  When I got a little bigger, I changed my mind.  I still loved him, but he was all, “Ooh, Outdoor Survival Skills (Read: Grubs have lots of protein!),” whereas I was Ms. Artsy-Fartsy.  Also, he may or may not have gotten into trouble from time to time.

Well, things change.  The outdoorsy kid got accepted to the University of Missouri at Rolla where he was going to study engineering, but the band geek (that’s me) failed to get into UMKC’s conservatory.  I stayed at UMKC anyways, but eventually switched over to art education, which came as a surprise to pretty much no one.  He hung in at Rolla for two years, but the second year was one of the few students studying history at an engineering school.  Let’s just say it’s a much harder program when you’re in a fraternity, and leave it at that.

In spite of that, Shaggy grew up pretty well.  He came back to the Omaha area, where he started studying geology (again, this came as a surprise to pretty much no one – he was the one always lugging big rocks home from vacation) and met his wife while working for an outdoor adventure company.  He later started working for a local sporting goods store, and he turned out to be really good at what he was doing.  He’s knowledgeable and passionate about gear.  He’s really good at making connections with people, and he’s worked his way up in the sporting goods world, until he landed a really good job with a national company.  His wife just had their third child (time will tell whether or not Monkey is sweet or hornery), and during this vacation we helped them move into a big, beautiful house.  He may or may not still get in trouble once in a while, but…I mean, c’mon – who doesn’t?

If I had to guess, I'd say hornery...

The reason I’m telling you about Shaggy and not Babysis (who is also fabulously successful with a beautiful house and husband and baby) is because I’m sure it never even crossed anyone’s mind to question whether or not Babysis would make good.  She has always been focused and directed and she didn’t make all the mistakes Shaggy and I did.  She never got caught hiding under a van in a cemetery drunk or hit a utility wire with that same van, taking out power to half our town of 5,000 people (I’ll let you try to figure out which of those stories apply to which of her older siblings).  Shaggy, on the other hand, listed his aspiration for senior awards night as, “To become a mercenary.”  People didn’t always know what to make of him.

As a teacher, I have kids who don’t always know what to make of themselves.  Maybe they have an older sibling to try to live up to, or parents with unrealistic expectations.  I hope one day they can look back with hindsight’s 20/20 vision, and everything makes sense.  But until then, I would tell them:

Be who you are.  Make it work for you. 

That, at the end of the day, is the most important of all the things I’ve learned from my brother.  Although the protein value of grubs is right up there.

Grub Club: Peeps Edition

Last year, I mentioned that my mom and her friends, known collectively as "the Peeps," have their own version of Grub Club - the Lunch Bunch.  It's more about getting together to gossip and eat than to gossip and try new restaurants (a subtle but important difference), but it still makes me happy to know that we're sorta doing the same thing.

Anyways, they meet up on Tuesdays, and this year I made it back for their special Christmas edition.  Every year, they go to a place in Bellevue, Nebraska, called the Summer Kitchen and exchange gifts.  It's no Butterfinger Pancakes (which I'm hoping to tell you about after the return portion of my trip to Korea), but after nearly deciding to get pancakes anyways, I went for their Santa Fe omelette, which was served with hash browns.  The omelette was delicious, and although I would have liked the hash browns to have more flavor, they were sufficiently un-potato like to be edible.

Babysister's mother-in-law had an omelette, too, but hers came with fruit.  What kind of horrible idea is it to eat fruit at breakfast?  Seriously - I've tried eating fruit for breakfast before - it seems like it would be perfect, but I'm always starving again an hour later.

 

And my mom went for the scrambled eggs and ham (I would not, could not, in a car, I would not, could not near or far!) and cinnamon roll.  I tried a bite of the cinnamon roll, but was not tempted in the least - having a Cinnabon in UB makes me impervious to at least that stateside temptation.

After breakfast came the gifts.  Some were crafty.  Some were covered in shit tons of glitter (a fact that I decided I could use to nefarious purposes after the fact by telling my mom's friends they had "something on your face" and then rubbing a glitter covered finger on their cheeks).  My mom's gift shows that she has the same propensity for evilness that I do, which is kind of alarming in spite of the fact that it is probably where I get it from.  She bought her friends a fan (for their hot flashes), a copy of "Magic Mike," and a tube of lube, among other things.  The Santa headbands they're wearing were also part of their gift.  I'm just glad she didn't buy them all the Fifty Shades trilogy, but then, they've all read it already.  Even my mom, which is the most disturbing thing of all.

Breakfast was followed by a movie - "The Delivery Man," which was a lot better than I was afraid of (I thought it was going to be one of those dumb-funny movies and was much more inclined to watch "The Hobbit," myself, but it turned out to be kind of sweet), and some shopping.  I'm glad that my mom has her Peeps.  Friends make a huge difference in how tenable it is to live in small-town Iowa, especially when they come laden with gossip (ask me about the fluids that were leaking down the wall in a space on the square that's being converted to a restaurant...I dare you).

Extended Family

This fall I read a blog post by John Bocskay that a friend had shared on Facebook.  It was about how you can choose your family but not your friends.  If you're thinking this is one of those times where I purposely and also idiotically screw up an idiom to be funny, you're actually wrong.  Not only because it wasn't me changing the idiom, but because it's not idiotic in this case: if you've lived overseas, you know that you don't always get to choose with whom you will be friends.  The longer I've been doing this, the more choosy I get about who I will hang out with, and luckily I've managed to land places for a while now that had enough of a pool of foreigners to allow this luxury.  I also get what he's saying about choosing your family, but ever since I first read his post, I've been thinking about it from another angle.

See, living overseas has seen me "adopting" a lot of family members.  It's not like this is a new thing; my high school friend's mom was kind of the original adopted family member, and I even mentioned my adopted Cuban-Saudi daughter about a month ago.  Lately (ie, in my last two contracts) it's gotten a little out of control, though.  Before it was always kind of a private joke - now the whole school gets involved.  It started with my new sister.  When I was working in Shanghai, our students were constantly mixing JoAnn and I up, and somewhere along the way one of them came up with the idea that we were sisters...we look alike, don't we?  To their credit, we were together a lot - A LOT - and we are both fun specialist teachers, and tall.  To our discredit, we totally ran with it, because it was just too much fun not to.

This time around, here in Mongolia, it is probably my fault.  I was not very creative last Halloween, and I put on some frumpy clothes and a (really rubbish) British accent, made myself a magic wand out of construction paper, and told the kids I was Mrs. Weasley.  And asked them if they'd seen my son, Ron.  And it worked, because I just so happened to have a really wonderful 6th grade student with ginger hair, and since he has such an AMAZING sense of humor, and friends who felt like playing along, we totally ran with it, too...to the point where his classmates - my students - were completely confused.

It didn't help any that the 8th graders - completely independently - came to the conclusion that since his older brother and I had the same sense of humor, he must be my son (they also decided that I was fighting to the death with Geek and last year's math teacher for the affections of the science teacher, but we'll ignore that one.  Kids!)  He was in my homeroom class, and I was a little worried that their actual parents would think this was totally weird and inappropriate, so I was relieved when their mom walked into my classroom for conferences last fall and made a joke about me being their "other mother."  They grow up so fast!  My older "son" is a freshman now, and doesn't find as much humor in it, but "Ron" still says, "Hi, Mom," when he sees me in the halls, and his little sister even joined in when I saw them leaving the school several weeks back.

Why do I keep this going, besides the obvious reason that it cracks me up?  Because these people are awesome.  Don't get me wrong, I love my actual sister to death, and wouldn't trade her for the world.  And if I ever get around to having kids in the distant future, they have at least a 50% chance of being totally kickass, because, let's face it, I am.  But by virtue of living in these places together, sharing this experience, there's something that bonds us together that I love, something above the fact that it's flattering that JoAnn is smart, talented, and a helluva looker, or that my boys are bright and funny (and will someday be sarcastic, if they keep at it), that makes me feel honored that people might think we're related.

Honestly, it's probably down to the fact that all us white folk look alike, but hell, I'll take it anyways.

Home for the Holidays

They say there's no place like home for the holidays.  Well, I could probably think of a few places that would have made pretty fine holidays (warm, sunny places), but a promise is a promise, and let me tell you, people, family is far less likely to freak out on you for skipping off on a Himalayan adventure (as I would like to, this summer) if you've paid your dues at Christmas.  And I love my family, so, you know, no big.

Like I mentioned on Saturday, I thought about doing a series of blogs about Omaha, but it didn't happen.  So here's a whirlwind blog of Christmas in Munchkinland.  For starters, you've got my mom and her "peeps."  Every week or so these "ladies who lunch" do lunch - in Glenwood, or elsewhere, and sometimes see a movie.  They're kind of like the G-wood chapter of the Grub Club.  Of course, there are a few less choices in a small Midwestern town of 5,000 than there are in bustling UB, but they have a good time and are always happy to see me, in spite of the fact that I'm a total brat.

Then there's the Winter Quarters temple (oh yeah, and my new haircut.  I was starting to get snarls the likes of which I have not seen since I was ten years old, so I chopped it off and sent it to Locks of Love).  Here in UB, Mormons in good standing are supposed to go to Hong Kong for the temple.  Me, I'm more of a Seoul girl (much cheaper, and oh, the memories), but the Winter Quarters temple is sort of my temple, so of course I had to visit.  And while I was there...

...I had to check out the gingerbread display at the Visitor's Center.  Mormons are sort of into crafty stuff - heck, we were scrapbooking before it was popular (I need a pair of hipster glasses for that statement).  This makes sense - if you're not going to spend your free time boozing and picking up men, you gotta do something (the men of the church play sports - Mormon basketball is one of the world's most dangerous sports, especially if you've got a lot of Tongans and Samoans in your stake).  Anyways, as I was saying, we do crafty stuff, including gingerbread.  Now, when I was a young, innocent single Mormon girl, my singles branch, the good ol' Independence 5th, had a Family Home Evening once a year dedicated to making gingerbread houses for the visitor's center.  They were monstrosities, often made of graham crackers, unless Sister D and Sister P were feeling ambitious and did a whole lot of baking for us (and they often did).  But they were made from scratch, one way or the other.  None of this prefab, cookie cutter gingerbread house business.  As you can see, there were plenty of AWESOME original designs, but also far too many that came out of a box.

 

But then, I couldn't help myself from picking up a prefab gingerbread house to decorate with the Princess.  I mean, she's just so damn adorable.  And just try to stop her from eating that candy.  You know she's thinking about it.  The Princess lives in Utah with my brother Shaggy and his wife, which I find hilariously ironic since I'm the Mormon.  And until I sat down to write this blog I hadn't even considered that it might seem I was trying to indoctrinate my adorable niece into the crafty Mormon lifestyle.  I'm not, Abby, I swear!

I also got the chance to catch up with my high school AP English teacher, Drim.  She's retired now, or else she would have brought me into school to tell her World Lit classes all about my adventures (I know, she's done it to me before).  As it was, she threatened to call the town paper and tell them to do an interview with me, which seems bizarre to me, because even if I AM a little Iowa girl living in Mongolia, to me, that's just what I do.  No big.  After lunch at the Spaghetti Works I took a stroll around the Old Market, and wandered into my favorite part (not least because it is inside), the Passageway.  It sort of reminds me of the galleries of Paris, now that I've been there.

I have had felting on the brain, and decided some felting needles and wool roving would go a ways toward alleviating my night time boredom, so I finally tried needle felting.  Ariel there was my second attempt - I made a dragon for my first, but it didn't turn out as well.  Practice makes perfect, they say.

But the best thing of all about being home is, of course, the kids.  Bunny here was born the Friday before I came home and she is just about as sweet as can be.  I still had my UB cough for a week or so after I got home, so it took me that long to see her.  And it's still a little strange to think that my Babysis had her own baby.

The Dirt Devil is Shaggy's own personal mini-me, in my humble opinion.  Shaggy's hair was never that red, but he DEFINITELY had that mischievous gleam in his eye.  Dirt Devil doesn't talk much yet, but he's got the most infectious giggle.  I'd have packed him up in my suitcase and taken him back, but he's his momma's boy and it would have broken his heart <3 br="br">

And finally, our Princess.  Words can't do her justice, just take a look at my sibling's faces.  She just LOVED her princess dresses from her grandma - she danced around in front of the mirror on her tiptoes while the rest of us laughed so hard we cried.  Like I said.  Too.  Damn.  Cute.  I miss those kids already!

Defying Gravity: Reprise

It's been almost a year since I began this blog, and I found myself, in the last week, right back where it began, madly shopping, trying to get everything packed and cleaned before heading out. It was a strange month home...I worked, and worked out. I ate very little junk food until right at the end (which didn't really help me lose any weight, but whatever) and made it 30 days without pop. I went to the Duncan family reunion, hiked up Deer Leap Trail, went to the Henry Doorly Zoo for the first time in Ages...

...Three thoughts from that here:
1. The cave exhibit in their "Kingdoms of the Night" makes me want to go spelunking.
2. The swamp part of it makes me want to go down to Bon Temps and do Bad Things to you.
3. I've finally figured out how to explain my lifestyle. If you've ever wondered what it's like, buying a ticket and landing in a strange land, relying on your wits and the kindness of strangers to get by, basically think about being in a zoo...then take away all the cages and - in the case of the HDZ - the air conditioning, in other words, the safety and the comfort, and it's kind of like that.

Anyways, I made it through my version of exile (pretty posh exile, surrounded by family and free housing, I admit), and made it to Shanghai. I'm writing this in the hotel room my school has kindly provided me with for the next two weeks (in which time I can hopefully find an apartment), after being out to dinner with Socrates and Shermeen. It's been a long day, and I didn't nap, but I will probably wake up at 3 again, anyways. Jet lag's like that, even for a professional bonne vivante of my caliber. I hate to be hasty, and tell you that life is swell, because honestly, I've been in the country for less than 36 hours, but here's the deal - I'm working in a school wedged into a bunch of Korean businesses in a city with fantastic public transportation and - for once - I actually KNOW people (plural, even!!!) here, so, really, life could be much, MUCH worse. And that's not my typical brand of cheerful pessimism, my friends: what you are experiencing is the rare Great One careful optimism. Crazy, I know.

On the Ground in Munchkinland

I'm back in the states, back to the places where I came from...for all intents and purposes: home. It's been almost two weeks since I got here, but I can hardly believe it's been that long. Two days after touching down at Eppley I was on the Duncan farm just west of Wheaton, Missouri. A week ago tomorrow we drove back to Iowa. Four days back I started working at B&N again. Today I went to church for the first time since leaving RAK.

And as of today I have 29 days until I leave.

I always feel a little bit of disconnect here. People's lives go on while I'm gone. I finally got to hold my niece, the Princess, the evening I got back. She's too cute for words. Saturday while I was floating down Sugar Creek, Shaggy was moving her, his wife, and the cat and dog to Utah. (Ugh.) I saw my cousins for the first time in seven years at the reunion, and it was good. I don't feel like I have to pretend to be anything but what I am with them. Sarah and I shared a canoe for the traditional "float trip," and I went to Roaring River with Dad, Matt, Micah, and Uncle Wayne last Monday morning, where I hiked up Deer Leap trail, fed the fish, stared into the depths of the spring, and poached wifi from the lodge while munching on peanut butter m&m's (ahh, the good life). They, on the other hand, fished. I used to try to fish, but this year I didn't even get a tag. As I was watching them reel 'em in, I thought of the day before, when my dad had shown us what a killdeer does when its nest is threatened, its frantic cries as it risked its life to save its babies...not knowing that he was just kidding. I guess I'm getting soft in my middle age, but I couldn't stand to watch, and I felt a little bit of the same for the fish.

It was sad, leaving, since this may be the last reunion. We celebrated my great uncle's 80th birthday, the last of his five brothers, who all died (in birth order) before their own 80th birthdays. I have a lot of love and respect for JD - we've had lot of common experiences, fifty years apart - and the thought that he might be gone before I come home again was another strand of sadness.

But life carries on. I've worked three days at the bookstore, and mostly I'm happy to see everyone again. Things haven't changed much. I haven't been in kids' at all, which is weird, and a little hard, because I always knew what to do back there. Out on the book floor there are long stretches of boredom. At least I know that I'm leaving in less than a month, and that fact makes the temporary annoyances a little easier to handle. (Borrowing books makes it MUCH easier to handle).

And my greatest fear - the idea that I might gain a bunch of weight whilst home??? I'm fighting it with everything I've got. I won't lie to you; I was AWFUL at the family reunion. The best I can say for myself is that I stayed off the pop, and that I borrowed The Fat Flush Plan (a diet book...which I will NOT, it seems, be following to the letter because I'm lazy, but it DOES have some ideas that I can easily integrate into my life) from my aunt Barb. Wedding cake, birthday cake, cookies, biscuits, cheesie poofs...all down the hatch. But since getting home I've managed to be a bit more in control. Not perfect, by any means, but I joined the YMCA for the month, and have been using their gym and pool, I took a walk with Babysis around Glenwood Lake Park, haven't had a single sugar cookie from work (because I know once I do, it's ALL over), and managed to avoid temptation a few times, in addition to using those Fat Flush ideas and having something light for one of my meals each day.

So I've not gone mad yet...but there are four weeks and a day left to go, so the potential still exists. Luckily I'm in New York City for my birthday with the Glamwhore in another three weeks time, and have only a week after that before liftoff; there is a very good chance I might get to Shanghai with my mind and my figure intact.

Another day, another dirham

So last week, as crazy as it felt, helped me to gain some perspective and improve my work ethic. See, last Wednesday, I had a six period day. This seemed like a LOT of teaching to do in one day, at first. But then I realized that those six periods, forty minutes each, added up to less than one morning - without gym/swimming - at GDA. I'd still have two, possibly four hours more to teach if I were still there. So I've been trying to kick it up a notch here in Miss Becky's art room, and went ahead and started tentatively planning times for double periods for year two - since they requested it and I needed to do it, anyway. As a result - or maybe just because it's been a crazy week, which I'll get to in a minute - this week has flown by.

Yes, it has been a crazy week. Sunday Michelle went up to wake our grieving coworker up so she'd come to school and start working on rebuilding a sense of normalcy in her life. Or at least that was the plan. Actually, she was drunk as a skunk, and in the afternoon Michelle and Sarah took her into the hospital. And after checking in, she turned around and checked herself right out. I got warning of this around 6 that night, and went to spread the word to Maureen, and thus was standing next door when this individual made her way home. I said hi, but got no acknowledgement; she tried the doorknob, then turned right around and walked away. I called our principal to let him know, and tried to catch up with her before she hurt herself, but by the time I'd gotten to the lobby she'd vanished into thin air. I checked the floors, but nada. So I ate dinner with Tony and Melissa - we are so smart, we're taking turns cooking for each other - and when Roy showed up we went looking for her, but she was exactly where I said she would be, checked in at the Hilton via her husband's credit card. We explained what was going to have to happen at this point - that she was going back to her husband in Qatar - and stuck around long enough to make sure she was okay, but left around 9:30. I was fighting a cold - still - and wanted to go to bed early.

Ha. Not likely. Because Melissa needed "petrol," and on our way to the station that also has Macca's (because nothing feeds the soul like greasy fries), we stopped at a corner to let traffic clear, and a Gypo driver tried to cut around her and ended up sideswiping her. Blerg. So while Melissa lost it, I phoned Roy and asked if he was familiar with the saying, "when it rains, it pours," and asked Tony to bring Melissa's backpack (because it had her license), and asked Paul to bring Tony (because he has wheels). Except instead of explaining the situation fully to Paul I seem to have given him the impression that we just needed him to come pick us up, and he showed up without Tony, who took a cab, and hadn't made it to the scene before the police informed us to go to Mamourah station to sort it. And in spite of the evidence in our favor, we ended up getting stuck with the blame...maybe money exchanged hands, maybe it was because we couldn't communicate in Arabic, maybe just because it's a boys' club and we were screwed by our excessive x-chromosomes. Whatever the case may be, the accident was supposedly our fault.

I was pretty strong the whole night. I shed a few tears with Linda, and several on our way OUT of the station, but for the most part, I was cool, calm, and collected. Then I got home and found out my niece the Princess - who I feel fairly confident in saying is the closest thing, genetically, I have to my own children, and possibly always will be (Abby and I have similar coloring, and Shaggy and I look more alike than any of our other siblings) - was born. And THAT'S when I lost it. I didn't think I'd be so emotional over another anklebiter in this world, but I am. I missed little Princess' birth.

I still haven't fully processed the fact that there's a new crazy little redheaded girl out there in our family. And part of me is glad that I haven't had any kids, so I could really appreciate the Princess for who she is. I can't wait to meet her next summer!

There was more trauma throughout the next day or so, and I basically decided I was going to morph into Antisocial Girl on Tuesday and give a great big, "Screw You!" to the rest of the world. And I did. Recovered enough by last night to do my dinner duty (Korean curry - nom nom nom!) but my mind is in a weird place (worried place) and I wasn't the best of company...basically I wanted to get everyone out so I could dance. It's been a while since I've felt like it as much as I have been. Maybe because I've lost some weight, or because I've got three mirrors up on my wall, or just because I have my own space in which to dance. Whatever the case, I'm glad to be back in it. I forgot how much I missed it.