I think I broke my toe.

I was walking down the hallway when I had an unfortunately stubbing of the toe on the vacuum cleaning. THAT HURT! And now, a good two hours later, it STILL hurts and there's a bruise on the bottom of the toe. It's the baby toe on my left foot. Now, I have broken a toe before, same foot only the middle toe, from crashing my foot into a door when I was 8. In all honesty, there really isn't much to be done if the toe is broken but still, IT HURTS!

In other news, the countdown continues. We are still on for the 11th. My brother from Chicago is making plans to come up the Sunday before to get me. He figures this will give him a chance to see everyone else as well. I have only seen him one other time and it was a long time ago, just after my brother-in-law was killed. For years, we were told he wasn't really our half-brother but our step-brother. LONG STORY. But now, we know for sure he's our half-brother. Should be interesting. The whole next couple of weeks should be interesting and that's before I even get on the plane!

Okay, I did it.

I reserved the tickets for Wednesday March 11th. I will be leaving at 8am from Chicago's O'Hare airport and arriving in Seoul, South Korea at 6:35 pm, Thursday, March 12th. I'm now very nervous about the whole thing. Still waiting for the actual e-tickets but this is the start. Whew. Now, I just have to get my taxes done, get my scrapbook done, finish packing, finish any shopping I still have to do, get my computer ready to go, etc... Something tells me the next two weeks are going to FLY, especially since it looks like my brother from Chicago is coming up the Sunday before to meet up with us and then take me back down with him and his family. So, lots going on and I'm nervous. I'll definitely be keeping everyone posted as I go along. If you are on Facebook, look for me as I'm on there too and tend to update somewhat on there. I also put all of Natalie's pictures on there for my friends and family to see.

No tickets yet...

Yesterday was WAY too rough of a day for me to focus on that and to top it off, Natalie woke up around 2am or so last night and threw up and now this morning, she has diarrhea so she has a full-blown stomach bug. It scared me a little last night though because she was REALLY shaking, I almost thought she was having a seizure. Unfortunately, that set of a series of events for my sister and now it looks like she is going to leave her husband. She's gotten sick of the fact that she can't even reach him when he's gone because the mistress won't let him have his cell phone on. He takes the ONE vehicle they have with and that completely leaves with her nothing. Between that and the fact that she couldn't reach ANYONE last night, that really kind of freaked her out because if she goes into labor, she has no one to depend on to take her to the hospital. So now, she wants me to stay until at least the 11th, if not until the baby is born. *sigh* My husband is NOT going to be happy about that.

My this time tomorrow night...

I will for sure have a date of departure. I'm getting the plane tickets after sundown. Kind of nervous about it. I'm shooting for either March 4th or March 11th and if neither are available for the price I can afford, I'll keep working my way backward or forward until I find a day that does work but Wednesday at this point seems to be the best option for a day to fly out. So yeah, stay tuned and I should know more hopefully within the next 24 hours.

In the meantime, we are preparing for our departure. I got the last of my things from my older sister's today. A lot of it I had to leave because I just didn't have the room for it in the truck and now, it's all here. There's a lot to do and I'm thinking I'm really going to have to start cutting down my internet time in order to get it done. But don't worry, I plan to keep everyone updated blog wise. Cafe Mom, however, may suffer a little.

Well, I should head to bed, I have church in the morning.

We're one step closer than we were the last time we tried this.

John has sent me the money for the plane tickets. This is HUGE. Now, I just have to find plane tickets cheap enough to buy and somehow buy them with the debit card. I still think I should try to do my taxes first just to see if I can get a little more money. I think that would help out a lot especially if the return is a decent amount. Though even $1000 would help out immensely and we tend to get a bit more than that. Yikes, I'm starting to get kind of nervous now.

Ooh, gotta go! Missing Save our Bath!

Things that really make my head spin...

Okay, so I get this email from my husband this morning regarding future plans and the eventual arrival of my daughter and I to South Korea (so yes, the trip is back on, FINALLY!). Of course, this has me sitting down and looking to see just what I can afford as far as plane fares when (and sadly, coming to the realization that it would probably be best to try and do taxes now to MAYBE get some money faster than it's currently coming, *sigh*). So, as I'm looking at air fares and flight plans and all that good stuff, it has me thinking of the flight itself and how I'm going to deal with a three year old who has a huge abundance of energy and is going to be spending MOST of that day stuck on an airplane or in an airport and trying to figure out what time I should kind of push for her to maybe go to sleep and that had me thinking time zones and the ever so lovely International Date Line. And let me tell you, trying to figure that out, I have decided, is a math problem from my worse nightmares. Because here is the logistics of it:

1. The flight is 13 hours from the time we leave San Francisco (roughly).
2. At some point during that flight, we will fly over the International Date Line thereby losing one full 24 hour day (which kind of freaks me out, you know?).
3. THEN, to make matters more interesting, we will continue to go BACKWARDS in time until we reach Seoul, South Korea where it will be 7:30 in the evening but only 4:30 in the morning at my current time zone, almost 24 hours from the time I left.
4. Which has me wondering just how many hours it takes to fly through a time zone and then considering we'll be earlier by the time we reach the dateline there's that too!
5. Is it any wonder that I'm just not totally boggled by this time? Which begs the question, has ANYONE invented a watch for these kinds of situations?! Because really, how in the world is one expected to keep track of time!

I'm not at all a math person either and this just really has my mind all befuddled, let me tell you. I guess the important thing is the whole when I'm leaving and when I'm arriving type deal but seriously, I would love to know how the people who are FLYING the airplanes do it because man, that has to be a SERIOUS time warp. Not to mention, come to think of it, how do the people on star ships do it? Although really, that's not really discussed too much on shows like Star Trek but it does have me wondering. And just what does that whole star date thing mean anyway? Ack! My head is rattling now!

Fortunately for Natalie, she has like NO concept of time whatsoever which must be nice. And don't even get me started on the whole sunset deal! I imagine that we'll be seeing that at some point too, just not quite sure how that all works out either!

John is now in Ilsan.

He's getting things situated so that he's able to start his new job sometime next week as I believe he has a day or two that he'll be teaching before his official start date of March 2nd. At the very least, he's supposed to be in housing by next Saturday which is good because then, he can start making plans to send for us and then I go back to freaking out about the plane ride again. Ay yi yi.

Otherwise, not much is going on right now. All I can really do is wait and prepare and try to keep Natalie as well-behaved as possible (which is definitely easier said than done). Not much else to do otherwise, in all honesty.

So today is John's last day at his current job...

...and there's going to be this 10 day period where he's sort of in limbo and then he should be moving to the housing for the new job as of the 24th of February. I'm hoping that maybe we could join him in Korea sometime that week. I'm really, REALLY hoping. But we'll see what happens. Still have a lot to do here to get ready too but I just want to be drama free for awhile. He's currently in the area where Camp Casey is, Dongducheon and he's going from there to Ilsan which is just west of Seoul, I guess a little closer to the coast. He was wanting to be in Ilsan, he was there the last time he was in Korea but only for a few months, I think. He spent most of the time in South Korea in Daejeon which is a bit south of Seoul. It's still kind of hard for me to really comprehend that we're going to be there but then, right now, the future is incomprehensible to me period. I just try to take it day by day and hope for the best. Been going to services on Saturdays which helps. Still really need to start getting better with Bible reading. I'm not very good with that at all. But baby steps, you know?

Today was a pretty good day. Got to have a nice break for a few hours and hang out with my best friend at her place. We got some lunch and spent the time watching Star Trek Voyager (my favorite of the Star Trek series) and getting some laundry done since my sister's washer kind of conked out. My friend had never seen Voyager before so she was interested but not too sure since the captain's a female. It took just the first episode and she was hooked. My older sister's husband has been downloading Voyager episodes for me and putting them on DVD and he's got me through season four already which is SWEET! I figure I'll be spending V-day watching a few of those unless my husband pops online to talk. Actually, it would be nice if he CALLED ME, spending Valentine's Day without him kind of bites. This is our TENTH Valentine's Day since we met back in 1999 and he's been gone three of them now. Yeah, this is the first one since 2003 that he's been gone but still, I miss him a lot. I never expected us to be apart this long. But yeah, I keep catching episodes here and there on Spike and now, I'm actually able to watch them in order from the beginning which will be nice.

Not much else going on with me. Just waiting to see if John pops online tonight while I'm still online here. Hopefully I'll hear from him Saturday night. That would kind of bite if I didn't. Everyone else I know is going out Saturday night so there won't be anyone to talk to. Even my sister's going out, with friends, but still I'll be pretty much here alone with just Natalie for company. Hmm, maybe I should do something crazy like dye my hair red...

No baby yet...

...which is a good thing. They did give my sister a prescription for insomnia so that she can get some sleep as she's been having trouble going to sleep at night. They're also testing for some things as her husband has not been faithful and hasn't had the decency to well...ugh. So, she's at 34 weeks now and counting and we'll see when the little one will make her arrival but in the meantime we're preparing and we got Natalie's crib out of the locker today for my sister to use. Natalie wasn't too impressed. "That's MY crib!" she told my sister and I was kind of expecting that. Hopefully, she won't be TOO upset with it being set up for another baby.

I do wonder how she's going to react to the whole baby thing if the baby arrives while we're still here. She saw a baby at church on Saturday and was just fascinated by her. She kept touching her and telling me to touch her and I guess she told someone at church that she wants me to have a baby too! Yikes! I'm not ready for that! Dealing with three kids on a daily basis has me SO not wanting another baby right now, if EVER!

Waiting...yet again...

...this time to find out if my sister is going to be admitted to the hospital to have the baby. She's having some cramping and some bloody mucus so labor and delivery told her to come in. She's only 33, 34 weeks along. They're monitoring her and running some tests so hopefully we'll know soon. In the meantime, I'm here with the three kids and going nuts. Fortunately, my adopted dad's here so that helps because trying to cook chicken with ALL three of the kids running amuck was NOT a good thing. A candle was murdered in the living room, with screwdrivers. The girls were also climbing into the coffee table, on TOP of the computer tower I had on there, and jumping off of THAT onto the couch. Natalie was sent to bed. The other two are still up but I'm not one to try and discipline kids who are not mine. I have enough trouble with my own kid!

But for the moment, I'm still here and I'll be able to stay. It was the family friend who was insisting I leave like NOW to get her husband to move back in but the thing is, I just don't see how that can happen when he's still spending MOST of his time with his girlfriend and NOT his wife. But he's not against me staying here anyway, for the most part so that's good because right now, I just can't move again until we go to Korea. It does look like we're going to Korea though. John will be signing a contract for a school in Ilsan, South Korea which is near Seoul. It doesn't start until March 2nd though and he's done at this school as of Friday so I'm not sure how that all is going to turn out but hopefully everything will fall into place. I'm hoping. I'm really hoping. All the details are not in place yet, I'm learning more each time I talk to him and I talk to him tonight--hopefully, if I'm not at the hospital with my sister--so I should get more details. I just have to take it day by day, I guess.

I'm really thinking I should just have John come home.

It's getting to the point that if I don't, Natalie and I are going to end up homeless anyway. Either that or I should just see if he can get the plane tickets and have us come over now since it does look like he's got a job. All he has to do is sign the contract but he was waiting to hear back from his first choice first. I don't know. I'm really starting to get depressed, SEVERELY depressed and my self-esteem is starting to take a HUGE nosedive. I'm tired of not being wanted. I'm tired of just being tolerated as long as something can be gotten from me and the minute that ends, I have to go. I don't know. I'm beginning to wonder what the point is to this messed up existence is anymore. I'm in the way. I'm ALWAYS in the way. Here, I'm in the way of my sister getting back with her husband. He won't come home while I'm here. I thought I was here to help because she's been so stressed out having to take on the kids on her own. No, it's been more I'm here to help out and to do all of the dishes and all the other things she doesn't want to do while she goes out and lives it up on the town. I give her the stuff I have left from Natalie, was going to be giving her my crib, everything I had left from when Natalie was a baby and this is what I get for it. I'm getting completely and totally screwed...AS USUAL.

I don't know what to do. I'm sick of being used by everyone in my family. I'm sick of being just BARELY tolerated by my OWN FAMILY just so that they can get what they want out of me. I'm sick of not being loved by the very people who SHOULD love me. This is the one thing that time and time again (and I have to keep going through things like this to see it) brings me back to John and to our marriage and has me trying again and again even when I want to throw the towel in. I KNOW he loves me. He tolerates me a lot more than my family does (at the very least, he doesn't insist I need to be on meds), and his love has NEVER had strings attached. He has loved me for ME; for better or for worse, no matter how difficult I have gotten. I've never had anyone like that in my life. I have NEVER EVER EVER felt that way in my family. I have NEVER felt that they loved me no matter what. It always felt like any minute, I could lose their love. It always felt like I was just being merely tolerated because they HAD to tolerate me. I had to be on medication for crying freaking loud just to be able to LIVE AT HOME! And I'm sick of it, bloody doggone sick of it. I want my husband back. I want him home or us there or whatever, I don't care anymore. I want to be with my husband and be LOVED again.

I cannot move my daughter again. This isn't fair for her. She's been holding up SO WELL and I just don't know how many more times I can do this before she just plain loses it. And I wouldn't blame her at all. I'm about to lose it myself! I just can't do it anymore. It will be three months that he left tomorrow and I can't do this anymore. I miss him. I want to be with him, I NEED to be with him. I'm slowly losing hope about everything the longer I'm away from him. I need to leave and finally get my life together, be away from all the problems and all the drama that is going on that I can never really seem to get away from. Moving to Beaver Dam wasn't enough. I need to move somewhere where it is too hard for me to come back when things go bad. I need to move somewhere where I can't be dragged into the problems of my family so easily. I just want my life to be different from what I grew up with. I want my daughter to grow up in a different world than I did. I want her to know she's loved and to know that her mom and dad are THERE whenever she needs them. I just can't do this anymore. I'm too tired, too depressed, and just too broken down to be able to do this much longer. *sigh*

Just a matter of waiting now...

...waiting to see if John finds another job by the end of the week. He's been looking but hasn't had the greatest luck. The fact that he's 45 and has a family are both heavy strikes against him. It didn't help that the one time he gave the information of where he was currently working to the recruiter ended up being a HUGE mistake. It cost him dearly and it cost us the ONE family recruiter over there. I don't know what really happened as far as why his contract was terminated. I've been talking to a mom over there, a mom who is a teacher there herself and has been there for awhile with her husband and child. Unfortunately, there are both good and bad hagwons (private schools for ESL in Korea) and John was unfortunate enough to get a bad one. It could have been the lack of experience (especially as the director usually hired teachers with a teaching certification which John never had and she hired him knowing that), it could have been that he looked older than he liked (Koreans can be a bit prejudiced about that, they like them young). It also could have been the parents having a problem with a male teacher teaching kindergarten (a prejudice that is alive and well in this country too) or something as stupid as his hair not being short enough or his pants not pressed enough or something like that. He did have the flu at graduation time which was when the parents were all there. He, I guess, crossed his arms during the ceremony which I guess is frowned upon. Personally, I think John was hired out of desperation and the director was looking for a reason to get rid of him but it really ticks me off that she then ruins any chances of him being placed anywhere else with one recruiter.

On top of that, now one of the other foreign teachers there is being absolutely hostile to him. In all honesty, and this is sad but sadly, not surprising, ALL of the problems he has been having there have been due to females. The director is a female. The co-teacher John shares his classroom with is a female and not only that, is also the director's cousin. The foreign teacher who is now giving him issues is ALSO a female and not only that she's an African American from Florida SO... Yeah, maybe I'm stereotyping just a smidge but unfortunately, some people really play into certain stereotypes and that has definitely been the case in this situation. Unfortunately for John, he's not the typical male. He's not agreesive. He isn't even assertive in situations like these and I do think that didn't help with dealing with all of these women and sorry to say, I do think that women who are in a position of power tend to over-compensate for what they don't have, if you know what I mean. In other words, they tend to be nasty. I even talked to someone once who was working under a woman and ended up fired, all because the boss got her period and needed someone to take it out on. And this is not the first time that John has ended up fired while under a female supervisor. Maybe they're not afraid of him so feel they can treat him like crap because he is so easygoing? I don't know but it's annoying and it makes me feel like I have to go and protect him because well, I'm definitely not a passive person and most who know me can testify to that!

So for now, I'm just waiting to hear what is going to happen. He's got a couple of prospects and hopefully something will bite before the week ends. Otherwise, if he hasn't found anything by the 7th, we're going to start making plans for him to come home. And that is really going to be hard because we've gotten rid of so much stuff in anticipation of being gone for two years that we don't have everything we need and yeah, I can maybe get some of it back but it's going to be hard, especially anything that went to my older sister's. She's not good at giving stuff back. Usually, once she gets it, she keeps it. We would have to figure out where to live. We would have to find an apartment and John at least would have to get a job. I probably would need one as well. We would need a car, more than likely and we would have to get everything set up with whatever county we're in for assistance. There would be a TON of details we would have to work out and figure out and so I'm really hoping he finds something over there. The job situation in Wisconsin is not good. Where I'm at now, there are layoffs happening all over the place. Both my younger sister's husband and his brother have been layed off. Their dad may be as well and the plant could even close. Trane which is HUGE here, is having layoffs again. I'm not quite sure what to do. Places are closing, things are changing big time here and it scares me. I was really hoping to get out of here before it got REALLY bad and now, we might not be able to.

It makes me mad sometimes. This is something John really wanted to do. He had FINALLY figured out what he wanted to be when he grew up and his focus for the last FIVE YEARS has been convincing me to go there with him. He WANTS to be there to teach which is more than I can say about most of the kids that go over there. Most of them, are there for the money and ONLY the money. They're single, with no care in the world and spend most of their NON-teaching time drinking and complaining on the ESL cafe about how miserable it is over there and how much they hate it. And yet those people are more attactive to the schools than a man with a family who actually WANTS to be there to teach, sees it as his calling. It's sad and it really points out how screwed up the world is.

So, I don't know. I've been trying to stay optimistic and be hopeful that everything will turn out alright but I have my moments when I just want to cry because I really don't know what's going to happen and I'm scared that everything is just going to end up completely and totally screwed up. At least I'm in town right now and not staying with my older sister. The whole thing with the electricity was the final straw for me (and for Natalie). We're staying with my younger sister and I've been helping her out as much as I can, helping her with the two kids and making sure she eats and gets some rest (not easy). Her life has been upside down too but at least now maybe things will calm down a little for her. Her husband at least has finally told her that he does not want to come back, he wants to stay with the girlfriend and so they will be going through with the divorce. As bad as divorce is, I think it is the best thing for them because he was using her. He was leading her on while getting more and more involved with the other woman and he was basically setting the two women against each other. It was ugly. And it was really stressing my sister out. She was losing weight, she was having contractions (she's only 33 weeks pregnant), she was having trouble staying calm which the kids need her to be right now. It just wasn't good at all. And now, with it being over for sure, I think she can move on, put her focus where it needs to be which is on the kids, and do what she has to do to make a family with them. And her husband? Who knows what will happen. Personally, I don't really care as long as my sister is okay.

So that's what's going on with me right now and all I can say is that I will update more when I find out more which should hopefully be sometime before Monday. John's last day at the school he is at is February 13th. After that, I'm not even sure he can be in the country legally unless he has another position so we'll see what happens. I'm just glad we're not there right now because that would really be stressing me out and that wouldn't have done John any good. At least with us here, I'm calm for the most part and he's able to focus on what he needs to do which is find another job. So, we'll see what happens.