Finding Me Again

Going to hide this blog for now.

2012-01-13T20:14:00.005-06:00

At some point, I still may make it only available to certain readers but I'm not entirely sure. We'll see. But for now, I'm just going to make the other two blogs visible.

Be sure to check out my other blog and follow me there. I can also be found on Twitter @SimplyJaneen.

Link to new blog.

2012-01-07T10:44:00.003-06:00

Be sure to stop by and follow:

Sipping Life One Day at a Time

This will be more on the daily going ons with me and the girls though I'm not great about updating it every day but I'm hoping to do better at it than I have in the past.

Making some changes on here yet again.

2012-01-05T22:57:00.002-06:00

If you've been reading my blog, you'll notice I do post about a lot of stuff that's been going on with me and I've lately been wanting to change the focus. I still do not know exactly what's going to happen with my marriage. Right now, things have been okay. They're not perfect because my husband is still involved with his religion but deciding not to let his beliefs influence what I do and what I do with the girls has helped out a lot. We still have our fights and our issues but I'm not so miserable as I have been. I celebrated Christmas this year for the first time since 2006. And I didn't do a whole lot. I didn't buy a lot of presents for the girls (they got more stuff from their aunt than they did from me). I bought a small fiber optic tree and put it on a book shelf in my office. I didn't do a ton of Christmas like activities but it was different in that I wasn't isolating myself from everyone because I couldn't stand to see anything regarding the holidays at all. And I took the girls trick-or-treating back on Halloween, something my husband STILL does not know about. Thanksgiving wasn't much different than it had been because that's the one holiday that's been okay to do. New Year's is at least tolerated and he'll somewhat celebrate with me though he probably wouldn't do anything if I didn't and all I really do is make munchies to eat at home and do the countdown thing with wine and sparkling grape juice for the girls (if they're up). This year, I also had the next door neighbor's little girl over since her parents wanted to go out.

Like I said, it wasn't much, I didn't go crazy but it was enough for me though he did start in on me one time because he really didn't like the idea of my doing presents with the girls on Christmas Day. Well, that's too bad. I'm not giving up holidays anymore and that's something he just need to understand. He was okay with it all and had no issues with me celebrating holidays before we got married. Just because he changed doesn't mean I did and I don't have the issues with holidays he does. I don't see them the same way he does. I don't have the beliefs he does. In fact, I'm getting farther and farther away from having any real beliefs in God at all, at least in as far as actually following a bunch of rules out of some book. I'm sure some people will be offended by my saying that but it's the truth. That doesn't mean I don't try to be a good person but it does mean that I'm not going to do something because the Bible says so. There has to be more to it than that.

Naturally, the new year tends to bring on the feeling of a clean slate and the need to make changes (and make resolutions). And for sure there are things I want to work on this year. Though I have done some posting in this blog, the blog I have for the girls has been largely neglected. This I plan to change. I want it to be more of a family blog than just a blog about the girls. I also want it to be more of a positive blog and to just have more to it in general than just me relating the going ons. So, with that in mind, my focus on this blog is changing to one that is more of a venting place. Because of that, I'm going to make it a little less visible and possibly even change the settings so that it can't be accessed by as many people, hard to say. But if you do come on here and read and sometimes respond, post a comment at least so I have somewhat of an idea as to what my next step with this blog will be.

It's been one heck of a year and I'm glad to see it go!

2011-12-31T23:37:00.001-06:00

Less than 30 minutes to the New Year and looking back, I'm glad it's finally ending even though it seems to have gone faster than ever. It was a really difficult year though, pretty much from the beginning when my adopted dad started getting worse on Natalie's birthday. He died 9 months ago, on March 31st, of lung cancer. I miss him very much and think of him often. Of course, that loss for me just made the loss of my parents (not to death but to prison due to their own extremely selfish actions) even more difficult to bear. The weather added to things with spring being delayed and then when it did come, it came with severe weather. We had a close call when the tornado sirens went off in early April but nothing came of it thankfully other than severe hail damage on the southside of town. I was very grateful that John was sent home early and he came home just before it all hit. That wasn't the case six weeks later. I had been aware that we were to get severe storms so had stayed home and had been watching the weather all day. I had this sense of dread during the afternoon, felt very anxious. Kept watching the radar and saw a storm off to the SE that looked bad. It was and this storm was heading right for my town. Warnings started popping up in the SE so I started to get things together in preparation for going down to the basement with the two girls John was still at work. When the sirens went off (late, I found out later), we all went down. This time the warning was for real. The southside of my town took a direct hit from a rain wrapped tornado. This happened just an hour or so before Joplin Missouri was hit. Thankfully, it was a fairly week tornado. If it had been the size of the one that hit Joplin, we would have taken damage and loss of life similar to theirs, I'm sure. The tornado touched down not very far from the hospital and there were numerous stories of close calls. It hit near the neighborhood I had lived in when my brother-in-law was killed so I have had a hard time dealing with that. Tornadoes have been a huge fear of mine since losing my house to a fire when I was a kid and that combined with what happened in that area back when I was living there just made it worse (ironically, while houses on either side of my old apartment took damage, the house I lived in was untouched). It was just really weird to see all the damage down there and to realize that I was less than four miles away. It could have just as easily hit where I lived. Still kind of freaks me out, in all honesty.

So those two events and some other struggles have made this a particularly difficult year and so I'm not sad to see it go. I'm really hoping that this next year is a much better year because I kind of need a break here!

I was really hoping things were turning around.

2011-12-14T14:28:00.003-06:00

But nope, they weren't. It's just me being stupid again. I had decided that I was, no matter what, going to celebrate the holidays. I was going to take the girls trick-or-treating and I did (and their dad STILL does not know I took them) and I was going to celebrate Christmas. He had actually been pretty laid back about the whole Christmas thing, keeping fairly mum on it all and I was thinking that while he wasn't going to join in, he was AT LEAST going to respect MY beliefs for once. UGH! How stupid can I be?! I should have realized something was up when he wasn't sleeping in our room at night. For the longest time we had been sleeping in separate rooms and we finally got them switched around so that the larger bed was just for us to sleep in and the girls shared their own room. Before, I was sleeping in our daughter's room on her bed and she slept in the larger room with her dad and sister. And I figured this way they would have the larger room for their toys and stuff and my husband and I would have a place to sleep together. But lately, he had been falling asleep in the room with the girls and not coming to bed. Intimacy was declining again. And now, he's back to telling me how defiant and rebellious I am. For crying out loud, it's CHRISTMAS. I'm not sleeping around on him. I'm not going out and drinking with strange men or being gone all hours of the night. He's calling me this because I went out with my sister last night to WALMART and bought CHRISTMAS presents for my oldest daughter who had a birthday two days after Christmas anyway! Seriously! I got THREE gifts that cost me less than $25. I got my younger daughter TWO gifts for about the same amount. I bought some gift wrapping stuff and things like that and because it's against HIS beliefs, because HE believes that HE will be thrown into the Lake of Fire for believing it, I am the one who is rebelling and being defiant. All I want to do is buy some presents for my kids, wrap them, and give the presents to them on Christmas Day. That's it. I have a small tree in my office. I did not buy any lights. I ended up not doing the Secret Santa thing I was part of because I ended up leaving the group I was in. The only decoration outside of my office are snowflake decals on the window that my older daughter put up. THAT IS IT. Oh and I mailed Christmas cards out. But to hear you, you'd think I was like the people down the street with the HUGE holiday display outside of their house or the people whose house I pass on the bus with all of the lights! I haven't even taken the kids to see Santa Claus (though after this, I think I just might, may as well be as rebellious as possible!).

I want to bang my head on a wall. I have tried and tried and tried and tried to make this work. I REALLY tried to give up Christmas. It was HARD. It was PAINFUL. It was DEPRESSING. I HATED IT. I HATED people who celebrated Christmas. I was becoming a Grinch about it all, seriously. I did not like myself. I did not like having to be isolated from everyone for a good four months because I didn't celebrate any of the holidays from Halloween on except for Thanksgiving. I have done SO MUCH for him and tried SO HARD to respect his beliefs only to have him ignore me and take me for granted anyway. It didn't seem to matter that I was making HUGE sacrifices for him. It was just expected because I was married to him never mind he lied to me about his beliefs to begin with.

I don't believe what he believes. It would make life (and for sure our marriage!) easier if I did but I don't. I just wish he would realize that and realize that all the crap he does just makes our marriage more unbearable for me.

So I managed to win a giveaway.

2011-11-06T15:16:00.002-06:00

And it was to an online adult store, of all things. I have to wonder if the universe was trying to make up for the fact that all my husband got me for my birthday was a massager from Goodwill and not just any massager, a massager that probably belonged to an old lady (it kind of had an old lady smell to it), looked older than me, and was only $2.99. I mean seriously, who gives a USED, second hand massager to his wife for her birthday and wedding anniversary?! EPIC fail. That and the lack of um intimacy during the last two months I think led to karma being nice to me for once because I almost never win giveaways and definitely not giveaways for a $55 gift card. So I'm excited. I made my purchases today (took me quite a few days to figure out just what I wanted to get because I haven't gotten anything like this since my husband and I started dating and I wasn't quite so shy--yeah, funny, considering I've given birth in front of total strangers since then) and they'll be here soon. Maybe this is just what I need to get a little more action. At the very least, it will spice things up whether I'm with him or going solo.

Feeling more lost and confused than ever.

2011-10-16T20:29:00.002-05:00

I called over to the hospital the other day and talked to someone in the women's health department, specifically someone who is supposed to be part of the domestic violence part of this department. To be honest, I don't feel like I got a lot of good answers and if anything, I couldn't help but feel she was telling me that I'm pretty much stuck until I get a job and make enough money to move out (unless I have someone I can move in with) because my husband isn't beating me.

At the same time, I have nearly everyone else I've talked to telling me I need to get the f out NOW. Well, that would be great if I had somewhere to go! I can't go by myself, one because I don't want to abandon my children and two because I would be a failure of a mother if I abandoned my children. My one older sister tells me I can come live with her. Yeah, thing is is she's in another state and from what I'm hearing, I can't even go more than 150 miles with my kids (you know, I really have to wonder if there are economics because this stupid law and just who the f came up with such a STUPID law in the first place?!) for more than 90 days. I was told by a therapist that I could be ordered back to this state with the kids so first of all, that's going to mess them up, being in a place only to have to return here and second of all, that doesn't help me with my where the heck I'm going to go because I'll be right back where I started! And I'm sure my husband would get a HUGE kick out of that. Plus, if I have to be ordered back here, that could possibly jeopardize my getting custody. I have another older sister who suggest I just do whatever I want and not listen to what he says anymore and not do the things he wants me to do. This has everyone else concerned that he'll either try to kidnap at least our older daughter or retaliate violently.

Would someone please tell me what I can actually do?!

He called last night, starts mentioning that he probably has been in the wrong with how he's been treating me and how he probably did not plan his trip out very well (okay, who are you and what did you do with my husband?). Then it goes from there to he might be home early, doesn't really give me a full reason why just mentions something to the effects that there's been a difference of opinion and from what I got from the little he says, I think it's that he doesn't really approve of the church's teachings. This doesn't entirely surprise me, after all, the whole no shaving thing is not something the church he attends to follow. In fact, even his best friend who has left not only the church my husband has been going to but several other of the offshoots, STILL shaves so it seems to me like John may be leaving the whole Armstrong offshoots behind period. Hard to say but it's still a step in the wrong direction because he's keeping himself a prisoner of the law following these laws, he doesn't get at all that the laws no longer need to be followed but that's a discussion for another day, to be honest. So I really don't know when he will be home, could be any day now, just hoping that this whole thing doesn't totally screw up our finances because if it does, there's going to be some massive problems. Unfortunately, I think I'm just going to have to make some more phone calls, maybe even go and see someone in person because I really do not know what else to do. And I guess I'm just going to have to print off some of the stuff with the bank accounts and find out just what my options are and ask a lot of questions including what exactly can happen if I did decide to leave and go to my sister's.

At this point, I still really have no desire to stay with him. The religion is a huge problem and not one that's going to be fixed overnight, especially when he is SO disrespectful towards anyone who follows beliefs outside of his. Not to mention that our relationship has deteriorated so much, it's going to take a lot of work to get it back on track and it's not work I'm willing to do unless he makes some HUGE changes and they're changes he's not very likely willing to make (especially when he keeps saying that my asking for certain changes in order for me to stay is being manipulative). We continue to be at an impasse. And I don't see that changing ever.

I can't do it anymore.

2011-10-11T08:36:00.002-05:00

I never went into a marriage planning to leave it. When I married my husband, it felt right. It added security to our relationship. We were friends and lovers and now partners for life. We married eight years ago today. The pictures of us at our wedding show a couple in love. I looked happy, my husband looked at me with love. We were the picture of a couple very much in love.

Eight years and two children later, I'm done. I'm miserable. I'm lonely. My husband hasn't look at me the way he looked at me in those pictures in years. I don't feel needed by him. He gets his emotional needs met through his church and through our five year old daughter. We have slept in the same bed maybe a few times in the last year. Otherwise, we sleep in separate beds, in separate rooms. Sex has gotten less and less and when it happens, it's because I not only initiate it but practically beg and harass him for it.

This, along with other issues, has finally led me to decide I can't do this anymore. As much as being alone would suck, I would at least have the ability to make choices for my life. I would be able to celebrate Christmas. I would be able to pursue my own religious beliefs. I can own Harry Potter and watch the movies. It's sad but I find more positives in being on my own (even if I didn't get custody of the girls) than I do in continuing to be married.

I'm sad though. I'm broken hearted and once again, I wonder what's wrong with me. It just seems like many of the people in my life either don't seem to really love me at all or stop loving me.

Just realized that OCTOBER is the blog writing month.

2011-10-07T23:28:00.002-05:00

Dang it. I'm never good with these things. I should be writing more. I would love to do NaNoWriMo next month. I need SOMETHING to focus on when everything else is going crazy around me. My husband is still planning to attend the Feast of Tabernacles in the Dells even though he STILL has yet to ask anyone to drive him and our five year old down. Currently, it's the Day of Atonement. He's to fast today, all day from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. I have a hard time understanding these kinds of things but then, I have a hard time understand Christianity in general. Just seems like a lot of work for nothing, if you ask me.

Tuesday is my birthday. I turn 31. It's also my eighth wedding anniversary (don't ask me why I got married on my birthday; it seemed like a good idea at the time). My husband has Wednesday off in order to have time to get down to the Dells before sundown. He did not take Tuesday off and he's working three hours late on Monday. And in the meantime, he's somehow going to have to get everything ready to go before he leaves and he's not the most organized person in the world. He's also expecting to take our five year old with. I can't help but feel that I'm not even a priority for him. His religion is more important and I'm an afterthought, if even that. Just getting so tired of it all.

Need to make some very hard decisions.

2011-10-04T12:50:00.002-05:00

When John and Natalie returned from South Korea last October, we had a bit of a crisis from the beginning. He had returned with a full beard and told me that because the Bible says one is not to shave, he is no longer going to shave. I about booted him out then and there. He did end up spending the night next door because we had such a loud argument over it, the police were called. I was furious. It was just one more stupid, inane, asinine rule I had to tolerate because of his religious beliefs. And worse, it wasn't even one of the things the church he had been going to practiced! He did shave it off for awhile, at least long enough to find a job, but grew it back (again, without even talking to me about it or taking my feelings into consideration at all). It has greatly affected our marriage since then and yeah, okay, it's just a beard, I know but it's the lack of consideration that's a problem. He does not take my feelings into consideration. He goes on and on about how he has "no choice" in the matter because it's what the Bible says. That is such garbage! There is ALWAYS a choice! You don't HAVE to choose to follow some stupid rule! That's the whole thing behind free will. It's not like God is play a game of The Sims and clicking on you and forcing you to do certain things. You have the ability to make your own choices. Yes, there are consequences for the choices you make but you still have a choice. And this is one of those things I don't get. He's so AFRAID of not doing what he's supposed to do. I mean seriously? He's going to go to hell/the lake of fire for SHAVING?! Are you freaking kidding me?!

Like I said, that was almost a year ago and I was furious then. Now, I'm just tired. I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of trying to get him to do the things he needs to be doing (like filling out the paperwork that keeps the student loan people from garnishing his wages). I'm tired of asking him for his time, asking him for sex, asking him for anything really. We don't really talk and we don't plan. He's getting moodier and moodier all the time. He hates his job which usually means he will at some point lose it because once he starts hating his job, he doesn't put the effort into it and with the (what I think are) ADD issues he may have, it becomes very easy for him to end up losing his job. It's happened before, many many many times before. He wants to go to the Feast of Tabernacles. This requires him to miss a week of work. The last two times we've done this, he's lost his job within a few months. The first year we went was before I had our oldest daughter. He was working two jobs. He lost both of them less than three months later and that year was the WORST year we had financially and supposedly there is this idea that if you tithe and go to this stupid Feast, you'll be blessed financially. Yeah, hasn't happened yet. The next year that we went, he lost his job less than a month after we returned. Fortunately, we were able to get by on him subbing at the local school district so it wasn't quite as bad as it was in the past. BUT, we started having car issues and one of his sisters AND her son died shortly after we returned and because he missed so much work, we couldn't go to the funeral. Again, definitely NOT blessed going to this thing.

But he still wants to go. Only thing is is that we don't have a car. He doesn't have a way to get down to the site that's 90 miles away. He doesn't have a place to stay. He doesn't have a way of getting around the town that the site is in (no public transportation there really). Services are everyday during the week; some days there are two services. It's an eight day deal and he plans to take our five year old. I think she's going to be bored as can be and eventually get sick of the whole entire thing. I know I did the last time I went down and I was an adult! It's BORING! I have no intention of going. His way of punishing me for that is to not include me in any of the Feast gift giving (this IS supposed to be the replacement for Christmas). He is also supposed to be leaving the day after my birthday (which is also the same day as our wedding anniversary).

I can't do it anymore. I can't keep going like this where I'm expected to follow his beliefs, put up with whatever he comes up with that he's read out of the Bible, and yet not be able to follow any beliefs of my own. I'm supposed to put up with a lack of intimacy and friendship within my own relationship and be perfectly happy with it. I'm not happy with it and I refuse to bend over backwards and give up everything of myself just to get that from him. At some point, either in the near future (especially if he does go to the Feast) or somewhere down the road, I'm going to have to leave. He will never change and I will never be happy staying with him. It's just an absolutely terrifying thought for me. I think I would be better about it if I didn't have the kids but I do and I worry I can't do it all on my own, I really do. But I can't keep living this way either. *sigh*

Weight and health and all that stuff...

2011-09-27T11:55:00.002-05:00

Last Monday was kind of an interesting day for me. I woke up with what I thought were gas pains and about 12 hours later, I'm getting wheeled in to the OR to have my gall bladder removed. It definitely was not on my list of things to do and having my husband home for a week in order to recover (laproscopic surgery is definitely easier to recover from than traditional surgery!) while nice is not going to do our paychecks any good. Still, I had sort of expected that day to come. About 10 years or so ago, I had a kidney stone and when an ultrasound was done to find it, they found a stone in my gall bladder. My parents both had had theirs removed by the time they were in their early 40's and one of my older sisters had had hers removed at the age of 22 so I figured it was just a matter of time. Then, a month or so ago, I started getting pains in my right side here and there. It wasn't excruciating but it was noticeable. I figured that time was getting closer to having surgery. I made an appointment for a physical but couldn't get in until the end of next month. The gall bladder decided not to wait.

Naturally, when a part of your body fails and you find yourself in medical need, the first question that comes to mind is "what else is going to decide to go?" I did mention to my husband before going down to surgery if this was going to be the start of medical issues for me. Unfortunately, he decided to share that with a friend of his, a friend who is very judgmental about a lot of the things I do and on my weight. He made some comments to my husband I found very offensive including one comment where he basically says he doesn't understand how I can eat myself to illness and possibly even death. Thing is, other than on Skype, he hasn't seen me in over 5 years. He hasn't watched me eat. He doesn't know me. He doesn't know my history and he doesn't know my family medical history. He is making assumptions based on my weight and the very very few times he saw me, one of those times being when I was pregnant. He doesn't know the times when I was on diets trying to lose the weight and going to the gym to exercise. He doesn't know of all the weight loss books and exercise videos I have purchased over the years. He doesn't know how much I have fantasized about being thin and being accepted by people. He doesn't know how I have avoided people just because of the shame I have felt about my weight and how avoiding on person in particular because I feared her being disappointed me meant I never saw her again because she DIED from a brain tumor even though she was healthy, ate well, and was a runner. He doesn't know how often I have avoided being in pictures and having pictures taken of me because of my own feelings towards myself because of my weight and how I struggle with those feelings every day. And those feelings of inadequacy leads more to depression than to feeling motivated towards taking care of myself. Those feelings of inadequacy tends to more likely lead me to food than to exercise.

It hurt and angered me and it angered me even more that not only did he make a comment like that (among others) but then he goes on to say that he's glad my daughter is active and so far not picking up my inactive tendencies. She's FIVE! I was active too at that age! I had a 10 acre farm to run around on and was outside nearly every single day! I didn't really start to become inactive until my teens when my options for sports dried up because I wasn't good enough to get on any of the teams. And that was just the start. I'm glad she at least has a dad who is very active because she'll have someone to motivate her and be active with. I didn't have that. I didn't have parents who really were watching what they ate and us in turn. I spent a couple of years primarily under the care of my older brother who ate mostly hamburger helper while my mom attended school 50 miles away and those were the nights he was at home. Other nights I had to make my own dinner, a microwavable meal. I'm sure there were better options but my mom certainly didn't seek them out, not when our food budget was likely very limited (and ours is too but I try hard to buy food that is better than what I was fed as a child).

I won't deny that there were things I did after I moved out that didn't help with the weight and definitely encouraged the weight to go up at an alarming level. College food was not a good thing for me. I wish I could go back and make better choices knowing what I know now. It's definitely much easier to put the weight on than it is to take it off, that's for sure. And I've tried and I've failed and in failing, put even more weight on.

I won't deny though that there are things I can do now to improve my health and those are the things I need to work on, as hard as that is. Having had surgery has been a little bit of a push in the right direction. I have to be at least a little more mindful of what I eat as eating too much of the wrong thing can wreak havoc on my body. Exercise though is always a challenge. It's a challenge to find something I enjoy enough to do continuously. It's a challenge to find something I can do all year around (sorry, it gets below 0 around here, as low as -20 and more during the DAY and that's without windchill being factored in). It's very easy for me to get out of shape which is something that GREATLY frustrates me because it takes FOREVER for me to get into better shape. And so yes, exercise has been a source of frustration for me even though I know that it would greatly improve how I feel on many levels. Just doesn't help that I also struggle with depression and days I don't even want to get out of bed and function much less go and exercise.

Some people are able to just go out there and do it and do it no matter what the temperature, how they feel, etc. Some people are able to eat certain foods and ONLY those foods without being tempted to eat anything else. People call that will power and some do have a very strong will power. Others need a little more motivation and I definitely fall under the latter. I find I need a lot of support, encouragement, and (shall I say?) a sense that someone actually gives a damn. I find I need to be rewarded in some way or I lose that motivation. Getting into the habit is hard and finding the reason to get into the habit, I think, harder still, at least for me and especially when I have issues with depression.

Some people would say I'm just making excuses but unless you have been in my shoes, I don't think you have the right to judge. If weight isn't an issue for you, doubly so. It's one of those areas I've struggled with for a long time and I will probably continue to struggle in this area awhile longer. I don't think it's ever going to come easily for me though I have made some positive changes in the last ten years I think are important, especially since having children. In another ten years, I hope to make more positive changes. Nothing happens overnight though and I will probably always have a vice or two that threatens to trip me up, just like everyone else does. Till then, I guess I'll just keep working at it as best as I can.

My issues with religion.

2011-09-24T18:54:00.003-05:00

The "kingdom of Heaven" is a condition of the heart - not something that comes "upon the earth" or "after death."
Friedrich Nietzsche

Religion is kind of a difficult subject for me. To be honest, it has been for a long time. It started before I met my husband and marrying him and being exposed to his religion hasn't helped. This video sort of echoes how I feel about religion in general:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RviMdf7gng4&NR=1

The biggest issue I have with religion is the use of fear to get people to follow a bunch of inane rules that go above and beyond the basics, nit picky rules that set them apart from everyone else. It's one thing to follow rules that help you avoid hurting others. It's another to follow rules that are so outside the mainstream, it literally disrupts your life and your relationship with others. And this brings me to my second biggest issue, when following rules that set you drastically apart from others gives you a sense of superiority over those who do not follow the same rules you do. My issue is in seeing people almost sneer at those who do things differently because they have different beliefs. It can be seen in general in a Christian vs atheist situation but it can manifest itself among Christian religions too. I've seen it and I hate it and it turns me off of many Christians. The judging of and disrespect towards those with other beliefs drives me crazy and it is as far away from being a Christian as you can possibly get.

On the other hand, I have seen the opposite. I have seen Christians who try very hard and very humbly to act as much like Christ as possible. They don't judge. They're very open minded even when beliefs totally outside their own are brought up. They do all they can for their neighbors. They WANT to help others and feel that being a Christian is all about helping others and showing love towards others. They are supportive and help those who are struggling with spiritual matters. They are positive. They're not perfect and they're willing to admit it.

I know two couples. One couple shares the same beliefs my husband does. I'll admit, I don't know them all that well and I've only been at their house a few times but the times I have been there, it's been very tense. I have felt that my behavior was being scrutinized and I would be judged on the things I did (and I was and later on also judged even for the books I owned when the husband helped my husband move our things one time). I was made to feel that I was a long way from being where they were at. They would make comments about people and their beliefs and even their weight often acting as if they were superior because they held beliefs that they felt were THE beliefs and those who didn't hold those beliefs were inferior. It was very hard to be around them. They were very stingy with help, acting resentful and using that as another means of feeling superior. THEY didn't need help so others should get their act together too and if they were doing what they were supposed to do, they wouldn't need help anyway. Their children are limited as far as who they can be with and spend time with due to concerns of influence.

Another couple I have been very blessed to know. I met the wife online in a group and we met a few times in person over the next 4 years. When I returned from South Korea, I spent the first two weeks in a hotel while I figured out my living situation until I had the baby and my husband and daughter returned to the US. When this friend found out, she talked to her husband and they both offered me a place to stay for the summer. She helped me find a midwife and drove me to the appointments even though she was over an hour away. When I struggled with making decisions, she would talk to me. She and her husband were very devout in their beliefs but it was never pushed on me though offered if I was interested in joining. She helped me out as much as she could even giving me things for my apartment when I moved out and things for the baby. She was my doula for the birth and was absolutely wonderful with her support. I am in awe of her and her husband's generosity. Members of their church were very helpful to me as well (unlike my husband's church that barely even acknowledged I was home much less offered a helping hand in anyway). Even if they hadn't given me as much as they did, the fact that they opened their home up to me, someone they barely knew, is a testament of how loving and giving they are. They're both in school now, preparing for a life in the church, preparing to give even more of themselves to others and I'm just absolutely amazed by them. They are examples to uphold. They are good and moral and kind and decent and for sure deserve to be a part of the kingdom of Heaven (if there is one). If the world were full of people like them, it would be a peaceful world. And no, they're not perfect because no one is but my time with them was probably the most peaceful time I experienced in my life and I will always be grateful for that.

But, to those like my husband and his friend, that's not enough. They are not following the "rules". They need to be following the Old Testament part of the Bible. They should not celebrate Christmas or Halloween. Those things are evil and pagan. And it makes me sad because my husband could really do well to have a friend like my friend's husband instead of the friend he currently has. It makes me sad that there is so much of a sense of fear behind what they do. They really struggle, I think, to enjoy THIS world because they are so afraid of losing out in the next world. They are afraid of the Lake of Fire and it is because of that fear that they totally forget the important thing, love. They may preach it and talk about it but they don't practice it. They don't practice love. It's all about control and making sure that the rules are being followed and making sure the kids are following the rules and are not being influenced to stray or rebel. It's all about fear and fear is what can make religion dangerous. When fear is the basis of a religion, when control is used, religion becomes dangerous.

I will not believe something because of fear. I will not follow some arbitrary rules because I'm afraid of hell or the Lake of Fire. If I do something, I want it to be because it is the right thing to do. I don't want to hurt others. I may not have many beliefs but there are things that are important to me. Unfortunately, much of what is important to me has been deemed unacceptable by my husband because of his beliefs. And he will not respect my beliefs though he demands respect of his. And that I have many issues with as well.

So religion continues to be a struggle for me. I do not believe what my husband believes. I tried and it just didn't feel right. I didn't feel right. It always felt like I was forcing myself to believe these things and to do these things and I couldn't stand behind those beliefs 100%. Anything outside of those beliefs though are not accepted here in my house. So I'm left adrift, not sure what I believe, not respected for any beliefs I do have, and feeling lost and alone because I don't really have anywhere I really belong because I don't belong here really with someone who so thoroughly rejects any beliefs I may have that are outside of his. And I'm not free to find a place I do belong. So it's been a hard road and a lonely road and a very lonely marriage and that is why I struggle so much with religion. It has always been at least somewhat of a struggle for me but it has gotten much worse over the years and sadly, I will probably never be able to really find myself spiritually until I leave my marriage. Sad that it will have to come to that but really, that seems to be the only option I have.

It's been awhile and I still don't really have much to write about.

2011-09-15T15:27:00.005-05:00

Not that there hasn't been much going on because there has. I mean, it has been over three months now but it's hard to think about writing much of anything these days. To be honest, it's a struggle just getting from one day to the next. For a long time now, things have been stagnate for me. I wish I could say that I enjoy parenting but when you have a spouse who has very rigid ideas about things, it's hard to. And lately, it's hard for me to enjoy much of anything about life. There's nothing to look forward to. Fall, while it's my favorite time of year, just reminds me that there are holidays coming up that I can't participate in. The sense of loneliness and isolation is nearly unbearable. We identify with people who share in the same traditions and rituals as we do and when we don't have those, we feel lost and adrift. At least, I do. Due to my husband's religious beliefs, Halloween and Christmas are forbidden. I am not allowed to celebrate those holidays and I am not allowed to participate in anything relating to those holidays with my children. They are not even to watch a TV show that has either of those holidays in the episode but are to turn off the TV immediately. It's easy to take for granted how interwoven those holidays are in the fabric of our lives from October on until you find yourself not able to celebrate those holidays and forced to avoid them at all costs. It's nearly impossible to do so, especially in the US. It's not quite as hard in South Korea.

The Feast of Tabernacles is supposed to soften the blow but it has not due to the fact that the last time we went was back in 2007 and less than a month after we returned (it's a week long deal where you are required to travel somewhere else in order to partake in it and you save up and use 10% of the last year's income in order to partake in it), my husband lost his job. When we went in 2005, my husband lost both of his jobs within three months so it's not something I eagerly anticipate especially when saving up the 10% at this time is quite a hardship for us. But supposedly, it's supposed to all work out to being enough money for a nice vacation for a week never mind that the week also entails 2 hour church services every day (and some days, TWO two hour long services). These services are tedious enough for an adult, for a child, they must be absolutely mind numbing and not surprisingly enough, many children struggle to sit still leaving many a weary mother to wander the hallways (because, at least at the site we've gone to the last two times, they have yet to set up any kind of child friendly deal like Sunday school; the best they have to offer is a nursing area for mothers to hide).

My husband wants to go even though doing so would be extremely difficult. We don't have a car which is an absolute necessity for something like this. He wants to go even though he has yet to make any kinds of plan to do so. People reserve their lodging in June, months ahead of time. The Feast is in October this year and he doesn't even really know what he plans to do. I will not be going. There is little point in me doing so when I will have to spend the entire time starting at a TV set, trying to find something to do while my husband and older daughter are gone all day. I did that the first time I went down with him, back when I was pregnant with our firstborn. It wasn't fun. And though it's supposed to be a time for members of the different congregations to get together and see each other again, no one really noticed we were there, at least not enough to want to get together with. I have come to find that members of my husband's church really tend to not have much to do with each other. Some churches, you find members getting together for various things in the church and for fellowship and for things outside of the Sunday service. With his church, members get together ONLY on the Sabbath. They just make a really long day of it. My husband and daughter are gone on Saturdays not just for the two hour services but for a good hour or so after that. I guess that's fine but to me, it just doesn't seem like anyone has a relationship outside of the church and that's the part that frustrates me and it especially frustrated me when I returned from South Korea alone and almost 30 weeks pregnant. It's terribly lonely and when you add to that the isolation that tends to come from having to avoid everyone from October on because you can't celebrate certain holidays, it gets really isolating and when you add to that the cold and the days getting dark earlier and earlier, it's a recipe for severe depression.

This last year, I've lost a number of friends. One friend ended our relationship for the umteenth time because her relationship ended with my nephew (too long of a story to go into now). Supposedly, she was going to get back to me when the pain of her break up wasn't so hard to bear that it interfered with our relationship. Yeah, that was back in December and she's back to dating my nephew so I don't know what her deal is there other than the usual ill treatment of me. I don't even know why I consider her a friend other than the fact that I've known her close to 20 years now but I suppose when you take away the years we were not talking, it's probably considerably less than that. Another friend passed away and that has been very difficult for me because he was a replacement for my dad who never was the most stellar parent in the world and now that he's where he's at, I find it easier to just not talk to him at all. A third friend moved away. We still meet up here and there though when she is in town so her moving away is nowhere near as dramatic as the lost of the other two friends. Still, it's been a difficult change. My older sister also moved away to another state leaving our family feeling more fragmented than ever. Not that it was holding up all that well with my mom being gone but since she's the oldest, her moving so far away has had a great impact. There really isn't an older sibling now for me to rely on. My brother is nearby, yes, but not really available. It just leads even more to that sense of isolation and loneliness.

I suppose it wouldn't be so difficult if my marriage also wasn't struggling. Having kids put a huge strain on our marriage. It forced me to stay home and my husband to be the primary provider. Money is always tight. Both of us are always tired. We don't get much time together and unfortunately, my husband would rather prioritize time with the girls than with me. I know he can balance both out but he chooses not to and it's frustrating. He won't get a babysitter so we can go on a date. Dates are rare, very very rare. We had one about 11 months ago. Before that, it was more than a year. And before that, even longer. He would rather spend time as a family. We spend most of our time as a family. We ARE a family so it's not like we're not getting any family time. When he's home, it's pretty much family time. I want time with my husband. I want time with him to talk to him and plan our lives and figure out just where we're going down the road. No, instead, I may find out what his plans are when he just spontaneously mentions them or I find out that he's been making plans and preparing without even discussing it with me (he had started doing some of the preparation for going to Korea months before I even suggested we go back when he knew I had no desire at all to go). I don't know what he wants to do five years down the road or more. I know he wants to live in CA or AZ because he hates the Midwest and he hates winter. That's about it. I don't know how he plans to accomplish this and sadly, I can see him being in the same place five to ten years from now, the only difference is that he'll have worked and been fired from just about every single job that's available in this area. I know I have little confidence in him. It doesn't help that he really has been fired from just about every single job he has ever had. He starts to get bored and frustrated with where he's at and then he starts to screw up and make mistakes. Sometimes, because he doesn't take care of himself, he'll start to fall asleep on the job and gets fired because of that. He's lost numerous jobs due to falling asleep.

But I'm not supposed to be working. I'm supposed to be staying at home and taking care of the girls. I'm supposed to be the house wife. I'm supposed to be homeschooling. I'm supposed to be breastfeeding and doing the shopping and the laundry. I'm supposed to be following his beliefs as far as what the girls are to learn and believe. I'm not supposed to celebrate the holidays I have grown up with and loved as a child. I'm not supposed to go to school. I'm not supposed to do anything that alters my body such as have a tubal so I don't have to worry about becoming pregnant with any more children. I'm supposed to feed my children healthy food with as few ingredients as possible and I'm supposed to avoid high fructose corn syrup and MSG even though we get food assistance from the government that is limited. I'm supposed to be okay with him taking up to 20% out of each and every check: 10% for tithe and 10% for the Feast of Tabernacles. I'm supposed to be okay with not being on his checking account because he couldn't be bothered to wait until I could go with him before he set up the account. I'm supposed to be okay with having almost no say at all in MY life but to follow him where he wants to go even if that means going to South Korea YET AGAIN because he's not happy with the money he's making here.

I'm not okay. I'm miserable. I hate my life. I have days where I want to die. I have many nights where I go to sleep thinking that I will be just fine with not waking up the next day because the thought of living another 40 years depresses the crap out of me. I have nothing to look forward to. Yes, I have my children and yes, I must be a horribly selfish person for not thinking of my children but are they really mine? I mean yeah, I gave birth to them and I went through quite a bit giving birth to them but he makes all the rules and the rules do not take into account anything I would like to do with them. I can't take my older daughter to some activity that is going on on a Saturday because she's going to church with her dad and it's the Sabbath anyway so she can't do anything that day never mind that just about every single freaking thing that goes on for kids in this freaking town is on a freaking Saturday. I can't take her trick or treating or take her Christmas shopping for her dad and baby sister. I'm constantly faced with a list of "don't"s. Don't take her to Mc Donald's; don't have her around these people; don't have her involved with that; don't get her these books; don't let her watch this on TV. It's never ending. I'm tired of it. This was never how I envisioned a marriage. It's not a marriage. I don't have a partner. I have a father. I have a marriage that is similar to how things was when I was 18 and still living at home. I'm told I'm rebellious because I watch shows and read books he doesn't approve of. I'm told I'm rebellious when I bring home HAM for myself.

I had a controlling father, a VERY controlling father who was also very chauvinistic. The man literally (and I'm using the word correctly when I say this) would not make a sandwich for himself if there was a woman in the house. He felt that he should be waited on and worshiped because he was a man. I feared him so I didn't do much to fight back even though he was also verbally abusive. Towards the end, I did though. Towards the end I started to lose that fear. I don't fear my husband and it shows. I know I don't respect him. I run my mouth and say whatever I feel like saying whether the kids are around or not because I know it ticks him off. I have become that sick of him and it's getting to where I'm so sick of him that I would rather be alone than live with him and the children. I would rather have no one in my life and be completely and totally alone.

I should leave. I know I should leave and I think about leaving all the time. I'm afraid of leaving the girls. I know he would never hurt them. That's not the problem. He has trouble enough taking care of himself though and I fear that would carry over to the girls. I don't think he could handle all of the details he would have to handle like doctors and things like that. I worry that he would be even more likely to lose his job and the girls would suffer due to that. I'm also still nursing and feel that obligation heavily. Even though my youngest is over a year, I nursed her older sister considerably longer and I don't wish to shortchange her--at least not too much. I haven't even looked into medications even though I have probably been fighting post partum depression for well over a year because I'm afraid of taking anything that would force me to wean. I feel that sense of obligations all mothers feel, sometimes to the detriment of their own mental and physical health. And I could never take them with because my husband would fight me and it would be a vicious nasty fight and I'm afraid he would win and to be honest, I don't think I'm a good enough mother to not lose.

So I constantly feel a sense of failure in my life because I can't do much more than survive each day (and boy does that make me feel like I'm living with my parents again). But instead of having school to help me feel good about myself (because I had always been a good student except when things at home were REALLY hard which made high school kind of a struggle to get through), I have nothing. The mommy wars especially have me feeling like a colossal failure to the point where I avoid most parenting groups. If I could do it all over again, I would not have gotten married. I for sure would not have had any children. And it's not because I don't love them but because I'm not doing much better than my parents did with me. And the sad thing is, I'm starting to understand more and more why they were the way they were.

To be 30 and feel like life isn't going to get any better than this is positively depressing. And the idea that there's at least another 35-40 or more years of this is enough to make me want to drink to a stupor. All I want to do is run away and find myself and find an actual purpose for my life. And no, religion is not going to help. Religion is crap. The Bible is crap. Too many people out there use religion to enslave others. I want nothing to do with it. I want nothing to do with busting my butt for a POSSIBLE everlasting life. Not to mention, I hate this life enough to want to check out at times, WHY would I want to live forever? Even in the spirit? I just don't have faith that there is all that much outside of this life. And I don't fear hell or the lake of fire or wherever it is that bad/evil people are supposed to go when they die. To be honest, I fear life more. Physical pain is nothing compared to the deep emotional pain I feel day to day. Even if there is NOTHING out there after I die, it can't be much worse than this.

All I want (and I have EVER wanted) is to be loved and accepted for ME. Not loved and accepted because of what can be gotten from me. Not love and accepted based on my religious beliefs. Loved and accepted for ME as I am NOW, faults and all.

Hmm, beginning to think I prefer the cold...

2011-05-26T23:43:00.003-05:00

At least with cold weather, you don't get tornadoes. On Sunday, my hometown was hit by a tornado. There has not been a tornado here in almost 45 years. Last month, we had a really warm day that turned into severe weather when a cold front went through. The tornado siren sounded and we went down to the basement only to find that the storm didn't produce anything. This time, it did. An EF-2 tornado struck the south side part of my town touching down just a mere block or so away from one of our hospitals. It then took a NE path through town crossing 4 highways before dissipating near the bluffs. What's absolutely shocking is that despite NUMEROUS close calls, there were NO serious injuries or fatalities. Considering that our tornado struck a mere hour plus before Joplin, MO was hit, I consider us all extremely lucky. To add to that incredible luck is the fact that the siren nearest the area that was hit did not sound. It's been dead for a number of years. The warning that would have sounded through the weather radio also did not occur due to a malfunction. By the time the warning came over the weather radio, it was too late. If you were not watching TV, surfing the internet, or set up with a warning system over your cell phone, you did not get a warning. My brother was one of those people who did not even know a tornado hit until my sister called him to find out if he was okay. At the time, we didn't know where it hit. Fortunately, he was 8 blocks away from the path.

I had a chance to take a look down in the area the next morning and it was just amazing. Large trees were down at the room or snapped in half. Some homes were hit really hard and others barely touched. My old apartment that I had 8-9 years ago had no damage while houses on either side were hit. What's absolutely amazing is while trees were brought down, lilac bushes were left unscathed, blossoms intact. It looked like a war zone down there and I imagine that the neighborhoods down there will change bit by bit as trees are removed and houses town down and rebuilt.

Some of the stories that have been told are simply amazing. One couple rode the storm out in their car and survived. They come out of the car to find the apartment had been damaged severely. Another rode out the tornado in his bathroom and emerged to find no roof over the rest of his apartment. A bus driver basically drove into the storm head on and got through it without a scratch. It was a rain wrapped tornado so no one could see it and because of that there weren't even any pictures of it and officials for awhile were not even sure a tornado had hit. But the damage was clear that it was a tornado that struck.

We lucked out. Looking at what happened to Joplin, things could have been SO much worse. An EF-5 would have damaged the hospital and left a devastating path of destruction through my town. A storm hitting 24 hours later would have severely impacted rush hour traffic. We lucked out, massively.

Still, the whole thing has left me feeling unsettled. I live a mere 3 1/2 to 4 miles away from where the tornado hit. The last tornado hit the airport which is not all that far from me. I have been having nightmares since then and hearing anything about a tornado/storm makes me nervous. We're due for another really warm day on Monday and a cold front coming through. The Weather Channel is already talking about the possibility of severe weather in my area. I'm not looking forward to this. My husband will be at work and I'll be home alone with the girls. As much as I was done with winter, I do have to say that cold weather does keep the severe weather down.

It's been kind of a long (and COLD) month.

2011-04-30T23:04:00.001-05:00

March ended on a rather somber note. Just after 2am on the 31st, a dear friend of our family passed away. He's actually the father of my younger sister's first husband who was killed back in 2003 by my father (long story there that I won't get into today). My father even before then was not the warmest father in the world. In fact, in many ways he was quite abusive both verbally and later on, physically. So, I never really had the greatest relationship with him even though we were similar in many ways and had a lot in common. My mother was also arrested and charged with being a party to the crime, first degree intentional homicide (my father was charged with first degree intentional homicide). Both were tried in two separate trials and both were found guilty and sentenced to live in prison without any chance of parole. So basically I have no parents in the sense that they are not in my life. I am not allowed to see them. I can write to them and my mother does call me collect but that's about it. They were not at my wedding. They have never met my children and very possibly never will (there is concern that they could still victimize my younger sister and I since the murder occurred in my apartment and I saw it happen so that's part of the reason why at this point I'm not allowed to see them). The last time I saw my mother was when she was here for my dad's trial in August of 2004. I saw my father a year later when he was in court for some motion he was trying to put through.

Jesse, the father of my sister's first husband, sort of unofficially adopted all of us four kids after everything went down. And for almost eight years, he was like a dad to me and the only grandparent my children really knew (other than my older daughter talking to my mom once in a great while). He was there at my wedding even though I barely knew him back then (even went and got fitted for the tux so that he could be dressed for the occasion). He was there to hold my oldest shortly after she was born. I would call him and talk to him and he would stop by and see my girls. During my youngest daughter's colic period, he was the only one who could hold her and calm her down and it was because of this that we started calling him The Baby Whisperer. He was a good friend and a wonderful and generous man who would give the shirt off his back and the shoes on his feet and do anything he could to help his kids out.

Last March, I found out he had lung cancer. He was told that without treatment, he would have only two months. With treatment, he might have two years. He started undergoing treatment for it, getting both chemotherapy and radiation. He was getting radiation at the time Isabelle was born so he didn't get to meet her until she was one month old. Even with the treatment though, the cancer spread. Around Christmas time, he was told he had about six months. Then he got worse. In February, he was told he had a month/month and a half. I got a call March 27th that he was in the hospital. He never regained consciousness.

The funeral was April 5th and he was laid to rest in a grave next to his son. It still feels odd sometimes not being able to call him and talk to him. I used to call him all the time, even when I was in Korea and phone calls were very expensive. The world has seemed much emptier since he died. He had so much energy and life within him that it just doesn't seem real that he's not here.

So that's been difficult to deal with at times. Shortly before that, my older sister moved away to another state and that's been hard too. It's hard not to feel an overwhelming sense of loneliness when people close to you leave so April has been particularly difficult this year. Doesn't help that outside of a couple of warm days (including one especially warm day that brought with it a severe storm and almost hit us with a tornado too) it's been quite chilly. We at the end of April and we're still getting nights that are below freezing and even snow! Makes me wonder when it's really going to start getting warm outside.

Getting just a tad tired of winter here...

2011-03-24T01:58:00.002-05:00

I seem to remember a groundhog saying that spring was going to be early. So much for that! We did get our first spring thunderstorm early Tuesday morning and later Tuesday evening. This was followed the very next morning with--believe it or not--SNOW!!! Yes, we got about two inches of snow here following the almost two inches of rain we got the day before. And with the snow came the cold, lows around 15 degrees expected tonight with temperatures going lower each night through Sunday which is expected to be around 9 degrees. Really? I mean, it IS almost April for crying out loud! I'm getting sick of this! I swear, the older I get, the more I hate winter and the more I want to get out of Wisconsin for good.

The computer works again!

2011-03-22T01:02:00.003-05:00

Though to be honest, it's been working for more than a week now. I'm SO glad too and it didn't take much to fix it at all. I didn't even have to take it in. I hadn't been allowing Windows to update my computer in awhile due to the fact that one time when I had, my wi fi was disabled. Somehow, the updates got turned back on and I guess enough of them were loaded to take care of the virus problem. When I turned on the computer while talking to the tech person on the phone, a whole bunch of things started scrolling down the screen and the computer was looking for errors. When that was all done, my desktop loaded and I was no longer getting error messages about the virus. Only problem was my computer wasn't able to go online. The tech person was able to walk me through to fix that and it wasn't long before the computer was up and running again just as it was before. Whew! That was a huge relief for me. I did download and install an antivirus and I passcoded the computer so that not just anyone can get on it. I hate to have to do that but John's been going on it while I'm gone and not even bothering to ask me if he could and it was starting to really get to me. Sadly that's one of the many issues we have right now.

So the computer's working and spring is on the way so I thought I would change the template again. At least this one didn't take quite as much work as the last one. lol

Posting from the library.

2011-03-07T18:00:00.002-06:00

My computer which is my lifeline as that is the main source of social interaction for me (yes, I know, it's pathetic) is dead. While I was at the store on Friday, John went online on Internet Explorer (I usually use Fire Fox), clicked on a page, and my poor computer was hit. While it still turns on and goes to my desktop fine, I get hit with error message upon error message saying I have a virus and I'm unable to go online or even open a word document. So I'm at the library, catching up on things but only get an hour to use it. SO frustrating. I hate this and I was FURIOUS with John for going online without even asking me. He doesn't feel needs to and it's one more issue we have, his complete lack of respect towards my things. So, I will be taking the computer in tomorrow where I bought it over a year ago and hopefully it can be fixed. If not, I'll be in the market for a new computer. *sigh*

This no car thing is getting REALLY old.

2011-02-05T17:41:00.002-06:00

Back in September, I made the mistake of getting a place with my younger sister. I knew it was a bad idea. We've had problems in the past living together and I knew at anytime, my husband and daughter would come home and then there would be even more problems. My sister and husband do not get along. But, the friend I was living with was getting ready to sell her house and needed to get the room I was staying in ready for that. Isabelle was starting to have issues with colic and I really didn't know when John and Natalie would be returning to the US. My sister had two weeks to find a new place to live because where she was living, the landlord would not let her stay so she had to go. She has three kids and had such a bad rental history that it was next to impossible for her to find place. We found a 3 bedroom apartment that was right next door to members of my sister's first husband's family. The landlord was not overly concerned with rental references, and it was a three bedroom apartment which we were going to need for the six people who were going to be living there. We got the place and moved in. She needed some help with babysitting because she was both working and going to school full time. One of the things I had expected was some help with transportation (I mean, I was footing most of the bill for the apartment as I paid about 90% of the rent and security deposit and I was babysitting for free). Things did not exactly work out that way. And when John and Natalie returned, there were some huge problems and my sister moved out less than two months into the lease (she was able to get taken off the lease though).

This left us with no car. And while we live right on the bus line, the bus system itself is horribly inconvenient. It runs every half an hour until about 6 pm and then once an hour until 10:40. That's during the week. During the weekends, it's once an hour. Some areas have even less coverage, once an hour until almost 6 Monday through Friday. One area in particular even lost coverage, from 10:25 am to 1:25 pm, there are no bus runs. Problem with this route is that the two big grocery stores on that side of town (and also one of the cheapest grocery stores in town) is along it. These are the two stores we go to the most. The rest of the stores are more expensive with items up to $1 or more than what you would pay at the cheaper store.

John works until 3:30 during the week. He's off on Fridays. Other than Fridays, he can't go to the cheaper store. Then there's the fact that we try to shop only once a week. When we lived in Korea, we didn't have a car. We were shopping almost every single day in order to replenish supplies because when you don't have a car, you're limited in how much you can buy because you have to carry it home. So there's the time thing there too. It's incredibly time consuming to take the bus to the store several times a week because you can't carry home a week's worth of groceries.

I'm just beyond frustrated right now. We've gotten by using the neighbor's car because my sister's first husband's dad sort of adopted us kids so he has always helped us out and has said we can use the car whenever it is available. It used to be available quite often and so we didn't have any problems getting out to shop but now they've had some car problems and the car isn't available as often and now we're finding ourselves without a way to get groceries. I HATE asking people to take me to the store. I don't know a lot of people who are willing to do this. My sister couldn't even be bothered to take me to the store when she lived here and I was babysitting for her. Forget asking her now. My one friend probably would but she has done SO much for me, I hate asking her for anymore help. My brother probably would but then I'm having to kick in about $20 or more in groceries for him and I can't afford it. So I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know if we're going to get anything back on our taxes because John only worked a month and a half before the end of the year. Cars are not cheap. Getting a car licensed and insured and gassed up is not cheap. Keeping a car running is definitely not cheap. But we really do not have any other options.

I hate how politicians go on and on about all the things we need to be doing to reduce global warming and stuff like that but when it comes down to it, they really don't do anything to SUPPORT making earth friendly life style choices other than to sign into law things that take away our FREEDOM to make choices about what we buy. A ton of money went into building this bus station downtown and the bus routes were all changed to include it making the whole thing a huge deal and yet the bus routes and times are SO inconvenient that only people who absolutely do not have a car are going to use the bus. Anyone else isn't going to waste their time. Why take the bus (even if it does cost a lot less to use than a car each month) if it takes about two hours to get from one end of town to the other when it takes only 30 minutes at the most to do it by car! They could make riding the bus FREE and it still wouldn't get many people riding it (and they do make it free too, once a month). John has the choice of catching the bus right outside of our apartment and taking it downtown and catching another bus in order to get to work or walking seven blocks to catch the bus that will take him to work. He usually makes the walk which isn't a problem most days of the week but it's winter in Wisconsin and he's done this on mornings where the temps have been as low as -12 or more degrees (and that's before the windchill). It's just really frustrating and I'm especially frustrated by the fact that instead of my sister giving me her car when she got her new one (since the car was given to her), she sold it instead. And instead of paying me back the money she owed me for rent when she moved out, she took her entire tax return (that she had to call and brag to me about when we've been struggling for the last three months to pay our rent in time) and spent it on a car. Sometimes, it's really hard not to hate her.

I'm just getting to where I'm going to post an ad on Craig's list offering $30/month to someone who can drive me to the store once a week to get groceries because this is getting absolutely absurd.

Struggling...cont.

2011-01-31T23:13:00.000-06:00

I HATE that there is such a taboo out there about hating being a parent. I wasn't even sure I wanted to have kids when I met John. At first, we both decided we didn't want kids. Both of us struggled with less than ideal childhoods (John's in some ways was even more messed up than mine; he wasn't even raised by his bio parents but by his half sister from his dad's first marriage). Eventually that changed after we married and I started trying to figure out my life purpose. Looking back, sometimes I think I should have just not have had kids. It's not that I don't like my kids because I do and I love them and they're the best part about being a parent, it's not the kids thing at all. It's the isolation, the constant mommy wars that divide mothers and makes it next to impossible to have ANY friends. It's the LONELINESS. It's the feeling like a failure when you can't do everything possible for your kids because there's only one income but feeling guilty too for even thinking of going back to work and not being with your kids all day. It's the damned if you do, damned if you don't feeling that constantly follows you around and that feeling that no matter what you do, you're going to completely and totally screw up your kids. It's the feeling that what you do is NEVER enough. I hate it. I hate feeling that way. I hate feeling like a complete and total failure. I hate spending most of my time alone even with two kids and a husband at home. I'm a dishrag, a sponge, or a mop. I'm used when needed and used all the time but not always asked how I'm doing or how I'm feeling or how my day was.

No doubt, people will read this and say I need to stop playing the victim, get up and get out there and do something. It's amazing how people who know little to nothing about me at all will take something I say in a post and just think they can give me simplistic advice to follow and that following their advice will solve all of my problems. And if I don't follow their advice, well then again, I'm just playing the victim.

There are times I honestly do not know what to do. I don't have a mother I can call and talk to for advice. I don't have a family that is supportive that I can go to when I'm having a hard time. I'm basically faking it, trying to do it all with little support and a TON of conflicting advice. And seriously, there are days when drinking myself to oblivion starts to look real darn good.

I had my older daughter which was a clusterpuck and a half (cesarean birth that totally traumatized me and triggered the post traumatic stress issues I already had). My marriage dang near disintegrated when my husband decided to go all cult-follower on me. I moved in with my sister. We patched things up. We found our own place in another city. Two years after that, my husband goes to Korea, we follow him four months later, and less than a year after we get there, I'm pregnant again. I return to the US, have the baby (which thank goodness was the empowering VBAC I needed), my husband and daughter return three months later, and again, I'm dealing with power struggles between us as my husband goes all zealous on me. This time, I don't know if I can take it anymore. I don't know how much more I can give. Add to that family issues that just keep getting worse and worse, and I just want to run away and go hide in a cave.

It's not just I feel I'm failing at being a parent. I feel I'm failing at life. I'm not getting anything out of it and I really wonder if this is it, if this is as good as it's going to get which really isn't all that good. I'm still trying to figure out the purpose of even being alive. And that's been a struggle in and of itself for the last eight years having severe survivor's guilt from my brother-in-law's murder. I still sometimes feel I never should have survived that day and because of that, I feel stuck, I feel that no matter what I do I'm stuck because really, I never should have been here. And that feeling gets worse all the time and nothing helps. I see everything falling into place for other people and I wonder if it will ever be that way for me or if there will always be this sense of failing that I constantly carry. I don't know. I just don't know anymore. I don't know what to do. I don't know who to trust or what to believe or what higher power to look up to. I feel stuck and not able to grow up, yet growing older every day. And I have no control over anything, just dragged along for the ride, completely and totally helpless.

Struggling...

2011-01-06T17:38:00.003-06:00

It's hard to feel that parenting is a good enough purpose when I feel like such a failure at it. I'm not the "fun" parent. I'm definitely not the "calm" parent. To be honest, that I survived my childhood is nothing short of a miracle. A therapist who had worked with my mom and dad for over a decade even asked me how I got through it all. I lived in a very dysfunctional household where I was, at best, merely emotionally neglected and at worse, verbally and physically abused. I did not even feel safe enough to go to my own mother if I had been hurt and would try to hide even when I had gotten BURNED. So how can I even begin to teach my children anything about love and treating others with kindness when I wasn't raised that way myself?

Since my husband has his idea as to how our children should be parented, I feel like there is little I can even do. I'm out of touch with my five year old, having been away from her as long as I was and I'm still trying to figure this new baby out, a baby that until very recently, had colic and, since that ended, has struggled to keep weight on and gain weight.

So actually, to be honest, right now, parenting seems to only point out to me my many failures. And so, more and more, I seek to find SOMETHING I'm good at again. It's not so much I'm looking for a career or anything that would take me away from them but something I can accomplish and succeed at. I'm 30 years old and I can't even DRIVE! So there's this feeling not so much that I'm missing out on life but that something is missing in my life. And maybe the solution is nothing more than to seek out a new craft or find a church. I don't know but I have to find SOMETHING because this can't be it. I don't know very many mothers who do ONLY the parenting thing. There is SOMETHING else they are doing whether they are involved with their church or have a hobby or sell something online or write articles, SOMETHING. They are not just mothers.

Changes!

2011-01-02T14:27:00.002-06:00

New year, new decade (because, really it is when you think about it as the first year was 1, not 0 so the end of the decade would be 10, not 09), time to make the blog look a little new too. First is the name, changed that (especially since our shoebox has increased substantially since returning to the US and to NORMAL housing prices ha ha ha) and plan to change colors, template, who knows what else! So...stay tuned!

Goodbye 2010!

2010-12-31T23:42:00.002-06:00

It's been a really crazy year with an overseas move, a new baby, and a HUGE readjustment for EVERYONE. I'm incredibly grateful that I got through the year in once piece and got to have my VBAC to boot. I'm very thankful for friends who have been there for me who have helped me out greatly and continue to help me out. I will never be able to repay that debt but truly truly appreciate everything they have done for me.

These past couple of months since John and Natalie have returned home have not been the easiest. It's been (like I mentioned) a huge readjustment. John's reaction to major changes and milestones in our family have been to delve deeper into his religious beliefs, beliefs that I just don't have (though I have tried to go along with them). I don't know what this will mean for us. This year marks the beginning of a new decade. Ten years ago, my life was very much different. I was 20; I was going to college. I had at least somewhat of an idea what I wanted with my life. My parents were still around and my family still consisted of them and my siblings. John was a part of that life but sort of a fringe part of it as we were not yet married. My life changed drastically during that decade in a way I never thought it would. I'm hoping that this decade will be more stable and I will figure out what direction I want to go in.

At times, I feel lost. I don't know where I want to go much less how to get there. I have no path for I haven't even gotten out of the driveway. I know that there is more to life than this. I know that I have talents that grow rusty from disuse. I used to sing. I used to play the piano. I used to write. I read things others write, people who are years younger than me and wonder how it is that they seem to know SO MUCH more than I do. I don't just feel lost, I feel like my own intelligence is slipping, that my life has lost meaning and purpose and I don't know exactly what to do about that. I have made mistakes, many mistakes, the big one being letting others tell me what my purpose in life should be based upon some book. I have let others put me in "my place" because I felt that that what I was supposed to do and in doing so have allowed myself to become almost nothing. And that needs to change. I don't know who I am anymore but I hope that sometime in the next decade, I figure that out. I can't keep going on like this, having no purpose other than to birth and raise children. Not that this isn't a noble cause because it is and I don't wish for that to end at all but only want to add to it. I just need to figure out how. I just need to find myself again and maybe, find God too.

John and Natalie are back in the USA.

2010-10-09T12:22:00.003-05:00

Thank goodness! He did have to hand over his bank card though which just really ticks me off. The way some of these employers treat their employees over there...seriously I do not AT ALL recommend teaching in Korea. It is the BIGGEST scam EVER. The sad thing is we've been pretty lucky compared to other people I've talked to. Some have literally gone through their savings being over in that country and have gotten screwed by their employers in the end. There's just not enough protection for English teachers over there. I wish he had called me so I could have told him that what she was doing was ILLEGAL, that whoever sponsored his visa HAD to pay for his plane ticket but I'm sure he felt especially vulnerable being there with our four year old. This whole thing has been a NIGHTMARE. While there were some okay aspects and it was nice to have a chance to check out a large city, job wise, it sucked. It's one of those nice place to visit but you do NOT want to live there. I don't know how people who do live there long term do it. They obviously have had better luck than we did. Hopefully he won't end up losing his whole pension and hopefully we can start rebuilding our lives and put this whole nightmare behind us. I'm just SO GLAD I did not stay there to have the baby. It would have been SO MUCH worse if we all had been over there.

Just waiting for him to call again so I can let him know about his ride.

Shouldn't have said anything.

2010-10-07T16:39:00.002-05:00

The tickets were canceled; John and Natalie are not coming home. I don't know when they are or what they are going to do. The school coordinator is being a real witch because John wouldn't hand over his bank card. His pension is being put into that bank account and she would have had TOTAL access to a substantial amount of money! Way too easy for her to decide to just clean him out and sorry, no, after the crap he's been put through, we do NOT trust this woman to not just clean him out for various so called bills and things he owes (but would never see the paperwork on it, of course).

I'm depressed; I'm stressed; I'm worried. I'm unsure what to do and I feel so incredibly helpless. I could just kick myself for not bringing Natalie back when I had the chance. I should have because while John could maybe figure something out if he had to, with Natalie, that just really complicates things. They very well could end up not having any where to go at some point with no money or job prospects.

In just a few more days...

2010-10-06T23:19:00.002-05:00

...John and Natalie will be home. I'm SO SO GLAD that they are coming home though not entirely happy at the circumstances that lead to this. John is coming home having been terminated for his job. The reason? Something about the parents not liking him. *sigh* It's just stupid one can be fired over there for something so petty but that's one of the HUGE drawbacks of working over there as an ESL teacher. And there isn't much protection for teachers there so, not much that can be done. John was going to look into another job but heard nothing from recruiters. I hate to say it but no doubt the fact that he had our four year old daughter there with him was a factor. So, having his plane ticket (and I guess Natalie's too) paid for by the school coordinator he was working for at the job before the one that fired him is getting him home, thank goodness. Of course, I won't feel sure about it all until he's actually here, I still expect some SNAFU to come up but I'm hoping all the same that it won't and he and my little girl will be here with me by Sunday night which (seeing that that is the day before my birthday) would be the best birthday/anniversary present of all.

Isabelle's Birth Story: The Short Version

2010-08-29T19:21:00.004-05:00

Finally getting some time to get on and type some of it out. This won't be the long version since that would include everything leading up to the final three days. I'm just going to cut to those final three days for now.

Saturday, July 17th was my due date and it had more or less come and gone without too much in the way of contractions or anything. I would have some here and there but maybe three an hour and nothing that I couldn't handle. I couldn't help but feel a little frustrated. I knew that there was a chance I would go past the due date since I had with Natalie but with Isabelle being in a good position and everything, I had gotten kind of hopeful that she would come earlier. It wasn't so much that I was impatient for her to come out because realistically, I knew that babies are harder to take care of outside than in but I was concerned that if she took too long to come out that my chance of a VBAC would end up being none and everything I did up to that point would be for nothing. I tried not to think about it though knowing that I still had three days before we even reached the gestational age Natalie was born at.

Sunday morning, the contractions I had been having all day Saturday started getting more intense and more in the back so I started to think that maybe this was it. I woke my friend (and acting doula) Tami up and she came down to help me out. After some time, she told me I should give the midwife a call and she would start boiling water for the pool so we could add some hot water in. She also added some hot water with the hose, getting water all over in the process. I gave the midwife a call and she said she would be on her way. When the water on the stove start boiling, Tami started to bring those down and add them to the pool. Eventually, the water warmed up enough that I was able to get in but Tami continued to boil water so that we could heat it up more since it was still a little cool. It was nice being in the tub and the labor calmed down a little but still continued. Neither one of us was really keeping an eye on the timing of the contractions, but we knew that we were still more or less at the beginning. I had music playing in on the computer and just in general, I was sort of veggie out, trying to remain relaxed and prepare for what would be coming up ahead.

Brenda, the midwife, arrived. The plan was that she would stay and help with labor as a montrice where basically, she would be labor support but she could also check on me and on the baby and she could check dilation. I had determined beforehand that I would get as close to transition as possible before going to the hospital. For sure, I wanted my dilation to be past where I had gotten with Natalie before I ended up with the cesarean. It was very important for me to reach that point and I did not want to go to the hospital before that at all. Still, we also wanted to not do checks too often so somehow, we had to sort of make a balance there.

I was talking to John when she arrived and she said "hi" to him and to Natalie. She wanted to check on me and the baby so I laid down on the bed in order for her to do that. Blood pressure was fine but it took her awhile to find the baby's heartbeat and I was a little nervous about that. I had been feeling Isabelle moving around so she had been fine but I know too that things can happen very quickly so I was worried that something was wrong but she did find the heartbeat and all was well. At some point, I went offline, telling him I would call him again if there was more and most of the time, I just focused on getting through the contractions in various ways. Tami gave me a lot of suggestions including walking around and made sure I was eating and drinking making me a cantaloupe smoothie and refilling my water bottle. Around 7, I started to get tired and thought I would try to get some sleep. I was able to sleep a little, maybe a couple of hours and woke up and the contractions had settled down. Brenda and I decided to do a check to see where I was at and I was pretty disappointed to hear I was only at 1 cm. How frustrating! Here, I thought that the contractions not just that morning but also from Thursday night on had been doing something. She did say that I was pretty effaced, just not dilated much so something was happening, just not much dilation, at least not yet. So, we talked and she was thinking that the baby was working on getting into position and that was why I was having the contractions but that she's probably not in the ideal position for dilation yet. Therefore, she suggested that I go to the pool, get on hands and knees and use that to help things out and maybe that would get things going better. She also recommended taking more of the cal/mag that I had been talking and Tami had some supplements to help with relaxing as well so that I could get more sleep. She left and I went back to bed, sleeping off and on until around 2pm.

I woke up and decided I would try to get to the pool. Tami agreed to drive me and when I finished getting ready, she had decided we would all go (encouraged by her five-year-old daughter). We went to the pool and I spent the time just relaxing in the water and trying to encourage Isabelle to move into the right position. I was having some contractions here and there but not very many, just a few or so per hour. We didn't spend too long there but it was nice to get out to the pool and have that time to relax, especially since I knew that it would probably be the last time I would get to the pool anyway.

At around 1 or 2 am, I was up with contractions again. They were in my back which was not making it easy on me. I woke Tami up and she started boiling water again. I walked around and did other things to try and help with the contractions and the back pain. Tami helped with that too, rubbing my back when I was having contractions. It was pretty similar to the night before and eventually, they started dying down and I was getting tired. Throughout the day though, I would wake up with contractions and eventually, I figured out that whenever I needed to pee, I would get a contraction and my back would hurt. By this point, it was REALLY hard to pee. I would have to lean to the side to really get much out and I wasn't feeling comfortable at all since by this time, the contractions were mostly in my back. Nothing steady or regular but I was in pain. I called Brenda mentioning that my bladder filling was causing the contractions and she suggested going to a chiropractor to get some help with baby's position through an adjustment. Tami scheduled an appointment for me and we left around 5 after Tami made me a really yummy green smoothie with dates and lots of greens. The car ride wasn't too much fun though with the contractions I was having and leaning back in the seat was definitely not comfortable.

The chiropractor was actually someone I had gone to school with which I thought was kind of funny. He noticed that my back (especially lower back) was pretty tight but my pelvis was nice and loose and he figured I would have the baby in the next three days. He asked me when I was due and I told him "two days ago." He mentioned that that meant he wouldn't have to be careful avoiding certain areas while working on my back. He was a little surprised to hear that I had not seen an OB in two weeks (I canceled my last appointment) and felt I needed to get in ASAP. I had figured that if I hadn't had the baby by the next day, I would since it would be past the gestational age Natalie was when she was born but the chiropractor seems very nervous especially since I was attempting a VBAC and Natalie had weighed almost 9 and a half pounds. He worked on my back a little, trying to loosen things up but he didn't do much in the way of actually adjusting me. He then recommended a cold pack and to come back if I hadn't had the baby by Wednesday.

Before going home, we stopped at the food coop for some stuff. We stopped at the bathroom first and I ended up in there for awhile after they left dealing with some contractions. It really was not fun needing to pee that day because it would trigger a contraction each time. Things did seem to be getting slightly more intense so I was having to do a little more to get through them. I called Brenda while I was there and she recommended getting some more rest and maybe even getting some wine to help with relaxing. If things were still the same, maybe book another chiropractor appointment. At this point, I was almost dancing with the contractions and leaning forward against the shopping cart. I'm sure I was getting some fairly weird looks while I was there but I wasn't paying too much attention. I did remember to pick up some massage oil since John had finally sent me money so I did that and then we all went home. I had some dinner and a little bit of wine which made me sleepy. Thinking I would try and get some sleep, I took an ice pack down to the room with me, put it to my back and tried to get some sleep.

I did sleep for maybe an hour or so before waking up to contractions. Not wanting to wake Tami up yet again, I tried to relax and go back to sleep, readjusting the ice pack. Didn't work. I kept going back and forth to the stairs to lean over them during the contractions. I was also constantly going to the bathroom (thank goodness I didn't have to go upstairs to do that because that would have been such a pain!) so I was walking from the bedroom to the stairs to the bathroom getting more and more frustrated and aggravated and just plain to the point where I could not deal with it anymore. I wanted the baby out NOW! and was thinking that I didn't care HOW she came out either! I was tired and the thought of another night of this back pain was enough to drive me insane. I was swearing, groaning, almost screaming in frustration and even anger, calling out to a higher power, and the whole bit hoping SOMETHING would happen. Finally, I had had enough and called Brenda and told her that I couldn't take it anymore, it was getting too hard, it hurt too much and I really just couldn't do it. She told me she would come up, check me out, and we would talk and see what our options are. After I got off the phone with her, I called Tami--again.

This time, I had no desire to go into the pool so I told her not to even bother with the water. Just had no interest in it at all. Tami helped me through some contractions rubbing my back and I would just lean forward. She went upstairs and I had some contractions and was using the stairs again for those. Unfortunately, I dropped that idea entirely when, during one of my contractions, a spider ran out at me! I screamed! Mind you, I'm not a big fan of spiders and having one run out at me almost in my face during a contraction was not a fun day, let me tell you. That idea abandoned, I went upstairs. Tami suggested trying some things out during the contractions, one of which just didn't work for me. I really could not be in any position where I was either straight or leaning back at all and definitely could not be on my back. Anything that got me leaning forward was the best. But I kept trying things out and what I was doing was leaning forward at the counter in the kitchen and sort of lightly bouncing from one foot to another while Tami rubbed my lower back hard. That helped out a lot. The rubbing part was VERY important in helping the back labor and without that, I would not have gotten through those contractions. I also focused a lot on the swirls in the counter; that also seemed to help a lot. I also walked around and that was okay but leaning forward was definitely the best position for me.

Around two or so, my water broke. Now, it wasn't a gush or anything and I wasn't sure if it was my water but I was feeling trickles coming down and my panties were getting pretty wet. I was also getting more bloody show and had gotten a bit of mucus at one point too. Tami gave me a pad and I put that on so that I wasn't leaking all over. She made me a drink of apple cider vinegar and honey and I was drinking that. She also made sure I was drinking water and getting some food in me, I think a banana and maybe some grapes too. By the time Brenda arrived at around 3:30 or so, things were getting more intense. I was noticing that the contractions were getting closer together and were getting longer. It didn't seem like there was much time at all between the end of the one contraction and the beginning of the next.

We decided to do a vaginal check on me. That wasn't easy because I kept having contractions and it HURT to be on my back, I could not stand it AT ALL! But I was able to get on my back for a little bit, long enough for her to check me and she told me, "You are farther along than you were with Natalie!" I was SO HAPPY! I had reached a big milestone for myself and that really helped me emotionally to continue on. She also checked my blood pressure and on the baby and we both were doing well. I still had contractions to get through and both Tami and Brenda helped me through them encouraging me and giving me suggestions like making low sounds and encouraging me some more and rubbing my back and making sure I drank and got to the bathroom. Around 4, Tami decided to take her daughter to the babysitter's and I decided it was time to call John since I figured it wouldn't be long before we would leave for the hospital. I called him and he told me he was still half an hour from home. That was about all I could really do because the contractions were making it hard to talk so I passed the phone to Brenda. Not much was said though and the call ended pretty soon after that.

Contractions were getting closer and closer together and it wasn't very long before I asked her to do another check since I was feeling that it was time to go to the hospital. I think it was close to 4:30 and I was at 8 cm. Tami came back shortly after that and we got things together to get to the hospital. I didn't call labor and delivery, sort of forgot about that but I was well beyond the "call when you get contractions 5 minutes apart" rule that the OB had given me (which was part of the plan, HELLO, was NOT going to be at the hospital for interventions any longer than I had to!). I followed Tami out to her van and I remember it was still dark and quiet out since it was not quite 5am. I got into the back of the van and into the seat on my knees sort of leaning over the seat. Tami starts driving and I watch everything go by the window while having contractions and sort of wonder what would happen if we were to get pulled over.

We get to the hospital and Tami drives past the ER, which had been moved, and drove towards the area where the old ER used to be. I reminded her that the ER had been moved and that she had driven past it. She ends up having to turn around to head back to where the new ER is. We pull up and she opens the door and I get out. I didn't have my shoes on so I walk to the desk bare foot. I let the person at the desk know that I'm there to have a baby and I was already registered. It took a little bit for her to understand and get things going, especially since I had failed to call L&D (gee, sorry, was a little busy having CONTRACTIONS!). Brenda comes in and before too long an orderly (or nurse? who knows!) shows up with a wheel chair. I get in. Tami goes to park her car and Brenda follows (or maybe it was the other way around?! I forget now!). I'm having contractions while the guy is wheeling me down the hall and he tells me that I have to wait because he's NOT ready to deliver a baby for the first time! lol I thought that was pretty funny. It was a LONG trip though! Goodness! We had to go down all these halls, to an elevator, up a couple of floors, down more halls, to the skywalk, across the skywalk, to another elevator, up a couple more floors, and down more halls until we get to L&D. Then, they're about to wheel me into room #4 when I say something about how I keep ending up in that room! In fact, it's where I was when I was in labor with Natalie and it's where I had been just a couple of weeks ago when I got sent up to L&D to check on the baby because her heartrate was just a little high. So, instead of taking me to room #4, we go into room #2 and he wheels me in saying excitedly, "She's having contractions 1 minute apart!" Brenda leaves, going with the orderly to get back to her car since she had been called to another birth and Tami stayed (she had caught up with us by then). I get out of the wheel chair and into the bathroom where I get changed into a gown. By now, it's past 5am.

I get settled and then it's time to start dealing with the fun stuff. Bleh. They're asking me questions, half I don't even remember now but some of them were just stupid like whether I was taking prenatal vitamins. Someone comes in to take my blood (the vampires have to get in before daylight, you know!) and the nurse decides that I need to be tested to determine if the fluids leaking are in fact from the amniotic sac. This meant lying on my BACK! Did I mention that it HURT to lie on my back, especially during a contraction? It was not fun having to lie on my back a FULL MINUTE for this stupid test. Then, they want to do a vaginal exam. That I should have declined but I was kind of focusing on other things so wasn't really thinking at that point. A resident comes in and he checks and then the nurse checks and they stand and talk for a moment to come to a consensus and finally they decree, "5 cm!" Um, WHAT?! I was at an 8 when I left the house! Tami mentioned later that she had forgotten to warn me about this, that other people may not come to the same conclusion as to how far along I was. Then comes the fun part. I have to get an IV. I HATE IVs. I got one with Natalie and it was worse than the stupid contractions! I did not want one.

"The doctor won't even work with you if you don't get one," the nurse tells us. I should have called her bluff but again, wasn't quite thinking of that at that point. I was sort of like fine, just get it over with but do it right! Unfortunately, the nurse I had did not do it right. She tries my right hand and blows the vein. Great. Not only did it hurt like heck but now, I'm bleeding all over the place and she has to do it again. So then she tries my left arm. And AGAIN, blows the vein. Um...okay, you want me to have an IV but you can't get it in? The OB comes in at that point with the resident doctor and the first nurse and starts giving me this whole spiel on how I'm such a high risk patient and that normally they would recommend that I just have a repeat cesarean and blah blah blah blah blah. I end up signing yet ANOTHER form saying that I will not hold anyone responsible if something were to happen in my attempt at a vaginal birth and my baby ends up harmed or killed in the process (or something to that effect). The OB leaves the room. The anesthesiologist comes in. Thank goodness it's the one I had spoken to just a couple of weeks ago. She's really nice and she had been great answering all of my questions for me. I asked her what was in the IV and she told me that it was just nutrients and stuff like that. She gave me a numbing shot in my hand, waited a minute or so, and then put the IV in and that time it took and it didn't hurt at all! Now, why can't they just use an anesthesiologist in the first place instead of a nurse?!

Then she leaves and the first nurse is trying to monitor the baby. I refuse to go on the bed because I did not want to lie down. I sat in the large comfy chair that was in the room but I try not to lean back much because, again, it hurt. Trying to use a belt on me was impossible so she had to hold the monitor to my belly. I try to cooperate as best as I can but also try to remain as comfortable as possible during the contractions. Tami had grabbed some of my stuff including the massage oil and she had put some on my back after asking me if that was what I wanted. When I wasn't getting checked for something, I would tell her to rub my back whenever I had a contraction. I was almost demanding about it too! A contraction would hit and I would say, "Rub!" I guess that's kind of one of those signs of intense labor, the laboring woman doesn't say "please", lol. Still, other than a number of "Oh l---!" and maybe some "OM-", I really didn't do much swearing, if any. I think I was kind of shy about that or either that or I really do just swear when I'm angry. lol

I was kind of worried because it had seemed like the contractions backed down a little. They didn't seem to be quite on top of each other as they were before I left the house. I also sort of entered a quiet stage, I seemed to be more focused inwardly or something. It's hard to describe. Even though I was at the hospital though, the thought of drugs didn't really enter my mind, even when I was told I was only at 5 cm. I was glad to be clear headed and it was definitely much easier to deal with the pain NOT being under any drugs, even IV meds. Fortunately, no one said a thing about drugs or even suggested them and I kept getting through the labor one contraction at a time.

Not long after that, I had this urge (WARNING: TMI) to poop. It was a very strong urge so I went into the bathroom and I tried to go but it was like having the WORST case of constipation EVER. I could not poop. Not at all. But I was feeling the urge so I was pushing, trying to poop. I had also been pushing a little here and there during the labor as I felt the urge to. Nothing major but just bearing down a little here and there. This urge started to get stronger but sometimes, if I did bear down too much, it would sting a little so I would stop. But the urge kept getting stronger. Around 7, there was a shift change and I got two of the SWEETEST nurses EVER. They were GREAT. They encouraged me to lean on them and just gave me some great support. Tami was there giving me support too and it was just the four of us women in there. I was still getting the urge to poop and getting very restless because of it. I wasn't really feeling any back pain anymore just this incredibly insane urge to poop! I ask to be checked and one of the nurses checks me and tells me I'm at 8 cm. I tell them I feel like I have to push and the nurse tells me not to but I really could not hold back so I keep bearing down kind of during the contractions (having read a number of articles talking about the wisdom in listening to our body when it says to PUSH!). At one point, and I have NO IDEA why I did not think of this before, I squat down next to the bed because it just seemed like a good thing to do. lol I think by this time, I was going mostly on instinct or something. I tell them to check me again because it feels like the baby is going to come out! One of the nurses checks me while I'm squatting and tells me that I'm complete! Tami's all excited, saying, "You can push now!"

So, I'm thinking, okay, I'll push right here! lol And I sort of tell them that and the nurses are like, "Oh no no, you have to get in bed!" Aww man! So, I get up into the bed, and I mean, really, she feels like she's very close to coming out, like I don't even have to push and she's going to come out any moment now but I get into the bed, on hands and knees, butt towards the bottom of the bed. People are rushing in, the OB (who I am sure is surprised that I'm already ready to push) is telling me what position to be in! You have got to be kidding me! I have to get OFF the bed?! I had to get off the bed, go to the side of the bed, get back in and scoot down with my butt at the bottom of the bed before I can push! FINALLY, he says push and I'm like OK! I push with everything I have but pull back a little when I feel some stinging then push even more. I felt a head passing through, then a shoulder, and then this very weird slippery feeling as the rest of her body passes through and Isabelle makes her grand appearance!

"You did it!" Tami says and I sit there in shock as I realize that I just gave birth vaginally, an experience that I did not get to have when I had Natalie just four and a half years before. It was the most amazing thing in the world and I had never felt so empowered in my life. I have a baby! It was simply amazing! And with that feeling came a high like I had never felt before.

Isabelle had some out a little on the slimy side. Unbeknown to us, she had passed meconium and was COVERED in it, and I mean covered, she was GREEN. lol But she was healthy and crying and had a full head of hair just like her sister did. I was still kind of in shock due to everything happening so quickly so I didn't think to demand that she be handed to me instead of her being taken over to the warmer to be suctioned out and stuff. In the meantime, the OB was waiting for the placenta to be ready to come out and when it was, he told me to push again, and it came out quickly and easily. He sort of tossed it into a pan and that was that but I was just kind of absorbing everything and still getting used to the idea that I had a baby. He had to stitch me up as I had a second degree tear so he did that and there was a short time there where we were separated but it wasn't too long before they brought her over to me and I was able to look down at this precious little bundle. It took me a few minutes more before I thought to nurse her and the nurses helped me get situated so I could do that. She latched on and nursed like a champ. The wishes I had in my birth plan regarding the Vitamin K shot, the Hep B shot, and the eye drops were respected, I just had to sign a waiver which they gave to me right there to sign. Eventually everything got done and everyone left and that's when I remember that I never did get the computer set up and online so that John could watch the birth so I got that set up and I also started making phones calls to let everyone know that Isabelle had arrived.

And yes, believe it or not, that IS the short version. lol I'm sure I have already forgotten things and left things out but I did the best I could remembering everything that happened in those three days. I have no doubt at all that I would not have been able to do this if I had not had the wonderful labor support I did. Tami especially was amazing waking up for me in the middle of the night, three nights in a row, boiling water and bringing the pots down the stairs to the rec room, making sure I ate and drank, and in general, being very supportive and encouraging when I needed it most. Brenda was great as well and I totally appreciated the time she took to come up and be with me as a labor support and to help me stay at home as long as possible. I wish everything had come together for a homebirth but this was the second best scenario and it as well as it could go considering everything I had to go against (including massive weight biases). I had gone through SO much on this journey and learned a lot about myself along the way. I'm confident now that if I do become pregnant again, I can find a way to have the birth I want to have and that what I need to have a successful birth is a good support team. That is what EVERY woman should have.

And of course, it wouldn't be a birth story without a picture:

This was taken the day we went home from the hospital when she was two days old.

I'm very happy to announce...

2010-07-25T22:35:00.002-05:00

...the arrival of our second daughter, Isabelle Arianna. She was born July 20th at 7:37 am, SUCCESSFUL VBAC! She's smaller than her big sister was, only 8 lbs but she's beautiful, absolutely precious, and looks very much like her sister did at birth (some say she's a xerox copy but that's not quite correct because she doesn't have the stork bite her sister was born with). Labor, when it REALLY hit, was very fast and very intense and most of it was in my back but I had GREAT labor support and did not go to the hospital until I was VERY close to transition. Contractions were a minute apart when I got to the hospital, backed off a little, then came back. I got to the hospital less than three hours before Isabelle was born and gave birth to her without any drugs at all. It was an incredible experience and I'm still amazed that I did it. Poor John though missed the whole thing. While I did call him during the labor, I never did get the computer set up and everything just went too fast at the hospital for me to set anything up. It was probably for the best; I don't think Natalie would have been able to handle seeing me in pain.

So now, I'm just enjoying my little girl and hoping that her daddy and sister will be able to join us again in the states soon.

Waiting...

2010-07-14T18:43:00.003-05:00

...and at this point, that's really all I can do. I'm not feeling too impatient but with some additional aches and pains today, I can't help but wonder if we're getting close. Just want to get through today though because it's my one niece's birthday and it's the niece who was born sleeping just three years ago today. EDD for this little girl is July 17th so we'll see if she decides to come out sooner or later than that date.

In the meantime, I really need to take a nap. If things are gearing up for labor, I'm going to need all the rest I can get!

Should probably update!

2010-07-10T22:51:00.002-05:00

No baby yet though I am now 39 weeks and so expecting this little bundle of joy to arrive any day now. Her sister was born 3 days past her due date so this one, we'll have to see. Could be anytime during this month.

Being away from John and Natalie has been a challenge. Things have not been going as planned over there and more and more I worry about their situation there. John ended up putting Natalie in daycare a month or so after I left and that has me feeling very helpless and very much like a bad mother for not trying harder to bring her back with me. She seems to be doing okay and she appears to be thriving and John has been taking her out and doing things with her but still, there's that guilt and that concern that if things do not improve financially, it's going to get very difficult to get her home. I do not want to be waiting until March and his contract ends before I see them again. That would not be acceptable to me AT ALL. So, hopefully something will work out and I'll get to see my big girl in person, not on a webcam.

Other than that, just spending my time getting ready for labor and ready for what will likely be a fight ahead. That's kind of how it is when you're trying to have a VBAC and a trial of labor against medical advice. But, I'm hoping that with the plans that are in place, I won't have to be at the hospital too long before the baby arrives.

I made it! I'm back in the US and it's good to be home!

2010-05-07T22:22:00.002-05:00

That was a long, long trip and doing it at almost 30 weeks of being pregnant is NOT my idea of a good time. Not doing that again. Not to mention, I don't think the baby likes to fly. I'm still recovering from jet lag (doesn't help that I'm pregnant AND have a cold). Otherwise, I'm doing well. Got a big welcome home from my family and friends last night which was really nice. I got checked into my hotel room where I'll be spending the week so that I can get over to the hospital and get seen. No idea how that's going to go but hopefully it will go well. Just kind of nervous about it all since I am so far along but I'm hoping that things will be fine. It's been a pretty normal pregnancy all in all so just have to be sure that everything stays normal.

And so far, that's been it. Need to get some food and go to bed so that I don't miss breakfast tomorrow. And then tomorrow afternoon I'm supposed to get some more grocery shopping done. That should be fun. I'm just glad to be back where I can read the phonebook and feel like a normal person again. Not everyone can understand that, I know, but for me, there's just no place like home.

Preparing for my trip home.

2010-04-29T02:18:00.003-05:00

I finally got the plane ticket last week and I'll be returning to the US next Thursday. It's been kind of bittersweet thinking of that. I'm glad to be returning to the US where the medical care seems to be at least a little better than it is here. I know that the doctors there are able to treat someone my size and has the equipment on hand to do so. I know that my chances of a VBAC are at least slightly better in the US than they are here and there won't be quite as much of a language barrier which has really made things difficult for me here. Unfortunately, I'm going back alone. Airfares have gone up by almost twice since I flew to the US in November. We just couldn't afford it, not when I was going to have to find an apartment and all that. It's been hard, dealing with the thought of leaving Natalie here with John but I know that it will be one less thing for me to worry about while I try to get everything figured out for having this baby.

I'm still not ready for this though. I don't know what's going to happen and I'm a little worried. I still do not feel at all prepared to welcome this baby into the world. I remember too much how hard it was with Natalie that first year and how hard it was financially for us as a family. Unfortunately, it wouldn't have been any easier in Korea. I just wish that foresight was also 20/20 because if I had known I was going to end up getting pregnant not even a year after I got here, I wouldn't have bothered. I would have just had John and I stay where we were, gone to work myself to help with finances, and then try and figure things out as they came but somehow, I don't know if that would have even worked out. Sometimes I think that for whatever reason, things are just not supposed to work out for us. Timing always seems to be off and we're almost always having to make very difficult decisions that half the time end up being the wrong ones.

I'm trying to trust though that going back will be a good choice. I NEED to be where I feel comfortable and safe when having this baby. That's not here. That never will be here. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what these next 11 weeks are going to bring. I'm just trying to take it one day at a time and get done what I need to get done so that when it comes time to leave next Thursday morning, I'm ready. But it's not going to be easy. There's still going to be a lot I'm going to have to figure out but I'm hoping it all falls into place. They sure haven't been here.

Still trying to figure everything out...

2010-03-31T08:41:00.002-05:00

March hasn't exactly been an easy month. The end of February, John's job ended because the after school English program was terminated at the school he had been working at. So that meant that both he and his co-teachers were to be transferred to another school where another after school English program would be set up. Only, it didn't start until March 22. He was told he would get the time up to that off and at first, I was worried because I didn't know if he would be paid for that time or not and that would have been REALLY bad since we're trying to get enough money together for me to go home. He was reassured that he would be getting paid but then he was pulled in almost every day for busy work which he was NOT told about until the last minute. So that was really stressful especially since we're been trying to figure out how I could get to my prenatal appointments including my ultrasound.

March 4, I got news from my younger sister that her father-in-law from her first marriage has lung cancer. This is really bad news for all of us because he sort of unofficially adopted us all after his son was killed back in 2003. Since my parents are not in my life and John's parents are dead, he has become the only grandparent Natalie has. And now, he has lung cancer and has been told he has as little as two months to as long as two years to live. So, I've been trying to make plans to get back to Wisconsin as soon as possible which, with our money issues, has been VERY difficult to accomplish. I never really did hear back from anyone I had sent emails to which has been very frustrating so I don't know what's going to happen when I finally do get back, IF I even get back.

March 9th, we went in for the ultrasound. I had actually found another OB to do it because the one I had been seeing will not tell parents the sex of the baby before 36 weeks due to South Korea's ban on telling parents the sex. The reason for this ban is because parents are more likely to abort a girl than a boy even though abortions are illegal in Korea. I was also hoping that this OB would be more favorable towards doing a VBAC but nope, she wasn't. We did at least find out that we are having another GIRL! So that was one HUGE weight off of my shoulders since having a boy would mean having to decide whether to circ or not circ and while I'm on the fence about it, John is very much for them and it was just really stressing me out because so many people are against circumcisions this day and age. So we found that out and we're tentatively thinking of Isabel for a name (unless something better comes along). Still tossing around a few ideas for middle name too. I'm somewhat unsure about Isabel for a name though because, while I like it a lot, the problem is is that so do a lot of people. It's one of the more popular names out there. Well, Isabella is, Isabel is a little further down the list but when you factor in all the spellings and everything, it's up in the top ten for names and I'm not quite so sure how I feel about that. Then again, Natalie turned out to be a far more popular than I expected it to be going from 18% the year she was born to around 13% now. Why can't my name ever become popular?

Not much has happened since then, just a lot of stress trying to figure out how I'm going to get back to the US, where I'm going to live as far as an apartment, how I'm going to get all of this figured out over all. And the frustrating thing is just when it seems to all be coming together, something happens to completely and totally screw it up.

I'm still not insured. I was insured for about a week. We found out when we went in for the ultrasound that no, I was NOT on the insurance. Obviously I got kicked off of that when John's job changed. So we had to pay full price for the ultrasound which was around $70. Yes, I know that's cheap but when you're trying to save up money, it's not something that we can afford all the time, especially when in the US, it would have been free because we would have been eligible for medical assistance. So, since the ultrasound, I haven't been in to see the OB. The last time I saw him was back when I was 15 weeks and he didn't do anything because I refused the ultrasound. So, really, the last time a full appointment was done was back when I was 11 weeks. Great, huh? So, really, I'm not getting that great of prenatal care here, definitely not like I had when I was pregnant with Natalie. VERY frustrating. I really need to see a chiropractor and I haven't been able to do that because of the insurance issues. I'm in a TON of pain in my pelvis and in the back of my left leg. But, even if I did have insurance, the insurance will most likely NOT cover chiropractic care (again, another way that medical assistance in Wisconsin is better than the national health insurance here) and even if it did, the nearest place for me is likely going to be all the way in Seoul which is an hour or so away by bus/subway/both.

And now, we've reached the end of the month and one of the concerns I had came through. Since John started at a new job this month, I was concerned that he would not get paid because that's happened before when he started back in July. He didn't get paid for over a month and then he didn't get paid for the first couple of weeks. Well, he checked his account tonight and NOTHING. I was NOT happy. I immediately sent a text message to John's co-teacher and we finally heard back from her that while John would get paid for the three weeks BEFORE he started at the new school, he would not get the money for working at the new school until NEXT month. This was NOT what I wanted to hear because that means John only gets paid 2/3s of what he normally makes a month and, to top it off, this makes it ALL too easy for the school to decide to ONLY pay him for the month of April, especially since he NEVER gets anything that tells him what gets paid and what gets taken out for taxes and things. He just gets the money into his account. It's happened before, back in July when he first started working down here in Yongin. He never did get the week and a half that he was entitled to. A lot of the time, they explain it away by saying it was training and therefore, he's not entitled to it. It really has soured my feelings towards people here and it has really caused me to become very distrustful of the employers here because it has become VERY obvious that they care little for their employees that they bring in from other countries and just basically dump here. It has me VERY concerned about what is going to happen when July comes around. John is SUPPOSED to be getting a severance in July but based on what has happened so far, I'm not so inclined to believe that's going to happen. And even if it did, when would he get it? Technically, his contract doesn't end until July 21st. I'm due July 17th.

So, once again, we're trying to figure out how all of this is going to work and at times, I really start to think that it's not and that I'm going to end up having this baby here, very likely via cesarean, very likely unconscious. Either that or it's going to end up being a totally unassisted birth. I'm very unsure as how we're going to be able to afford everything when things are SO expensive here. There are three of us crammed into a one bedroom apartment with a teeny tiny bathroom that doesn't even have a separate shower but just a shower head attached to the bathroom sink (which means you have to use the WHOLE bathroom as the shower). How in the world are we going to fit a fourth person in here? Where am I going to get all of the things I need for a baby when everything is two-three times as much as they are in the US (and there are NO garage sales from which to buy things?). I feel SO overwhelmed and SO very depressed at times. I hate when people say that God doesn't give you more than you can handle. It's a big fat LIE. Because He does, many many many times and has done so to me more times than is at all fair. Just ONCE, I would like things to go right. Just ONE STUPID LITTLE TIME. With everything I have gone through, I think I deserve that much. But no, things just keep going wrong and keep not falling into place and I'm really getting sick and tired of it all.

I had forgotten how it all felt, it's been so long.

2010-02-21T05:55:00.002-06:00

More than four years since I was last pregnant and I had forgotten all about how it felt to feel those baby kicks all the time. It's like holding on to a secret that no one else knows about. The flutters, the thumps, the kicks to the bladder that make you feel like you're going to suddenly pee your pants. As much as having this baby sometimes scares me, I can't help but feel kind of reassured by the continuous kicks I feel throughout the day. He/she has his/her quiet moments but many times I sit/lie there quietly and feel and wonder at all the movement deep within my belly. That it started earlier than it did last time is nice too. It was after my ultrasound before I really started to feel Natalie's kicks. This one, I started feeling a good 3-4 weeks earlier. I'm 19 weeks and have been feeling them daily since 17 weeks and I was feeling them before that too.

Now if only I can get this whole thing figured out about WHERE I'm going to have the baby, I probably wouldn't be feeling so freaked out but that's taking it's time in getting figured out. I'm working on it though, sending emails to midwives in Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Delaware. Planning on sending some to a few midwives in Colorado as well. HOPEFULLY something pans out and I can start making plans in earnest to head back to the US.

I should at least update.

2010-02-18T03:04:00.003-06:00

OB says I have like a 33% chance of getting a VBAC with him. He's worried about complications, he's worried that the baby will be too big to fit, blah blah blah. He can't even tell me if I can be awake if I end up with a cesarean. The weight bias is so bad here that some women can't even get an epidural, not even for a cesarean (and I'm talking over 200 pounds, not the weight I'm at which is higher than that).

We're really looking into trying to send me back to the US but ugh, the devil is in the details. I'm feeling overwhelmed, depressed, and just not very sure what to do.

I'm currently 18, almost 19 weeks along. Feeling lots of movement, even felt a thump OUTSIDE the belly today! Still feeling it in the area I was cut when I had the cesarean (along where the scar is on the outside). Really not sure what that means. But been feeling movement pretty much everyday for the last week or so.

Nausea has finally settled down, haven't been getting any heartburn yet, not really. I do still have bad days here and there. The exhaustion is not quite as bad and at least I'm able to stay up most of the day now so it looks like we're through the worst of it. Unfortunately, my mood swings are pretty bad. Also having a lot of back and leg pain but not letting it get to me. I just wish I could find a chiropractor who will take the national insurance here. Oh wait, I'm STILL not on the insurance even though John has been trying to get me on it for over a month.

We're supposed to be moving sometime around March 1st. John was transferred to another school as the school he's been teaching at has ended the English program. I have a hard time believing that the school coordinator is really going to get things done. It's the 18th and our visas all expire on the 27th. It's really getting down to the wire. So yeah, things are extremely frustrating here. I'm very stressed out.

That's pretty much it at the moment. Just trying to take it day by day the best I can but we're going to have to figure something out soon if I'm going to have a chance at all of getting a VBAC. To be honest, sometimes I think about just signing up for another cesarean. I just get so tired of fighting. But John doesn't want me to get one and I don't really want to get one (especially not here) but sometimes, I really don't think I'm going to be allowed the chance to get a VBAC either here or the US because of my weight and that's very depressing and I've really been down on myself because of my weight. My self-esteem is definitely in the toilet right now and I've been thinking a lot about getting gastric bypass at some point after all of this is done with. When the world only sees you according to how much you weigh, HOW you lose weight really doesn't matter, it's getting to that socially acceptable number that counts.

Forgot to mention, they were at least able to do my blood pressure the last time. They used the electronic one. I was kind of worried about my arm getting stuck or something but no problems there. Not sure why they didn't do it the first time. Also got on the scale and I'm down 3 pounds. It's very easy to lose weight when I'm pregnant, at least for the first two trimesters. It's the last one where I tend to gain. Not only is it easy for me to lose weight, it's also easy for me to not eat as much. Not only do I not eat for two, I barely eat for one, or rather, I barely eat as much as I was eating BEFORE I got pregnant. The atmosphere here and even some of the comments John has made (along with depression) has me not really wanting to eat much at all.

Next appointment which is supposed to be the BIG ULTRASOUND is March 9th. Not sure if I'm going to get to find out what I'm having though (especially if I go to this guy). He told me that he doesn't tell his patients what they're having before 36 weeks. There's kind of a ban here against telling parents the sex because so many parents go and abort girls even though abortion here is illegal. So, not sure what I'm going to do yet. May look into another OB for the ultrasound. There's one who is very close by and easy to get to and I may go to her for the prenatal stuff until I go back to the US. Not entirely sure though, just one more thing I need to look into.

I'm 15 weeks now and my second appointment is tomorrow.

2010-01-25T07:31:00.004-06:00

With that, we may have to face a very important decision: stay and have this baby in Korea (and VERY possibly have to have another cesarean) or go back to the US to have the baby probably without John and maybe even without Natalie.

It's not a decision I'm wanting to make. Unfortunately, Koreans are EXTREMELY prejudiced against weight (and height too, I guess) and being oh at least twice the size as your average Korean woman, I'm fair game. It is VERY likely that my chance of having a VBAC here are slim and none (and slim's on vacation, my mom always liked to say). I can't have a homebirth because no midwife will touch me. It's not legal for a midwife to take on a woman with an unproven pelvis. And cesareans in South Korea are in the 40-50% rate, HIGHER than the US by quite a bit.

I won't lie. There are times I am really doggone sick and tired of fighting this and just want to sign up for another cesarean and be DONE WITH IT! Go in, get the baby cut out and get my tubes cut on top of it so that I NEVER have to worry about going through this EVER again! I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of being so stressed out that I'm already having braxton hicks. I'm tired of not enjoying my pregnancy and not even doing any little baby tickers or anything because I keep hoping deep down that the pregnancy ends at some point so that I don't have to worry about this anymore. I'm tired of feeling angry and resentful and scared out of my mind. I'm just tired. I'm tired of my life always being one major hit after another after another and never getting a break. Even the things that are important to me I can't get a break on. THIS is important to me. This MATTERS to me and I can't get that. I don't have the choices I should have here and it's not fair. It just makes me SO ANGRY!

I don't know what's going to happen. The appointment is at 3pm tomorrow and one of the doulas I've been talking with will be going with me to talk to the doctor and we're going to see how he feels about me having a VBAC and what my chances of that happening with him are and if they are low, could he recommend someone who can give me a VBAC (besides the guy that will cost me $4000 and doesn't take our insurance). If not, our options are trying to come up with $4000 or so to pay for the one and only doctor who will likely give me a VBAC (that again, the insurance does NOT cover AT ALL) or I go home though personally, I wish we ALL could go home. Coming to this country has been the BIGGEST mistake I have EVER made in my life. If I NEVER hear the word Korea again for as long as I live, it won't be long enough.

We'll see what happens, I guess.

Well, I can't really deny it anymore...

2009-12-24T06:43:00.002-06:00

...not that I could with the all day every day nausea but that's another story. I finally went in for an appointment today. John thought he had the day off so he scheduled an appointment for me at this one clinic that was recommended to me. Unfortunately, he found out that actually he did have to work but he just did one class today and took the rest of the day off to take me to my appointment since we really didn't know how to get to the place. So I went in and talked to the doctor and all that stuff and they did an ultrasound and there it was. At first we didn't see anything but then he found the little bean and we got to hear the heartbeat. We got a picture too which is weird since we didn't get a picture of Natalie until I was 18 weeks pregnant with her.

So yeah, I am definitely pregnant. I'm 10 weeks and 5 days along. I found out about 36 hours after I got to the US back in November. It's been a struggle dealing with the news and dealing with the fact that I will likely have to have the baby here unless I manage to find someone who can take me and Natalie in for three months until I have the baby in the US which I highly doubt. I wish I could say that seeing the doctor helped but with the language barrier and the fact that they have absolutely NO experience with plus sized women (they didn't have a blood pressure cuff big enough for my unfortunately large upper arms), I'm nervous. It didn't help that the peeing in the cup thing was just LOADS of fun. You see, some places in Korea do not have normal toilets. They have a toilet bowl in the floor that you have to sort of squat over and try to pee into (and somehow, at the same time, NOT pee on your clothes). I have tried VERY VERY hard to avoid these kinds of toilets and have managed to in the nine months I've been here (Natalie freaks out when she sees one and absolutely refuses to use them). Today, I had no choice but to not only pee into a cup but to do so while standing over this toilet bowl in the floor. I really don't know if I can do this here, I really don't. John and I had no intention to get pregnant and have the baby while we were still here. This was definitely not planned, a pull and pray that did not work this time around (though we THOUGHT we had pulled out in time).

I'm feeling very lost, very vulnerable, and just very overwhelmed and I really don't know what to do. And if that's not enough, I'm nauseous every single day from the time I get up until the time I go to bed and if anything, it's getting worse, not better (though I'm glad to see there was just ONE baby in there, I was beginning to think maybe I was having twins). The only thing I'm finding comforting about this is something I read that told me that bad nausea lead to a higher probability of girls over boys which is good, I'd rather have a girl because if we have a boy, John wants him circumcised and I don't even want to go there.

So, we'll see what happens. Next appointment is the end of January and hopefully they won't do so much this time around, it wasn't cheap!

As usual, my poor little blog gets neglected...

2009-11-14T14:17:00.003-06:00

Vacation, while relaxing, has also been somewhat draining. Dealing with jet lag (among other things I'm not quite ready to get into just yet) has left me exhausted and looking to hit the sheets WELL before my normal night owl times. The friend I'm staying with has been dealing with her own problems due to an ex that I'm sure she had wanted to be done with before I arrived but unfortunately, is getting dragged into more and more as time goes by. As for me, surprising news has left me somewhat shocked and unsure what to think.

It's just a lot to take in and deal with, that's for sure and it definitely doesn't leave much time for blog writing. John has, for the moment, taken over my other blog since he is the one who is with Natalie at this time and so far, he's not doing too badly with it. We talk on the phone and online and quite a bit since there now seems to be a lot of things we need to figure out and decisions that we must make that will have an impact on us for quite some time. It just all makes me wish we could come home and angry that the economy here is still fragile and not improving very quickly.

Not much else going on at the moment though, just resting and enjoying what may be my last vacation for a very long time.

I made it to the US in one piece.

2009-11-11T06:42:00.002-06:00

It was a pretty long trip and I was definitely exhausted by the time I got there. I don't sleep well on planes unfortunately. I'm enjoying my vacation so far though I ended up getting some news that have kind of put me into shock. I'm not quite ready to divulge what the news is quite yet but suffice to say, it was the LAST thing I expected to happen at this time. I'm dealing with a lot of emotions due to that. I'm trying to not think too much about it though since anything can happen in the next several weeks and just try to enjoy the time I have here since it may be the last time I'm able to visit for a long time.

I'm happy to be back though. I really missed being here and it's nice to have space for me and a place to put all of my stuff. The bed is nice and soft and very comfortable to sleep in. I bought a coffee pot and some coffee and I'm looking forward to making a pot of that. I'm also looking forward to Thanksgiving. I just wish I wasn't so worried about the future but I am right now. That's the only bad side to everything, that and the fact that my appetite is down quite a bit. I'm still hoping everything will fall into place though, just didn't expect the news I got, that's for sure.

Today's the day!

2009-11-07T11:12:00.003-06:00

It's after 2 in the morning and I'm trying to relax enough to go to bed for at least two hours. Yeah, that's not working out too well. I hate having pre-flight jitters, especially since I really do not sleep well on the plane, well at least the last time I flew which was the first time I flew. I'll be in the air less than 9 hours from now and man I really wish I had not looked at the clock because that SO did not help my nerves. I'm pretty much packed though, just need to shut down the computer and put it in the laptop bag. I have the documents I need and I'll just have a few things to throw into the bags tomorrow morning and then I should be pretty much set to go.

I got some pictures of the apartment tonight so I'll post those once I get all set up at my friend's house. Then you all can see just how much of a shoebox we live in!

Well, guess that's that. The next time anyone will hear from me online will likely be once I make it to Minneapolis. Ooh, that reminds me, I need to forward my flight information to my husband. Later!

So much for that.

2009-11-05T23:26:00.002-06:00

I was trying to do a blog entry ever day for the NaBloWriMo even though I hadn't actually signed up for it. Yeah, didn't last long, what I get for trying to do it the same month I'm going to fly home. There's a lot I'd like to blog about but I just do not have the time to actually sit down and write about it and naturally, if I am going to write about things that are important to me, I'd like to have a bit of time to do so. I can't even sit down and write my poor mom a letter! Less than 48 hours to go and I still have laundry to do (though nothing I'm taking with, thankfully, just the last of Natalie's summer clothes) which is taking twice as long to dry now that the weather has gotten cool, dark, and damp; packing to finish including figuring out how much I spent on all of the stuff I bought here that I'm taking back to the states with me; dinner and a movie since I'm hoping to watch The Time Traveler's Wife before I go (read the book, want to see the movie); and just getting all the last minute details figured out including how to get to the airport possibly on my own since Natalie tends to be such a pain in the behind about going out anywhere and it would just take less time and less stress to go alone (pity we can't get her a babysitter for the day).

So yeah, that is what is going on with me and now, I really should get off of the computer and get some things done because I need to take off after John gets home from work for Gangnam to see what time the movie's playing tonight.

Less than five days to go...

2009-11-03T08:43:00.003-06:00

...and I'm already starting to feel the stress of trying to get everything ready and packed and set for Sunday morning. Still have details to figure out for Sunday itself as far as getting to the airport and all that good stuff. My flight leaves at 11am Sunday the 8th (Korea time) and I will land in La Crosse, WI Sunday the 8th at about 2pm (Central time). Yes, time traveling rocks. While it will only have been about three hours time wise, I will have really been traveling for 18 hours and since I will be up at 5am, it's going to be a LONG day. Just hope I'll be able to sleep on the plane this time around.

I won't lie; I'm glad Halloween is over.

2009-11-02T07:55:00.002-06:00

I don't celebrate Halloween. To be honest, it's not really a holiday I've ever gotten that much into. Sure, I've gone trick-or-treating a few times and I've been to a haunted house or two. On occasion, I've worn a costume and have gone to a Halloween party but it just does not interest me all that much. Part of it is being married to John, I'm sure. He doesn't celebrate Halloween and, with his religious beliefs, wants nothing to do with it. But even without that, unless I had married a die hard Halloween fanatic, I probably still would not be all that much into Halloween. First of all, I'm not that into horror movies and scary stuff. I don't choose to watch them and I definitely don't own any. Second, I'm not into the being sexy and strutting myself downtown thing. Third, I think the money that is charged for costumes is insane and I think the time and money that goes into getting ready for a night of mayhem is a little excessive. All this for some candy? Why not go to the store the next day and get it for half off? Oh, it's FREE...that's why... So what? You can't pick the candy you get and most people will buy the cheap garbage anyway and give that to you, that nasty old peanut butter taffy stuff that's in black or orange paper. And if you're too old to be out trick-or-treating, you won't get candy anyway!

I guess, I just don't see the point of it. I love fall. I think pumpkins rock and the weather is beautiful and the colors and smells the best of any season. But, I can have all of that without celebrating Halloween. Granted, Natalie would look absolutely adorable in a costume but, what's the point? Most years, (especially in Wisconsin), it's freaking COLD! I remember a couple of years going out in the SNOW! One year, I was especially blessed to be delivering papers on Halloween and since back then Halloween fell AFTER the change to standard time, I was out in the dark and in the rain. Not a fun night, that's for sure though I did get a couple of pieces of candy for my troubles. Why not just dress your kid up in cute costumes for pictures instead? In fact, there are studios in Korea that do just that! You can dress your little girl up in princess costumes (Snow White especially is quite popular here due to the dark hair) and get their pictures taken. Perfect. And you won't even have to try to wrestle a whole bunch of bad-for-them candy from them later on. We try to teach them every other night of the year that all things should be in moderation but let them go crazy on one night? Doesn't make much sense.

I don't know, it's a day that just takes over the entire month of October. And yet, when it's over and done and November rolls around, not much is said about Thanksgiving until it's pretty much right on top of us and then, it's usually eclipsed by Christmas (which I won't go into right now). Let's think about this for a minute. A month that contains a holiday that's about being thankful is boxed in by two months that really have more to do with asking for things than about anything else (and do not go there about Jesus being the reason for the Christmas season because He's not). And those months with their holidays are glorified while Thanksgiving is barely mentioned except in terms of dinner, Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade (complete with Santa riding in at the end), Black Friday, and maybe pilgrims if you have a child in elementary school.

I have wondered about Thanksgiving at times, wondered if it is part of one of the Biblical holidays known to us as the Feast of Tabernacles. I have wondered if it was sort of separated from that and made into it's own American holiday due to the one that was celebrated here between the pilgrims and the natives. I don't know. For me, since we don't celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving is considered more of an American holiday since it doesn't have the pagan origins that other holidays do, Thanksgiving is the big family holiday for us. And Thanksgiving is the time to remember those blessings that we have received during the last year.

So, let's take this month to remember our blessings and not be so quick to shut it aside for the two holidays on either side of it. It's those blessings that make life worth living.

A brand new month and less than a week before I head home!

2009-11-01T08:12:00.003-06:00

Things are just crazy, crazy, crazy around here as I get ready to go and still try to keep on top of the other things I've been doing here. I did get a couple of short stories written in October for the Writer's Guild including one that just positively creeped out those who have read it so far. I actually don't do too badly with writing really short stories. There's not much in the way of details you have to have and you can just sort of end it anywhere, it doesn't have to be tied up all nice and neat. It takes a little time though to sit and write so not every week has been productive and this week especially nothing is going to get done because I'm leaving. But it helps to get some of those writing juices going again since I hadn't done any real writing in a very long time, just blog writing.

I'm also getting more involved in the knitting group, especially now that there's a local one for me to attend. And by local, I mean REALLY local, just a few blocks away! That's REALLY nice and it helps that the person who set it up pretty much lives in the same neighborhood. Spending a Saturday morning knitting and talking I think is a very nice way to pass the time especially as John doesn't do anything on Saturdays and this Saturday in particular was cool and rainy (and Halloween and I didn't really want any part of that). I've been meeting up with other members as well and going on outings with them. I met up with two of them on Thursday in Itewon (the foreigner district) for a manicure and pedicure (that's pretty much my birthday/anniversary present since John never really got me anything). I also met up with one of them the next night for a trip to Myeongdong which is a large shopping area. Last week was a trip to Dongdaemun, a HUGE craft shopping area and I'm not kidding when I say huge, the entire basement floor of the place was knitting stuff including yarn, knitting needles, etc. I got several balls of yarn and a thing if needles for a total of around $22. Not too bad and I like the colors I got. I'm still working on my first project which isn't much, just knitting practice and something that will end up being a blanket or something for one of Natalie's dolls but it helps to practice both knitting and purling, casting on and hopefully casting off (haven't done that yet). The next project will be more of the same but maybe practicing more of a pattern, we'll see. I just want to get the basics down so I can make something more complex later on.

There's definitely a ton to do and a ton to see here. I'm getting into great shape with all of the walking and stair climbing I'm doing. It's not always possible to take the elevator or the stairs so yeah, I do a LOT of stair climbing, especially in subway stations. And one a busy walking day, I definitely am going, going, going. The only thing I'm NOT doing is carrying Natalie around (even I have my limits!). John does that though, poor thing, she's not exactly light. Today, we went to Insadong which is a huge art shopping area. All kinds of crafts and things to check out and lots of items to buy, some cheap and some quite expensive! It's a pretty long street so we did a bit of walking there. Then we grabbed a bite to eat, got back on the subway and went to Myeongdong so I could pick up more socks from that shopping area. I had picked up a few pairs the other night and loved them so much I had to get more. They're the really soft socks and they come in all kinds of colors.

From there, we got back on the subway and headed for home. John and Natalie had to get off at the Express Bus Terminal because Natalie had to go potty. We had planned that I would stop in Ori and pick up a few things from the Home Plus and head home. Well, I realized I had almost no money to do that and John's the only one with a bank card. So I wanted for him at the transfer point in Suseo to see if I could catch up with him there. I waited and waited and finally, just as I was about to get back on the subway, I get a phone call. He had called me from a pay phone to ask me about Natalie's gloves. I didn't have them but I was able to tell him to meet me up in Ori. lol He did find the gloves and we agreed to meet in Ori at the exit near the Home Plus. I got there probably a good half hour before him so I finished watching my Voyager episode on my MP3 player, walked out of a different exit, stopped over at the Tom N Tom's coffee place and grabbed a cinnamon chocolate hot chocolate drink. YUM! It was getting cold out so this was a nice fall treat. John and Natalie met up with me shortly after that and we did our shopping. We got a new blanket (since it was going to get COLD) and a few other items and took a cab home. It was a LONG day! We left the house at around 11:30 so that I could meet up with this guy who had gotten a letter that my mom sent me by mistake (I do not know what was up with that, especially since John had been going to the post office almost every day for the last almost two months) and we didn't get home until almost 11pm. I'm hoping the rest of this week won't be quite as hectic, next Sunday is going to be crazy enough since that's the day I fly home.

And that's just a small example of what we've been doing the last month. Every weekend, something's been up and I've been gone or all three of us go out somewhere and do something and weekdays can get pretty hectic too. I'm looking forward to actually getting a chance to RELAX! lol Going home will REALLY seem like a vacation though I do plan to do a lot, it's just not going to be quite as hectic as it has been here. I'm definitely looking forward to it.

The next several weeks should be quite interesting...

2009-10-14T03:38:00.004-05:00

...as today, I bought a round trip ticket going to and from the US. I leave for Wisconsin November 8th and will return here December 9th. I will be going alone as I am staying with my best friend at her new apartment/townhouse/condo. Way back when we first started planning, John promised that if I needed it, he would make sure the money was there for me to go home. Fortunately, he has followed through, though to be honest, I'm actually using the tax return money from back in March that's been in my account but he will be putting more money into the account too. I've been needing this, to be honest. Living here has had its perks (like actually having money for once) but at the same time, it's not home. I do tend to feel lost in a sea of people who speak a language that is not mine, lost in smells that still have not become familiar to me, and just in general, adrift from all I am familiar with. Even a simple thing like the mail has become incredibly complicated and I still have two packages that I suspect I am never going to see because of one stupid blasted error which would not have been made if addresses here had any sort of consistency to them! Anyway, there have been some good days and many bad and the lack of support here has been really hard (many foreigners here are just not helpful and, in fact, tend to be quite rude, to be honest) and a month back home where I can shop for the things I need and actually have the money to do so may be just the thing to help me get through the next year or so we may end up here.

Not that I spend the days moping and stuff like that (though I have my moments). There's a ton to see and do here and public transportation is great at getting you just about wherever you need to go in the Seoul Metro area. It's a great place to visit; it's a great place to work for a year or two, do fun things you wouldn't have the money to do at home, and buy some neat souvenirs. But living here for more than that after being used to the standard of living in the US that most are used to, that's not for everyone. For sure, it's not for me. And I think, if John really thought about it, he would realize it's not for him either. The man would just about starve to death if he had to live here indefinitely because the food that's available here compared to what's available at home is just not as varied and considering John's religious beliefs leaves out pork and seafood, right there that takes away a good amount of what he would be able to eat here (and Natalie as well, not that she eats any meat). Space is also hard to come by. Apartments are SMALL. There's a reason I changed my blog to the name it has now. There are three rooms here and by that, I don't mean bedrooms. The largest is the kitchen, then there's the bedroom, and the bathroom is the smallest room of all. For three people, things get awfully cramped and tempers can easily flare. I don't do well cooped up in a small place (last time I really had to do that was the summer I spent with my mom, brother, and little sister in a 10 foot pop up camper after our house burned down). I like having my own space. I like having a place to put everything. I don't have that here and that's VERY hard on me. As hard as those are, I think the biggest challenge is the lack of support. The recruiter hires you for the job. Your ticket may/may not be paid for by the school. You fly in. You're picked up by the school and taken to your apartment and that's IT. No one helps you figure out how to work your washer or your heat. No one tells you where the best place to get pizza is. No one tells you how the MAIL works. No one tells you how you can find any number of items you may need. You have to figure that out yourself in a country that has an entirely different alphabet than any English speaking country (and a mailing system that really makes no bloody sense whatsoever!). If that's not enough to cause a severe case of homesickness, I don't know what is.

John gets by pretty well, he dealt with the Korean language back when he was in the army. I managed to figure out the beginning character for Gray's Anatomy and that's about it. I'm literally pushing buttons on things to figure out how they work. I can't read half of the text messages I get on my cell phone and there are days that the whole experience is very overwhelming. Languages are not my forte as it is and Korean has been very difficult for me to figure out. Most languages you learn in school come easy enough because you at least know the alphabet. With Korean, you have to learn the alphabet and THEN learn the words.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really improve much from there. You are pretty much left alone to your own devices. Now, for some, it's easy to meet other people and get by that way. But that doesn't work for everyone. There are groups online but anything that would set you apart at home definitely sets you apart here. So the fact that John and I are here with our daughter, having the religious beliefs we have, and having the parenting beliefs we have really sets us apart from everyone else. The not vaccinating especially really tends to irk a lot of the foreigners here for some strange reason and asking about getting healthcare with a doctor who is okay with not vaccinating, in some groups, is akin to admitting that you've committed mass murder. The sad thing is, many of those people probably think you HAVE committed mass murder by not vaccinating, that's how dearly some people hold onto those so-called truths of the CDC. And religion...I don't even want to get into religion, it's too big of a subject to even begin to tackle. But if the parenting beliefs don't scare people off, the religious beliefs do. I haven't done too badly finding friends in this area, so long as I stick to finding friends for myself. Finding friends for Natalie since we left Ilsan has been very, very difficult. I have no doubt she's lonely and could use a playmate. Korean children look at her like she's an exibit at the zoo (no, I'm not joking, they really do, they'll even point and stare at her) and the few non-Korean children I've seen I just haven't been able to strike up much of a friendship with their parentals.

So that's been the struggle and after being here 7 months now, I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed and a little homesick. If things had gone the way they should have and John had been on top of things like he should have, we would have all at least gone home for the Feast of Tabernacles but he didn't and we didn't and I can't wait until next year. I need some time to go home and take care of things and spend time with my friends and take a much needed mental rest before I lose it. I'm already starting to feel the strain of living here (especially after the four months I had before I left for Korea) and I need that time to go and embrace all those things I once took for granted in the US (ovens, dryers, Reese's peanut butter cups, REAL COFFEE). Hopefully, after that month, I'll be able to come back and deal with what's here for awhile without going too crazy. At least I'll know what to expect when I do come back.

Been pretty busy lately.

2009-09-30T22:03:00.002-05:00

One thing for sure, living in a place that's really too small for you motivates you to go out because otherwise you would go insane from cabin fever. We get out, quite a bit. Sometimes we go out during the week and take it easy during the weekend and sometimes we get out during the weekend and not as much during the week. John has a five day weekend (along with many other ESL teachers in Korea) due to the Korean holiday coming up that's basically their Thanksgiving and Christmas combined. So, naturally, the plan is to go out and do things because five days cooped up with both John and Natalie is sure to drive me NUTS! In the meantime, I've also been joining groups both online and in person (the one sort of leads to the other). One of the first things I found was a group for those who go to the Mosaic which is an English cafe at a subway stop just three down from ours called Jeongja. There's food and a place to sit and relax and it's just a nice place for people who speak English to meet up. So, it started there. Then I found another group (which I had kind of perused before but didn't join since it didn't seem very active but when I did join, things kind of started to get hopping and I was able to find out about places to go to and I even got an MP3 play from a group member for a nice price ($120 for a Samsung P3 which is AWESOME!). That led to joining a writing guild that meets once a week. It has also led to joining an online group called Stitch & Bitch (that's honestly the name of it!) which has to do with knitting which I had been thinking of taking up because I needed a hobby to keep me occupied. So, I met one of the members for the first time last night and she introduced me to knitting. I found that to be very relaxing and now I just need to find some nicer yarn but I've heard that yarn is kind of expensive here. Another group I joined on Facebook introduced me to one person who just moved to the Seoul area and we met for the first time on Saturday and have made plans to meet up again today.

Whew! And that doesn't include the person I met a couple of weeks ago from either the same group or another group I met the person I'm getting together with today. lol Most have been of the non-parental nature but to be honest, I actually kind of like that. It's a nice break from the parenting thing. That probably sounds bad but there are times when it gets overwhelming and I could use a little bit of a break. John is a perfectly capable father and is able to deal with any issues that may come up. I think it helps me be a better parent because then I'm able to regroup and be able to focus on parenting again. I'm one of those people who need adult interaction. I can let loose but I need to be able to have adult conversations and John isn't much for them (other than the occasional pillow talk once we get Natalie in bed and that's if HE'S not asleep) and Natalie makes it next to impossible to really have an adult conversation and naturally, Natalie just isn't old enough. I was getting some through my various online groups but I wanted to be able to go out, go shopping, and do things without worrying about my three year old having a temper tantrum in the middle of the store.

It's one of the big reasons why I'm really looking into going to the US without Natalie in November. Admittedly, a big part of it is that I would be staying with my best friend and her house is not child friendly (understandably, she has no kids). It would be kind of stressful staying with her with Natalie. I wouldn't be going to the US otherwise, to be honest. My friend has been wanting me to come back and visit, especially once she moved out of her apartment where the landlord only allowed her guests to stay for two days a week. It's all tentative though and there's still a lot details to work out but I'm hoping it all goes through. It would be nice to spend the time with my best friend and be able to bake, shop, and have Thanksgiving dinner. If it ends up not going through though, it's good to know that I won't be bored at least, especially since the cooler weather will make walking through the various markets easier.

This really bothers me...

2009-09-30T01:01:00.005-05:00

There's a family I became aware of not too long ago on one of my parenting boards. The mom was asking for prayers because she was facing prosecution for having a homebirth in Ohio. Yes, prosecution, she was facing charges for endangering her child's life for having a homebirth. A group on Facebook has been set up and you can join it here:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1017828571&v=feed&story_fbid=173459489767#/group.php?gid=140938029710

I think this is absolutely absurd. This has NOTHING to do with the health of the baby. In this situation especially, the baby was fine. Mom was blacking out a little and the midwife didn't have oxygen (since I guess it was illegal for her to have it on her) so it was decided that the family would call the EMTs to be on the safe side. It was doing that that has brought about these charges. But again, this has nothing to do with the health of the baby or babies in general. In the Netherlands, about 30% of births are homebirths. In the US, about 33% of births are cesareans. Take a guess as to which country has the lower infant mortality rate. I'll make it easy, it's NOT the United States. So, if the high rate of homebirths in the Netherlands leaves that country with a lower infant mortality rate than why is this woman being prosecuted? Money, pure and simple. Money has lead various groups to go against homebirths because as long as women give birth at home, hospitals lose money. I mean, you do know that hospitals make a TON of money off of births, don't you? Yeah, they do and they make even more money when a women ends up with a cesarean, considerably more. So, these groups play off of the fears of women, make them afraid of something happening to their babies, and really push home the idea that the ONLY SAFE place for a woman to have a baby is a hospital.

Now, don't get me wrong, for some women that is the safest place. Women with high risks pregnancies are best served in a hospital. But for women with healthy, low risk pregnancies, there's little to no reason to go to a hospital unless that is what the woman wants. But really, to be honest, doctors make pregnancy sound like a risky venture, don't they?

The fact that this family is facing these trials greatly concern me, especially as I consider any future birth plans of my own. My daughter's birth was a rather traumatic cesarean (with lots of drama just moments before the surgery between my husband and my family) and it has taken me a long time to recover from that and I'm still not fully recovered from it. I'm scared to become pregnant. I am honest to goodness scared of becoming pregnant. At the same time, I feel the urge to have another child but that fear, at the moment, is still stronger. I'm scared of getting pregnant here because I don't think it's possible to have a VBAC in a situation where I don't know the native language. I'm scared of getting pregnant at home because my options are limited. My chance of having another cesarean are pretty high and that concerns me. I've already told John that if I ever get pregnant again and that pregnancy ends with a cescarean, it WILL be my last. I will request a tubal at that point. Twice will be bad enough, I will not go through a third time. And I will not go through another several years of being afraid to become pregnant.

Roe vs Wade was about women having reproductive rights and making decisions about their own bodies. Why is it that women can make that decision when it comes to killing her child but she can't make those decisions when it comes to bringing her child into the world?

Just another Manic Monday.

2009-08-23T19:04:00.007-05:00

Well, maybe not so manic. lol More manic for John who had to be at work by 9 than for me and definitely not for Natalie who is still sleeping (thank goodness!). I'm just sitting here drinking my second cup of flavorless, freeze dried (with creamer and sugar added) coffee. I REALLY need to get a coffee pot and some REAL coffee. *sigh* Anyway, yesterday we took our big trip to Ilsan to do some shopping since we know where everything is there and we're still trying to figure out where things are here and sorry to say, this area is just majorly lacking in a lot of things compared to Ilsan, like a decent outside mall! I got seriously spoiled there, I'll admit because Yongin (at least where we live) is just not set up the same way and just about every time we go out, there's something I'm not able to find that I can find in Ilsan very easily. The problem is is that it's two hours to Ilsan by subway. So, for me, timewise, it's the equivilent of going from La Crosse to Madison. But for me, it's totally worth it for those few things we just need to have and it makes my life a little happier in a strange foreign land (though I'm REALLY hoping we can pull off a way for me to make a visit to the states in November).

Unfortunately, even with lavender lotion, Natalie was not all that keen to go to bed early Saturday night and John and I both got to bed even later so getting all of us up at 9am didn't quite work out. And then, there's all the getting ready stuff that tends to take forever no matter how much we don't want it to but finally, we're ready to take off and we take our long walk to the subway because there are no bus stops between our apartment and the subway stop (one of the BIG things I hate about living here compared to Ilsan). The walk tends to be a little dangerous at times because we have to cross a street that is NOT run by traffic lights. There are lights there but they are permanently set to flashing orange and therefore worthless because the drivers here do not heed them AT ALL which makes crossing the street kind of similar to a game of Frogger. I'm convinced someday, SOMEONE is going to get run over hopefully, NOT one of us! The little street (which has a light) was a little better to cross but that has been known to be hard to cross too because people do not always heed the red light. We cross that, head up the footbridge and into the Emart. I like going through the Emart and the department store because it means less time for me to be outside (since it was already pretty warm afternoon) and I can go down the escalator (actually more of a conveyer belt thing you can put your cart on too) and not have to do quite as much walking. We go through the Emart and take the shortcut to the department store that's right by it (the largest department store in the world--IE: most branches). I grabbed a couple of snack things for me and John and Natalie get some pinapple on a stick. We made a quick bathroom stop and we tried to get Natalie to go too but no such luck. I prefer using the department store for that because not only is there a regular potty in one of the stalls, there's also a potty that's Natalie's size. It's SO CUTE! It's her size but it's also attached to the plumbing so it flushes like a real potty! No, this is not a typical bathroom for Korea, there are still some toilet stalls that have floor toilets (basically the female version of a urinal) but newer places do tend to have better bathrooms. From there, we go to the subway station. I put some money on my card since I was low on funds (both John and I have a card to use to get through the machines at the subway stations, Natalie is free) and we head upstairs to catch the subway. We had a few minutes to wait so we all sat down. This one guy near us tried to offer Natalie a BUG! I don't know what it was but it was some big fly/bee/roach looking thing. I wouldn't let Natalie take it and I was kind of freaked out by the fact that this guy was even offering some large dead bug to my daughter. Yuck! It was after 1pm before we finally got going and the plan was to get back on the subway in Ilsan by 9pm so that we can get to Suseo and on the yellow line before it closed (since we got stranded the LAST time we did a large trip because we didn't get to the yellow line in time and therefore, we didn't get home until after 1 in the morning and John had to work the next day).

So, we're on the subway, and we're trying to get Natalie to actually sit down and behave and not run around mooching off of people (she's really into that and it doesn't help that people here LOVE her and want to give her ALL kinds of stuff including candy, gum, and other things John and I don't want her to have). I set her up with my old MP3 player, the headphones and Abba playing. That lasted about four songs before she got bored. Finally, I just put my headphones in and sort of zoned out which was easy since I had gotten maybe six hours of sleep the night before. In Suseo, we got out for our transfer. We climb up a bunch of steps (never a favorite of mine) and pick up the subway for Madu station, our stop. John also bought Natalie a waffle to munch on. There's not much to see on the subway because it is mostly underground. Sometimes, it comes out and you can see part of the city it is going by. I really like one of the stops because it is near Seoul and the subway is outside crossing a bridge. The air conditioning was on and I was almost cold which was nice because it definitely was warm outside. Natalie was enjoying herself being doted on by three older ladies who telling us in pantomime that Natalie needed her bangs cut. There was also a younger child on the subway that Natalie went over to look at since she's got a bit of a baby obsession going right now. Natalie was also squeezing herself in next to people and talking to them in the hopes of getting some little trinket in return (which is her usual MO when she's on the subway).

John and I start to make plans for the things we're going to do. We already had plans but John wanted to get off at an earlier stop, catch a bus, and go to the bakery near his last place of employment and pick up my bread (they have the best baguettes in Korea as far as I'm concerned). I wanted to get off at the subway stop near the Krispy Kreme and pick up a little treat for myself and maybe for Natalie. John wanted to take Natalie with since she likes to ride the bus. Natalie wanted to go with me and get a treat. That got resolved pretty quick one subway stop earlier than planned. Natalie, who wasn't able to go potty before we got on the subway, had to go potty. So they got off and I stayed on until my stop which was three stops from Madu. I went over to the Krispy Kreme, picked up a few donuts, had mine and put Natalie's in a bag. I stayed long enough to eat, then went back out. I was going to go to the subway right from there but backtracked when something caught my eye outside of a little store. I went in and found a few cheap items to buy including a couple of purple baskets (we need baskets to help with organizing here) and a set of marker stamps for Natalie. That was around 7000 won. I got back on the subway and got off three stops later at Madu.

From Madu, I crossed the street then headed for Newcore which is where Kim's Club is at which was where I needed to pick up some (EXPENSIVE!) parmesan cheese and my chicken broth. On the way, I see bags of potatoes at a stand for a reasonable price (potatoes are not easy or CHEAP to find in Korea) and made a mental note to mention it to John when we caught up (which I completely forgot to do). I get to Newcore and made a stop at the Skin Food on the way to the escalator. They didn't have the foot lotion I was looking for so I didn't pick up anything though the sales person kept trying to help me (I really need to learn "I'm just looking!" in Korean). I got to the escalator and took that up to the 7th floor where Modern House is. Modern House has a lot of home type stuff there and there's also a kid's section that's really nice. I've been able to find some stuff for Natalie there on clearance including her purse. I walked around, found some nice things but nothing I wanted to get and nothing to get for Natalie. I left that section of the store and went over to where the hair bows and things were and found a headband for Natalie for 2000 won. I hadn't bought her any headbands yet so I figured I get her one. Saw some other bows I liked but they were more than I wanted to spend at the moment. I went over to the small stationary area but didn't find anything there I wanted to get. I got back on the escalator and went down one floor to the children's clothing area. Looked around there. I saw some shoes that I wouldn't have minded getting Natalie but passed because I couldn't find anything smaller than 180. She wears a size 170 here and that fits but I would really like to find something between 170 and 180. The 170 is starting to get small but she can still wear it, the 180 is way too big (I'm guessing she's at a half size and above 160, Korean shoes for young girls do not have half sizes) so until she really grows out of her Strawberry Shortcake shoes, I'm not getting her new shoes because shoes are stinking expensive here! Not to mention, since she ended up getting TWO pairs of crocs (because one pair was stolen while she was at a play place) and another pair of shoes that are currently too big, I've spent more than enough money for shoes at the moment for her and I refuse to buy her shoes that would either be way too big or close to being too small especially with winter being about three or four months away. When she grows out of the shoes she has now, I'll look for new shoes for her though I may get her dress shoes before that.

I spent a few more minutes looking around on that floor then got on the escalator and worked my way down to the market section. John called me on the cell phone while I was heading down. He was just outside and would meet me inside. I told him to meet me by the dairy section where the parmesan cheese would be. I get down there, pick up my items, and stand around waiting for John. I found everything I was going to get there which was about five items (not cheap items though, that's for sure!). I finally see the two of them and catch up to them. John wanted to pick up a few more things so he grabbed a basket and I sat down just outside the checkout lines because my legs were starting to get sore. While I was waiting, I grabbed a cappicino blast from the Baskin Robbin's that was right there and Natalie and I shared that. Since we were also by the area that had several fish tanks, I told Natalie to go look for Nemo. It took her a few minuts but she was able to find a tank that had a bunch of clown fish in it. She was very happy to find "Memo". While we're sitting a young girl and her mom come over and the girl tries to talk to Natalie. The way they were looking at her made me feel a little strange and when John finally came back and they had left, I mentioned to him that it seemed like they were looking at her like she was some kind of a zoo animal. It's strange the attention she gets here and she doesn't even have blond hair! She had blue eyes though and is definitely not Asian so that gets quite a bit of attention here right there. Still, Ilsan has a fairly large foreign population and I have seen other kids here so I'm not sure why she seems to draw so much attention there.

We all take a quick bathroom break. Natalie, of course, doesn't have to go. We decide to head over to Western Dom which is a large outdoor mall area. That's where we're planning to have dinner and was also where I was going to take Natalie to get her first professional hair cut. She was well overdue for a bang trim and I also wanted to get the rest of her hair done professionally as I really don't trust my own cutting job. We walk, crossing the two big streets (since at this point, we're downtown). When we get there, we see the fountain is one and Natalie of course wants to go right in and get wet (thank goodness we packed another outfit for her). Unfortunately, before she gets in, she starts squatting down because she has to go potty. John takes her to the bathroom and I sit and watch all the kids getting wet in the fountain. They finally get back and Natalie spends the next five to ten minutes getting soaking wet before the fountain shuts off. John takes her back to the bathroom to change her clothes. In the meantime, the fountain comes back on only now with colors. They get back down but we don't let Natalie get wet again but head over for the Skin Food store which is on the way to the hair place. There, I pick up the peppermint foot lotion (which this store at least has), the avacado conditioner (part of my no-poo routine) and a Grape Seed Oil body wash. That wasn't too badly priced and the sales person added in a bunch of samples too which was nice.

From there, we walked to the hair place. I wanted to get Natalie's bangs cut and the back of her hair cut a little so that it was nice and even and I didn't have to worry about it for a good year or so (except for the bangs unless I decide someday to let them grow out). They get a stylist who knows English and we wait a few minutes while he finishes up and prepares for Natalie. The hair cut itself didn't take too long though it took a little bit to get him to understand how short we wanted the bangs (just over the eyebrows) and I had to hold Natalie's head still a few times because she kept moving. She didn't seem impress with the experience. She was sort of glum about it the whole time and looked a little anxious. John had planned to make a quick run to La Fiesta where the Olive Young is for the face wash and Dr. Bronner's we were going to get but I had him stick around because it seemed like it was going to be over pretty quick and I was having trouble understanding the hair stylist, even with the English. Without the hair washing or blow drying (I'm particular when it comes to Natalie's hair and my own hair drying fiasco was not something I wished to repeat with Natalie), everything got done in a short amount of time and the price was okay though it was not something I would do more than once a year, if even that, especially since her hair is pretty much one length.

After that, we walked down to the Croc store since I wanted to get a pair of crocs. I found a pair just like the ones my younger sister had and got them. They were a little on the expensive side but they'll last awhile. From there, we walked over to the elevator that would take us up to Uno's, where we had planned to have dinner. Dinner was pretty good. Natalie was a little restless but no more than usual and she wasn't too difficult. We got done with that and started heading back down stairs when I remembered that I needed to replace my coin purse so I walked down to the little store that carries the coin purses I liked, picked up one quick, paid for it and walked back to where I last saw John and Natalie and they weren't there. I had told them to wait for me because I was just running over to the other store real quick and would be right back. No, they didn't wait and I had no idea where they went. I spent several minutes looking for them around the area then finally decided to walk over to the Olive Young that was in that area (there's two of them, one in Western Dom, one in La Fiesta but the nearby one doesn't carry Dr. Bronner's, only the one at La Fiesta does). I walked over there and found them. I found the facial scrub I use (one of the things I CANNOT find in this area for some stupid reason) and picked up two of them hoping that that will last me for a little while at least and had John pay for them because I had no cash at this point. We still had to go to the other Olive Young AND we were hoping to stop at Costco's all before getting on the subway by 9:30. I didn't look like we were going to make it. John was going to make a quick dash to the Olive Young while Natalie and I had a quick frappe at A Twosome Place. One problem, they were no longer carrying the frappes I liked. Grr, I HATE when companies change the things they offer! So I decided I would walk with them to the plaza near the subway stop and rest there while John made his run. By then, my legs and knee were KILLING me. I rested while John made his run and Natalie sat next to some guy and talked to him (she's an equal opportunity moocher). John gets back and we walk to the subway stop. It's almost 9:30 by the time we get on and I get nervous because we don't know when the last stop is and I'm afraid we're going to be stranded again. It didn't help that Natalie had to go potty not even half an hour into our trip home and then it took the two of them FOREVER to get that done causing us to miss the next subway. Fortunately, even with all of that, we were able to get on the yellow line and it did take us all the way to our station. From there we caught a cab and we got home just before midnight. Whew! Long day all around and we didn't get over to Costco's but we did get quite a bit done.

Hard to believe it's the end of July already.

2009-07-31T09:00:00.004-05:00

We've been here in Yongin City aka Jukjeon for about two weeks now. There are definitely some differences between where we live now and where we lived before. While John enthusiastically appreciates some of the differences, I'm not quite as keen on them. The big difference is location. In Ilsan, we were right smack dab in the downtown area, just a block and a half away from the subway station and the bus stop. John's school was not near by and that required him to take a bus which meant that he ususally wasn't home until around 6 at night even though he got done with work at 5:15. Here, John is just five minutes away from work by foot but we're a bit farther from the subway and bus stops than we were before and usually, it's a bit of a hike to get from here to there, a hike that includes hills and crossing streets that are not very well regulated by traffic lights and even when they are, the driver's don't always heed the red lights which can be frustrating at times when you're trying to cross the street with your three year old (makes it a bit of a life and death adventure as well). So far, I'm able to handle the hike though on warm, muggy days it can be a bit much and with my one foot giving me issues, not something I can just up and do every day (if I overdo it one day, like yesterday, I tend to be out pretty much all of the next day). It has gotten to where we will use a taxi to get home because even with the buses going from the subway station (which is where the department store and the E-mart are), they tend to stop a bit aways from where we need to go while the taxi takes us right to the door for about 100 won more than it used to cost John and I to take the bus one way (Natalie's free on the bus) and 100 won is only about 10 cents so really, not that much at all. So, when you look at it that way, taking the taxi definitely is the better deal especially if we have to carry any large items home like a computer desk (which we may be getting at some point). Still, there's just not very much in the area we live in which is a bit different than how it was in Ilsan and I kind of miss that. Having all that stuff nearby really got me out and about doing things I normally would never do in the summertime namely, leaving the house when it was warmer than I liked which usually was most of it (though I've heard that Wisconsin actually had an usually COOL summer this year which I'm really annoyed about because I MISSED IT and the chance to have to wear long sleeves in July). Now, it takes more of an effort but John is finding places we can go along the subway (admittedly, most of that has been purely by accident by getting on the wrong bus) and that may help to get me out more. I'm also hoping I can still meet up with my one friend and hopefully at some point meet up some other people who live closer but unfortunately, getting friendships to go beyond the internet isn't any easier here than it was back at home. Ilsan is two hours by subway from here so I'm not always going to be able to get up there to meet with the moms I have met so far but at the moment, considering I know where everything is up there, there's motivation for me to go there.

The past couple of weeks have definitely been a challenge though. When we first got here, we had nothing as far as kitchen items outside of the things we brought with us from the last place which wasn't much so we've had to go and do some shopping and get a lot of that (which John is supposed to be reimbursed for). There were no pots or pans or dishes or anything of that nature, we've pretty much had to completely stock up the kitchen so that's been fun especially as many kitchen items here in Korea are really not all that cheap. There at least was a bed (which can be iffy as Koreans tend to sleep on mats on the floor). That is a queen which is a great size for all three of us (though Natalie does have a couple of mats to sleep on those nights when John and I want to sleep alone together) and it's nice and firm but not TOO firm (some beds can feel as hard as the floor, the last one in our place did until we broke it in a little). It is, however, on the floor which John has been trying to get fixed since we moved here. We also had no internet for more than a week and that was definitely a challenge for me as most of my social life is through the computer via Facebook and online forums. I spent most of the offline time playing Sims 2 though and watching a few episodes of Star Trek Voyager. It helped that I got one of my old neighborhoods for Sims 2 in the game that's on my current computer. I ended up with two games on two different computers for awhile and recently figured out how to get some of the stuff from the one computer into the game I have on this one. Been looking at stuff for Sims 3 but really thinking that I want to keep with Sims 2 for now. I can remember how hard it was at first to play Sims 2 with all the stuff that was on the original Sims by the time Maxis stopped making expansion packs and it was rough so I'm waiting and I'm hoping by the time I get home and get a desktop, Sims 3 will have an expansion pack (or two) and will be even better than it is now. Meanwhile, I still have two expansion packs to get for Sims 2 in order to fully enjoy all it has to offer.

Things are coming along though and John enjoys his new job which is the most important thing. He doesn't have too many kids and they're all older and pretty well disciplined (which was one of the problems he was having with the last place, that and the fact that he was basically expected NOT to discipline them but let them do what they wanted, especially the kindergarten age kids which were basically not much older than Natalie and at that nasty pre-five age I'm disliking so much because it is SUCH a challenge to deal with). The fact that he only works five minutes from home is a huge bonus because then he can come home for lunch and get home right after work though that is for July and August only. Once the regular school year starts up again, he goes from noon to six and he probably won't have a lunch break during that time. I'm sure once that starts we'll get a schedule all figured out. We are right by a park so he and Natalie can go before he goes to work (as long as it is not raining which, being monsoon season at the moment, is just about everyday). So, other than the fact that it's not quite as convenient to the action as the last place was and the apartment is TINY, it's not too bad of a gig so far. Will it work the whole year? We'll see, I guess. Hard to be optimistic about anything at this point after all the issues John had with the last two jobs.

We're moving...AGAIN!

2009-07-19T23:49:00.002-05:00

Well, to be honest, we're already just about all moved. Oh boy was THAT an adventure. It's also one of those things where you really do not realize just how much stuff you have until you try to move it. There was not furniture to move but we had clothes, suitcases, food, a laundry basket, a small hamper, plus a few boxes of TOYS. So, taking all that on the subway was not going to be an option (yikes!). Fortunately, the coordinator for the new school John's working at (more on that in a moment), sent a moving person. He loaded up all the stuff (with a little help from John) and after a bunch of talking back and forth on cell phones with the coordinator, we ALL bunch into the front seat of this truck and off we went! Yeah, first thing to learn about Korea, no car seat laws here and we had Natalie on John's lap the whole time. And yes, I was nervous as can be about it too, especially as we were going a good 80 km/mile on the roads. The old place is just north of Seoul and we were moving south of Seoul, the whole trip was about 50 km (sorry, it's all in km, don't exactly know what the conversion is) which I think is about 30 miles? But it was a LOOOONG trip even on the expressway and we saw lots of buildings, LOTS of bridges and just all kinds of different things that we don't usually see going on the subway. It was warm though and pretty muggy out so we had the windows open the whole way (not overly pleasant on my poor ear).

We FINALLY get there though with a few mishaps as far as trying to find the exact building and get everything unpacked off the truck and into the apartment. Now, how to describe that...well, I don't think apartment is the right word. SHOEBOX is more appropriate. The place is SMALL. It's supposed to be a one bedroom. Yes, it has one bedroom...sort of. There's a room with four sliding doors and then they're all closed, that makes a bedroom and there IS a bed in it and it's a queen sized bed...well, actually, a queen sized mattress on the floor (the coordinator felt that would be safer for the "baby"). There's a TV in there and places to put some clothes (if you came to the country with about five outfits per person). The "living area" is mostly kitchen with a large table and chairs. There is no couch. The fridge is the perfect size...for Natalie. It's about 4 feet tall and John figures he'll have to ask Natalie what's in the fridge. Basically, it's a dorm fridge with an added freezer. There's a microwave that we put on the fridge because there's no counter to put it on and no outlets by the little bit of counter to put anything on either. Fortunately, there is air conditioning. The bathroom has a toilet, medicine cabinet above that, a sink, and between the toilet and the sink, a thing on the wall with the shower head and that is attached to this thing on the sink.

This is where we will be living for the next year. If I don't go insane during that time I had better get a medal. Fortunately, John will be worker fewer hours and I can have him spend LOTS of time with Natalie outside. I'm convinced though that Koreans do not live in their apartments but spend all their time out and about and go out to eat. It is at least in a decent area that's within walking distance from the subway, the world's largest department store (at least that's what it said on the side of the building), and an Outback Steakhouse. So, we'll at least have things to do and we're a little closer to Seoul than we were before so we can bum around which will be good during that week John is off of work.

So that begs the question, WHY. Well, John finally got the notice that he is being replaced, officially. Back in April, the director had told him that he wasn't planning to keep John due to issues with the kindergarten class. No biggie because the director wasn't being the greatest about paying and that kind of stuff. But, it got to be two months later and we sort of started getting the idea that we were going to be staying for awhile and got the visas done, a cell phone, that kind of thing. Well, I had John ask the director the end of June to find out what was going on and that was when he was told that the new teacher was coming the 24th in time for an open house. Fortunately, he had been working with a recruiter who had a school, a public school, that needed a teacher ASAP so John got his release for the 22nd of July (two days from now). So yeah, it's been a really busy and insane month and now, we're moving to a place John has not lived in and we're both going to have to try and figure out where everything is. Should be fun. Hopefully, this will be it and a year from now, we'll have saved enough and the economy will be stable enough for us to come home. That's what I'm hoping for anyway.

Time and the hours, run through the roughest day...

2009-06-28T10:38:00.002-05:00

It was about this time, six years ago, that I called John who, at the time, was my fiance and living here in South Korea. It was sometime between 10:21 and 10:50 am CT on Saturday, June 28, 2003. For John, it was already June 29th, just after 12:30 am. I'm sure he was not at all prepared for the phone call he got, a phone call from his very hysterical bride-to-be. He wasn't even able to understand a word I was saying and I wasn't able to talk to him for very long, the ambulance and the police were already arriving. It was amazing I was even able to dial the number since it was so long but months of calling him had made it all pretty automatic.

It was and still is, the worst day of my life. Nothing in the 22 and a half years before that day and nothing in the six years since that day has eclipsed the events that transpired that Saturday morning. I sincerely hope nothing ever does.

It's one of those events that ends up defining you and it definitely has defined me. Part of me, I think, is still stuck in that day. Sure, I have worked to move on. That's kind of how life goes. No matter what happens, there are still marriages and births and birthdays and all of those things that defines the life of a family. There's the day to day process of living that has to happen no matter what happens that may disrupt that. Life keeps happening and the world goes on living and somehow, you have to as well. But it wasn't easy, for a long time, it wasn't very easy to do at all.

And now, six years later, I'm here in South Korea, with both John and Natalie and it just seems to be so different compared to how things were six years ago. Sometimes it all seems surreal, that the events never really happened at all. When I talk to my mom, where she's at doesn't really enter my mind. There's sort of a denial about it all, like my brain just can't comprehend it all, doesn't really WANT to comprehend it all because to do so would somehow shatter it. I don't know. Sometimes, it tries to deal with what has happened through dreams but even those are confused. Many times, I will have dreams that I'm doing things with my mom, sometimes even my dad which is not at all possible nor will it ever be possible but it seems that they are right there, like everything is normal, like it all never really happened. It's like there are still parts of my brain that are just in total denial of all that has happened the last six years and doesn't want to acknowledge it ever happened so there's a sort of another dimension that is there within my mind and not only in that dimension are my parents in my life in full force but my seventh grade science teacher is alive and well and I talk to her often even wished her a belated happy birthday even though she's been dead now for almost a year and a half.

I know I'm not the only one with the dreams and mine are fairly tame compared to the dreams my sisters have had, especially my younger sister. Again, just amazing how our minds will take events that have happened and try to make sense of them when we're asleep. Amazing and kind of scary because the world it presents as the alternative is just crazy sometimes.

So another year passes and time goes on. Hopefully, someday, the day will pass without me taking note of it but that probably won't happen anytime soon. You just can't go through something like that and not have the date etched on your mind. Time may wear it down a little but to nothing? I don't know if that will ever be the case. I think John was hoping that bringing me here would help that but if anything, it only seemed to remind me even more because he was here when it happened. And it took me a long time to even forgive him for being here in the first place. That he wasn't with me when I needed him and wasn't able to come home for another three months was not easy for me to deal with at all. And for a long time, he took the brunt of my anger towards what happened because of it. I always had felt that things would have ended differently if he had just been back in the US with me or even if I had somehow been here with him. But to be honest, there's just no way of really knowing.

We finally have our visas...

2009-06-24T05:10:00.003-05:00

...and our registration cards, all good until February 27th which is when John's stuff all expires since we're here as his dependents. Still not sure how long we're actually going to be here though. Things are still all up in the air because of this director. He told John two months ago that he was going to replace him. Well, nothing has really happened since then. But in the meantime, he won't let John go nor will he help John with anything that requires a contract since he doesn't "intend" to keep him. So once again, things are very much all up in the air. We're kind of tossing around the idea of just leaving for the Feast and not coming back here, just go home for that and then try to figure out where to go from there. Not quite sure how that would all work though. But John has to figure something out as far as that goes as taking a whole week off in October is not something that directors are going to really be thrilled with when getting a new employee.

In the meantime, I guess he has an entire week off the first week of August which should be nice, provided we're still here. But I would say, if John hasn't gotten any kind of notice the first week of July, we'll be here at least that long because I expect for John to get the 30 days notice he is entitled to. Not that the director has really been inclined to follow the law thus far. He STILL has not taken out pension and he has NOT been taking out money for health insurance (which will be great if we ever need to take Natalie or any of the rest of the us to the doctor).

Fortunately for the most part, we are pretty healthy people but it is on the back of my mind. Which has me concerned about something else. Since John dropped the cell phone in a sink full of water a week or so ago, we have not had any means of calling out. The cell phone (which did not always have minutes) was the only means I had to call out should something happen. The landline here is not capable of calling out. I always get some kind of error message in Korean when I try to make any kind of a phone call. My understanding was that it was deliberately set up this way (not sure why anyone would have bothered to put a phone in in the first place then).

And this is one of those things that really gets to me. We need to have a phone that is capable of calling out in the event that anything happens here while John is at work. I have a three year old. Things can happen and I do not want to try and figure out how to get a hold of John if something was to happen. If Natalie is sick, I don't know where the hospitals are. I don't know where to take her. John had a cell phone but it was always kind of iffy. It's not easy to figure out where we can go to get a contract and with the director planning to replace John at some point, I doubt we can get one anyway. But, I can't even find that out because I can't speak Korean and so far, the cell phone places I have stopped at today don't seem to have any English speaking reps. So, I'm really getting frustrated by this and I have asked John to talk to the director about this to let him know that either the phone here needs to be set up so that I can call out or someone who can speak both English and Korean from the school needs to come over, take me and Natalie somewhere I can get us a cell phone since John pretty much works during all the business hours.

If things weren't just so messed up economy-wise in the states, we would have gone back home but as sucky as the situation here has been, the money has still been good and it still beats going back on county assistance and having almost NO extra money at all. Here, we're able to go out, see things, do things, have fun, eat out and still have money to send home. It's not perfect but right now, being here is just a lot more attractive to me than going home. And, as always, it is the path of least resistance. I also don't have to figure out quite yet just where we're going to live because that's still up in the air too. The plan is that when we do go home, we're going to settle somewhere for awhile, at least 4-5 years with NO moving AT ALL. That's a tall order to ask of John but after all the moving I've done so far since October, I will have no desire at all to move once we get home. So, I really do not want to rush on that because it's a big decision. We're going to be at least temporarily putting our roots down and I want it to be somewhat of a decent place.

So, once again, it's all a waiting game and we're just waiting to see how everything turns out. We just sort of take it one day at a time, just like we have with everything else. Kind of frustrating at times but what else can you do? It's no better at home, that's for sure.

It definitely has its perks though. I am really enjoying not having to rely on a car and I like getting around by myself or with Natalie, taking the bus (which I have finally gotten used to enough to brave on my own, the buses here are FAST and SCARY!) or the subway, both just a block from our apartment. I have figured out the subway system enough that I probably could go just about anywhere it goes without John (a fact that I'm sure would not thrill him as he would probably panic at the idea of Natalie and I galivanting all over the place) and I'm hoping that maybe I'll be able to start meeting up with some other moms who live on the lines but aren't in the same area. There's lots of shopping to be had here and not everything is insanely expensive. Hair pieces, especially are super cheap and Natalie and I are having a ton of fun finding different colors and different types including bows and those pony tail holders with things on them (think of those sunshine pony tail holders that Punky Brewster always wore and you get the idea) like butterflies, hearts, stars, etc. Shopping is also interesting in that you never quite know what to expect when you go into a store. Samples are typical in the grocery store setting (just like it is at home) but one thing you'll find here that you WON'T find in the US is an area to sample WINE. Admittedly, it's not much more than a sip in a paper cup but still, I think it's pretty neat that I can go into a grocery store and try a sample of wine. And in doing so, have found quite a few that I wouldn't mind picking up a bottle of and bringing home. lol And the nice thing is, as long as the store is open, you CAN buy the wine to take it home! In other words, no being told that you can't buy it because it's after 9pm. Bars here are also open pretty late but since we're here with Natalie, we haven't really taken advantage of that. Still, John jokes that if I get mad sometime and need to get out (always a possibility when you have three people stuck together in a studio apartment), I can always go next door and upstairs to the wine bar. lol

Another interesting thing with shopping is that unlike at home where (especially in big box stores) it can be extremely hard to find someone to help you find something, here there are store personnel available to help pretty much in every single aisle. While this can be a good thing, it can also be a little bit overwhelming, especially if you are trying to shop for something discreetly. An example of this was my experience on Sunday shopping for um pads. Now, I was prepared when I came over. I bought a Diva Cup from the co-op in Madison and I came with a few pads and a package of liners as a back up. That's been working great but the liners were not really big enough and I wanted to pick up something a little larger. And while I'd really like to get cloth pads at some point, right now, I'm just too overwhelmed by all the choices and not looking forward to getting hit with the huge shipping fees to get them over here. So there I am, trying to look at various packages of pads which, of course, are all in Korean and the sizes are all in cm and I have no idea how big I want it to be except that I KNOW that 42 cm is just too big (since that's like a good 15 inches and good grief who in the world needs a 15 inch pad?!) when this nice Korean woman comes up and tries to see if I need help and naturally, there is a language barrier but I try to convey that I would like to find some pads that are not too large and are not too scented either (I can't stand scented items). She keeps pointing some that are definitely too big and I'm trying to tell her that won't work but not getting very far. She finally, I kid you not, brings out this BOOK with samples of actual pads in it! Oh boy! I do see some that may work but to be honest, I was just sort of uncomfortable with the whole thing and really just wanted to get out of there! Mind you, there are samples of pads hanging in front of the packages of pads in the aisle. And they are open so that you can touch them and see if that is the pad you would want to get or not. Helpful, I'm sure, but not something we're going to see in the US anytime soon (thank goodness!). So that was Sunday. Monday, I go to this little Walgreen's without the drugs type place (since all medication are sold ONLY in pharmacies and small ones at that) and fortunately, the help is not quite so overwhelming so I'm left to try and figure out pads and liners for myself with a little help from John with reading the Korean (poor hubby). We had trouble figuring out if one of the ones I was looking at was scented and unscented so John is left having to ask the ladies up front since he's the one who knows Korean. It was interesting to say the least. But we were able to find out what we needed to know and as those weren't too expensive, I did leave with them. They were more liner type things than pads but again, as I only need them as a back-up to my cup, they'll work...as long as I put it in correctly.

There's definitely a lot to see and do around here, don't get me wrong, and I am starting to see what got John so into traveling. My family had settled down by the time I was born so I missed out on all of that and now, my eyes have very much opened up to how unique various places can be. And if John is still at this job come August when he gets that week off, I have no doubt we'll be doing some traveling, especially by train which is a favorite of both John and Natalie.

Now if only John can find a decent job. I think that would really make a world of difference. If he can find a honey of a job with what we have here so far (and a decent apartment with the amenities we need), it would really help out a lot. Unfortunately, I don't think Natalie's going to be sold on the idea until she gets her bike and I'm holding off on that for the moment as I'm using that for a very special milestone. But she seems to be adjusting too and I think if we find some fun things to do this summer (like a water park or the one amusement park that's not too far from here), she'll get more excited. It's just not easy to find things for a three year old to do everyday. They get bored easily.

Still here and doing okay, for the most part.

2009-05-31T07:31:00.002-05:00

For awhile, we were really debating whether or not to go home. John had run into some issues with his director and he was really feeling discouraged by the whole thing and just sort of tired of doing it. He had already been here for four months by the time Natalie and I got here and already on his second job. Now, with another almost three months gone by and the situation with this job not the greatest, I think he really was starting to feel that it might be better to go home and to be honest, it was on my mind too. It didn't help that Natalie started to feel homesick and was asking to go home every day. Things are not perfect here and they're never going to be. That's a good thing. It means at some point we will go home. However, right now, we have opportunities here we will NOT have when we get back home. We have money which is something we definitely will NOT have. We don't have to be on county assistance here. I find that VERY nice. As nice as it would be to go home and have an oven, a microwave, and a bathtub again (not to mention, have access to a lot of the things we don't have access to food wise), the money we have set aside so far would not get us very far. It definitely would not get us a decent car which is something (unfortunately), that is VERY necessary in order for us to live in the US. I would LOVE to have the ability to live without a car like we can here, I would just LOVE IT! But, unfortunately, unless we're in a large city, that's just not possible and living in a large city in the US compared to living in a large city here is VERY different, especially as far as crime goes. Not to mention, cost of living. Not that living here is all that cheap because it isn't but the plan is NOT to live in a studio apartment when we finally do go home, the plan is to live in a place with at least one, if not two or three bedrooms. So for now, we stay.

Not that things can't change at any time. Things are sort of rocky here and there are some tensions once again with North Korea that has me wondering at times just what is going to happen but for the most part, and this is sort of sad, I'm actually MORE concerned about our situation were we to go home now than I am staying here. Here, John can get work. At home, with the economy the way it is, that's not so certain. I hate that it is this way but that's how it is right now. Maybe in about a year things will be different and we CAN go home and find a place to live and a job and all that good stuff and we won't have to worry but to be honest, I'm not ready to go back into that uncertainty just yet. And right now, in the US, things ARE uncertain, that's for sure.

So, at the moment, job issues considering, we're doing okay. I do better once I know what it is we're going to do than I do when we're not sure and for awhile we weren't. Now maybe I can get some of Natalie's summer clothes sent here so that she doesn't have just pants or skirts to wear when she wants to go out to the park. It's not going to be easy because I have to rely on other people to do things for me and that doesn't always go the way I'd like it to but *sigh* what else can we do? I simply am not going to replace Natalie's summer wardrobe, she has a lot of things that I got her, some that she'll grow out of this year and I would like her to get a chance to wear them. I also really do not want to have to deal with having to figure out clothing sizes, that's just too much of a pain in the tail end. So far, I have managed to avoid much of that and I'd like to keep doing so if I can.

Not much going on otherwise, really. During the week, John works and Natalie and I hang out here. Sometimes, if John gets home early enough and Natalie isn't asleep, the two of them will hit the park and play until sunset. Other times, eh, just depends on what is going on. Sometimes we go out for dinner. We're definitely enjoying the opportunity to hit the American restaurants that are here. The Korean restaurants are pretty much out. With our dietary restrictions, we can't afford to take any chances that we'll get something that's not so clean. And some of the dishes here are anything but appetizing. Sorry, but I don't see me EVER eating octopus, even if I DID eat seafood, which I don't! Still, there are a lot of places to go to and check out and ice cream is always a favorite (and VERY easy to find with Baskin Robbins virtually on every block around here). Coffee is another favorite of mine, especially iced coffee drinks and I have been trying out many of the coffee places around here including Star Bucks but I have to say my favorite is A Twosome Place which has the BEST frappes I've tasted so far, tastes more like a chocolate shake than a coffee drink so VERY yummy.

John is doing all he can to get me out and walking around and exploring with him. Yesterday, we walked ALL over the local park and all over the mall areas prior to that. It helped that I found a shopping area I haven't seen before and wanted to explore a little. It wasn't completed but it did have an indoor ice skating rink that was nice and cool to be in with the warm day yesterday. The park wasn't too bad either, as long as I stayed in the shade. It was definitely cooler OUTSIDE than it was in the apartment. We finally ended up where all the fountains were located and Natalie and I both got a little wet. Well, I got a little wet, Natalie got soaked. But she had fun and that was all that mattered. John wasn't too impressed though.

Well, that's it for the moment as they just got back from the musical fountain. I'll have to include pictures of that sometime as it is really neat. I didn't go with tonight because today, we were again walking all over the place, though this time, we took a train down to Seoul Station, took a subway to Itewan (and I KNOW I misspelled that word), walked around the outdoor markets there, walked back to the subway, took it to one station to transfer and then rode that the rest of the way back. I LOVE how cheap the subway is, especially with the subway cards we use. But still, lots of walking to be had and my legs are TIRED!

You know that whole "No news is good news" thing?

2009-05-08T00:57:00.002-05:00

Yeah well, that's been my family of late. If I don't hear from anyone, things are going well. When I do, it's because something's gone wrong. Talked to my younger sister last night for the first time in like a week or so and she gave me some news that definitely wasn't good. She had gotten a letter from my mom yesterday and my mom gave her news about our dad. My dad, at this point in time, is not able to my in our lives physically. Neither is my mom. They are both in places that severely limits their freedom and for good reason. They are also both very limited in their activities and it is this, I believe, that brought on my father's current issues. From what the letter said, my dad had a stroke about six weeks ago which would have been just after Natalie and I got here. The letter also says that he's fine but my understanding is that strokes do tend to have some affect on the brain afterward and again, it is a stroke, not something to take lightly. Course, now writing this, I'm hit with another thought, strokes were what eventually killed my mom's step-dad when he was in his 80's. And now, thinking even more, now that my dad has had a stroke, with my younger sister's issues with both pregnancy and being on the pill (and the fact that she spent all of the LAST pregnancy on baby aspirin), she probably needs to look at what HER health concerns are, this may be something genetic.

So yeah, definitely some concerns there which naturally has John concerned about me. I told him a long time ago that it was doubtful that I would outlive him or if I did, it wouldn't be long because people in my family, compared to his, just didn't live that long! We're usually killed off by something major before the age of 70.

So yeah, I'm a little worried right now. Kind of worried about my dad and definitely worried about my mom because her health isn't that great and my sister too. And having had that happened, it reminds me that at some point, we're going to start losing family members and that's not something I look forward to. I mean, it's been awhile since we've had an actual death of a long term family member in MY family. Spouses have been a different story, John has lost most of his half-sisters now and even a nephew, my younger sister's husband has lost family members recently, and my sister's first husband's family has lost members but OUR family, other than my sister's baby, has had a death in almost 20 years. That's a LONG time. We've been really blessed as far as that goes but I fear that that's not going to last much longer. My family is getting old and with age comes death.

Moved into the new apartment...

2009-05-02T10:38:00.002-05:00

...for the most part. I hate it. I absolutely hate it. John's not loving it very much either. While we gained a loft which is JUST the right height for Natalie to claim as her domain (but too low for me to really be able to go after her when she decides she wants to be up there and I don't), we lost an oven, a dishwasher, a radio, and a dryer. Oh, and did I mention that the ONLY closet with a bar to hang clothes on is up in the loft? That is also where the two extra outlets, extra internet connection, and extra cable connection is. Um, and just what WAS this apartment set up for? Snow White and her seven dwarfs? On top of that, the cable and the internet has NOT been transferred over and the phone is STILL set up to only take calls, not call out. John has already gotten some conflicting answers on when the cable and internet will be set up here so at the moment, I'm on the WI-FI when I'm able to which is not often. The entire day yesterday, I could not get online. THANK GOODNESS for Star Trek Voyager and The Sims 2. Without those, I'd go stark raving mad by now.

Tomorrow, we're looking at another school, in another city entirely and we'll be checking out the apartment as well. John isn't going to stay at this school any longer than he has to, especially since he's going to be replaced anyway. I just feel sorry for the new teacher who has to live here. I mean, we don't even have a microwave. And the place wasn't even CLEAN! People don't do that, they move out of the apartment with the apartment in the shape it's in and the next person moves in pretty much the same day. YUCK!

In other news, since John was off of work yesterday for a holiday, we FINALLY got Natalie's three year pictures done, four months late. *sigh* So, those will be back next week, including CD and I should be able to post those. They're okay, definitely not as much done as I wanted but there's only so much I can get across not knowing Korean. As it was, the experience was frustrating enough because I couldn't get shoes to go with Natalie's dress. The only dress up shoes she had were black ones but the only white ones I could find were either too small, too expensive, or too tacky. In the end, I just wanted the pictures done but hopefully, the photographer understood my instructions to CROP OUT THE SHOES! Because seriously, the black shoes with yellow socks do NOT go with the dress AT ALL but for some reason, they did REALLY far off pictures rather than close ups. *sigh* And to top it off, Natalie got some kind of a black stain on her dress too. I got most of it out but there's still a little spot on there that hasn't really budged so far. Going to have to try again during the week and see if I can get any more of it out because seriously, that was the FIRST time she wore that dress! Good thing I only spent $10 on it.

Still, by the end of the whole thing, I had a vicious headache and had to go home and take a nap which didn't help. At least today I didn't get a headache because we ended up going out on the subway to an area near Seoul to get a new adapter for the computer since for some dumb reason, the teacher who gave me the adapter wanted it back! But, fortunately, we found the correct one and it seems to be working pretty well. At least it stays in the outlet a little better than the other one did. We ended up being out for awhile though and didn't get back in until after 11pm. At least we got to the place before it closed, it was debatable though because we had to wait until close to sundown to leave.

But right now, the idea is sort of to spend as little time in the apartment as possible which is not going to be all that easy next week while John is at work. However, I've got a TON of laundry to do and a washer to figure out how to use to get it done. Should be fun. Hopefully I won't shrink anything in the process.

Moving...yet again.

2009-04-29T04:43:00.002-05:00

I'm getting pretty sick of it too. The reason we're moving is pretty stupid to be honest. Because we said that we were interested in getting a bigger place, the director immediately put the apartment we're in now up for sale. Well, we had found something we wanted but did not want to put almost $4000 down for it, even if we did get it back, things were kind of dicey with the director anyway as far as being paid on time. SO... this place got sold and the director had to get another place so now we're moving tomorrow. We were told Monday. We're moving just across the street and down the block a little so a little farther from some things but closer to others, we'll have to see how that all works. One of the frustrating things is to get to the area I enjoy going to most of the time, I'll now have to cross the really busy street which I didn't have to before. We only had to cross it to go to the store. Now, we won't have to cross it for that but we will to get everywhere else I enjoyed going to before. *sigh*

If only this were to be the last move, it wouldn't be so frustrating but ultimately, we are going to have to move again and it may even end up being in another city altogether. The director has more or less told John that he plans to replace him and from what John has understood it will be with a female teacher. He would have to find the teacher first but I guess, when the school is as iffy as this one, what parents say go and most parents just are not into a male kindergarten teacher. And that was all that was said, the director does recognize that John does want to teach, actually teach, not babysit though which unfortunately is a lot of what kindergarten here is at least in the ESL schools, especially the private ones. I am very quickly becoming frustrated and tired of the whole deal. It seems the situation is worse here than it was at home but John doesn't seem to think so and is bound and determined to see this through for one reason or another even though I'm not entirely happy with the situation (and at times downright ANGRY with him about it) and Natalie is, in her own way, reacting negatively as well. He's bound and determine to make money and save it but I'm the one who has to be on top of it to make sure he doesn't spend it all! Otherwise, it would all be gone. He has NO concept of a budget whatsoever and that's really frustrating too.

So, I really don't know what is going to happen in the next few months much less two years. I keep hearing that once he finds a good job then things will be much better but a lot of directors, especially those of hagwons (the private schools here) for whatever reason seem to think that foreign teachers are a dime a dozen. They're not though, they cost a considerable amount of money to get and to keep (since things like paying on time is a concept lost on many people here).

So, that's been my world of late. I just hope that when all of this is done and over with (and it will be at some point because there is just NO way for John to make a career out of this whatsoever), he'll be ready to go home and SETTLE DOWN for awhile! Sometimes I think he should have stayed in the army when he was in there because that would have totally met his need to roam, I'm sure they would have been VERY happy to send him all over the place and at least with the military, you can get stuff shipped to you pretty much like normal. But maybe he just needs a couple of years to get this out of his system and after that, he'll be done with it. At the very least, I have decided that when we go back, I will be going back to work. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy staying at home with Natalie and I enjoy spending time with her and all of that but I'm tired of depending on other people for survival. I hate that here, John is the only one who can work. I can't. I don't have my four year degree. That is required to teach ESL. And I hate that there really isn't much I can do here. I can't bake, I can't do the usual jewelry stuff, or my scrapbook, or really anything more than the laundry, keep the apartment clean which doesn't take very much as small as it is (I mean, it's only one room), and cook which is also very limited because we really only have the stove to do that. I can grocery shop and go window shopping and sometimes do some actual shopping when I have some money but nothing REALLY challenging these days.

I would love to learn to sew, learn to do some gardening, things like that but I've just finally come to the conclusion that I'm really getting to be too old to be depending on someone who, job-wise, just isn't all that dependable, no matter where we are at. He's just not. I want to go back to work and learn to drive and actually be able to be a little more independent so that maybe I won't feel so much frustration in my life, at the very least, frustration towards John. He's always been better with the domestic stuff anyway and his standard of clean has always been higher than mine (product of living with a mother who really didn't care to clean and has has kept houses so filthy, they've become mouse-infested, one house was even condemned and torn down after we lived in it) not that mine is THAT bad but it's not as high as his, I can tolerate some mess, he can't tolerate much at all though ironically enough, he has no problem with his clothes being all over the place.

But really, there are times I wonder if I'll ever be able to make a home for us all. Since we moved out of our house on West Avenue when I was 17 (that was the one that was torn down), I have not lived in anyplace for more than two years. Not one place. We moved out of there spring of 1998 so it's been 11 years now. And the longest I've lived in a place has been seven and a half years and that was the first place I lived from birth until the house burned down May of 1988. That year wasn't fun either, we spent most of that summer in a 10 foot pop-up camper so I suppose things could be worse but still, not having a permanent home isn't fun either. There's no stability for Natalie, no place she can really call home, things change frequently for her and it's no wonder that she struggles at times, she really has no idea what is going to happen next. Tomorrow, we're going to be in a new apartment which means getting everything settled in again for her and getting her adjusted and eventually, we probably will end up moving again, maybe even to another city and she's at an age where she just doesn't really understand why and I start to wonder how that's fair for her because really, it isn't.

When I originally decided to let John have his way about the whole thing, my idea was that we would go from the apartment in Beaver Dam to the apartment provided by the school and stay there for two years, then come home. It NEVER crossed my mind that we would end up going from the apartment to one sister's house, from there to the other sister's apartment, from there to here, from here to another apartment and another. It just never crossed my mind at all that we would end up moving four times in just over six months and really, if I had known that, I never would have agreed to this because this is the kind of thing that messes kids up. When we finally do go back home, it will be with the intention of staying in ONE place for not just two years but AT LEAST 4-5 years. Much of that though, will be determined by how long we stay here which is partly determined by whether or not John can behave himself and not get me pregnant. We had a VERY VERY close call this month and I have decided that if I become pregnant, we do not stay here. I will not have a baby here. I have decided that for sure. I have no desire at this point to have another child so there's no plan to get pregnant to make us go home. I'm not stupid, I know things up very up in the air there and that we really are not in any shape to go home yet. We could be though, if we really got things together and John found a job he can actually keep for more than three or four months, we could send a decent amount home and save up what we need in a year or two. That is not impossible at all. But right now, there is just a lot that's up in the air and to be honest, I really cannot do this moving thing too many more times. At some point, I will expect him to face reality. Living out of suitcases is not my idea of fun and there's only so much time I'm going to put up with that.

But at the moment, he hasn't even gotten any written notice or anything like that and legally, the director HAS to give him a WRITTEN 30 day notice. So that gives us a little time anyway.

Another really good article concerning body shape and mortality.

2009-04-19T21:10:00.002-05:00

Does it really matter how your numbers measure up? Or can you ditch the tape measure?

And thank you Sara for your comment, you made some good points. One of the big concerns though is that what is healthy to eat/not healthy to eat is even under debate. Weston Price provides some good information, especially as far as how some fats (animal fats especially) CAN be good for us. The concern though is that many people (ESPECIALLY those trying to lose weight) go after things like margarine, having been told butter is bad. But it's actually the opposite, margarine has so much extra stuff, stuff that our bodies don't need at all. Butter is actually healthier in that regard but yeah, you want to eat a tub a day of the stuff (not sure how one COULD!). And being in shape is definitely important which is what I'm trying to work on now. It's a little easier now that we don't have a car and we have to walk everywhere but I have a ways to go. Large flights of stairs still tend to wind me a little and I'm nowhere near being able to run the five miles hubby can run. lol

Interestingly enough, my husband happened to mention that he will GAIN weight with a lot of exercise, I'm guessing if he were to really start to work out, not just run. My nephew's dad didn't gain weight until he started lifting weights and my nephew is skinny as a rail right now and that has been with a diet that has NEVER had veggies but has mostly been chicken nuggets and french fries from Mc Donald's, then moved on to Ramen noodles, pizza, and mac and cheese. The kid has never eaten healthy in his LIFE (well, except for the nine months he was breastfed lol)! He has to wear women's pants because he's so darn skinny. Oh and he does NOT exercise. Never had, never will. He also drinks, smokes, and has done drugs. Definitely NOT a healthy person. But no one will care what HE eats, he fits into society's views of how a person should look.

Interesting...

2009-04-18T01:59:00.003-05:00

Shortly after my rant about the things I've been told about my daughter and her future weight issues, this blog entry came out:

Death threats to children — the government’s idea of public health messages

Here's the part that REALLY gets to me:

Parents report their children have been left terrified of food. One mother told the Telegraph that her daughter had became very upset about dying when her dad served her cereal with sugar on it and that children are being “brainwashed” by exaggerated messages about healthy eating promoted in schools.

WOW. Again, people need to have a NORMAL relationship with food, not an obsession for or against it. And some people seriously need to get over their fat phobias before they screw up their kids! And by fat phobia, people who, in my opinion, think no differently than those with anorexia or bullemia but instead of seeing it on themselves, see it on other people, as in, no one else is skinny enough for them. In other words, people who make comments about my HUSBAND being overweight when he weighs less than 130 lbs because it's not all pure muscle. SICK! These kinds of people need MAJOR THERAPY!

Well, we've been here over a month now...

2009-04-17T23:16:00.004-05:00

...and there are definitely some good days and bad days. The good days are when we go out and about and find something that I didn't expect at all to find (like Dr. Bonner's castile soaps) and the bad days are when I look ALL over and can't find one decent toy store around here to find something OTHER than character toys for Natalie or worse, can't find something that should be simple to find like a pail and shovel. The good days make living here bearable while the bad days have me thinking of buying a plane ticket. *sigh* But naturally, a month doesn't even come close to getting one used to new surroundings so I stick on, hoping that this will come to feel like home for me at some point, or at the very least, a sense of what I missed my years in college deciding to stick to a local university rather than head out of state/abroad as I had once planned. Fact is, there was a time where I had considered going and spending a year overseas for college. Admittedly, it wouldn't have been Korea but still, it would have been quite a culture shock and not something I would have been able to do on my own (though I'm sure, if I HAD gone oversears for school, John would have found a way to come with).

One of the big struggles has been the apartment. We're in a studio apartment which is really not all that big and has only one actual bed (that's firmer than anything I've been on in the states, though I must admit, I think it's been broken in a little now). Natalie sleeps on a mat like thing on the floor which, oddly enough, seems to work for her, she definitely likes it better than the couch with the mat on that. Unfortunately, she usually does not go to bed unless at least one of us is also in bed, usually John because he has to get up the next day and I tend to suffer from bouts of insomnia here and there. Even then, it's not easy to get her to go to sleep and therefore, we tend to find her awake as late as 1 in the morning. Fortunately for me, she also usually doesn't wake up before 10 or 11 on the morning following that late of an evening. I have no doubt that having a room to actually put her in would help her go to sleep sooner at night but at the moment, it doesn't look like that is going to happen. While we were able to check out a few apartments around here and found one that would work right in the building we're currently in, in order to move into that apartment, we would need a deposit of around 5 million won which is over $3700 US money. That's not something we have right now and although we would get it back, it's still a lot of money to put down at once, especially when John's last payment from the director was late.

Which brings us to our next issue, budgeting. Normally, John gets paid once a month but already, he's been paid late. This last time wasn't too bad but we talked to the other foreign teacher and she told us that it's normal for this director to be as much as 1 MONTH late. This would not be good AT ALL! So, at the moment, we're seeing what happens next month as there are a couple of other things we're sort of keeping on eye on, things that would end up affecting how long we are here. At the moment though, I think we can be pretty confident in John's job security. While the one foreign teacher is being replaced, it is because her contract has ended. The director here honestly cannot afford to lose any foreign teachers at all because if he does, he'll end up having to shut down the school. He had run into all kinds of issues, I guess, because a teacher had to leave for home suddenly. Parents started pulling their kids out. And this is the reason why working for a private school in Korea tends to be so iffy to begin with. It is the PARENTS who determine the teachers basically. If they don't like the teacher, they WILL pull their kids out and that does NOT help the school at all. Any why a parent might not like a teacher is anyone's guess. In John's case at the last job, it could have easily been something as simple as he was a male. Some parents prefer female teachers to male teachers. Still, it's not quite so simple to get a teacher over here as it was. Changes in the process and requirements (including background checks, physical examinations, etc) have made it a little more time consuming than before. And that is time that a director cannot afford to NOT have a teacher in place.

So that's something, at least. It's not like before where if something goes wrong, John would be fired instantly and sent home with no job. Here, he would get at least a month's notice which gives him some time to find another job. Now hopefully, that won't be happening anytime soon because with a job change comes visa and immigration changes and more paperwork and other issues as well and that's not only time consuming but also expensive! As it is, at some point, we will have to start making plans to get visas for me and Natalie. We have until June 10th to do so as we're currently here on a 90 day pass. Once we get a visa, we can be here for a full year and by that point, we will probably have a little money set aside to take a brief excursion out of the country. Hard to say, we'll have to see.

At the moment though, there's a lot to figure out and plan. With the weather being so in-between winter and spring, I ended up bringing many things here that I no longer need and leaving things there that I probably could use now, especially with the weather warming up close to summertime temperature for Wisconsin. Natalie at least has short-sleeved shirts here but she also has mostly pants and jeans. Her shorts are still in the locker at home. I at least brought the pair of gauchos I'm very fond of but I could probably use my summer items before too long as well. John already brought his summer stuff which really isn't much different from his winter stuff with the exception of three pairs of jean shorts that I got for him from someone on Freecycle last year. Fortunately, summer items fit a little better on Natalie than winter items. I don't have to worry about length so she can wear shorts from 24 months up to 4T and she has plenty of tops of various sizes. I'm still finding clothing sizes to be baffling though, especially jeans. I managed to grab a couple of pairs of 3T jeans from Old Navy before we left the states and they fit. In fact, they're almost too big around and I have to use the waist adjusters on them to keep them from falling off. Before that, I had found some of Natalie's 3T jeans to be a little snug. I don't understand it at all. She did hit a little bit of a growth spurt, sometime between late January and a week ago, when I finally measured her height for the first time in months. She's up to 37 3/8 inches which is almost an inch more from the last time I measured her.

Still, I am rather perturbed to have heard that my lamenting about Natalie's changes in clothing size was due to her being fat! What in the world! I got QUITE the lecture from a family friend shortly before our departure and told that Natalie's weight issues at such a young age are CLEARLY my fault because of the examples she gotten from me and how I eat and that she will have weight struggles her whole life because of it. Um, EXCUSE ME?! FIRST OF ALL, I NEVER lamented on here that my daughter was fat (why EVER in the world would I do that?!), I was lamenting that my daughter, for WHATEVER REASON, had grown out of her clothes. I had the same issues when she shot up an inch back in November and grew out of all of her 2T stuff! And the reason for this is very simple. I knew I was leaving the states, I knew I was going to have issues figuring out the sizes here in Korea (and oh boy has THAT been a challenge!). I had spent a fair amount of money buying clothes for her from rummage sales and eBay and whatnot when I had the chance to. I knew I wasn't going to have time to get money back for those clothes. I also knew that it was past the time for rummage sales so I couldn't look to those for clothes and my change in location meant I really couldn't look to Freecycle either (though I actually prefer NON-stained clothes which one usually doesn't find on Freecycle). I don't have half a dozen other kids and their hand-me-downs to get clothes from either. So yeah, I was kind of annoyed and especially annoyed that I had to keep going through clothes and packing and repacking the luggage because she kept growing. That NEVER meant she was fat though or that I even THOUGHT she was fat! Yes, some of her jeans were snug around her belly, that's where I buttoned them! She did fill out a little bit over the winter, SO WHAT? So does John! He gains a little tummy over the winter (probably to SURVIVE the cold because he's so blasted skinny) and then when it warms up, it goes away, especially if he starts running and then I have to figure out how I can fatten him up enough to keep his pants ON! He already had to cut off part of his belt today so that it would fit him as he's probably down an inch or two around the waist.

I'm just getting SO annoyed with all of this though. I'm told Natalie is going to be fat because of how I eat or because she's gotten the ocassional treat. I'm told Natalie is going to rebel and eat pork because John and I won't let her have any or she's going to rebel and go on an eating binge because we don't let her eat a daily diet of ramen noodles or let her have soda or a lot of other stuff some parents give to their kids all the time. Natalie is THREE. Why the bloody blazes are people worried about her weight ALREADY?! She is at a perfectly acceptable weight for her age. When I look at 3T stuff for her, she's in the height and weight range for that size. She has NEVER EVER been off of the chart for her weight. She does NOT look overweight. Looks are deceptive though because she's a VERY solid girl. She DID inherit my bone structure and I have ALWAYS been heavier than I looked. Even in pictures where people have commented that I was SKINNY (around a size 10), I probably still weighed more than my husband does now (he currently weighs around 128-130 pounds). I was never a waif though. I have always been broad-shouldered and big hipped and just a little wider than a lot of people (and by that, I don't mean overweight, I mean built wider). That's just how it is with my body type. Natalie will probably be the same way and Natalie also will probably not have the trouble to GAIN weight her father had (and still does, the little snot). He didn't hit 100 lbs until he was in 10th grade. I'm pretty sure I was close or over 100 lbs by fourth. And yet, I did not look fat.

I don't deny that I struggle with my weight and I don't want Natalie to struggle with hers. BUT, at the same time, I want her to have a HEALTHY relationship with food. No, I don't want her to comfort herself with food or eat junk food all the time because it tastes good or to go on overeating binges in general. I also don't want her throwing up her food or not eating at all simply to lose weight. That's not healthy either and in fact, that's more likely to kill you than being overweight. For MANY reasons, I did not have a healthy relationship with food. I have no doubt that a lot of it was due to the issues within my own childhood and I'm hoping that that will be one thing Natalie does NOT have to deal with. She won't have to eat food for love as I did or eat food to fill in that hole that needed to be filled for SO LONG. I'm hoping she won't have to eat for stress but will find other ways to deal with it like talking to her parents or to friends. I hope as she gets older, she'll have support to continue to be active and a place to do so and not told she has to stay inside because it's too dangerous to go out on her own. I hope that being active becomes second nature to her like it is to her dad so that she doesn't have to relearn to enjoy being active at almost 30. I hope veggies and other different foods become something she tries on a daily basis...but not octupus, there's something HORRIBLY wrong with eating something that's STILL ALIVE and STILL has the little suction thingies *shudders*. And mainly, I hope she finds balance and accepts and LOVES HERSELF. Because you know, that's the hardest thing of all.

These pictures were taken about three weeks ago. The last thing Natalie is is fat. And anyone who says otherwise needs to be smacked upside the head.

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore...

2009-03-21T05:15:00.002-05:00

Eh, couldn't resist the whole Wizard of Oz quote there and yes, there is no place like home but slowly I am starting to adjust to this whole WAAAAAAAAY outside my comfort zone thing here. It's definitely a culture shock, don't get me wrong. It's NOT America. lol But the more I actually get out into it and the more I find things that ARE familiar and comforting, the better it is.

Admittedly, food is an adjustment. South Korea is a predominantly pork and seafood eating culture and those are two things that are no-no's in John's book (though seafood has never really been something I've picked up on myself, to be honest) so dinner gets tricky to figure out and probably will for awhile until we get used to a whole new way of cooking again which basically means cooking on the stove for the most part as there is no microwave here and there isn't much of an oven either as it isn't much bigger than the size of a toaster oven. It MIGHT fit a small pizza. lol

Adjusting to the whole laundry thing is interesting too. The washer is both a washer and a dryer and it takes a LOOOONG time to wash and dry clothes BUT on the plus size, they really seem to get clean though I do wonder about using the washing stuff John has here. I would prefer to use the clean and clear stuff or maybe even look into something like Charlie's like some moms I know use (especially those moms who have cloth diapered little ones).

One of the first things I had to find though was a stain treatment thing which I did find, at Costco's which was a NIGHTMARE to go into, especially on a Sunday. Yikes. Sam's Club in La Crosse and Costco's in Middleton do NOT compare AT ALL to the Costco's here. Here it is PACKED! It is INSANELY packed! And there are these escalator like things all over and that is how people get from one floor to another. Note: I hate, despise, LOATHE escalators. I'm terrified of them. Don't ask me why, I just am. I hate them and I try to avoid them whenever possible. I hate getting on them; I hate being on them, and I hate getting off of them. *shudder* I will, nine times out of ten, take the STAIRS over an escalator and would have last week if I hadn't walked SO much and was SO tired and my legs were just screaming at me for making them walk more in the last few days than they had walked the last four months before that. The ones at Costco's were a little easier to deal with, they were more like an inclined moving sidewalk (yes, I hate those too) so that wasn't AS BAD but still, I do NOT LIKE ESCALATORS. Therefore, between that and the overall crowded condition of the place, I do not plan to go there again anytime soon. I'll probably send John by himself instead. Yes, I'm mean. Then again, the plan in all honesty is to just go once a month to get those things we need to get that we just cannot get around here and those things that are in bulk that will therefore hopefully last at least half, if not a full month. So that's my plan. Last week, we needed something to treat stains on clothes (an absolute NECESSITY when you have a preschooler) and that was where we decided to go looking for it. Hopefully, we won't need anymore anytime soon because man, that was NOT cheap. Then again, things brought over here from the US typically are not cheap.

So yeah, I'm slowly adjusting, getting to know the surroundings and getting to know people as well. I've met up with a mom a couple of times and Natalie gets along really well with her little girl so that will be something we'll keep up with and it gives me a chance to get to know the area even better. One of the nice things about where we live is that it is in a ideal location where it's just walking distance to many place (though with the subway, just about everything is within walking distance) and as I become more comfortable with going outside with Natalie on my own, I'll be able to tour more of the places and get to know more things. Unfortunately, some of the concern is language as I can't speak Korean and my understanding of it will be next to impossible with the hearing issues I have but all I can do is try and the best way to deal with boredom is to get outside and do things. That will also help get some of this weight off too.

Not that there isn't anything to do indoors. True, the apartment is small. It is a studio and therefore, it is just one room. But, we honestly do not have that much here. It is mostly just our clothes and some toys for Natalie and really, she doesn't need much else at this point (though I'd be willing to bet she'd LOVE to have a scooter) and storage hasn't been too bad. It would be nice to get another laundry basket or two (or at least a hamper) but other than that, we've been dealing. Not that a larger place wouldn't be nice. I mean, we are two married adults and it would be nice to be able to have intimate relations without worrying about being caught in the act by a three year old waking up to go potty. But at this point, that's about the biggest downfall of all three of us being in one room. John's gone most of the day, there are a couple of days a week I get out, and at night we all have dinner and go to bed. Natalie sleeps well when she is asleep so I could watch TV if I wanted to but there's also the option of finding things to watch online or watching one of the episodes of Star Trek Voyager as I managed to get ahold of all seven seasons of that before I left. And with the computer, I can use my headphones at least so that doesn't even disturb anyone. All in all, it hasn't been too bad so far though, I'll admit, there was a few days when I really considered just buying a plane ticket for myself and going back home but I think for the moment at least, that feeling is gone.

Yes, I'm alive.

2009-03-18T00:46:00.002-05:00

And, not only am I alive, but I have both my computer AND the internet connected! The computer took a little bit of figuring out because of the change in currents here, the plug thingies are pretty weird looking but a co-worker of John's stopped by the other night and gave me a plug that would work with my computer and with the outlet here. Woo-hoo! And internet was even easier. Thank goodness for Wi-fi; I was able to connect to that pretty quick. So I am here, in Ilsan City, South Korea, on my computer and on the internet.

I won't lie though, it's all been VERY overwhelming. It's a big city and we're near the downtown area. I'm still suffering a bit from jet leg and get tired at odd times here. Natalie does too though she's actually holding up right now which impresses me. Then again, she actually slept in a little bit today and by sleeping in, I mean she didn't wake up until 7:30 in the morning as opposed to around 6am. Since we're all sleeping in one room, this has not really helped the rest of us get any sleep and having some alone, ADULT time has also not been easy (though one good thing to that I guess is that I probably won't get pregnant anytime soon). I'm hoping that eventually she'll be able to hold off on sleeping until around 8 or 9 pm giving John and I some time to ourselves. But it does require that we get dinner done pretty soon after he gets home which requires actually knowing what we're having for dinner in advance and so far, it's been by ear each night.

The apartment is VERY small. I would be willing to bet that it is smaller than the livingroom of the last place we lived. If it's over 300 square feet, I would be surprised because I cannot imagine it being much over 10 feet by 15 feet. The bed fits both John and I at least but it's hard, just slightly softer than sleeping on the floor would be. Natalie sleeps on the couch.

Some good things though (besides being able to get online here). The water pressure here is REALLY nice, the water stays hot, and I'm able to find a lot of my favorite shows in English on the TV here. Though I will say this, watching Dora in Korean where they emphasize the English rather than the Spanish is just a little on the ironic side, to say the least. But even a lot of those shows are in English and Natalie doesn't seem to care about the ones that aren't. She was quite happy watching Thomas the Tank Engine in Korean. Commercials though, are a bit strange and I've yet to find the closed captioning though the English shows do have Korean subtitles (and usually have the actor names in Korean as well).

One of the big things to get used to is how people react to Natalie. She is a BIG TIME oddity. American children are not common here and one with blue eyes, I'm guessing, rarer still. She REALLY attracts attention. In fact, in one place we stopped at, one of the servers took out her cell phone and was trying to get pictures of her! They also come up to talk to her and to touch her which can be a little unsettling. And many people say she's pretty or has pretty eyes. We stay here too long, she's going to get a big head!

The plane ride here wasn't too bad. It was my first time on a plane and I was very nervous but it definitely could have been worse. We got to the airport early enough to get through security and all that with few issues (other than Natalie having a breakdown when she had to leave the car AND when she had to take off her coat and shoes) and got to our gate with little time to actually have to sit and wait. Getting to the gate took a little longer because I was specifically trying to avoid escalators (I HATE them with a passion). Natalie, on the flight to San Francisco was VERY excited to watch the plane go up (meanwhile my stomach was flopping around like a fish) but was out cold five minutes later. Still, once my tummy settled down, it was nice to see all of the scenary below. It was a clear day and the view was VERY nice. We flew over Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, and California before finally landing in San Francisco. Having only been in two of the above states, it was very different for me.

Getting to the gate in San Francisco took about an hour (again, stupid escalators and it took a while just to figure out WHERE to go) but then we had a little over an hour before boarding took place. So we took the time to sit down and relax (Natalie spent her time looking out the window). Since she slept most of the way to San Francisco, she wasn't quite willing to go back to sleep when we got on the plane again. She was up for the first four hours and was a bit of a pill too as she did NOT want to stay buckled in. There was DEFINITELY some turbulance going on too which was VERY interesting, to say the least. But fortunately, I knew what it was and I wasn't too freaked out. Still, it was over 12 hours of flying and the shades were down most of the time, not that I could see all that much anyway as just about everytime I looked outside, there were clouds below. It was light out all the way to Seoul, where we landed. The sun set just a little bit before our arrival and it didn't really get dark until after we had been there about an hour. That in itself was disorienting considering that it was light out when we first flew out of Chicago and when you consider that we didn't land in Korea until around 4am Chicago time, that was ALMOST 24 hours that we had light out which definitely didn't help my body figure out what time it was.

Landing in Seoul was very interesting. Natalie and I had to take a train (basically a subway) just to get to the baggage claim. John did NOT warn me of that at all but I guess he didn't have to do that when he flew in since he came in through Japan, not San Francisco. But we made it to the baggage claim, got all of our bags (they all arrived there safely) and after a little bit, figured out we needed to go through one more door in order to get to John. He was very happy and relieved to see both of us make it there okay.

The rest of the evening was pretty adventuresome but I'm going to take off for now, I'm getting kind of beat here. The time change has been a bit difficult to get adjusted to and I still get tired during the day.

Last post written in the US!

2009-03-11T04:14:00.002-05:00

And probably the last one for a little while, at least until I get settled in. Leaving in about an hour for the airport and will then be flying out after that. Really nervous about it all and haven't been able to get much sleep. I have some HUGE butterflies in my stomach. But hopefully, it will all go well without any snags.

Just 48 hours to go...

2009-03-09T08:05:00.002-05:00

...well, give or take a few hours since I would have to be at the airport between 5 and 6am but yeah, flight leaves Wednesday morning so not too long from now. I'm starting to panic a little and I'm worried I'll forget something. I've already realized I've forgotten a few things in La Crosse including Natalie's spring jacket. grr. So, not sure what I'm going to do about that, probably have my sister ship it out to me. *sigh*

Anyway, I'm in Chicago now, staying with my brother and his wife and kids. Not sure what the plans are for the next couple of days but I know I do intend to finish up the little bit of packing that still needs to be done and be ready to take off. I'm still hoping the federal tax return gets in before then, I could use the money.

Not much else going on though right now, just getting ready to leave.

We have a baby!

2009-03-06T08:48:00.002-06:00

Keira Faith Annalee was born last night at 11:26PM by cesarean. She was 5 lbs, 10 oz and 19 1/4 inches long. She's VERY little! Things definitely didn't go as planned but the big thing was getting the baby out okay and considering everything my sister had gone through with this pregnancy, she's definitely grateful to have a healthy baby. This one will be her last though as she also went through with the tubal after the cesarean was done. If I get a chance and the internet is still up and running, I'll post pictures later but I need to get them on my computer and edited a little first.

So now, I'm waiting for my sister's in-laws to come and get me...

2009-03-05T19:36:00.003-06:00

...and take me to the hospital. Hopefully I'll get there before the baby is born. She's now been induced to things are back on track as far as moving forward. Don't ask me why she got induced, I really don't understand it either. All I know is that they all got impatient with the water breaking and no contractions for a good six hours so rather than wait for the contractions to actually start, they induced. So, we'll see when the little one will make her appearance and hopefully I'll get some pictures!

I'm just kind of hoping that all of this baby stuff going on doesn't get Natalie into wanting me to have a baby because I really don't think I want anymore. Then again, it has been awhile since I've been around a newborn so we'll see what that ends up doing. It would be kind of funny if I ended up getting pregnant not long after arriving in Korea (though really, that's NOT the plan!).

Oh, and if you don't get any updates after this one, more than likely it will be because the internet was disconnected and I didn't get back home in time to update before that happened. Just to warn you all in advance and if that IS the case, more than likely you won't get an update from me until after I get to Chicago which won't be until Sunday. So consider this your potential cliff-hanger...

She's been admitted...now we're just waiting...

2009-03-05T15:24:00.002-06:00

To be honest, I'm not sure if I'm even going to be in the delivery room. She has her husband there which kind of surprises me considering what he's been putting her through but I guess I shouldn't be surprised really. I just know that if it were me in her situation, NO WAY. Then again, my husband would have to consider himself lucky if he were still ALIVE if he pulled something like this. So I guess we'll see what happens.

On standby!

2009-03-05T12:23:00.002-06:00

Got a call from my younger sister. She's 37 weeks and a couple of days pregnant now and has been showing signs of early labor but nothing had really been moving beyond that. Well, she called to tell me she thinks her water broke at the chiropractor's office after an adjustment and she's now on her way to the hospital to see if it was in fact the amniotic sac that went. So now, I'm just waiting to hear if she's been admitted and hopefully I'll get to go over there and help. I have the babysitter on the way just in case!

Packing...YUCK!

2009-03-04T14:01:00.002-06:00

That is what I'm doing these days. Packing, packing, and yet even more packing. I just packed the two main suitcases but I'm sure I'll move things around from there to the extra one and back until I have it all just right. So far, it is mostly clothes which kind of scares me. I still have the rest of the stuff to pack. Yikes!

Because it is warming up, not as much of the winter stuff is going and more spring stuff is and trying to pack the winter stuff is NOT easy. It's bulky and big and it is NOT going into the totes all that easily. So I don't know what I'm going to do about that except to maybe buy another tote before the week is out.

I have Sunday to get this all done and that still includes finishing my scrapbook and transferring files from the computer to the laptop so I can FINALLY get that all ready and sell it to the person I have been planning to sell it to.

In the MEANTIME, my sister is working her way into labor. She went in this morning and was told she's in early labor so she could go at ANY TIME. So we've got ticking time bombs all over the place here.

Bleh, I need a nap.

Did I mention my sinuses are congested and I'm on my monthly? Fun times all around. *sigh* Better get back to work, the little one is out with her adopted granddad so I need to use the time wisely. I may not have internet as of Friday so we'll see what happens as far as me keeping everyone posted. The next time you hear from me, I might be in Chicago.

One week left before take off. Actually less than that when you consider the flight is at 8am.

Why can't anything in my life come easily?

2009-03-02T00:21:00.002-06:00

It just really seems that things have to keep pushing me and pushing me and pushing me until I finally break. I'm about to that point already. I just want things to FOR ONCE go right without problems, without a lot of snags but it NEVER happens that way. Something is ALWAYS complicated and I'm SO TIRED OF IT!

John has moved to our new place. It's a STUDIO APARTMENT. I couldn't even have a roommate in college because living in such close quarters with someone else about drove me insane and I have to spend the next up to two years in a studio? The other option is to find a place of our own but there are a couple of problems with that including the need for up to 5 million won for the deposit. To put that simply, that's about two months of John's salary. And while there is a housing allowance, I'm not sure how much of the rent would be covered with it (because even with the deposit, we would STILL have to pay rent!). One of the HUGE reasons for going over there was because housing was going to be covered. I could handle a one bedroom. But a studio? Not having a place to go when everything is overwhelming for me is NOT good. It's going to be like a pot on high with the lid on. I'm going to blow up at some point. I'm almost to that point now. I'm very burned out having played this single parent thing for almost four months. I don't know what to do and I'm FURIOUS with John about this. He just NEVER considers my mental capabilities. My ability to cope with stress has been SEVERELY compromised since the murder. And having gone through what I've been going through the last four months is NOT going to help. And I haven't even gotten on the plane! Why does he do this to me? Sometimes I think he likes pushing me to see how much I can handle before I completely have a mental breakdown. I really do. *sigh*

So, in other news, the baby is still hanging in there. My sister will be 37 weeks on Tuesday and so far, so good. So, we'll see if she makes her appearance before I leave on Sunday for Chicago. I'll be spending a few days there with family before I finally fly out of O'Hare on Wednesday the 11th. It's not a happy situation I'll be leaving either. She is going through with the divorce as her husband has decided that he prefers the other woman. It really sucks for her but I think eventually, she'll be better off. Unfortunately, his parents are sticking their noses where it don't belong and are trying to get my sister AND her husband to terminate their parental rights and turn the kids over to them. Which I think is SO wrong especially since one of the kids isn't even their biological grandchild and the adoption was never completed. They seem to think though that they are better suited because they have a house and cars and money and can take the kids to Disneyworld and garbage like that. I think things could get VERY ugly before it is all over with.

So that's pretty much it in a nutshell. Did my taxes today finally (but hey, a full month before I did them last year and MUCH earlier than I did my state which was pretty late) and hopefully, the refund will show up before I leave. Could really use the money.

I think I broke my toe.

2009-02-26T22:38:00.003-06:00

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.

2009-02-24T23:32:00.003-06:00

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...

2009-02-22T09:58:00.002-06:00

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...

2009-02-21T00:21:00.002-06:00

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.

2009-02-19T10:35:00.003-06:00

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...

2009-02-16T19:41:00.002-06:00

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:

The flight is 13 hours from the time we leave San Francisco (roughly).
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?).
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.
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!
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.

2009-02-15T22:33:00.003-06:00

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...

2009-02-12T22:32:00.003-06:00

...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...

2009-02-10T20:40:00.003-06:00

...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...

2009-02-09T20:53:00.002-06:00

...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.

2009-02-08T21:29:00.002-06:00

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...

2009-02-05T13:08:00.002-06:00

...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.

May I also mention?

2009-01-20T09:08:00.002-06:00

Now I know why people went to bed pretty much at dark back in the old days. WOW. It is NOT fun to have to try and do things in candlelight, really. And this half hour on/half hour off thing is VERY annoying! Not to mention, it's kind of freaking Natalie out especially after dark. Ugh. Fortunately, my younger sister is picking me up and I'm staying with her until I can finally go to Korea (or John comes home, whatever ends up happening, *sigh*). One thing for sure, without power, you sure get a lot of praying done. But that did help a little, I was able to get calmed down but there's NO WAY I could stay here until my sister finally got enough money together to pay her bill, especially since the electric company also wants a $200 deposit now. Ugh. How can people live this way?! I just don't get it. NOTHING one can buy is worth this, seriously. But they all see it as a big adventure! Um, sorry, no, I did that already the summer after our house burned down and I'm not into doing that all again. No way. I don't even camp if I can help it. And of course my sister sees it as an adventure, she works full days seven out of 14 days so she's not home half of the time anyway! Ugh. Why did I sign up for all of this again? Seriously, we should have just not done this if we didn't have the money for the plane tickets for all three of us. *sigh* Because now I really don't know when we're going to go or even IF we're going to go. It's all going to depend on when John finds a new job. The one he has will end February 13th. Why does that almost always happen around Valentine's Day? Ugh. But yeah, I just wish he would come home. I miss him.

As for WHY he lost his job, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to matter over there if you are doing a good job or not, if the parents don't like you, you're out. And the Koreans usually do not follow their contracts so there is nothing protecting you if they decide they don't like you. Though this is more of a problem with the private schools, not as much with the public ones. I'm hoping that that something will come through whether that is a new, better job or we just decide this isn't going to work and try to make it here. I don't know. Obviously, it was time to leave Beaver Dam, we just weren't getting anywhere there. I just don't know where exactly where we're supposed to be. Hopefully the answers will come soon but in the meantime, it looks like it's going to be awhile before we'll be together as a family again and that is the hardest part of it all because I really, REALLY miss my husband.

Not much else going on other than my sister is starting to dilate. She's 31 weeks and she's 1cm already. She has also been told by her OB that if she goes into labor (even now), they will NOT stop it. They are going to take that as a sign that the baby is supposed to be out. But, her OB also wants me in town to help her out because she can't handle the two kids herself AND rest and she really needs to rest. Her husband...I won't go into right now, that's another whole ball of wax in and of itself and if I think about it too much, I'll just get mad. So, that's what's going on in my life right now. Hopefully things will turn around soon.

VERY quick update...

2009-01-19T15:03:00.001-06:00

...as I have less than five minutes before the power kicks off. Yeah, here, they have a 30 minutes on/ 30 minutes off thing if you don't pay the bill. Add to that no gas, YET AGAIN, and other issues...ugh. And yet, John is losing his job in Korea as of Feb. 13 so I don't know what to do but this nightmare needs to end NOW!

I am SO sick of this winter!

2009-01-15T15:51:00.002-06:00

Between the constant snowing and the now, EXTREMELY bitter cold temperatures, I've pretty much had it with winter in Wisconsin this year. Temperatures last night got all the way down to -23 degrees. It was SO cold this morning, they showed a thing on the news where they threw water out of a glass or something and it FROZE before hitting the ground. It was THAT cold. Schools all over are canceled and tonight, it is supposed to be even colder. Now, when I say how cold it was, I'm not even talking about the windchill. Those are even worse. Last night's temp was the ACTUAL temperature. Windchill, I believe got all the way down to -40 or more. So yeah, not fun.

Monday was snow which made sure to COMPLETELY mess up me getting ANYTHING accomplished in town. I'm still in need of a suitcase and a few other items including jeans for Natalie because she's chunked up being cooped up all winter here. I'm SUPPOSED to be leaving a week from Saturday from Chicago to go to Korea (at 8am too) and I'm nowhere NEAR ready to go. I have SEVERAL items that still have to go to the locker, things to pack, laundry to do and I can't get anything done because I'm CONSTANTLY stranded here. When I finally DO get to town, there's no time to get everything done and getting to town constantly depends on the weather which has been HORRENDOUS this winter.

And I can't even really make plans until I konw what is going on with the flight and John for some reason has not gotten ahold of me in more than 24 hours. I'm getting mighty annoyed with this. He pulled this quite a few times last week too and that's why things got delayed a full week. He could AT LEAST let me know if he has made the attempt to get the tickets or not. I can't call him because I don't have international long distance on the phones here and calling long distance is expensive enough: 10 cents a minute. He obviously hasn't gotten to an internet cafe because he hasn't emailed me and he's yet to call me and let me know what's going on. So I don't know what's going on. I'm EXTREMELY stressed out, almost to the point of just wanting to sleep all the time. I shut down now when I'm stressed out and that's not good when I have NO ONE to help me with things. I don't know. Life really sucks for me right now and I'm getting very frustrated with everything, getting very stressed out, and getting very depressed yet again.

To top the whole load of garbage off is my younger sister and all of her problems that is getting EVERYONE in the family dragged in. She recently found out that her husband is in love with her best friend (read the entry on the huge fight she and I had because I was ticked off at her for getting back with this friend back in October, that's the one). He has been having an affair with this girl for awhile and I guess it started as far back as last year. This woman has been staying with them recently (along with a few other people, in a two bedroom apartment that was already cramped with the four family members) and I guess my brother-in-law's plan was for both of them women and their children to live together so that, I guess, he was never without sex (since one of the big problems with this pregnancy is the sex restrictions that were put in place by the OB). Yeah, that went over REAL well. The stress from finding out all of this plus other problems that cropped up put my sister into the hospital with contractions Sunday night. She's only 30 weeks pregnant. *sigh*

I'm trying VERY hard to stay out of this, going so far as to sit out in my best friends car for what was probably close to, if not more than, an hour while all of the various family members and friends discussed what was going to happen. And nothing I needed to get done got done. And I may or may NOT get to La Crosse on Friday and it would be REALLY nice to get there so that I could MAYBE go to services and be exposed to some NORMAL people for once. You know, people who don't live their lives in a constant soap opera like most people I know do.

I just want to get the things done I need to get done so that I can leave having everything completed that I need to have completed so that I don't have to worry about anything of mine because it will all be where it needs to be. But I don't even know what is going on and I'm dependent on people who really don't care what happens to me, who really haven't seem to grasp the fact that I'm leaving in a little over a week, to a country that is 7000 miles away, not to come back for at least close to two years if not more depending on the state of the economy in this country. And the weather is NOT HELPING! It's just SO FRUSTRATING! And there's not a darn thing I can do about it. Because most of it is completely and totally out of my control and I'm getting SO sick of it. And when you consider that I'm dealing with all of this without the weekly therapy appointments I had back in Beaver Dam, without meds, with very little help with Natalie from anyone else, without being able to get outside, or cook what I want, or have access to hot water everyday I've been here, it is absolutely amazing I have not completely and totally gone off the deep end.

And I haven't even gotten on the airplane yet. My very first flight EVER, which will be international, taking along my three year old, where I will be pretty much going from the time I get up until I get to our apartment in Korea almost (if not more than) 24 hours later...that will be the test. To say I'm not looking forward to it is a bit of an understatement. The question is, who's going to be there to drag ME on the plane?

Okay, let's try this one again...less than two weeks now, hopefully!

2009-01-11T11:11:00.002-06:00

We ran into a couple of snafus this week with John trying to get plane tickets. Mainly the problem had to do with the company John decided to go with to get the tickets. It was one of those companies that unfortunately outsources its customer service to another country where the people do not speak English very clearly. For someone like me, with hearing issues, this is not a good thing. The person kept calling and calling needing information to run John's debit card through (a card issued by a bank in Korea) and half the times, I could not understand a word he was saying! Then it was determined that the card could NOT be used at all which added even MORE frustration to the point where I was getting SO stressed out, I couldn't get anything else done because I was dealing with all this. On top of that, I wasn't hearing from John for 24 hours or more at a time so when the guy did call, I had no information or anything, didn't know what was going on which made the conversations VERY aggravating. Even after John called and talked to the guy and told him NOT to call here, he called here again! By then, I was just more than a little annoyed, I was STEAMING! And while they couldn't run the cards through on John's debit card, they were more than happy to charge it $50 just to cancel the hold! ARGH! The reason we were looking to cancel it was because we couldn't pay for the tickets!

So after ALL that trouble, I decided that I'm just NOT ready to leave next Sunday, not to mention John actually wants us to leave on Saturday which was DEFINITELY not going to happen. The total flight time from the time we would leave Chicago to getting to Korea will take about 21 hours. Add 15 hours to that and that will be the time when we get to Korea. The plan is to leave 8am CT Saturday from Chicago and arrive at what will be 7:30pm Korean time SUNDAY. And that's if there are NO delays and NO snafus. John wants to be there when we arrive though and waiting until Sunday to leave here means that would not happen as he would have just barely gotten off of work by the time we arrived and he would still have to get to the airport which I think is about an hour away. He also thinks the airport there will be a little less crowded by the time we get there which will probably be a good thing considering how exhausted will be by then, especially when you consider that it will be 4:30am HERE when we get to Korea. This time change stuff really boggles my mind so it should be really interesting as we fly over various places.

So the plan is to fly from Chicago to San Francisco and then San Francisco to Korea. The airport in San Francisco looks really nice and I guess it's right by the bay/ocean/some body of water anyway. Should be interesting and I'll have to make sure to get lots of pictures. Just so many things to think about and plan and not having ever been on a plane, I'm simply overwhelmed.

This week, I need to go to La Crosse and pick up some things, the big one being more luggage. I want to at least get one more large check-in bag. There's a lot of clothing and stuff we'll be bringing and I want to make sure we have everything we'll need, at least through the winter. I also need to find Natalie some clothes. The little stinker has grown too much and a lot of the 3T items have gotten snug on her. SO frustrating! So, I need to see how some of the 4T items will fit. Then, I could stand to get a few things myself so, just lots to do and not a lot of time to do it in so if I'm not posting very much, that's why.

In other news, my sister was released from the hospital and she is home. She's supposed to be on limited activities and she'll still have to see her OB every week for ultrasounds and things like that, just in general keeping on eye on Keira. Unfortunately, her stress levels are about through the roof because a certain person who shall at the moment remain nameless is selfish and uncaring about the life he was partly responsible for starting. I will say this though, I'm glad my husband does have a higher power to answer to in as far as our marriage goes and will not just run off when the responsibilities start to pile up. But that's all I'm going to say on that.

So that's it for now and hopefully, I'll know more by next week this time.

Just two more weeks...I hope.

2009-01-04T10:22:00.002-06:00

We're making final plans now. John has decided he wants to get tickets for the 18 of this month, still hoping for us to fly out of Chicago. It all depends on finding transportation though, the various cars have all been hit hard by the nasty winter and the vans especially have suffered large breakdowns in the form of transmission issues. Ugh, I will be SO glad to not have to worry about cars AGAIN for a couple of years.

The next two weeks are going to be both busy and stressful. I have a lot to do, very little time, and very few resources on hand. Getting myself to town is something that is VERY difficult and the winter weather is not helping. Easy simple tasks like being able to take a shower and wash laundry are being hampered by not having any hot water whatsoever because the LP constantly runs out here. It doesn't help that only so much is gotten at a time, enough to last about a week IF no laundry is done at all as the dryer takes up a lot of gas. If laundry is done, the gas lasts less than that. I'm currently washing Natalie's cloth diapers and underpants in cold water and will then have to hang them to dry. I'd wait on the diapers but one has already been sitting for close to a week and I can't keep asking people here to do anything more than what they are willing to do which, to be honest, is not a whole lot. The humans in this house are just not as important as the animals my sister wishes to collect and therefore, as of now, we have been without LP for close to a week. Again, this means not hot water, no gas for the stove, no gas for the dryer. At least there is heat because that relies on the wood burning stove in the garage but still, to go DAYS without a shower is about to drive me up the wall.

I just don't understand why anyone would want to live this way, I really don't. It also really has me thinking of the future and what would happen to Natalie (or any other children) if anything happened to John and I. I want to know that if anything does happen, Natalie will be with someone who will take care of her and take care of her in the best way possible, ie: making sure she gets good, quality healthy food and not a lot of junk. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of things that we would expect to be taken care of and respected and therefore, it will be very important for us to decide on a family who WILL have some respect for our beliefs as far as that goes. Since many of them do go against the mainstream, that will not be very easy, unfortunately. But it will be necessary.

So, in the meantime, I'm trying to get everything figured out. I'm packing and repacking our bags, trying to go through clothes and decide what we will/will not take with. What gets tricky is that Natalie is at a very odd place as far as clothing sizes go. Some of her 3T stuff fits, some doesn't (mainly because I can't button some of the jeans over her belly!). Some 4T stuff fits, some doesn't. It's confusing and it's hard to plan where she's going to go growth wise. I need to try a couple of 4T jeans on her sometime to see how they fit and then plan accordingly. And then I just need to hope I can find clothes for her once we're over there. There is a Costco's so that's hopeful but otherwise, I may be taking our tax return (whatever that may be) and buying her a wardrobe online.

Other than that, not much going on, just preparing and hoping I'll be out of here soon.

Time flies...even when you're not having fun!

2008-12-31T21:10:00.002-06:00

This is something my mom used to say all the time that I do have to say I agree with, that and her whole, "I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not that of an oncoming train!" Not quite to THAT point yet but it's getting there. This last week, oddly enough, went by pretty quick and now we're about two weeks to John's birthday which is when he next gets paid and when we plan to REALLY get the plane tickets. I just haven't felt comfortable getting them sooner than that when money just hasn't been quite as lucrative as I thought. But we'll be there soon and in the meantime, I have time to get ready to go.

It's New Year's Eve and this is normally the time I sit down and pore over all of my old journals and relive past New Year's Eves. I have too many of them now though including THREE online journals. So that tradition has sort of gone out the window. It's kind of odd though to think that for John, it's already the New Year. Here we are about three hours to midnight and the New Year and it's been the New Year for him for over 12 hours now. Just boggles my mind sometimes.

My younger sister is still in the hospital and will be until the baby is born. They are hoping that it will be AT term. She's not due though until March 24th. That's a LONG time to be in the hospital. Her husband plans to rent her a laptop and get her internet over at the hospital so that she doesn't go too insane with cabin fever. Otherwise, not much going on there other than that they are watching her very closely and running a bunch of tests to find out what exactly is going on.

Here, we're all just sort of vegging and waiting for midnight. Natalie got a nap earlier, so she'll be up because in La Crosse, they do fireworks on the bluffs and one of the stations tapes it so we can turn that on at midnight for the kids to watch (or kid, if the other two crash before then). Natalie LOVES fireworks so this will definitely be up her alley.

I will say, other than at the end when John left, 2008 wasn't too bad of a year; 2009 though, should prove to be very interesting once Natalie and I get overseas.

A not so good update on my sister...

2008-12-30T14:14:00.003-06:00

Just got a call from her. She's in the hospital. Her ultrasound yesterday (she's been getting ultrasounds every week since she was at 24 weeks) showed flow restriction in the umbilical cord so they have her on bed rest now there, on heart monitors. She's getting steroid shots to mature baby's lungs and they're running all kinds of tests on her. She's 28 weeks today. She lost Emmah at 28 weeks and four days. They are not taking any chances with her. So yeah, some pretty scary stuff going on and any prayers for her and the baby right now would really be appreciated. Her kids don't know yet. They've been on vacation with their grandparents for the last week or so. They went to Disney World. Since Vannessa's been restricted as far as travel (for this very reason), she wasn't able to go.

At this point, I'm not even sure what to do as far as leaving. I mean, with finances and the value of a dollar and all that, I wasn't looking to go until John got paid again which would be the 15th of January (he got paid before his break but it just wasn't enough with the dollar's value being so low right now). We could get plane tickets now with what we had but it would leave us with very little money if anything were to go wrong. Now, I'm not sure what to do. For sure, I won't be leaving until after January 15th, I just don't know when but at least by then, she'll be over 30 weeks and the baby will have a better chance of making it.

So that's what's going on at the moment, more updates as I learn of them.

Well, this was kind of an interesting week...

2008-12-19T23:10:00.003-06:00

To start with, I'm in Wisconsin and the weather here is CRAZY. I mean, you never know what's going to happen, it could be anything really. So, on Sunday, we had this big drop in temperature. It got up to around 50 degrees (which is pretty warm for December) and then DROPPED to around 0 that night. The next day, when my BIL was getting ready to leave to pick up gas (because we were out of propane gas yet again), he found the baby donkey my older sister had gotten down and almost unconscious from hypothermia. He was close to death. So, my BIL brought him into the house to get him warmed up because there really was no other place to put him. There was a little bit of a shelter outside but nothing with any heat in it except for the house. So, there was a donkey in the kitchen which was pretty interesting. We didn't think he would make it but my sister and her husband finally got him warmed up and he seemed to be fine.

Tuesday, my friend came and picked me up and brought me to town. Natalie stayed with her aunt since the weather was getting kind of bad and it would give Natalie a chance to have an overnight before we left as I highly doubt Natalie will have an overnight while we're in Korea (I just don't quite see that happening). The weather wasn't great as it was snowing (making up for all the snow that melted on Sunday) and with country back roads, the driving was not fun but we got into town and got a few things done. We also had a chance to go out and eat and that was very nice and do some shopping before heading back, throwing a pumpkin pie in the oven and watching Pippi Longstocking (an old childhood favorite of mine). I spent the night at my friend's and the next day was better weather-wise, clear and not too cold so we took care of more errands and then later that day, she took me home and I got back here later in the evening. The donkey was fine. He had his own little enclosed area in the kitchen (yes, he was still in the kitchen) and he had some hay and it looked like he was going to be just fine.

Thursday was spent kind of chilling out and things were okay with the donkey though he wasn't getting up as much but he seemed fine, was alert and all that and so no one thought of trying to get him up more or anything as we all just figured he needed some rest after his ordeal and being in the house where there is a lot of activity going on and stuff. My sister was back at work so she wasn't there to really see what was going on but again, he looked like he was just fine. Later that night, we started getting snow again. Another friend of mine was going to try and pick me up for the weekend but her cell phone battery died and she wasn't able to find the place (we're REALLY far out in the country here) so she had to go back home without picking us up.

Today, the donkey took a huge turn for the worse. He wasn't getting up, he wasn't eating or drinking, just laying in his "pen". At one point, I walked into the kitchen and he had his head up on his shoulder in a really funny way. A couple of hours later, he was gone. My sister was called home from work and she got back pretty much just in time for him to die. He wouldn't get up or anything and his breathing was very funny too. No idea what really happened though but there's been quite a few livestock deaths this week due to the goofy weather on Sunday. I guess animals can't handle that kind of drastic temperature change. It's amazing we humans do but I suppose it's because we're not outside as much and can just adjust the inside temperature accordingly.

So that's been my week here. It was kind of a goofy one, that's for sure. Next week is the big week holiday wise of course and although John and I really don't do the whole Christmas thing anymore, my family does so Natalie and I are kind of getting dragged over for the whole Christmas dinner affair and all that. My older sister seems to think that this would be the PERFECT time for Natalie to have her birthday party. John isn't so thrilled by the idea. I'm waiting on him to let me know whether he gets paid early or not so that I have somewhat of an idea as to when we'll be going to Korea. I'm also trying to figure out what all I have to do still. I'm really starting to think I may ship some things over there instead of packing it in the suitcase and taking it with. I think the shipping might be cheaper. Can't hurt to find out anyway. My plan is to look for space saver bags and see what I can do as far as putting clothes and things in there and then shipping it. I suppose it would make things lighter too which would help and that way, I don't have to worry so much about shipping costs but I don't think it would work for travelling with the way air travel and security is these days. It kind of bites but it is what it is. There's just a lot of stress and frustration going on with me right now as I'm trying to prepare, prepare, prepare and take care of Natalie at the same time. She's been hitting some HUGE mental milestones and some of them are just a bit overwhelming right now. John is going to have his hands FULL once she gets over there. Well, mine will be too but he's going to at least get her for a couple of days while I recover from the two months alone with her and jet lag, not to mention the 13 hours plus I'll have to be on a plane with her. Bleh. I'm SO not looking forward to that. But what else can I do? Just hope I find out WHEN soon so that I can finish preparing. It's hard to do that when I don't have a departure date.

I'm beginning to think I'm going to be stuck here forever...

2008-12-14T23:35:00.002-06:00

I've been informed that the person who is supposed to be taking me and Natalie to Chicago when we FINALLY get a flight out currently does not have a working vehicle to be able to do so. The van he normally drives has a non-working transmission. My older sister is using the car I brought here because the transmission in HER van died. Mind you, both of these vans have had the transmission replaced within the last two years. My younger sister is pretty much grounded to La Crosse as she'll be in her third trimester.

So, I had to send an email to John asking him to look at flights coming out of La Crosse which will mean paying more for tickets which will likely mean waiting for his NEXT check to get this done. If it wasn't for the holidays coming up, I'd send in all the paperwork that needs to be done anyway so that we don't have to go flying to Japan within a month of getting over there.

*sigh* I'm tired, I'm lonely, I miss my husband terribly and once again, we're out of propane which means no hot water, hot gas for cooking, and no gas for the dryer until I have no idea when. It is times like these that it is very hard for me to keep any bit of optimism going and the day to day living is just very hard. I'm trying to keep my spirits up but it is definitely not easy and I'm quickly running out of chocolate. Which has me thinking some hot chocolate would be nice before bed.

Hard to believe John's been gone a month now...

2008-12-09T13:18:00.002-06:00

On one hand, it feels like it has been longer and on the other, it feels like it hasn't been that long at all but this time a month ago, John would have been in the air close to two hours so if not over the ocean at that point, close to it. Strange how we'll be in a similar situation ourselves no more than a month from now. It's starting to hit and I'm starting to panic just a wee bit. There's going to be a point where I will be on an airplane with my three year old daughter (I'm figuring she'll be three by the time we leave since her birthday is oh 18 days away) and coming to a country I have never been to and sleeping on a bed that is totally unfamiliar to me. Just seems strange that this is all going to happen but then there have been a lot of things that have happened in my life where I have looked around and thought, "This is NOT happening to me." June 28, 2003 comes to mind as the big one. So there will definitely be moments of WHAT AM I DOING THIS IS NOT HAPPENING! but hopefully not too many. lol Just another adventure in the journey of life though I figure by the end of this, I'll have a few books to right. I mean, come on, if someone can pay Mylie Cyrus SEVEN figures for her biography and she's only 16, I should at least be able to get something for mine! lol I'll admit too, it would be nice to have some time for writing and maybe being in a new place will inspire me and maybe even bring a few more readers to my site. We'll see. Of course, I have considered making it a family effort too though I will admit, Natalie hasn't quite figured out how to put her thoughts to computer or even paper for that matter.

Ah well, I suppose I should head off to deal with the little one who is calling me and continue to figure out what will be going with us as there isn't much time to get everything ready before we depart.

Three weeks...maybe a little longer...but all the same, not much longer...

2008-12-08T13:02:00.002-06:00

John called this morning with some VERY good news. We had been looking at ways to cut down on the amount of waiting time that is needed to get over to Korea. Part of what has to be done is to get visas and since going to and from Chicago by car is NOT fun (did that with John last month), the other option is to send it by mail. Well, part of the concern with getting the visa was the sponsorship which required documents being sent over to Korea, then getting the number we would need for the visa application, then filling out the application and sending this really big package to Chicago and then wait for it to come back to us and then get the plane tickets. His news today let me know that we can totally bypass that. We do not need a visa in Korea for thirty days. During that time, we can get the visas done ourselves and all that would be needed is a day trip to Japan to complete the process. So, John is looking into this and with luck, he may be able to get the plane tickets as soon as next week with the money he gets from his paycheck.

So here, I've been thinking how in the world am I going to get through the next month plus before we get over there and now I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get everything done in the next two weeks! lol Crazy how that all goes. But, at the worst case scenario, if I can't find a way to be in La Crosse for the final week, I do have somewhere else to go and that may something I need if there's no way for me to be in town. In the meantime, I want to spend the next week or so getting EVERYTHING ready including getting all the clothing down to one suitcase and one carry on bag. That's a BIG job but it has to be done. Seems kind of overwhelming though to think about it.

We're getting closer though so that's something. Not scared yet, reality hasn't quite hit on that end and probably won't until I'm actually at the airport or on the way down and then I'll probably freak out. lol

It's been awhile since I've done an update on my sister...

2008-12-04T00:41:00.002-06:00

The good news: baby's still in there. Now the bad news: she's due in March but she may be having the baby before the end of the year. She had an ultrasound yesterday and there's something going on with the cord and the OB is very concerned. She wants my sister to come in EVERY WEEK. Normally, that doesn't happen until week 36 and on. She's 24 weeks. I think she's getting another ultrasound next week too. And if ANYTHING is off, she's to come in right away. She was 28 weeks, almost 29 weeks pregnant with Emmah when she lost her so the OB is REALLY being cautious. Hopefully the baby will be able to stay in there but some thoughts and prayers are really appreciated right now. A preemie would be REALLY rough on the family and on the little baby too.

John's been in South Korea for over three weeks now.

2008-12-02T11:50:00.003-06:00

Natalie and I are still here, trying to adjust. Plans are being made as far as getting us over to South Korea as well but without tons of money, it's slow going. One of the things I have to do yet is fill out the applications for the visas and send those along with passport photos of both me and Natalie as well as our passports. Before I can even do this though, I need to make copies of the birth certificate AND marriage license both and send those to the school John is at so that those can be sent to the immigration office over there. Then, we're supposed to get our numbers and those go on the visa applications and all of this stuff has to be sent to the Korean Consulate in Chicago. Then those are looked over and we should then get our visas and after that, plans will be made as far as getting the plane tickets. John is working with the travel agent the school worked with when getting him over there and hopefully, we won't have to wait until after January 1st to get there but it's possible. I'm trying to figure everything out and make plans and go through things because I want to be down to having ONLY enough stuff to go into our check in bag and carry on bag and everything else will either be given away, sold, or put in storage. I'm also hoping that I'll be able to pick up a few things we'll need before leaving. Natalie will need new socks and possibly even some new clothes as she has grown over an inch since October 22nd. She will probably also need some new underwear. I need new underwear and new socks myself and maybe another pair or two of pants as those are hard to locate in my size over there.

It hasn't been easy. We both miss John here very much and living with family tends to invite comments and criticisms and they've never really liked John that much anyway. Then there's the religious differences and the fact that this is the time of year we normally do not celebrate that everyone else does! So that makes things a little more difficult. We're also WAAAAAY out in the boonies, the nearest town (and I say this almost tongue-in-cheek as there isn't even a grocery store there but there is a post office) is about 10 miles away. The nearest REAL town is about 15 miles away. Fortunately, there's a Wal-Mart there and if I need most of anything, I can get it there. My hometown is 35 miles away. Natalie has been having to adjust to not being able to go to the park when she wants to or really even outside that much. We're RIGHT by a highway and she's at the non-listening stage of her development right now which has me very concerned. There are also electric fences around here and would prefer she didn't learn to avoid them the way I did, by touching one. Yeouch!

So I'm trying to take each super long day as it comes and hoping that everything will get set up soon so that we can get over there and finally be together and then that will begin the next stage, actually being in Korea. I'm sure there will be interesting pictures coming once I'm over there as there will be all kinds of things to explore. We'll be near a subway (something I have never been on) and I'm sure we'll be taking all kinds of modes of travel while we are there since we will NOT be driving at all. In the meantime, I do have a picture of John and Natalie before he flew out from O'Hare last month:

Don't they look cute together? There's a picture of me somewhere too but eh, I never do like my pictures. lol

Well, he made it.

2008-11-10T10:16:00.002-06:00

John is in South Korea. He called me this morning from the school where he was touring. I also got to speak with the director and she sounded very nice, excited to meet both me and Natalie. So, that part is done and now we need to figure out when Natalie and I will be going over. It will probably not be until after December 15 which may mean that we are here until after the January 1st. It's just all going to depend on the holidays and stuff. We can't even apply for our visas though until John gets his first full check. He'll send that and then I'll do the applications and send them through the mail and then I should get that all back in the mail as well and after that, we make plans as to when we fly over. He is going to try and get the same airline he had and have us fly over on the same day though the problem with that is that getting paid on the 15th of December, that won't be until December 21st and that is going to be a really bad time to try and fly due to the craziness of the holiday season. Still, being able to go with him and see part of the process really helped and I now know I can get another bag for both Natalie and myself and I can get a laptop bag for the computer too and use a purse/diaper bag for Natalie. Hopefully I'll be able to put some toys in there for her as I'm sure she's going to want her doll and a few other things. Not sure how I'm going to deal with 8 bags, a two/three year old AND a car seat (yes, I need to take the car seat and that alone is going to be a big pain in the behind). I'll also either need to invest in a harness or an extension for the Ergo sling I'm buying from a friend of mine as I am not going to be able keep a full hand on my daughter at all times and she's entirely too fond of the escalator (I'm terrified of them, I don't even like the stupid moving sidewalk!) So lots of details, things to buy, things to figure out and it's just all mind boggling but at least John has made it to South Korea safely and that's the important thing.

Now, we wait.

2008-11-09T22:23:00.002-06:00

John has been dropped off at the airport and currently, should be in the air as I'm typing this. Actually, he should have been in the air for the past 11 hours and will hopefully land in the next two. Saying good bye was hard, just as it was last time but maybe a little harder this time since there was Natalie too. Hard to believe that it was almost seven years ago that he left the last time. SO much has changed in those seven years.

Anyway, I'm REAL beat and Natalie has already crashed so it's really tempting to go to bed. Hopefully tomorrow, things will start to go back on track, at least until we get ready to leave ourselves.

Getting ready for tomorrow!

2008-11-08T15:46:00.002-06:00

After many setbacks and delays and two VERY long and tiring trips to Chicago (a five hour drive by car ONE WAY) to get John's visa all ready, John will finally be leaving for South Korea from Chicago tomorrow morning. Yes, this does mean making ONE more trip down there but fortunately, the majority of the driving will fall to a family friend though it will be a VERY early morning for us as John's flight leaves at 11AM. He would like to get there by 8AM which means leaving here at 3AM or earlier. So another VERY long day awaits us one that will be made a little harder by John's departure. We'll be joining him but not for at least a month (possibly even two months) so it will be a fairly lonely time here. Fortunately, I'm just a short distance away from friends and family so all should go well. Still, I do worry that Natalie will have a hard time without John there to keep her occupied but I did buy a copy of Annie and once I have the desktop set up, she can start watching that in our room until the VCR and DVD player finally get set up.

I'm sure too that the next month to two months will also go quick with me making plans myself for our own departure. I will still need to get our visas done (thank goodness there's no need for any trips to Chicago to do that, that will all be done by mail), go through both mine and Natalie's clothes and determine just what will be taken, go through Natalie's toys, go through books, finish my scrapbooking project so that the finished scrapbook can go with, cut down on the things I am using here bit by bit, sell/get rid of old clothes of Natalie's, try to sell some more nursing necklaces, and more that I'm not thinking of right now all while dealing with an almost 3 year old toddler who has MORE than enough things to get into during the day when no one is looking (in particular, the cats that are outside that she keeps trying to sneak out to go see).

Add to that birthdays and holidays and people to see and things to do, I have to say I think the next two months are going to go by WAAAAY too fast for me and the next thing I know Natalie and I will be on an airplane ourselves! Don't want to think about that just yet though cause eek! not ready for that and can't really wrap my mind around that at this time.

We have a tentative departure date!

2008-10-30T00:45:00.002-05:00

November 9th if all goes well, maybe sooner but it all depends on immigration and the whole visa deal. Whew! Lots going on right now. John is finishing up everything in the apartment and will be leaving there Friday at the latest (he has to be out by 11am) and Natalie and I are settling here at my sister's as best as we can. I'm trying to get us both on some kind of a schedule though that will go right out the window once John gets here. Hopefully he won't drive me too crazy, I about went nuts with the whole moving thing because he was such a pain about it all! Ugh. Just want some peaceful time and hopefully some time for just the two of us before he leaves.

It's all starting to hit but I'm still trying not to think about it too much. Right now, I'm kind of trying to prepare for the writing thing that starts in November. I didn't do it these past couple of years though another mom I knew did (and wrote very well for it too) but I would really like to give it a go. It would be fictional but I'm kind of coming up with something. I don't know. It's been a long time since I've really done any writing (well besides letters and emails and stuff) but it would give me something to do anyway and I do have my AlphaSmart that I have had forever. I would need to hook it up to the desktop to use it but I suppose I could use the laptop too, just haven't really used it on my LAP yet. lol

That's pretty much it for now. Natalie's been sleeping for a couple of hours now and I had better get a diaper on her and then I should head off to bed. More details will come as I learn of them.

Moving Day!

2008-10-25T14:03:00.002-05:00

For me and Natalie anyway. We're waiting for a family friend to come up with a trailer, then we'll load stuff and hopefully go! John and Natalie are making a quick milk run and should hopefully be back soon. I'm hoping we won't be getting back to La Crosse too late but you never know especially when it comes to loading things up. I have been SO STRESSED OUT! I think Natalie is feeling a little out of it too as she keeps meowing instead of talking. She is excited about going to her cousin's house so I'm hoping she'll snap out of it soon.

Not much else going on, just trying to get a couple of things sold on Craig's List and a few things given away on Freecycle but I should probably go and get some more packing done. Bleh. Have I mentioned I HATE packing?

John will be staying behind to clean up and then will be out of here by the time the lease ends. Hopefully he'll know what the situation is with the visa and all that. The documents should have gotten to Korea by now so it's just a matter of time. I'm still hoping he'll be out of here by the 4th of November but we'll see.

Here we go again...

2008-10-20T13:31:00.002-05:00

John is sending out documents to a director in South Korea. John did send her the information on the thing with the driving so hopefully having seen that, everything will be set to go because seriously, I will wig if another job falls through. As it is, things have already taken a detour as I will be staying with my older sister instead of my younger sister. My younger sister is angry with me because I questioned her getting back with a friend of hers who really isn't very good for my sister. She's a known thief and has stolen from me before and staying 1-2 months over there with my computer and a few nice rings really didn't have me feeling very secure about things. Not to mention, the whole thing didn't even make any sense. This girl was honest to goodness NASTY to my sister for MONTHS following their break up and now, they're best friends again when the break up was not even 9 months ago. I don't know, if someone was that nasty to me to the point of stalking me and threatening bodily harm and was acting so horribly I had to call the police on her, you better believe I would not be best friends with her a less than six months later. But, not only is this person my sister's best friend, my sister has actually turned on ME because I dared to question it. So, because of that, plans had to be changed including deciding that instead of storing things at her place, we will now get a storage locker. *sigh* Hopefully that won't be too expensive. It's just really frustrating because there really was not that much stuff I needed to store but I have no one else to leave it with so I really don't have a choice and these are things that have meaning to me so I'm not just going to give them away either.

So, that's pretty much has been what is going on right now, just doing what I can to prepare for my departure next week with Natalie. John will follow sometime around the 31st and hopefully, he'll fly out sometime around that time. First thing first, the documents have to go out, then there's the visa, and then he'll have the plane ticket. Soon, it should all be set and he'll be flying over and then it will all really hit home.