News Roundup

The winner of the mystery won is Janelle. I will be sending her fabulous prize out early next week. Congratulations, my friend! Don't spend it all in one place.

In blog news, I am looking for a new name for 'Stories from Korea', since my stories are no longer from Korea. If you have any ideas, let me know! As soon as I get a new name, I am going to have to figure out a way to get a new header. My clever brother-in-law made my existing one, which I love, but he is very fancy and important and most likely has better things to do than draw cartoons for me. Hard to believe, I know. Then, when that's done, I'm going to set up an email subscription form like Helen did. If you haven't signed up for notifications from 'Tips from the Trenches', you totally should right now, because it's awesome.

In some random Seattle-ish news, there are like a bazillion bald eagles flying around here all the time, a rousing Endangered Species Act success. Super cool. Also, I am very pleasantly surprised with the driving situation around here. There is a noticeable improvement in the traffic flow, even during the busiest times. Lloyd thinks it's because no one has a job anymore but WHATEVER; it gets me to the thrift store way faster than ever before!

And speaking of the thrift store, here's the weird news of the day: thrifting seems to have partially lost its luster. Maybe it's because all those people without jobs are can't afford to drive their cars to the donation center? That must be it. GET WITH THE PROGRAM, PEOPLE! GET BACK ON THE ROAD AND DROP OFF ALL YOUR OLD CRAP RIGHT NOW! There, that should do it.

And finally, here is the last boil report ever: the gaping hole has turned into a handsome little scab. Now it looks exactly like a half healed-up wound from a glancing blow from a paring knife. On my hipbone. Not that I would know.

Have a happy weekend! I'm off to the thrift store to get Janelle her treats from America. Okay, FINE. Maybe I'll go to Target, too.

Beach

You may or may not be pleased to know that I am, in fact, not dead. Yet. It makes me giggle to gross you guys out but I try my hardest to model my nicest manners whenever I can muster them up, especially now that Weston can read, so I will spare you the play-by-play of the boil-bursting episode. Let me just say, though, that cheesecake with strawberry sauce is probably ruined for me forever. Also I may be blind in one eye. It's too soon to tell.

Potentially more deadly than the giant suppurating carbuncles of doom, however, was the six day 'vacation' with Weston, Shane, my mother, my sister, her daughter and her miniature Godzilla charming twenty month old son. Seriously, I thought I would expire from exhaustion just watching my sister. She was constantly lunging after him, her face was haggard, and there were always raisins stuck to her pants. Not an especially good look, if you were wondering.

'What is wrong with this kid?' I asked myself from my comfortable vantage point as the mother of an oh-so-mature almost three year old. Until I went back and read about the times I was handily humiliated at the post office, the office party, the barbecue, the boss' house, and the sidewalk. Then I was a little bit more understanding, but I'm still pretty sure Shane never attacked a pack of other kids with a kite, or kicked them until they ran away, or pig-piled them while evilly chortling. It could be because I kept him tied up in the closet for about eight months, but I prefer to chalk it up to his inherently better nature, or perhaps to my superior parenting skills. The other kids, including Shane, were surprisingly tolerant of the tiny tyrant, and didn't once smack him back, despite what must have been a major temptation. Lucky for Teddy, he's a cute little monster.

We hit all the hot spots of the Northern Oregon Coast: the Tillamook cheese factory, Fort Clatsop and the pizza place on the corner. Okay, we went to the pizza place twice. Whatever. We went to the beach seventy zillion times and ate forty bucks worth of candy from Bruce's. On the way home we stopped overnight to visit Aunt Ina in Portland and visited the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI).


And now we're back. The floor Lloyd did while we were gone is gorgeous; I have a vanload of wet filthy clothes; and Jennifer is probably crumpled up at home like a wrung-out rag, waiting for Monday when she gets a nanny day. And there are sure to be tons of new things at the thrift store! It's good to be home.

Turkey

You probably haven't been thinking too much about turkey yet, but here in Korea, things are a little.... different.

This morning, I roasted the tenderest, juiciest turkey ever for a USO function. Not that I would know, of course, because it was for CHARITY and eating some would be like STEALING. That's what Lloyd says, anyway. I consider it more of a TAX, and a super reasonable one, not like those stupid vice taxes that are breaking my budget. After all, I am the one who had to get up in the middle of the night and slave over a hot oven push SEVERAL extra buttons on my oven control panel before I went to bed. To be totally fair, it's not as if we bought the turkey with the intent of donating 90% of it to the USO. Someone else bought it and Lloyd volunteered to cook it, but I still think a small fee, payable in delectable turkey bits, was in order.

Of course, the juicy goodness of the turkey was complete dumb luck, but I am fully prepared to modestly take credit for it: 'Oh, this old thing? It's just an secret old family recipe. I'm glad you like it.' But because Stories from Korea, like Fox News, is fair and balanced and 100% reliable all the time, here and here only, I'll spill the unvarnished truth. The turkey was wedged upside down in an undersized rusty thrift store roasting pan. I didn't cover it so the top was all crispy while the breast marinated in the juices in the bottom of the pan. We probably don't need to discuss the overlooked bag of innards. I even made my traditional holiday gravy. Or as my mother-in-law calls it, 'gravy-with-lumps'. That IS a secret family recipe, so don't even think about asking! I was feeling especially domestic and all festive-y and it would have been nice if Lloyd hadn't been so suspicious of me:

Me: Look, there's tons of juice. Do you think I should make some gravy?

Lloyd: For the USO, RIGHT?

Me: Ummm, yeah. Of course. Right, for the USO. Dammit!

So, as it turns out, I didn't get the first nibble of turkey or teeniest spoon of gravy. The USO even took the carcass! I wonder if Lloyd told them I wasn't to be trusted. That would be just like him. What is it they say? It's a foolish bird who fouls his own nest, or something like that?

Gobble, gobble, Lloyd!

Ivan and Weston

It's almost Weston's birthday, and I've been thinking about the time just before he was born. We were living in Pensacola and Lloyd was gone. Usually when I tell this story I'm all vague about where he was so everyone will feel sorry for the poor hugely pregnant military wife who was abandoned and left to fend for herself in the face of a hurricane while her husband was off fighting for freedom and democracy or some BS like that. But you know I never lie on here, so the truth is that he was elk hunting in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, where there is no phone service of any kind. Also, as it turns out, no elk, but that's Lloyd's story to tell, if you can stand the swearing. Luckily for me, my lovely Aunt Ina came to stay with me while he was gone.

When you evacuate in advance of a hurricane, there are many items you should take with you in your hurricane evacuation kit. Some of the commonly recommended essentials are cash, a battery operated radio, non-perishable food and water, prescription medication, and blankets. We were a little tight on space and had to prioritize our supplies, so we couldn't be bothered with a lot of that crap. Here's the more important stuff we had instead:

Salami sandwiches

One extremely large pregnant woman

One lovely aunt who despises hurricanes and dogs

Two large dogs

Directions to hospitals with NICU facilities in three states

Emergency Baby Delivery Kit

Infant car seat

Dog food

Cocoa butter

Alas, we didn't have room for some other vital items, such as Georgie and Sandy, our two little rabbits, and Bella the cat, who you may recall from yesterday's post. We put Georgie and Sissy in the bathroom with tarps on the floor and loaded it up with hay, rabbit pellets and water, and left Bella to roam the house with bowls of food and water in every room and the laundry room filled with boxes of litter.

The trip was about exactly what you'd expect. The first day it took us all day to travel from Pensacola to Birmingham, Alabama, a distance of about 250 miles. The next day, we went to Memphis, where we stayed in a ratty dogs-allowed motel on the bad side of town for a few days. We had a nice visit to Graceland, where the photo of me above was taken. If you look carefully behind my enormously swollen body, you can catch a glimpse of the dead cat tote. After we spent a few days there, we decided we might as well keep going, since we had nothing better to do. So we went to Branson, Missouri, dogs and all. We took in a few shows and saw the sights while we waited for news of how Pensacola had fared after an almost direct strike from Hurricane Ivan, and for Lloyd to come out of the woods. After about a week, Lloyd flew in, sans elk, and Ina could not leave fast enough, shaking off the dog drool and coarse brown hairs as she went. You would think she would have learned her lesson, but I guess not, because several years later she came to stay with me again when Lloyd was gone and I was hugely pregnant with Shane. That time Lloyd really was in the sandbox, though. Before she came, she made me promise no hurricanes, no babies, and no snakes that time. Two out of three isn't bad, right? Because Shane was born in the early morning the day she was leaving and Lloyd was coming home. Sucker!

Anyway, we loaded up the now-filthy Honda with supplies from WalMart and headed back home. Seriously, it looked like the whole place had been carpet bombed once we got within 100 miles of Pensacola. We even had a hard time finding our way home because the street signs and landmarks had all been destroyed and it looked entirely different. We only had minor damage at our house, but a major mess. The cats and rabbits were fine, and the power came on shortly after we got back after having been gone a little over a week. Weston was born two weeks later.

Happy Birthday, Weston! And Ivan, may you rot in hell.

My life in cats

It's Chusok weekend here in Korea. If you're interested in Korean holidays, you can read a little about it here. It's kind of like a Korean Thanksgiving, only I doubt there are any apocryphal stories about ill-prepared immigrants and naively friendly natives. Even if there are, they are all written in Hangul, so I wouldn't know the difference, now would I?

Despite my complete ignorance of Korean culture, I'm game for participation in the local holidays, and today I am thankful for cats. Starting today, we are lucky enough to be cat-sitting the beautiful Mishka, who is one of our upstairs neighbors. Her family, who has not been here very long, has embarked on a two-week multi-destination trip back to the states, and I cannot decide if I should envy them or feel sorry for them, or both. But either way, today I have been thinking about all the cats I have loved and lost. Here they are, in roughly chronological order:

Charlie- I got Charlie when he or she was a kitten and I was a small child. The mother cat lived in my Aunt Luella and Uncle Butch's barn and I had my choice of kittens. Unfortunately, Charlie and I did not have long together; the cat had some sort of seizure and dropped dead in my arms shortly after. It's a wonder I wasn't scarred for life, don't you think?

Smoky- My dad found Smoky tied up in some trees in the woods near where we lived, and cut him down and brought him home. He was a beautiful big gray cat who liked to yowl and car surf. One morning he rode off on my dad's car and never returned.

SillyBilly- My dad found SillyBilly, a beautiful calico cat, when she was a kitten. He's always been a little vague about the details of this late night acquisition, but my sister and I were thrilled the next day when we got up and found our new pet. You know, I'm getting a little suspicious of these mysterious cat-finding trips of his, now that I think about it. Anyway, she lived with us for quite a while until she got hit by a car down the street and was returned to us in a cardboard box by one of the neighbors.

Fluffer- Fluffer was the son of SillyBilly and was a fluffy black cat. He was very mellow and would let us dress him up, but I don't remember what happened to him. I think he just disappeared.

Chebosco- Chebosco was a male orange and white cat, and I don't know where he came from or where he went. That's funny, because I really liked him. You know, now I'm getting a little suspicious of these unexplained cat disappearances and might need to have a little chat with my dad.

Katie and Kelly- When I got out of high school, I worked in a pet store for a year or so before I went to college. I should totally write a post about that place because it had everything: flashers, larceny, pathological liars, and mud puppies. One day, a kid brought in these two teeny tiny siamese kittens and said his male cat had dragged them home. They were only two or three weeks old, and I took them home and we bottle-fed them until they were strong and healthy enough to eat cat food. Katie, the boy cat, was always glossy and a little wild- he moved around my parents' neighborhood for years until finally they didn't see him anymore. Okay, now I'm definitely going to talk to my dad about this. I just hope he doesn't have some cat-fur quilt hidden in his closet or something. Kelly, the girl cat, had an obsession with pushing her paws into things and was a big licker. She was always sickly, probably because she was bottle-fed formula instead of breastfed, and died fairly young.

Lewis and Clark- After Lloyd and I got married and moved to Pensacola, the first thing we did was adopt Lewis and Clark. Their original names were Tyler and Cassie, and they were not related but had bonded deeply in their foster home. Clark (formerly known as Tyler) was an old male orange and white cat, and Lewis (formerly Cassie) was a sweet, younger, long-haired gray and white female cat. We had a pleasant, but short-lived relationship with both of them. Well, I did anyway. Clark didn't care for Lloyd, and the feeling was mutual. He moved in with the neighbors, much to Lewis' dismay, and soon died of feline leukemia. Lewis liked to follow us on walks through the neighborhood, and one day she followed us down the street, then peeled off to investigate something. When we returned, she was laying dead on the street. I was very traumatized by this and embarked on some immediate retail therapy. One of my purchases was a bright red leather tote bag by Kenneth Cole. I carried it for months and called it my 'dead cat tote'. People looked at me strangely, but that's never bothered me, and it made me feel lots better. After Hurricane Katrina, I donated the dead cat tote, along with my entire work wardrobe, to hurricane victims who were trying to relocate and start new jobs. I hope it helped somebody else as much as it helped me. I got some additional cheer out of it, because it was a splendid tax deduction. Thanks, Lewis!

Bella (pictured, above)- I got Bella as a kitten from someone at work shortly after Lewis died. An email message was going around about kittens available for adoption and one of them was a calico, like SillyBilly. I wanted that one, but it was already taken. I decided to get one anyway, and picked out Bella. Her name is Bella because I wanted something derived from SillyBilly and chose a girlish version of Billy. She is kind of a strange cat, not super friendly, and she hated Lloyd on sight. One day, when she wasn't very old, she didn't come home and we started looking around the neighborhood. We didn't have any luck, but a day or two later she hobbled home. We took her to the vet and found that she had two broken legs. Apparently this is a common cat injury when they get hit by a car. The car strikes them, breaking the leg on the car side, then they get tossed down the street, breaking bones on the other side. After several very expensive surgeries, with pins and everything, Bella was almost good as new. When we left Shreveport for Korea, we decided to leave her with some Catholic friends there. They immediately took her to family pet night at their local parish and had her blessed with the special water, and she still lives there happily in holy catrimony.

And that's the last of the cats. For now. As soon as we get to a place where we can have cats again, we are loading up. Don't worry, I plan to keep a VERY close eye on my dad.

Desperate Groundhogs

So, have I mentioned that we're back at Osan? I think I might have. Osan's a nice little place, if possibly a bit strange; the people are friendly and the sky is always blue, except when it's yellow or black. I've written plenty about it, you can click here and here for some brief descriptions of life here if you like.

On of the many odd things about it is that every day is the same. My friend Lauren describes the Osan standard day perfectly in a recent post titled 'Nothing': BX, Post Office, wine store*, commissary, wine store. Well, that's my version. She probably makes a few more trips to the library for educational tomes and a few less stops at the wine store, but she's sort of snobby that way.

The whole routine is a vicious mobius strip; sort of like a loop or a vicious circle, only you can't get off, and it's not round, especially after your wine ration. All you can do is shuffle off to the side once in a while for another bottle to check the mail again. It's sort of like 'Groundhog Day' meets 'Desperate Housewives': Desperate Groundhogs! I totally smell a reality show in the making, and I look smashing in brown fur!

* On my recent trip, my sister one of my many loyal readers informed me that SFK makes it sound like I drink a LOT of wine. This is not actually true. While I like my wine, I am not a complete lush; I simply don't have the time to drink as much as I'd like. Just so you know, once in a while there might possibly be a slight exaggeration or teeny tiny obfuscation. Hardly any lies, though.

For the birds

Life must be pretty sweet when you're a bird, right? You get to swoop around, free as a..... well, whatever. Enjoy the sunrise, sing a beautiful tune, feather your nest, poop on someone's head, and go to bed early. What could be better?

We have some birds in the birdhouse on our deck. Lloyd and Weston built it last year and it sat empty until late this spring, when some chickadees moved in. At least Lloyd says they are chickadees. Birds all look the same to me. Except peacocks and chickens; I can tell which ones those are.

The chickadee family consists of a mother, a father, and four babies, and they have definitely revised my opinion on the advisability of being a bird. First, the mother and father spent weeks painstakingly gathering bits of dried grass, twigs, Pottery Barn curtains and other nesting material. Then, a goodly amount of time tethered to the eggs, never even getting out for a bit of purse shopping.

Then, once the babies hatched, their carefree bird lives were OVER. All day long, every day, those poor birds are fetching food for their insatiable offspring. No lie, they are voracious. We can hear them squeaking in there for more, more, more, always more. Moths, grubs, dragonflies, you name it. Back and forth, back and forth with never a moment's rest. The second the birds sit on a branch for a breather, the squealing starts up again: Where's my aphid juice? Can I have some antennae chips? Her centipede has more legs than mine! I don't wanna eat my seeds! I want my mosquito with no blood!

I sit in my chair by the window, and oooh, I know just what those birds are thinking: 'It must be nice to be a human. You just sit around and drink coffee, haul your food home in big bags all at once, and you don't even have to sit on those damn kids. Slackers!'

Wax on, wax off

Perhaps you remember the story about how we got our turtle. I am not a huge fan of the turtle, but Lloyd really likes it and is already working up an adoption plan for when we're forced to leave the turtle here in Korea (turtle + long international flight=contraband). Now, don't get me wrong; I like turtles fine. I just don't think they belong on my kitchen counter in a filthy tank, eating dried bugs and staring at me every time I go by with those big 'help-me' eyes. You wouldn't think a turtle would be able to communicate, but I swear this one knows what's going on. The thing throws itself against the tank and bangs the rocks in the tank around to get attention, and then waits for you to get it bugs. It's pretty smart; at least smart enough to get elected to the Governor's office in the great state of Alaska, and I hear they're letting reptiles run now. That would be so awesome if it could support itself; dried bugs don't grow on trees, you know. Plus, I understand there is a very generous per diem arrangement.

The turtle tank gets so disgusting from the bugs and the generous supply of turtle poop that it is appalling even to me, and my standards are LOW. This morning I set out a bowl of water to dechlorinate so we could clean the tank and supply the turtle with fresh water. This is a quick job, and it's a good thing, because the turtle is at the very bottom of my priority list until it actually is elected to office. I walked into the kitchen to see Lloyd painstakingly cleaning and polishing the turtle's shell. With a dishcloth. He then asked me if we had any turtle wax. I would like to think he was totally kidding but the truth is I'm not quite sure.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, there was laundry piled in the hallway, goldfish crackers crushed into the carpet, and pencil marks all over the bathtub. But at least the turtle will be presentable for the inauguration, right? Hey, after that maybe I can afford that English-speaking ajima I've been wanting!