The Nation's Summer Capital

The girls and I are spending half of the week at the beach with my folks. We drove due east, through Annapolis, over a lot of water, past some fabulous looking produce stands, and ended up at our motel a few blocks away from the end of the land. Its a nifty little motel, clean and well located with tables in the room and lawn chairs on the balcony. What more could we need? The weather is perfect, the beach is lovely, and the food is both tasty and affordable.

We arrived this afternoon, and I just keep thinking about how easy it is to travel in America. We don't have to mess with passports, no worries about luggage weights, we just throw everything into the car along with all of the people, put on a good book-on-CD and plug away. With the cooler in the back, we stopped at a state park for lunch and running around about halfway through the drive. Things here are cheap. Anyone who wants to join us here in a beach house next summer, just let me know!

I have been posting pretty rarely lately, so I suppose you're wanting a better update on our lives. Two good reasons for not posting much.
One: There's just a lot going on. The house is unpacked and the shopping is all done (thank goodness. But adoption paperwork still looms, and we've already begun bidding for our next post. That includes loads of research. Plenty of other projects still sitting in boxes in the basement, and I rarely make it to the gym.
Two: There's not so much to say. Wry comments about my neighbors and the funny way people do things around here don't seem so funny. Its just being snide and judgmental when I comment on Americans living in America. Bidding will keep it interesting for a while here, but otherwise you may be looking at a dry year or so.

We have been keeping busy in the general area, though. Virginia and the surrounding area is just full of fun stuff to do! We've explored Mount Vernon, hung out on the mall, hiked through a forest park and driven to the beach. Our bucket list for the area is exciting, and this summer is the time to accomplish it. As I won't be telling you interesting things about the crazy way folks do things around here, I'll try to tell you the fun stuff that we do around here instead.

And right now, that's go to bed. An afternoon at the beach has readied me for a good night's sleep.

This Is Getting Embarassing

The cell phone curse has continued. And I've got to admit, its really getting me down. This is an expensive and frustrating piece of equipment to consistently break down. After I broke down and bought myself my same old phone from China, the one I sent through the washing machine back in April, I thought the curse would have ended.

Sadly, no.

At the beginning of June, it fell out of my pocket while I lounged in a chair on our back deck. Dave and I went straight to bed, it rained overnight, and my phone was flashing a strange light when I found it the next morning.

The vaccuum / rice trick worked its magic, and my phone was back within 1 week.

Yesterday, enjoying the sticky heat of June, the family attacked each other with the garden hose in the backyard. Once we were thoroughly soaked, we all dumped our clothes into a laundry basket and I quickly transferred that load straight into the washing machine.

When Dave and I went down to change the laundry around midnight, I saw my phone sitting right in plain sight - at the bottom of the washing machine. I walked away crying, and turned on the air conditioner.

Its sitting in rice for another week, although I'm a lot less hopeful about this recovery. Sitting in the drizzle all night is one thing. Being put through the wringer is another.

Here's the comfort I try to give myself. As I look back on the last few months, I've managed to drop very few balls. The house has come together. The kids have been happy and healthy. Schools have all been begun, finished, and registered for next year. Doctors have been visited multiple times, often with expensive and frustrating referrals.

In the grand scheme of things, if I'll I've wrecked is a few cell phones, it won't be a bad record.

Lets just hope the curse ends here.

I Have Arrived

I finished all of my Moving In shopping today. I can let my credit card rest, and just relax in my fully-lit, fully linened, fully-dished house. But it was actually yesterday when I truly realized that I had arrived at a normal state. I realized it when Lori came over.

Lori has been a rock for me these past few months. I knew Lori in Shanghai. My kids knew Lori's kids in Shanghai. And even though two years had past, they all played together beautifully within minutes. Lori has a comfortable home and a big backyard. Lori has a helper who enjoys our little Annika. Lori has listened; Lori has provided babysitting; Lori has given doctor references; Lori has offered her backyard as respite; Lori has been a Godsend.

So yesterday, with all the furniture and the dishes and the bedding generally arranged, we finally invited Lori and her kids over for the day. I had lunch for kids, and lunch for adults prepped and ready to fix. Within 30 minutes of her arrival, I had the house clean (that is, of course, 30 minutes after she was scheduled to arrive. thank goodness they were late!)

Lori did not feel so organized that morning, and had to drop the kids and run so she could meet someone who had stood her up over an hour before. She made it back later in the afternoon, in time to pick up the kids and go home. While she was gone, the kids all played beautifully and her wonderful housekeeper kept an eye on them so that I could relax a bit and get some things done around the house. Of course, I would have enjoyed chatting with Lori for the day. But it was lovely to get so much done, knowing that my kids were happy.

But here's the best part.

When she arrived, things were still a bit of a mess. She let me in on the confusion of the day, and of the summer. And she summed it up flatteringly. She said she was having a day much like I've been having for the past few months.

I'm not saying I'm going to be Well Put Together from here on out. But it felt refreshing to be the stable one.

Status Report

Its 12:35 AM on Sunday night.
The weekend has officially ended.

Status Report:

Dining Room - finished
Living Room - finished
Sun Room - finished
Girls Bedrooms - finished
Kitchen - finished (except for the pantry)
My Bedroom - finished (except for
the 2 boxes of bedding, which may just have to live in the corner of my room
cause they're sure not going to fit in my tiny little linen closet)

Boxes are broken down and neatly piled in the sunroom,
until tomorrow night when I leave them on the curb for recycling.

Also managed to make sweet bread for breakfast,
blueberry sorbet for snack,
and Dave made Chicago style pizza for dinner.

The girls spent the weekend playing with their toys,
knowing where things belong, and generally feeling at home.
Its the most relaxed they've seemed in weeks.

I believe we are home.

What We've Been Reading

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

As we wrapped up on our time in China, I focused on the last few China books I'd left sitting unread. Shanghai Girls was a classic example of a book I should have read long ago. My book club in Shanghai read it together, but I skipped that month. Friend and family in the states recommended it to me, after having read Snowflower and the Secret Fan, also by Lisa See. Once I finally made time for the book, I breezed through it. See writes a compelling story, which carries two sisters through an amazing number of changes in lifestyle, landscape and self-image. I've always enjoyed author Amy Tan's writing, because she writes about Chinese women talking to their American daughters. In so doing, she explains the recent history of China in ways that I can understand and relate to. I always find the most extraordinary piece of Tan's stories to be the expansive change her characters undergo. As with many Americans who arrived as refugees, or simply escaped dangerous conditions, characters from this book lived in a world where they were well taken care of and had few worries; they then underwent unimaginable experiences before arriving to live in the U.S., shop at the same grocery store as me, and raise daughters who drink too much Coca-Cola. It reminds me that everyone I meet has a hidden story. And that recent Chinese history is awful. And that people are capable of horrible things, but that life is also redemptive. As a friend recently reminded me, this too shall pass. See tells a good story, and I recommend it for all of my readers.


Country Driving by Peter Hessler

Peter Hessler is one of the best modern writers on China. He left the place a year or two before we did, but his books neatly bookmarked our tour. I read his River Town when we first arrived in China. The book was actually published around the year 2000, but Hessler very neatly described my experience - of being lost by the culture, lost by the noise, lost by the language, lost by the characters of China. Except that by the end of the book, he could read characters and had become amazingly adept at speaking the language. Still, I identified. So when Oracle Bones came out the following year, I ate it up. It wasn't so good - a mishmash of freelance journalist's projects and friends which never fully gelled. Based on the second book, I hesitated to pick up Country Driving when it came out this year, neatly bookending our time in China. Nothing to fear - Hessler's strength in telling people's stories in China shines in this book. Once again, Hessler describes China as few foreigners can - telling very personal stories, and this time from off the beaten track. He paints a vivid and accurate picture of the China that we left behind this year.


Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China by Ian Johnson

I love how good reads begins their synopsis of this books: "In Wild Grass, Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist Ian Johnson tells the stories of three ordinary Chinese citizens moved to extraordinary acts of courage." In the engaging style of a skilled journalist, Johnson delved into the stories of a legal clerk in the countryside who filed a class-action suit on behalf of overtaxed farmers and learned the limits of the Chinese legal system; a young architect who defended not only the dispossessed homeowners but also the disappearing architecture of Beijing; and an average elderly woman who ended up beaten to death in police custody for her faith in falun gong. After living in and reading about China for the past three and a half years, I still found the well-researched stories in this book telling me things about the country that I was naive to. But beyond telling stories which the world needs to hear, Johnson smoothly and professionally weaves in his reaction to each individual - his skepticism at times, and his frustration. A great read for a thinker, but a simple read for anyone.

And that completes my China list, until we get to the books concerning adoption - but I'm saving those for later. Anyone with recommendations for books on the mid-Atlantic and northern Virginia, I'm all ears. Although you'd better come quick - we'll know our next post by the end of the summer, and then I'll once again focus all reading attentions outside of this country.

Finishing Up-Date

Status Report:

We hung pictures in the Living Room,
and otherwise made dinner and started on
Father's Day edible treats.

Crossing my fingers that we will reach the goal -
no more boxes and all frames hung by the end of the weekend.

Finishing Up

The goal for this weekend:
To finish all unpacking, shopping and moving into the house.

Progress as of lunchtime on Saturday:
Basement - finished
Kitchen - finished
Dining Room - finished
Sun Room - finished

Rough Patch

Alright, I've got to tell you, this has been a tough month.

When we left China, I felt confident that this would be a simple move. Its going home, right? The girls and I have friends in the DC area, everyone speaks English, we'll have all of our stuff in one place, and there's Target. What more could we want?

And for the first month or so, it really was. The schools were both good, the housing was easy, and it is lovely having those friends nearby. But as we've begun to really settle in here, its just gotten harder. Picking out a house was tough, and moving into it has been even tougher. Its an expensive house, and we don't have a small house worth of furniture, so there's been significant shopping involved. We're about to get our dressers delivered, which will pull all of our clothes off of the floor; but we're still lacking lamps, which makes it a bit dark in the evenings.

The commutes are rough. Lilly goes to school in a different district, so she can't take the bus. Sophia goes to school in another town, so she's got a long drive. Annika rides through it all - morning, lunchtime, and afternoon. So I can't get much done in my morning stretch, and the poor baby can't get a full nap in the afternoon one.

The same goes for Dave. He's an hour to work on the Metro - although he'll begin biking tomorrow, which has him pretty stoked. And he's working East Coast hours - that is, in between 8 and 9:00 in the morning, but leaving the office around 6ish at night. I'm looking forward to the end of school this week, because right now he gets home just in time to put the girls to bed. Another hour of family time in the evening would make a difference for everyone. But add in last week, where Dave never got home before midnight and didn't see the girls all week-long, and its been a struggle.

Both Lilly and Sophia have faced behavioral challenges. And although Sophia's seem to be less than usual (she is in a fantastic school), Lilly's seem to have ramped up since we moved into the new house.

I'm tired all the time, sometimes breaking out in hives, and have frequent headaches. I'm contemplating buying an espresso machine just to make it through the afternoons. Well, and because wouldn't that be fun? But with the serious slash in income and the major bites we've been taking out of our savings, I think that one's going to have to wait.

Visits to the doctor turned up some questionable test results, which don't have her worried, but are leaving me a bit on edge. Apparently a non-specific indicator in my blood says that I should see a rheumatologist. Now, my doctor says that I'm showing no symptoms of anything joint related and that as often as not, these tests are wrong. She expects the rheumatologist to run another test and send me home. But still.

But really, here's the problem. I need some friends. It feels so pathetic to write that, but lets be honest here. Its a remarkable person in remarkable circumstances who doesn't need friends only a few months into a new city. And luckily, I've got a few good friends. I'm doing well on the weekends. Its just the day-to-day interactions that I'm lacking. What we should all pray is that I hit it off with some of the neighbors soon - neighbors whose kids will play with mine, and who will chat with me on the street. Because I know that none of those things listed above are a big deal - but with no one around to normalize my minor complaints, they quickly morph into the type of thing that spontaneously gives me hives.

Bid Season Begins Again!

Now that we've begun to settle in our new home, talk has begun about when and where we'll be moving again.

Dave began his DC post about a month ago. He's been keeping extremely busy, working all those corporate hours without all of those corporate perks (that is, a really big salary), which is a bit of a bummer for me. But he certainly enjoys this job more than he did working for Uncle H--, so I can't complain too much. He'll be in this position until May 2012, as it is a 1 year post. At that time, he'll begin training for the next post. That training takes places in Northern Virginia, so we expect to be here for about 18 months or so. (just typing that feels so relaxing - ah, to be able to plan ahead!)

The bidding process for his first tour was pretty straight-forward. We faced a list of nearly 100 posts, and ranked each place High, Medium or Low in desirability. Then, Uncle Sam made our choice for us. Happily, he chose one that we had ranked High. That doesn't always happen.

For the second tour, the process is a bit different. We will look at a much longer list, and pull out the 30 posts interest us. With a few caveats, of course. First caveat is that a lot of other people will get to pick before Dave does - folks serving at crummy posts right now get first dibs on good posts next round, while folks living in Arlington and sending their kids to world-class public schools have to choose a little later.

The next caveat is that each of our 30 must meet certain standards, per Junior Officer requirements. The position must require a foreign language, meaning that we will certainly be here for language training. The position must be consular. And at least half of the positions must be in hardship posts.

The third caveat is that Uncle Sam will look at our picks, and then make our choice for us. And he may not choose out of our 30 chosen destinations.

I'm eager to see the list, and to spend some time obsessively researching cities over the internet and at the Foreign Service Institute. And then to begin reading up on our next destination, since I've finished all of our books on China.

Mis-defined

All these many years, I have been operating under the illusion that the word "extrovert" could be defined as "one who is outgoing." Quite a few people have recently informed me that this definition oversimplifies, and does not get to the heart of the meaning. More specifically, according to my friends, an extrovert is someone who draws energy from social situations. By contrast, an introvert would be exhausted by social situations.

Rather interestingly, when I went to a few dictionaries to verify these definitions, I found the old standby to make the only appearance. According to Websters, an extrovert is gregarious and unreserved, and Britannica makes no mention of energy either

But lets please not let the research get in the way of my point.

For the sake of argument, lets call my friends greater experts than the dictionary and say that an extrovert is someone who draws their energy from other people. And this is my personal diagnosis for my recent exhaustion. Such exhaustion, in fact, that I did indeed take myself to the doctor and ask her to run a bunch of tests. As it turns out, my thyroid is just fine, my cholesterol looks fantastic, and my Vitamin D is a little low. But nothing that looks to be causing the type of exhaustion I've been feeling lately.

My diagnosis? Not enough social interaction to raise my energy level. And plenty of moving nonsense and stressed out kids to drain it. I'm still working on the Rx for this diagnosis, but simply becoming aware of the issue has helped. Since I decided that my exhaustion is not physical, but rather entirely in my head, I have given up my afternoon nap and decided that I am no longer tired. Just grumpy sometimes, and a little nervous about school letting out next week.