The Way We Live

Its funny the things we can get used to.

We've been living under the cloud of a pending move to Washington DC for about a year now. For most of that time, had we received an email invitation to the Foreign Service, we would have been living in Washington within 8 weeks. We prepared the girls for such a move, and got them excited about DC.

That call still hasn't come, still hangs over our heads, but we don't talk about it to the girls as much. They no longer remember most of the friends we have there.

Possibly because of this mindset, we picked up and moved to Shenzhen within 2 weeks this summer. We've settled quite well, even with the cloud of an uncertain future hanging over our heads. When people ask how long we expect to be here, I don't really know what to answer. If Dave gets into the Foreign Service, we could move as early as mid-March. If he doesn't, we could be here for another year after this one. The 1-year contract everyone signed for us has not yet taken effect, and the girls have landed well in Shenzhen. Could be that we're facing stability, and the same address for 2 years in a row!

But the uncertainty still prevails. Dave will start work on this new contract any day now. He got an email last week asking him to go to the U.A.E. for 6 weeks or so, starting today. Only on Saturday did he learn the city (Abu Dhabi - how cool is that?). And still today, he's been given no travel plans. Our best guess at this point is that Dave will fly to Abu Dhabi tomorrow, for somewhere between 1 and 6 weeks. But we won't know for sure until tomorrow, when he either does or does not catch a plane.

This new uncertainty makes the old stuff seem simple. As does having lived with it for a while now. But I can't make plans for this weekend if Dave may be away. I can't make plans for tomorrow's dinner if Dave may be here. I can't make plans for Thanksgiving, because I don't know how long he'll be gone. Dave has pushed back, saying 6 weeks is far too long to spend away from his family. I expressed that this uncertainty, and this long trip are not very good employee treatment. Dave answered that it certainly is not - that's why they hire a consultant rather than use their own employees. And a globally mobile one at that. Fair enough.

Clearly, I am actually fixing dinner tomorrow, and life is going on as usual around this uncertainty. But I'll admit, its giving me a big headache.

If You Want it Done Right

They say that if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself. Nowhere is this truer than in China. Friends working in quality control would agree - this is not a place where you can offer simple instructions and expect to know the end result. Although I should say its a great place to get a copy made. I could hand someone a photo of the plate above and get a replica which looked just as tasty. But nothing that tasted nearly as good.

I'm a Kansas City girl, and we've been importing our Arthur Bryant's and our Billardo Brothers for years now. But as our stock dwindles, the time has come to man up and make out own. Here are the photographic results of our day of barbeque.

the makings of the sauce

the makings of the bacon -
you could still feel the piggies little back hairs on the skin!

Believing ourselves to be in China only temporarily,
I never bought a food processor.
Enough is enough!
This machine is loads of fun!

the beans, after a 14 hour soak

the beans, after an hour of boiling in sauce

after 4 hours of boiling

after sitting in the coals of the grill for 2 hours. yum!

the grillmaster and his assistant,
cooking late into the night

and once again, the final product

We need to keep refining. The beans were still a bit tough, the Root Beer was too expensive an ingredient, and something about the ribs just wasn't right. We think it might have been the meat itself, which we've got no power to fix.

But the best part? I shredded the leftover meat into the beans, and boiled it all with the rest of the sauce the next day. Poured the whole mix over fresh corn bread. Oh, heaven!

Heading South

The verdict is in. Uncle H-- informed us on Wednesday evening that we will, in fact, be moving to Shenzhen. We stepped on a flight to the white sand beaches of Hainan Island early the next morning, and returned to Shanghai this evening. Our flight for Shenzhen leaves at 6:30 on Tuesday night, and school starts on Thursday.

All of that within 1 week's time.

I've got a crazy To Do List for the next day, the next week, and the next month. Tomorrow will be a bit nutty, but not actually as overwhelming as one might think. We will move directly into a serviced apartment in Shenzhen, one within walking distance of the grocery store. I will return to Shanghai in a few weeks to pack up the house, and hand the keys over to the landlord. As I'll travel without kids, I'll be able to race around town at breakneck speed and checks loads of things off of the list.

So, the focus for the next week is to make this transition as smooth as possible for the girls. Questions like how to keep the girls amused over the next few days, while I'm busy shopping and packing and how to fit the moses basket and antique rocker onto the airplane plague me.

But, as far as moves go, this one seems rather simple. The girls are already enrolled in the right school - one which seems very community focused, having already invited our family to join others at a local restaurant on Wednesday night. The school lies inside a complex where we can afford to live, and so I only plan to view homes inside that complex. There's also a church and a library in the complex, all of which make me think that it will have a built-in community as well. Plus, simply living within walking distance of the school and church mean that we can easily spend casual time with the people we meet.

Bonus points, that we will be within walking distance of the ferry to Hong Kong.

Further bonus points that we don't anticipate living there past February. I will not make the same mistake as in this home: We will rent our home assuming we will live there for a year; we will have a comfortable guest room, and plenty of space for Mei Mei to move in. However, I don't feel the pressure of needing to fit in so strongly. It feels more like an extended vacation than like a move.

I believe the girls are approaching it that way as well. Lilly asked me recently if, since we are moving now, can she please invite her cousin to her birthday party? I explained that we'll still be in China, and not yet in America.

Lilly: So, when will we move to America, and live near Jack and William?
Lynne: I think probably after Christmas. Until then, we'll go to school in Shenzhen.
Lilly: (reassured) Okay.

They've been prepared for a summer move for quite some time now. I think that they're not thrown by this news, because they've been expecting it all along. As Washington DC means very little to them as a place, why should Shenzhen be a scary stopping point?

Hyperventilating

Still no decision on Shenzhen, although Dave will formally interview for the role tomorrow morning. This means that a decision by Friday is possible. But Dave's boss advises that once the contract to consult has been accepted, the two companies still face negotiations which could take a few weeks.

So, we stand to lose the lease on our current home.

Lease runs out on Aug. 30th, and we have yet to tell them we want to renew. Should we say yes, and immediately face a 2-month penalty for canceling? Should we say no, and be forced to leave on Sep. 1?

Here's the best potential scenario I can come up with:

Because of confidence in the move to Shenzhen, we lose the lease on this house.
Because that confidence is not amazingly strong, we do not begin school in Shenzhen on the first day - Aug. 12th.
Because things have not yet finalized, we begin school in Shanghai on Aug. 23rd.
Even better if we are forced to move out of this house before a decision has been made - maybe live in a hotel for a week?
Move to Shenzhen after school has begun in both places, causing all sorts of transitional angst for our kids.
And then get the call to the October class, and move to DC.

Likely? Absolutely not. But still keeping me awake at night.

Silence on Shenzhen

Neither regular readers nor fellow expatriates should be surprised when I tell you that we have no answers on our possible move to Shenzhen. It seems that our little ultimatum (school starts on Aug. 12, and our kids need to know that they're moving prior to the drive to the airport on Aug. 11) is of no real consequence to the decision makers.

Dave and I continue to feel comfortable with the option of moving, although we both vacillate wildly about which city we would prefer. I have a strong support network here now, and never feel isolated. This would certainly change upon moving to a new town. But we no longer live in the right house in Shanghai - too small, too unsafe, and too far away from school. This would be the perfect opportunity to mix up all that is frustrating about our home.

Essentially, for Dave and I, it comes down to this. If this would feel like an extended vacation, then we would have a great time. If this would feel like a short-term move, then it would be extremely difficult. If Dave works crazy-long hours and Lilly suffers with the transition, it could be more different than exciting. But the location and the apparent community both lead me to believe that we could have a great time.

Still, if we may be moving within a week, how do I shop for groceries?

It Ain't DC, but...

Just when we were beginning to feel stable, it seems there's a new city on the table. Dave's boss has a few very good reasons to want him working in the Pearl River Delta. Hong Kong would be ideal for the company, but with the price of living that city would be a tough sell to the budget-makers. As Dave's already turned down an offer in Hong Kong once, they know just how expensive our family would be. Shenzhen is nearby, Uncle H-- has an office there, and the cost of living is considerably less.

So, Shenzhen is now on the table.

And this will be a rush-rush deal. Partly on their side: if Uncle H-- wins a particular contract, the work will begin soon and need Dave on site quickly. Financially, our lease renews on September 1 and school fees in Shanghai become non-refundable as soon as the girls set foot on campus at the end of August.

But most importantly for us, school begins in Shenzhen on August 12th. I'm not able to picture a move from Shanghai to Shenzhen in under 3 weeks - especially as a non-refundable beach vacation lies smack in the middle of those weeks.

I've spent some spare time today looking at schools and housing. It actually seems like a fun place to live. Loads of expats, all living on a bit of peninsula with mountains on the background and the sea on the forefront. Fairies from the local terminal leave for Hong Kong and Macau 13 times daily, and people's hobbies seem to be scuba diving and lying around the beach. The girls will change schools this year either way, and realistically they will only be keeping a few of the same friends with that change. And myself? The next month would be such a whirlwind that I wouldn't have any time to be nervous.

Dave places the odds on this move at 50-50. The boss says we'll know by the end of the week. That timing is absolutely necessary for us to be in the Shenzhen area by the first day of school.

I wonder if many of the applicants to the foreign service - a career where you reliably move internationally every 2 to 3 years - look forward to it as offering stability?

Just Another Food Blog

When we first came to China, I didn't know how to cook. I believe I admitted this in an early posting - The Shanghai Kitchen Contest - where I asked for suggestions on fixing dinner with only a stovetop, a wok and a rice cooker. People came through with very few suggestions, but one friend put me in my place. He emailed that I could always just throw some rice, veggies and meat into the wok and create a simple stir-fry. His answer left me flummoxed - which veggies? how to cook the rice? what to do with the meat? I really didn't know how to cook when we came to Shanghai.

And now, after nearly 3 years in this town, I seem to have figured a few things out. Primarily out of necessity, I'll admit. The convenience foods are mighty expensive here, and it is much more cost effective to make your own pasta sauce and pumpkin pie. But the shops just don't hit the right chord here, either. If you want good wheat bread or brownies, you've got to make them yourself. And so I do.

Yesterday, I made homemade chicken nuggets for dinner, and then spent the evening making honey wheat bread from scratch, filling in the rising time with a batch of double chocolate cookies. Today is not so impressive - I ate the double chocolate cookies, and we had strawberries and whipped creme for dinner. The way we live when Dave is away.

Still, I am happy with this progression. Before, I needed a recipe to fix a good dinner. Now, I enjoy a good recipe, but I can also pull dinner together based on what is on the shelves. Before, I couldn't imagine finding the time to bake a loaf of bread. Now, baking bread seems simple and just requires a bit of forethought and a decent memory for time.

I've toyed with adding recipes to this blog, or at least stories about cooking. I toyed with this as I made caramel from scratch last weekend - yum! and beautifully simple. At some point I may, but at this point I'd feel like a hack. Anything truly impressive that I do comes from Simply Recipes or Cooks Illustrated, so anything worth writing and photographing would be a simple copy. Maybe upon arrival in a new land, my cooking stories will be more worth sharing.

The older my girls get, the more I have time for indulging hobbies like cooking and photography. And I'm quite pleased to say that the time is beginning to pay off. Unfortunately, the girls get older and they both talk more and nap less. The disappearance of the nap has led directly to a drop in blog entries. You'll have to bear with me until A: life becomes more interesting again, or B: the talkers spend more than a few hours per week in school. I may not have many stories for show for my time, and I won't soon be adding a food section, but there are some awfully tasty cookies in the kitchen!

One Decision Made

The Foreign Service holds training courses for them incoming officers about every 6 weeks or so. Invitations have already been sent and accepted to the January and February classes. The March class will begin on March 29. I would be 33 weeks pregnant. The following class begins on May 18. We expect to have a 1 week old baby at that time, so the May class has been off the table for nearly 5 months now. The June class begins on June 21.

We had been hoping that Dave would receive his Security Clearance in enough time to be invited to the March class. This is still a possibility. The crew in charge of clearing Dave have finished their investigations, and placed his file in a pile called Adjucations. This is the period of time where they decide whether or not to clear a person. People with clean records skip Adjudications, and go straight from Investigations to Cleared. People with foreign spouses, extensive travel, and connections in China tend toward Adjudications. With two of them three, Dave has already spent 5 months in Adjudications. We don't expect him to spend much longer here - Security Clearance could come any day now. We feel quite confident he will have his Security Clearance within the next 2 months - by March.

So, the question often arises for us. If offered a position in the March class, will Dave accept? The advantages are many:

- Dave moves out of a job he doesn't like, and begins his new career sooner.
- We deliver Jake in the states, at a hospital with a low infant mortality rate, and near our family.
- We can attend Dave's family reunion in May.
- We have all of our baby gear nearby, and easy access to stores which sell Pampers and Enfamil.

But would I rather move at 30 weeks pregnant, or with a 3 week old child? New moms may be amazed, but the old pros would agree - the 3 week old child is much easier. Plus, the advantages of delivering in Shanghai are many as well:

- Although Dave would be in a great new job, he would also have zero days of vacation. Think unpaid family leave, where we would have to reimburse the government for our housing on a daily basis. Here, he looks forward to nearly 3 weeks of vacation for the new little one.
- I have a great support group here. Although I look forward to meeting up with some wonderful friends in DC, I have some wonderful friends here as well. They will help with my kids, they will surround our family with prayer, and they may even cook for us sometimes!
- Wendy. While in Shanghai, we have someone who cooks and cleans for us, does all of our laundry and dishes, can pick up the girls from school and even get them dressed in the morning. Wendy knows our routines, she knows what we like, she knows our family and she knows how to help. In the states, our bathrooms would get filthy and our laundry would pile up at the arrival of a newborn - but now here!
- Tiny Tots. Lilly and Sophia can continue to attend school every day, offering a basic piece of continuity in their lives while they adjust to the new baby. That way we put off moving until school finishes for the year. Were we to move to DC early, I face delivering a baby with 2 children out of school. We move over the summer, and we've got better chances and seeing them each begin school in the fall, and meanwhile finding plenty of summertime playmates.

The list is certainly longer on the Shanghai side. Add to that how comfortable I am with my doctor, and that my hospital meets all Western accredidation standards. Our healthy baby will greet the world with no problems at all.

So, we've settled on the perfect timing. Dave's security clearance has 2-3 more months to come through, and then he can be invited to the June or July classes. If we're lucky, we might even make it back in time for the family reunion!

You Can Go Back

Many of my friends in Shanghai discuss how you can never go back. My friend Ann is a perfect example of feelings many of us share. She comes from a small town in Ohio - the type of small town where people grow up, marry, and live through their retirement. Simply by choosing to move abroad, they became vastly different from their Ohio neighbors.

Further, she had worked full-time in Ohio. But in Shanghai, she lives as a tai tai, running her household, caring for her kids, and joining the ladies for Bible Study and charity events.

Her family dynamics changed as well. Her son left his small Ohio school for a large international school. And her step-daughters came to live with them full-time, because a weekends-only arrangement doesn't work when an ocean separates the two parents.

Their family dynamics have changed dramatically over the past few years, and each of those changes have led to a happy family. But the thought of returning to Ohio brings to mind the classic phrase, you can never go back. How to return to small-town, weekends-only life after what their family has become?

I often wonder the same about our family. When we left St. Louis, we had two very young children. Dave and I were still social animals, often having our weekends planned to the hour and relying on the grandparent babysitters down the street. We made entirely adult choices, and we enjoyed our lives and our friends. And like Ann, we are certainly the only of our friends to make the choice to live abroad. When will our trips home begin to feel less like home?

After 2 weeks spent in St. Louis and immersed in our old life, I've concluded that we are luckier than Ann. Our family has changed dramatically - Dave's and my roles inside our family have changed, the types of friends we have become are radically different, and having older children affects all of our choices now. But the same type of changes have happened to many of our friends. I sat to dinner with a few ladies from our home church. I shared some of our changes, some of our challenges, and some of the craziness of our current life. But so did each of the other ladies at the table. New babies had been born, houses had been bought and sold, the economy had changed and jobs had been impacted.

Maybe I'm lucky - my friends are in that same stage of life, where family and career grow and change quickly. And maybe being from the city helps - change can't happen fast enough on the run-down streets of St. Louis. But after dinner with a few friends, I am quite confident. We could move back to St. Louis and fall back into our old life quite happily.

We won't; but we could. And how comforting to know that home still awaits, and will for a long time to come.

Christmas Traditions

The day before we left Chicago for Shanghai, Dave and I sat around his family dinner table with a few of his family members discussing family traditions. Dave's family has observed the same Christmas Eve and Christmas Day routines for years - they have very clear Christmas Day traditions. His brother in-law shared how his family has NO Christmas Day traditions. He was quite adamant about the lack, and his wife agreed. No routine for the day.

I sat quietly, thinking about what my family's traditions may be. Our Christmas Day has always been rather simple. Presents immediately in the morning, but only after everyone was awake. Breakfast afterward, something tasty but pre-made, like coffeecake. Dinner of ham or turkey at around 1:00pm. And an otherwise quiet day spent playing with new toys and enjoying each other's company.

Not a day filled with tradition.

But what I've come to realize is that my family's traditions come during the Advent season. We have always shopped together for a live Christmas tree. I have memories of trudging through snow deeper than my ankles to find the perfect tree; always passing up the first one that seemed pretty good, only to return to that perfect tree after our boots had let in the wet and the wind has seeped into our ears. Hot chocolate and candy canes while we stood around the little window to pay, and feeling far away and in the midst of a forest. We bake. We bake cookies like nobody's business - a cake saver full of sugar cookies, some frosted and some left plain; my grandmother's snow-on-plowed-field recipe; cherry bon-bons; peppermint patties; macaroons; and always at least one new recipe. And then there's pie. My mom would make 2-3 pies for Christmas Dinner, leaving her cooking them throughout the upcoming week. The weeks leading up to Christmas would see her counterspace lessen on a daily basis, as tins of different types of cookies and pies began to pile up. And the Advent Calendar. We read the same Advent Calendar together every night of Advent for as long as I can remember. I now have the calendar, and we've been reading it with the girls this year.

So, to return to our home on December 21st did not leave me too disappointed. I experienced my family's traditions this year. We picked out a live tree with Nana and Poppa. The girls helped my mom make Christmas cookies. We decorated the house together. And we all read the Advent Calendar together in a hushed silence, every night. These are my Christmas traditions, and I loved sharing them with my whole family.

So, this year we began creating our own Christmas Day traditions. For Christmas Eve dinner, we planned a homemade Italian pasta dinner, followed by Christmas cookies and hot chocolate while watching a Christmas movie. Dave picked up The Polar Express on the way home from work, and I spent all afternoon making manicotti with homemade sauce. It tasted wonderful, but one piece filled up Dave and I. The girls were too tired to try any, still suffering from jet lag. We packed them off to bed at 7:30, with promises that Santa might come early if they went to bed. They were sleeping by the time we finished the final Advent story.

Tomorrow, we'll share Dave's mother's cardamom coffeecake for breakfast; a turkey roasted for us by the kind folks at the Hilton hotel with homemade stuffing, cranberries and potatoes, and a lovely bottle of wine; plenty of hours of playing with toys, and a few hours of cookies, hot chocolate and Christmas movies. Just like the good old days.

And then supper at a local Chinese restaurant.

Family Jet Lag

Dave and I once visited his sister in Vienna. After sitting awake on the airplane all night, we gamely stayed awake all day and laid our heads on our pillows around 8pm that night. Exhausted and sleeping in a dark basement, we both fell sound asleep. And with no clock and no sunlight filtering in, we slept until 4:00 the following afternoon - 8am in our home timezone. We struggled to adjust to Austrian time the rest of the week.

Learning our lessons well, Dave and I have always strive to put ourselves immediately on local time when we travel. However, traveling across 14 hours with young children made this approach impossible. We quickly learned that the way to adjust very young children to jet lag is simply to follow their schedule. When a young child wakes up, wake up with them. When a young child gets sleepy, go to bed with them. The family will have adjusted to local time within 3 days, guaranteed.

It seems we have outgrown this strategy.

We arrived in Chicago the evening before Thanksgiving. We spent Thanksgiving in the midst of a wonderful family gathering, and didn't allow anyone naps. We all fell asleep in the car on the way home that evening, and slept soundly through the night, exhausted. With earlier than average mornings, we had adjusted the local time as quickly as that. We should have followed that example this time, but instead sent everyone to nap yesterday when Sophia got sleepy. We all managed to fall asleep by 3:00 in the afternoon, and could each have kept going well past 5:30 when I woke up.

So, here's the new rule:

For children still napping, and too young to understand that darkness means sleepytime, parents need to follow their lead. As with newborns, sleep when the baby sleeps.

For anyone old enough to push through naptime, place yourself on local time immediately. No naps on that first day back.

Luggage Arrival

The whole house was sound asleep, as well we should have been. Lilly tucked into her bed downstairs, and a sick Sophia snuggled between Dave and I in our bed. So sound asleep that when the doorbell rang, we all panicked. The doorbell rings in our bedroom, with a song that fills the entire house. And so when that song began to play at 1:15 this morning, Dave and I began running around like chickens with our heads cut off. What was that song? Why was it playing so loudly? Why wouldn't it stop?

We finally realized that someone was pressing our doorbell repeatedly, causing the loud music in our sleeping chamber. Dave threw a T-shirt over his boxer shorts and raced downstairs, hoping to stop the noise before it woke the children.

A man stood at the darkened door, and beckoned Dave out into the lane with a luggage tag. In only a T-shirt, boxer shorts, and now tennis shoes, Dave walked down the lane and to the truck sent by the airport which sat parked on the street. The nightime delivery man apparently does not physically carry luggage, but only transports luggage. So, half awake, Dave carried three 50 pound bags down the lane. And then collapsed back in bed, for another 3 hours of sleep.

All of our dirty laundry has arrived, safe and sound.

The Family Returns

After a ridiculously long day yesterday, our family has returned to Shanghai and all managed to stay in bed until 5:30 this morning. Just for fun, allow me to provide you with a run-down of our day yesterday.

7:00am - left Dave's parents' house, right on time
8:00am - Entered the expedited line at O'Hare Airport
Dave has enough frequent flyer miles to be in their Premier Executive class, and supposedly not have to wait in line at the airport. But yesterday, as most of the airports on the East Coast were sitting quietly closed, O'Hare was a mess and we stood in line for an hour.
9:00am - Moving from one line to the next, we stood in line at security for another half an hour.
9:30am - After grabbing a quick few snacks in lieu of breakfast, we boarded the plane immediately.
10:01am - The time the plane was supposed to take off for Shanghai
12:30pm - The time they announced we would be using a different plane for our flight to Shanghai, and asked everyone to deboard.
12:40pm - The time they changed their minds, and decided that this faulty plane would do.
1:00pm - The approximate time we actually left Shanghai, after sitting on the plane for an additional 3 hours. Lucky we had bought those snacks, because this pregnant Mama would have really been a mess by then! Luckily, the girls played like little angels and everything went smoothly.

In fact, most of the flight went smoothly from that point. The girls received children's meals, and they came early each time. The girls played well, although they only slept for about 2 hours each. They spent a lot of time in front of movies, and remained surprisingly happy. I ate well enough, and didn't really begin to feel bad until the last few hours of the flight.

However, something hit Dave about 7 hours into the flight, and he spent the remaining 6.5 hours as curled up in a ball as a 6 foot 3 inch man can manage in Economy Plus. He threw up as the plane was landing, and so felt better as we pulled out children and multitude of stuff through customs and on to baggage claim. Where we only retrieved 5 of our 8 bags. The boxes with Christmas gifts all arrived, so that's good. But all of our clothes presumably stayed in Chicago while we sat on the tarmac for hours. Here's to hoping they arrive in Shanghai this afternoon.

The family went to bed at 6:30 last night, 36 hours by calendar from when our family awoke. Actually, only 22 hours later - but that's an awfully long time for a 3 year old to stay awake. We all crashed until about 1am this morning. But my wonderful children saw the darkness outside, and each managed to fall back asleep with me until 5:30am. Running on a good 11 hours of sleep, the three of us are feeling good. Dave's still upstairs feeling crummy, but the hard part is over. I can abide with a sick husband when we're at home.

All things considered, this time was perfect. We made it to Chicago in time for a huge family Christmas around Dave's grandmother. The girls and I spent the bulk of advent in St. Louis with my family, going to our home church, shopping for Christmas trees and making holiday cookies. We spent time with every aunt and uncle (minus only 1), and we returned to Chicago on the day that Great-Grandma passed away. The entire family was blessfully able to participate in her funeral and burial, and to spend more time with Dave's extended family. The time was a wonderful blessing for our girls, for Dave, and for his mother and family.

And to be honest, I'm glad to be home just now. We've got a few quiet days to adjust to Shanghai time before diving into our own, small Christmas festivities. This will be a year for creating our own family traditions, and enjoying Christmas in our own cozy home. As much as I love a large Christmas, I'm really looking forward to our quiet event.

Peace and Quiet

Sophia and I went for a walk through my parents neighborhood this morning. This same neighborhood is where Dave and I used to live, and we passed Sophia and Lilly's first home. It is an urban neighborhood, in the smaller city of St. Louis.

Sophia asked a question: Why is it so quiet here?

Mommy: Hmm, what sounds are missing?

Sophia: Cars. Lots of cars and bikes.

It may be an urban neighborhood, but its no match for the ceaseless noise and the endless people, cars and bikes of the streets of Shanghai!

Update From the Front

Be wary of waging war on foreign soil. Our adversary, Randy the Rat, is Chinese and clearly brings the benefit of guangxi to his battle. He may be slowly starving to death, and periodically freezing, but he is well enough connected to wear us down as well.

Yesterday morning, workers awoke us at 6am by swinging pick-axes and driving jackhammers into the concrete in our lane. The picture below shows the progress by the time the girls walked to school at 9am:

See the green number 8 on the right? That's our house, our front walk. Our bedroom window faces this. Our front walk is, well, unwalkable.


The sewer line is being replaced. The workers, clearly directed by Colonel Randy the Rat, turned off our water and "forgot" to turn it back on for most of the day. When they needed electricity, Colonel Randy the Rat apparently gave them permission to connect to our power lines. It is possible that our electric bill will have powered the replacing on a sewer line for the entire lane. Wendy thinks this is unlikely, but I wouldn't put it past that wily rat.

He won the battle. We've left town. I'm writing from Chicago.
But he hasn't won the war. Wendy called the Pest Control Company back again, and they are under strict instructions to "do what it takes." We will return to a rat-free house. Or, at least, a house with a dead rat somewhere inside.

And I'm kidding - although I am writing from Chicago, its not because we couldn't fight this silly rat. He may be gross, but he hasn't managed to kick us out of our house. Dave's grandmother is very sick, and so we moved forward our home leave. On Sunday night, with the status update on Great-Grandma, we decided it was time to go home. We flew out today. The last two days were a whirlwind of packing, shopping, and making loads of phone calls. But this is certainly the right place to be right now.

The girls and I will be in Chicago through the holiday weekend, spend the next 2 weeks in St. Louis, and then return to Chicago for our final week in the states. Dave will join us on the way to Chicago, having spent 2 weeks alone (with a dead rat) in Shanghai. We will all return to Shanghai on Dec. 20th to enjoy a quiet family Christmas in our certainly rat-free home, having finally emerged victorious - I am confident.

War of Attrition

Our rat has not succumbed to any of our traps. He has not eaten any of the bright blue poison balls. He has not given in to the temptation of treats hanging inside a metal trap. And he has actually moved glue traps out of his way rather than step on them.

So we seem to have engaged in a War of Attrition - and our side has much greater resources.

We have removed all free foods. The bowl of fruit sits vacant and lonely on the kitchen table, while the refrigerator is full of chilled produce. The sack of flour rests neatly inside a Ziploc bag. Loaves of bread are stored in the oven. And bags of corn flour and chocolate squares rest inside an airtight box.

Every food in this house rests inside at least one air-tight container.

We rinse the dishes after dinner, and we take out the trash twice a day.

Unless he is eating the plaster in the walls of the stuffing in the couch, this rat must be slowly starving to death.

But the powers that be saw the starvation diet as too slow, and notched up our military strategy.

The heat has gone out in our home. Although the taps all run hot water, and the stove displays lovely blue flames, our radiators all sit cold. The outside temperature is 41, and the inside temperature can not be much higher than 55. We're cooking dinner now, which keeps me warm. And we've got thick blankets on our beds for later. We can stand the cold until the landlord deems it appropriate to send someone to repair the radiators (as a sidenote - I would expect immediately to be the appropriate time).

I just hope I'm not the one to stumble across a frozen, emaciated rat.

its in the house

11:50pm

The rat is in the house.

A Good China Day

8:30am
The family bed awoke, and Dave and Lilly bravely went downstairs to explore the various mouse traps set throughout the house.

9am
No rats or mice in the traps, so Dave made waffles, bacon and apples. We talked to Nana and Poppa via Skype.

9:40am
The landlord's contractor arrived. I had greatly feared coming downstairs first thing in the morning. I had no desire to see a mouse dying a slow death on top of my kitchen cabinets. My second fear was greeting and working with this morning's contractor. You see, a pest control company came to our home yesterday afternoon with a mouse-free guarantee. They left behind glue traps, poison pellets, and a big hole in the side of the wall that they refused to seal. So, after many phone calls to many different people, a contractor arrived this morning to fix the hole. I had no expectations that he would complete the job, but I was pleasantly surprised. He climbed right up onto the neighbor's higgledy-piggledy roof (none of us would have been surprised to see him fall right through) with a bucket of mixed concrete. And he tightly packed every pipe going into our home. He either sealed the mouse into our home, or outside of it. But he certainly left no holes. And he was done before we had even finished our waffles!

10:00am
With waffles and bacon chased down by grape juice, and the table cleared away, Dave took the girls out to color the lane with sidewalk chalk. They moved onto sports gear, and enjoyed a chilly autumn morning outdoors while I tried to make my first ever pie crust. I began work on it promptly at ten, cutting my butter into exactly 1/2 inch squares and measuring all of my ingredients just so to be fully prepared for this intimidating task.

11:30am
I followed every procedure, down to the last detail.

1:15pm
Everything went smoothly. The apples smelled delicious. The crust laid out well.

2:00pm
It even transferred beautifully from the tabletop to the pie plate. I began to pat myself on the back. Who says making a pie from scratch is so hard?

3:00pm
Wendy arrived to babysit for our Saturday date. I put the pie in the 375 degree oven. I began to clear up a bit, when I noticed smoke coming from the oven. I whipped open the door, and saw the egg wash dripping from the pie onto the oven floor. With cloth hot pads, I pulled the doughy pie back out of the oven and set it on the stove. I watced the bottom of the oven spew out smoke, and tried to come up with a solution. Nothing brilliant appeared.

3:15pm
A small shard of brilliance. Turned off the gas to the oven, used a wooden spoon and a wet washcloth and cleaned the base of the oven. Replaced the wet with a dry washcloth, and finished the mopping job. No more smoke - very nice.

3:20pm
I turned the gas back on, and waited for the oven to get back up to 375.

3:55pm
It didn't.

4:00pm
Dave and I left on our date. We left Wendy in charge of the pie. Now is a good time to remind you that Chinese people don't bake. They don't buy flour or butter. They don't have ovens in their homes. I had Wendy monitoring my first pie crust, which had baked for 10 minutes and then sat on a countertop for an hour. What's done was done.

4:30pm
Dave and I reached the Fabric Market. For a total of 3,750 RMB we began the tailoring process for 3 suits of Super 180s Wool suits with silk lining, 10 work shirts, a pair of jeans and a white cashmere scarf. That's about $500.

6:00pm
We reached our dinner destination, Yu Xin Sichuan Restaurant. It was a thoroughly Chinese restaurant, with red decor throughout, wait staff bustling around the many corners, partitions between every table, and a long menu full of photos. And nearly every food on the menu had been cooked with chilis. The meal was delicious.

7:30pm
We stopped at the video store on the way home. People don't rent movies in China. We buy pirated versions at full-blown stores with really interesting selections. Yu Xin was near one of our favorites, and so we perused. With a baby in my belly, we find ourselves watching movies more frequently, and so we grabbed movies freely. For 126 RMB we walked out with 9 movies and 1 season of Entourage. That's about $20 - heavy spending at the video store.

8:00pm
We walked in, and put the girls to bed. A very strange looking pie sat on top of the oven. We haven't tried it yet, as our bellies are still too full of Sichuan peppercorns. But by about 9:30pm...

Rats! continued

When we called the landlord about the rats, we said that a Pest Control Company would again need to come to our home.

She said we should get a cat.

After much wrangling between her and our agent, and then much wrangling between our agent and the Pest Control Company, a technician will arrive at our home at 1:00 this afternoon.

My understanding is that sticky traps are the most common form of mouse and rat control in China. This is where they lay out a very sticky piece of paper. When the rat steps on it, he can not remove his foot from the paper. My further understanding is that when the rat begins to panic, he may tear himself apart in fright.

I am not looking forward to such a greeting tomorrow morning.

Upon further research, I've learned that sticky traps are generally thought to be inhumane in the west. It can take a long time for the mouse to die, and our household will be forced to listen to the sad cries and struggles all night.

I told Wendy that maybe we will just leave town this weekend, stay in a hotel, and return on Monday... after she has already arrived.

She says I am weak.

Rats!

Well, we sort of expected it.

Tuesday night, as I lay in bed reading, I heard some noise downstairs. Worried about burglars or sleepwalking kids, I went down to check. All seemed in order.

The next morning, Lynne found teeth marks in the butter. And Wendy found a half-eaten apple.

We put out a trap last night. Apparently we should have had Wendy help. We used cheese (just like in the cartoons, right?). Apparently Chinese rats, like most Chinese people, don't particularly like cheese. Wendy said pork would work better. We'll see.

So this morning I came down and ate breakfast on the couch. Hearing a noise, I looked over and saw a long tail scurrying up the wall.

So the exterminators gave a bid today and should return tomorrow to begin the extermination. This is China.