Bad Day 27--One of Those Days

So today was a really bad day, but not because of Afghanistan, so I suppose it was an improvement. It started bad from the beginning, starting with that I got up on time and I didn't even have to walk the dog and I was still late! Only 5 minutes, which meant I was only 15 minutes early, but that would have been OK. It would have been, if it hadn't been for the rest of the day which went down hill from there.

Next, I got to the metro station and it was crowded, and I was early and it is never crowded when I'm early. Which meant that the trains were running late, and they were. I didn't get on the first train that came, because people shoved me out of the way. I managed to squeeze on to the second, but it was also crowded. No, that's not descriptive enough. It was China crowded. So crowded that if I had been standing any closer to the guy next to me, I would have been behind him. then a few stations down, even more people got on and the doors broke and the train wouldn't move and we all had to get off.



Two more trains went by before I could get on one. Then I finally squeezed on one and it smelled. I mean a really noxious sickening burnt rubber kind of smell. We went a stop and a half and then I started thinking, what if I passed out from the smell? And then I didn't because another man actually did and he was unconscious and greenish and a very pregnant doctor in scrubs had to get up and help him and people were calling 911 and then the train stopped at the station and I ran off. And then the ambulance came. And I'm pretty certain that guy had a worse day than me, even though he made me late for work. (Yes, actually late, not just not early. ) Although I am thankful that I wasn't the one who fainted.

And then at work, I ran into one of those girls. You know, the young ones who believed their parents when they told them they were the smartest children ever and no one would ever be as good as them. Those girls. And she is pretty, which makes it so much worse because then she only knows how to get things from men, and ahem, cough,  35 year old women who aren't impressed with her leave her non-plussed. So she tries to manipulate you and when you refuse to be manipulated, she gets snippy. Well, snip away, sweetie, because there is nothing you can dish out that I can't serve right back to you. I. Don't. Work. For you. Hmph!

And then I ate something at lunch that wasn't chocolate, but still made me sick. And then I had to pick up The Dog, and now I have to walk her. Ugh. So it was one of those days. If my husband were not in Afghanistan, I would cry on his shoulder and he would give me a foot rub. But he is in Afghanistan so I will just watch TV until my eyeballs fall out.

But this picture made me smile and I hope that tomorrow is a better day, and frankly it was nice to be annoyed by things that had nothing to do with Afghanistan. And isn't that little girl the cutest?

Bad Day 26--Off the Yellow Brick Road

There is definitely no place like home, and no place at all as comfortable as my bed. It is so, so nice to be back in my own space. Not that Husband's family weren't lovely to me during the reunion (they were) and not that I didn't enjoy myself most of the time (I did) but as I suspected, it was NOT the same as a vacation and I got very little sleep and it was exhausting crying all the time, so no, it was not a vacation.

But it was nice to see the family and they put up with all the crying, so all in all, not a bad trip. Except for the man on the second flight who kept stretching into my space and I had to keep shoving his knee over. Big jerk. But we arrived home safely and now I am in my bed and I don't want to get out of it, ever.

Today, this woman is having a worse day than me.



Kermit is for singing, and talking to, and cracking jokes with. He is most definitely not for wearing. And she forgot her shirt.  So as skinny as she is, people will still laugh at her creepy and ridiculous jacket. So thank you, Kermit model, for reminding me how nice it is to have a good sense of fashion.

Bad Day 25--Like the Hunger Games

The children and Sister 2 are being exceedingly silly and it is a lot of fun. They have decided to make a series of movie parodies, the first one being "Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears." It's "like" Goldilocks but not really because there will be three kangaroos and it will be set in Australia and Goldilocks will eat Vegemite and play didgeridoos. They plan on filming it in the Outback Steakhouse parking lot so they can say it's set in the outback. These are the kinds of things that happen when Sister 2 is around. She needs to come around more often because giggling uncontrollably is SO much better than crying all the time.

But good news! Due to scheduling problems and work coverage issues, Husband is coming home for his first R&R trip in two weeks! We are very excited and it is a huge relief to know he will be home for a little bit. I really had no idea how hard it would be to be without him, but I feel like only 1/2 a person. Also, I am no good at killing bugs and now there is no one in the house who can do it. Not long ago, Child 1 found a cockroach in the bathroom and asked me what to do about it. I said she should shut the door and pretend it wasn't there. She made a biohazard sign that said "do not enter" and put about 20 roach traps all over the bathroom. Then she had to sleep with me because she was worried it would crawl into her room. I told her not to worry about her room, because no cockroach could live in that mess, and she gave me a dirty look.

Child 1 is the queen of dirty looks, so much so, that sometimes I say things just to make her make that face because it is hilarious. It makes me laugh at all the wrong times. I know that I should be serious and stern at times, but when I see The Look on any of my children, it just makes me crack up. Once, when Child 1 was very small, she gave me The Look when I sent her to time out and I laughed. That just made her angrier, so she opened her door and shouted, "And your clothes are UGLY!" And then I lost it. I actually fell on the floor laughing.

But tonight, as I said good-bye to her because she is spending a week with her cousins, she gave me a different kind of look altogether which made me just melt. I think, really, that she might actually miss me a little bit. Child 2 won't even notice that I'm not around unless she wants food. But Child 1 just might notice that she needs me a little bit and wants me around. That makes me very happy.

Today, Kim Collins of St. Kitts and Nevis is having a really bad day.



He was kicked out of the Olympics by officials because he went missing and his team didn't know where he was. Turns out, he was with his wife in a hotel. Boo to the officials that thought the Olympics were more important than a marriage. If I ever have to choose between job and Husband, the job will definitely lose out.

Bad Day 24--8 pm is NOT late!

Today was shaping up to be not a bad day at all. I haven't even cried for two days in a row now. Took the children to see the place where Husband and I got married and I didn't even tear up when I told the story of how I almost broke up with him and then he changed. And now it's been almost 20 years. And I laughed with them about how he took a date (not me) to see the symphony that my roommate played the bass in and she glared at him the whole concert and he couldn't tell the date that they had to leave early because his girlfriend's roommate was going to rat him out and he was REALLY uncomfortable and totally deserved it. The children all laughed at Husband's silliness and we had fun. This is where I was married. Beautiful, no?



On the way home we stopped for ice cream and I got licorice because I'm still trying to replace chocolate and I thought I would audition licorice for the role of best friend, and it let me down. Not as delicious as I had hoped. The children fared much better and had pomegranate, cookie dough + cookies and cream, and smores. We got back a little late and tried to go to dinner, but ALL the restaurants were closed. All of them. At 8 pm. On a Friday night! Seriously! What kind of resort town is this?! So then we were starving and had to wait 45 minutes for the Chinese food we ordered to be delivered and it was be 9:30pm before I got any food and I was seriously cranky. And after the food finally came, I was sick to my stomach. But to be fair, I wasn't feeling well before the Chinese food. I think it was the licorice ice cream. So not a good day after all, at least until Husband Skyped me and then missed me so much, he Skyped again. Then I felt better.

I probably feel better than the Swedish ambassador to Belarus who just got kicked out of that country. For those of you not familiar with this story, here is a picture of the reason the ambassador was asked to leave:




Yes, according to Belarus, teddy bears are evil. A couple of well-meaning Swedes dropped a hundred or so stuffed teddies with pro-democracy messages out of an airplane that didn't exactly have permission to be in Belarussian airspace. So for this crime of moral turpitude, the Swedish ambassador has to leave Minsk. But come to think of it, any time you have to leave Minsk is a good time, so maybe his day wasn't so bad after all.

Day 23--Open Season

It's bidding season. For those of you unfamiliar with bidding in the Foreign Service (mine and my husband's employer) it is the time of year when very competitive people have to go around begging for a job. I know this confuses you because you all know that I have a job. But what you don't know is that the federal government, in its wisdom, makes me change it every two to three years. So they put out a list of all the places in the world that we could go, and I have to ask all my friends to be my references and then I write letters saying please oh please give me a job and I promise I'll be nice and good and then no one gives me a job and then I eat chocolate. Except that now I'm allergic to chocolate so I will have to eat caramels and that is not the same thing. And Husband is in Afghanistan which means we will have to coordinate long-distance and I am not at all confident that he won't do something sneaky like bid on Korea again.

The finding of the job is infinitely more complicated when your husband is also employed by the same job giver. You would think this would make it easier but you would be wrong because the Foreign Service believes that if two countries sound like they might be close to each other, they think it will be OK to split you apart and make you serve in two different places. And then you find yourself saying things like "I realize that Colombia and Gambia do rhyme and they are both near the equator, but they are on different continents and there is an ocean in between and I would prefer not to have cross an ocean to go to a parent-teacher conference because that is really hard to do over lunch."

Then of course, the children all want a say in where you will go next, and their criteria are things like they saw a cartoon about it, or it is fun to say, or there is great shopping. (Actually that last one I think should be part of the calculation.) So their picks are Abu Dhabi (fun to say and might be a character in Harry Potter,) Madagascar (always followed with "she likes to move it, move it,) and Bangkok, Thailand. Thailand would be great because of the food and shopping, but it doesn't fit into my criteria of being small, out of the way, where I would be in charge, and nobody cares about, and no one ever visits. So we will see. The list is out and we are jumping right into the bidding. Let the begging begin!

Having to work on bidding has not made my day stellar, but I did manage to buy some new shoes. So all in all, it could have been way worse, and certainly wasn't as bad as this guy who led police on a chase in a Smart Car!



You would think, having bought a Smart Car, that he would be a little more intelligent, but no, he honestly thought he might outrun the police, and then led them to his front yard! So thank you, Smart Car owner, for making me feel so much more intelligent.

Bad Day 22--Pushing the fledglings out of the nest--literally

Husband is in Afghanistan, so that means I can do anything I want to with the children. So today, I pushed them off a mountain. OK, technically, they jumped on their own, but I encouraged them, and I am very proud of myself for doing it. We went to a sort of mountain adventure park and I sent the children down a zip line, and a coaster, and an alpine slide. I was very proud of them because none of them screamed like I did when my dad took my on a log flume at age 10 and I kept trying to get out before we got to the top and he swore he would never take me on another ride again, and he kept his word.

But my children are braver than me. I spent my entire childhood being afraid of driving off a cliff, and they just jumped off one. It probably helps that their lives have been filled with lots of adventure from when they were pretty young. They've been to the DMZ in Korea, and hiking in the mountains of northern Vietnam where they patted water buffalo, and rafting down a river in China. We do lots of fun adventurous things that if I took the time to think about I would probably not not think was a very good idea, such as putting them on a raft made of PVC pipes while sitting on lawn chairs to go down a Chinese river that I'm sure has never seen a safety inspector. But it was fun and we all lived and a billion Chinese people do it all the time, so no harm, no foul, right? Child 3 is scarred for life because of the bathroom that was a board with a hole over a stream in Vietnam and to this day hates public restrooms, but still--lots of fun! And Adventure!

Today was not a bad day, in spite of the lingering headache, and I'm pretty certain that Wesley Snipes is having a worse day than me. He just had his 50th birthday while he was in jail for not paying his taxes. So thank you, Wesley, for reminding me that even when I am rich and famous, I will do my civic duty and pay my taxes, and I would much rather jump off a mountain than be in jail.

Bad Day 21--Stop Tiptoeing So Loudly!

Migraine Day 3. This is a record for me. I'm pretty sure it's from the crying, or the green beans with bacon I ate on Sunday. One of those. But probably the crying.

See, the problem is people are being nice to me and when they are nice, I can't be angry and then I am reminded of how sad I am that Husband is in Afghanistan, and then I start crying and then I get a migraine. So I either need to find a way to be angry in spite of all these nice people, or I need some stronger drugs. Maybe narcotics. (Just kidding, children. Narcotics will not make you happy. Chocolate will. Oh wait, I can't have that either. Maybe waffles?)

Or maybe some Eastern Medicine. Maybe I should try some meditation--my mantra could be "Jimmy Choo, Kate Spade, Tiffany. Jimmy Choo, Kate Spade, Tiffany." But knowing me, I would probably start thinking about British designers and my too-small Olympics T-shirts and then I will just be angry all over again. So maybe not meditation. I think I'll try massage therapy. I'll let you know if it works. Or maybe not, because if it actually works, I will finally get some sleep.

Today, I think that New Zealand Kayaker Mike Dawson might be having a worse day than me. Not only did he touch a gate and get a two second penalty during his race, his own mother called him on it. She was the gate judge who penalized him.



Then again, he is at the Olympics and his T-shirt appears to fit very well, so maybe it's not such a bad day for him after all. But anyway, thank you, Kay Dawson, for reminding me that if I am ever asked to judge my children in an Olympic event, I should turn it down. I would much rather be their cheerleader than judge.