Playtime

I guess I'm on this "day in the life" kick right now. So here is some more. During the day, when we get a chance, we go out to the "playground" in our little "gated community." I've put these terms in quotes because I don't want those of you in America to envision a playground or a gated community like what you have in the US of A. Nothing like it all. But nonetheless, here are pictures of Bright on the see-saw, Zion with his friend, Brennan, some other cute playmates, and the snack selection (what you are looking at are tasty, crispy chicken feet...yum).

Day in the life.

Omelet, anyone?

Here is a little perspective. Imagine having to the wash poop, blood, and feathers off of each egg before cracking them into your brownie batter or whatever. Welcome to my world.

And yes, I am wearing food service gloves in this picture. I'm not about to touch that egg with my bare hands!

The New Ride

As you know, Daniel's electric bike got heisted last month while we were ordering coffee drinks. Two days later, out of a desperate need for wheels, Daniel headed out to replace it. Thankfully, things are so cheaply made here that replacing one of these babies is about as costly as replacing a good mountain bike in America. No chump change, I admit, but nothing to get sick over, either.

In fact, we were a tad grateful to our friendly neighborhood thieves for giving us the opportunity to pick out something with good brakes, less kilometers of wear, and more visual appeal. Looking at this thing, you would expect it to burst out into macho rumble when turned on, but this pretty kitten doesn't even purr. Like all electric bikes, the turn of the key results in complete silence. A true biker would be horrified.


So, with Daniel's Wolverine chops (leftover from Halloween), his Michael Jackson leather jacket (which our American friends make fun of and our national friends covet), and his Tom Cruise shades (which are just plain cool, lets face it) the new ride is complete. Eat your hearts out, ladies, he's mine.

Girlhood friends

Like many of you, I have lost touch with one of the girls who stood up in my wedding. I have no contact with the girl who wore the other half of my best friend necklace in the fifth grade. I haven't talked to some of my college roommates in years.

But there is a remnant, a precious few friends from my past, who remain a constant in my life. They knew me when I had braces and freeze-dried bangs. They stumbled along beside me through the torrent of adolescence, holding each other up when it was too hard to keep going.

I am convinced that two things cement girlfriends together forever: The Holy Spirit, and/or training bras.

Two of such friends are Kathy and Emily. Kathy (pictured here with me on the beach our senior year of highschool) was in my seventh grade science class. She was the coolest girl in school. I, of course, knew who she was and was frankly shocked that she was speaking to me. As it turned out, the dimpled and beautiful Kathy, who could play the piano and sing and act and play sports and wiz through advanced classes, was also the most genuine and kindhearted friend a girl could have. She was nice to everyone, cool or not, and for whatever reason, she liked me.

Emily (pictured here with me in her parents' kitchen our senior year of high school) was the star balance beamer on the gymnastics team, all six feet of her, and when I met her she was still a gangly, goofy kid, all knees and elbows. She was the girl who everyone loved. No one has ever said a bad word about Emily. She and I were quite a pair, and we stayed glued at the hip all through the last two years of high school.

That is not say that they, nor I, have always been perfect, nor have our friendships enjoyed a completely smooth ride. In 9th grade they signed their names (along with all of the other girls in school) at the bottom of a hate letter, addressed to me, after I committed the ultimate teen girl blunder...stealing another girl's guy (which was an accident, I assure you, but that is a whole other story). But as the years have carried us on, our bonds have stood the test of time. Whatever the preservative is, these two friendships, and others like them, have not expired, and I know now that they never will.

Just this week, I recieved a care package from Kathy. In it were books and magazines (English reading material is scarce here), candy and snacks, a hand-written letter (somewhat of a rarity these days, unfortunately, which makes them highly valuable), a beautiful birthday sweater (which I am wearing at the moment, in fact), a lovely journal which beckons my thoughts, country music, Christmas music, nastalgic photographs, recent pictures from Emily's wedding, and many more goodies. Kathy and Emily are two of my most faithful care-package senders. Here we are, nearly 20 years after we first met, and half a world apart, and our friendships are perhaps stronger than they have ever been. What a wonder.

So here is to friends - real friends - lifelong friends - and all the greatness that comes along with them. I love you, Kath and Em. Thanks for the laughs and the love and the years. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Look-a-likes

The first picture is Brave at four months. The second picture is Zion at four months. What do you think? Do they look like brothers?

Kind of scary

While Brave is screaming himself to sleep, I will recap on Halloween.

Let me start by saying that I grew up trick-or-treating. Since we were not allowed to open gifts on Christmas Eve, Halloween was my favorite night of the year. My mom, bless her soul, is not the Martha Stewart type (at least not back then). There were no costume workshops sprawled out on our kitchen table for the last two weeks of October. We were never dressed like felt sandwiches or purple balloon grape clusters. Instead, my brothers usually threw on their football uniforms and I usually wore my mom's clothes from the 70's and flashed a peace sign with my fingers for the camera. One year, in a fit of desperation, at about 6 p.m. on Halloween night, my mom pulled a dozen items of brown, dingy clothing from the hall closet - sweaters and leather jackets and scarves and such - and told me to tell people I was Cinderella before she met her fairy godmother.

Trick-or-treating is a fascinating practice, when you think about it. I remember the first year that Daniel and I had a house (granted, it was a rental) and we realized on the morning of the 31st of October that we were going to need large amounts of candy if we were going to stay home that night. I realized, too, that we were expected to open our door over and over and over to tired and sugared-up kids and disrespectful teenagers, and pretend to be happy about it. Trick-or-treating, according to Wikipedia, "...resembles the late medieval practice of souling, when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain,[3] although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy."

There is no trick-or-treating, however, here in our country in Asia. Thankfully, no matter how far away you travel, it seems, you can always find a handful of other westerners who are more than willing to squeeze their European-descended hips into a black leotard and tights, stuff a long black sock with garbage bags and hang it from their butt, paint their nose pink and don a headband with attached cat ears. Why not?

This year, we brought our little Batman, builder, and frog to the annual expat Harvest Festival. The crowded room smelled, appropriately, like sweat, polyester, and hot dogs. All of the princesses and superheros (including mine) and butterflies and ballerinas were crying. All of the hippies and nurses and Hannah Montanas were flirting. All of the parents were pulling out their hair, all of the volunteers were cursing their inability to say no, and all-in-all I think it was a Halloween success. What would Halloween be, after all, without a mom hissing, "You WILL wear the tiara I spent three days making" into her daughter's ear as the poor little thing tries to stash it in her brother's stroller because it is pinching her head?

Why do we do it, anyway? Dress our kids up and take them in public? To outcute the other kids, of course. To show off our felt and glitter skills. To hopefully get a picture that will win the $2,500 prize on cutekids.com. We are Americans. We love junk food. We love to compete. We love to have fun. We love to pretend (in this case, that scary holidays are great for kids). We love to be social. Probably most of all, we just do what we have always done.

Kind of scary.

Happy Halloween!

Raising kings

I have been up since 3:30 a.m., first to pacify Brave, then to nurse him when that didn't work, then to worry if we came home from the Harvest Festival last night with all of the costume props we borrowed from a friend, then to peruse the house looking for costume props, then to flip on a light in the office and nestle into the futon with my NIV, my journal, and a bowl of oatmeal because I wasn't going back to sleep on this particular morning.

And thank goodness I didn't. You know those rare and delicious occasions when you are reading through some dusty book like 2 Kings and you are hit across the heart as if by a brick? Yes. This morning I was slatted to read 2 Kings 22 in my read-through-the-text-in-a-year plan (which I started, by the way, in 2006). So I am flipping to 2 Kings, la-dee-da, taking bites of wet oatmeal, when I read the first verse: "Josiah was eight years old when he became king...His mother's name was Jedidah daughter of Adaiah; she was from Bozkath. He did what was right..."

Now just to refresh your memory, Josiah's daddy-o, Amon, was a wretched man and a wretched king, as was his father before him. So how is it that Amon's 8-year-old son, Josiah, did what was right? Jedidah, of course. HIS MOTHER! These harem kids were not raised by their dads. King Amon probably couldn't have picked Josiah out of a lineup. These kids were raised by their mothers. No wonder the mothers and their lineages are mentioned throughout the book. Mother's shape the world.

Well done, Jedidah. Well done.

And now it is 20 minutes to 7 a.m. and all the lights will soon come on and there will be the flying of dirty diapers and the pouring of juice and the day will barrel forward. But today, I will keep Jedidah and her legacy in mind.