Ramblin' 'Bout My Babies
I don't have any particular point to make this morning, it's just 0719 and I'm bored and awake and thinking about my family.
We moved out of our place this week, which was no small feat. I was the one who did all the heavy lifting, and we do own quite a large refrigerator and an American washer and dryer (I don't know how you Eurons get by with those little miniature combo dealies you have over there, ours are heavy-duty enormous... it's like comparing Moloch with a Kenner Easy-Bake oven). Here's cheers to whoever invented the appliance dolly, without which I would have been forced to just set the house on fire and run.
The wife and sprog are slated to bop off to China shortly, and they'll be gone for five or six months... I am going to miss them both terribly, but while reflecting on the situation this morning I realized just how solid our marriage is. It occurred to me that I'm not at all worried about the relationship being strained by the upcoming long separation, and that's a significant thing. Daci, aka Mrs. Onion, aka Communist Spice 3.0, aka Bu Pan Zi, is in fact my best friend. I really can't imagine life without her, and I'm certain that she feels the same way about me. Which is not to say that we don't bicker and argue and tell each other to shut the hell up with great regularity; we do, but we've learned to do all that in a sustainable fashion. There's a constant element of striving for dominance in our relationship, but we do it in a way that doesn't wear thin. When one of us says "I love you," the other invariably replies "you better!"
And then there's Woody, aka Elwood, aka the Sprog, aka Lord Poopington-Smythe, aka the Amazing Food Tube, aka Stop That Damn It. While I'm not conflicted at all about my wife being so far away for so many months, I do worry about the boy. His mother has promised me that she will speak English to him every day while they're over there, but I'm still afraid that he might get linguistically confused by being so suddenly transplanted into a different culture, however temporarily. He's just starting to really get a grip on real talking (as opposed to babbling), and will repeat any word you care to teach him. And while I certainly will not miss the (deliberate?) way he spills his beverages on me, or the way he steals my pen and uses it to write on the sofa, or the way he steals my girl from me at every opportunity, he is still quite a joy to have around and I am going to be feeling the lack while he's gone.
It'll take them eighteen hours to get from LAX to the airport in Chengdu. His Lordship is a very sweet little boy in many ways, but also stubborn and willful and squirmy and not at all shy. He's going to be all over that 747, nonchalantly climbing into the startled lap of every attractive young woman he sees (he does that; at 20 months old he's already a girl-seeking missile), demanding sips of other peoples' drinks with his insistent cry of "CUP!" and taking away the toys of any other children that happen to be there. And of course, there will be long periods of time in which he will be required to stay in his seat (yes, I got him his own seat... he's under two years old and could have flown for free on his mother's lap, but no way in a million Hells would I inflict that on her).
So what can we do? Drug him up with cough syrup? Wrap him in a protective cocoon of duct tape? Handcuff him to his mother?
Once they get there, of course, they'll be in China. If either of them gets sick or injured, I'll have to pay to have them airlifted to Shanghai or Beijing just so they can go to a decent hospital. There are child-stealers in China. Dujiangyan still has many piles of rubble with corpses underneath, and who knows what kind of health hazards that might pose. I should be a bundle of worry, but I'm taking the calculated risk here and remaining stubbornly confident that it will all turn out alright.
Meanwhile, I'll be technically homeless, and saving up money for a down payment on a house. As long as I'm working and have a PO box for mail I don't need a place to go home to; I've got everything I need right there. I'll be sending money to China every month, but that will be a lot less than paying rent, electricity, gas, water, etc. so the only real expenditure I'll have here in the States each month will be my car payment.
The next time one of us takes a trip, though, it's going to be me. I miss my daughter in Russia and I want to see her and talk to her and hold her in my arms again. I'm going to have to go there to do all that, and I don't think it would be wise or appropriate to take wife and sprog along on that trip. I'm hoping that my little girl will be allowed to come and live with us in America for a year or two (or three...) once we've settled again and achieved some stability.
Happy holidays, y'all.
We moved out of our place this week, which was no small feat. I was the one who did all the heavy lifting, and we do own quite a large refrigerator and an American washer and dryer (I don't know how you Eurons get by with those little miniature combo dealies you have over there, ours are heavy-duty enormous... it's like comparing Moloch with a Kenner Easy-Bake oven). Here's cheers to whoever invented the appliance dolly, without which I would have been forced to just set the house on fire and run.
The wife and sprog are slated to bop off to China shortly, and they'll be gone for five or six months... I am going to miss them both terribly, but while reflecting on the situation this morning I realized just how solid our marriage is. It occurred to me that I'm not at all worried about the relationship being strained by the upcoming long separation, and that's a significant thing. Daci, aka Mrs. Onion, aka Communist Spice 3.0, aka Bu Pan Zi, is in fact my best friend. I really can't imagine life without her, and I'm certain that she feels the same way about me. Which is not to say that we don't bicker and argue and tell each other to shut the hell up with great regularity; we do, but we've learned to do all that in a sustainable fashion. There's a constant element of striving for dominance in our relationship, but we do it in a way that doesn't wear thin. When one of us says "I love you," the other invariably replies "you better!"
And then there's Woody, aka Elwood, aka the Sprog, aka Lord Poopington-Smythe, aka the Amazing Food Tube, aka Stop That Damn It. While I'm not conflicted at all about my wife being so far away for so many months, I do worry about the boy. His mother has promised me that she will speak English to him every day while they're over there, but I'm still afraid that he might get linguistically confused by being so suddenly transplanted into a different culture, however temporarily. He's just starting to really get a grip on real talking (as opposed to babbling), and will repeat any word you care to teach him. And while I certainly will not miss the (deliberate?) way he spills his beverages on me, or the way he steals my pen and uses it to write on the sofa, or the way he steals my girl from me at every opportunity, he is still quite a joy to have around and I am going to be feeling the lack while he's gone.
It'll take them eighteen hours to get from LAX to the airport in Chengdu. His Lordship is a very sweet little boy in many ways, but also stubborn and willful and squirmy and not at all shy. He's going to be all over that 747, nonchalantly climbing into the startled lap of every attractive young woman he sees (he does that; at 20 months old he's already a girl-seeking missile), demanding sips of other peoples' drinks with his insistent cry of "CUP!" and taking away the toys of any other children that happen to be there. And of course, there will be long periods of time in which he will be required to stay in his seat (yes, I got him his own seat... he's under two years old and could have flown for free on his mother's lap, but no way in a million Hells would I inflict that on her).
So what can we do? Drug him up with cough syrup? Wrap him in a protective cocoon of duct tape? Handcuff him to his mother?
Once they get there, of course, they'll be in China. If either of them gets sick or injured, I'll have to pay to have them airlifted to Shanghai or Beijing just so they can go to a decent hospital. There are child-stealers in China. Dujiangyan still has many piles of rubble with corpses underneath, and who knows what kind of health hazards that might pose. I should be a bundle of worry, but I'm taking the calculated risk here and remaining stubbornly confident that it will all turn out alright.
Meanwhile, I'll be technically homeless, and saving up money for a down payment on a house. As long as I'm working and have a PO box for mail I don't need a place to go home to; I've got everything I need right there. I'll be sending money to China every month, but that will be a lot less than paying rent, electricity, gas, water, etc. so the only real expenditure I'll have here in the States each month will be my car payment.
The next time one of us takes a trip, though, it's going to be me. I miss my daughter in Russia and I want to see her and talk to her and hold her in my arms again. I'm going to have to go there to do all that, and I don't think it would be wise or appropriate to take wife and sprog along on that trip. I'm hoping that my little girl will be allowed to come and live with us in America for a year or two (or three...) once we've settled again and achieved some stability.
Happy holidays, y'all.