Not So SAHM

Bitchy

It’s not what you think; I heard your audible gasps. Believe me, I gasped myself when I heard this word come out of my seven year old’s mouth. At a playground no less.

We were at the play area in the mall that is decorated with climbable art including a tree, a bear, some books, some bees, etc. Reagan had made a friend and she was running around with this new friend telling the new friend all the names she had come up for the different objects.

Apparently there is an owl on the top page of the big stack of climbable books. I heard, from across the room, “this one is Bitchy.” Only I heard, “this one is bitchy.” Subtle difference but that capital letter is a big player in this story. I told myself I had to be hearing things since the din in that area was a little louder than, oh, a cheering crowd in a stadium, and I let it go.

Later she came over to talk to me and I remembered to bring it up.

Me: So you were making names for everything. What was the name you called that stack of books?

R: Oh, there’s an owl on the page and its name is Bitchy. That’s what I named it.

Me: (Suppressing a huge guffaw) Honey, that’s not a very proper name for something. Here’s what bitchy means… (and proceeded to explain the word). So you see, we can’t use that name because other parents might hear you and think you’re using the word the bad way.

R: Whatever.

She didn’t really say “whatever”, but I was thankful that it basically didn’t phase her. I’m not sure if she’ll remember that word or not. But I had to write it down here for posterity. I’m a great mom like that…

Good looks can get you far

So for dinner tonight we were driving by a Japanese restaurant and decided to try it out. We were in eastern Arlington needing to the western edge of the beltway and didn’t care to sit in traffic. Much better to sit in a restaurant and let the traffic die down, especially since we wouldn’t arrive to the hotel until after dinner.

Let me just say now, if you are living in the DC area or will ever visit you must promise me that you’ll stop by Endo Sushi at the corner of Washington and Garfield in the Clarendon section of Arlington. Yum.my.

We stuffed ourselves on sushi rolls. The restaurant is not stingy, so we actually ate for a somewhat reasonable price. California rolls are my all-time favorite, but I have begun to venture into the raw side to eat tuna rolls. We even got Reagan to try a tuna roll and she liked it. Ashlyn’s favorite was the ginger you eat to clean your palate. Yeah.

Our waitress and the owner kept coming over to our table to speak to the girls and comment about how cute they were. I must say I agree. Most of the time. They must not have seen Ashlyn acting up though, climbing out of her chair, trying to poke Reagan with her fork, squealing in anger when she didn’t get her way.

At the end of the meal the owner gave us two of their desserts. The first she called, I think, misho ice cream. It was vanilla ice cream wrapped in rice paper. The second was green tea ice cream. Both delish. We all had to roll out of there. Oh, and she ended up giving the girls lollipops as we were leaving too. These were called Yummy Earth Organic lollipops. And they weren’t the normal, bland kiddie flavors either: Blood Orange, Grape and Mango. I’ll be ordering some of those!

On our way to find a restaurant we passed the Air Force Memorial.

Pretty cool, I must say. Reagan said, “you mean those sticks in the air?” Yes honey, those sticks. Representational art escapes her yet, but she’s only seven.

Out and about

Saturday we headed up to Silver Spring, MD to visit with Andrea, our maid of honor, and one of her little ones. It’s nice to realize how many friends we have in this area now that we’ve started counting them on our fingers and trying to contact and see them all.

We’ve been to Andrea’s place several times though and this time it was a kids’ play day. We walked to a local park and then walked to downtown Silver Spring.

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Downtown Silver Spring has a fountain that kids can play in. Great fun for a scorcher of a day.

After we said goodbye to Andrea we headed to the bastion of Swedish coolness. Do the Swedes ever produce anything uncool? I can’t say I’m that big of a fan of severe minimalist design, but you have to admit, Ikea holds some pretty cool stuff. Most of it’s cheap too. I’ve dubbed it the cool people’s WalMart.

It’s where the überorganized people go to get their fix and where the underorganized people go to learn. Like I said, a little…no a lot on the minimalist, modern European design flavor, but it kind of starts to grow on you when you look at the prices.
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That was all in one day. Today we went to the National Mall (right by the Smithsonian Castle and Washington Monument) for the Folklife Festival. We listened to Welsh music and even danced a couple of Welsh jigs.

We listened to Latin American music while relaxing in front of the Washington Monument.

One of the neat things we saw in the Welsh area was this:

Please click on that so you can see it for all it’s worth. That’s the place name for a Welsh city. It means “St Mary’s church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave”. Can you imagine introducing yourself? Hi, I’m Vicki and I live in St Mary’s church in the hollow of the white hazel near….oh forget it.

Believe it or not, we’ve actually heard of this place before. Back in Missouri our neighbors were Brits and John told us about this place one night; even looked in up online because Marie didn’t believe him.

Wow. I’m tired. We’ve done a lot this weekend. And I haven’t even mentioned yet the reptile show we went to on Thursday!

P.S. 33 more days!

Vandalism and shoplifting, I do it all

Can someone please tell me they become a little scatterbrained when they have busy days? Try throwing two kids in the mix and a temp of about 289 with 100% humidity. I know some people rely on their phones and day planners (of which I have both) but, whatever. Who needs that when you’re only going out to run some errands? All I wanted to get done today was:

Meet the realtor at our house to take measurements and pictures (with specific ones to be noted)
Obtain library cards (using required documentation that I did remember to bring)
Check our mail
Go grocery shopping
Sustain our bodies with some type of mid-day nourishment

Some parts of my day were successes, others…failures. I got pictures and measurements of the house. More on that at a later date. I even remembered to get most of the measurements I wanted. I met several of our soon-to-be neighbors and their children. Let’s see, that’s about it for the successful part of my day. Wait. We did eat lunch. There.

I totally forgot about the library cards because as we were pulling away from the house I was worried about an upcoming storm that was supposed to hit at any hour and drop hail. I did not want to be driving in DC traffic with hail added to the mix. So, hot and starving we headed straight for the mail then for lunch.

Only I forgot, the mail room is closed from 12pm to 1pm for lunch. I showed up at 12:15. Oh well, I figured we’d go get lunch, grocery shop and then come back. Lunch was fairly uneventful and fairly gross and greasy, but I’ve come to expect that from the Food Court. On to grocery shopping. My girls actually behaved themselves today and I only had to get on to Ash once I think.

As I was loading everything onto the conveyor belt thing at the register the clerk gave me one of those looks and said something under her breath. So I threw down a jar of pickles, shattering it to a thousand pieces, stuffed some Flintstones Vitamins in my purse, threw some money at her and stormed out of the grocery store, shoving the grocery cart with the girls in it in front of me. That’ll show them!

Oh wait. That’s not how it happened. I tried to pick up the jar of pickles from the cart to the conveyor and they slipped from my hand and fell to the ground and broke shattered into a million (not a thousand) pieces. This jar only fell one foot, I swear, but it made the loudest shattering sound I’ve ever heard. And then pickle juice started spreading everywhere. I just stood there mumbling, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, sorry”. A store bagger cleaned it up, bagged my groceries and then followed me out of the store. I was pushing a cart with the girls in it when the bagger noticed the vitamins…at Ashlyn’s feet. I sheepishly handed them to him mumbling something about “please take those back in. I’ll come back some other time to get the vitamins…and pickles.”

Knowers of me, you can vouch that I am cheap. This grocery store allows its baggers to be tipped. In fact, they make it a big deal to tell you that “baggers work for tips only”. I’m not dissing the baggers, I’m dissing the bagging system in general. I hate it. And I normally tip my bagger $2. Go ahead, I know. Today though I forked over a big ol’ Lincoln. After all, the guy had mopped up my pickle mess, bagged all my groceries, carried them out in 289 degree heat (100% humidity) and prevented me from committing larceny. He earned every penny (and, I’m sure, more).

Oh, and I forgot to go back and check the mail.

All the glory

What I was going to post about today, I still am, but it has a little added significance because of the death of two American legends.

I have been so blessed through this move. Actually, during every one of our moves I can see the hands of God all over them. Even last year with the slash-and-dump movers, overall it went better than it could have. Throughout my life I can see the fingerprints of God and His blessings on my life. I can look back at each place we’ve lived and understand why He had us live in the houses and neighborhoods we lived and why we attended the churches we did. I may not have understood it at the time, but of course, hind sight…

I owe all of our “luck” with this and every event in our life to God. I actually don’t believe in luck, as nothing happens by chance. Even things that I might not have asked for, things that might not have seemed good or lucky, I still thank God for. They have taught me more about Him, more about others and more about myself.

So as blessed as we are with this house and neighborhood and all the benefits it seems to have, I can only thank God for it. And for the fact that we have to spend the next five weeks in a hotel, I can only thank God for it. I will grow through this and know that I was blessed. I may not be able to see that while living through it, but I know after the fact I will look back and be able to count the blessings.

This leads me to the larger question of…What of those blessings? How should we act and what should we do because of and through our lives? We have tremendous opportunities each day and come into contact with tens of thousands of people throughout our lives. How are we to take those blessings, the good times the bad times, and help others?

You won’t have a fulfilling life until you put your life in the hands of Jesus. You won’t be fulfilling to others until the work of your hands includes His guidance. You may impact millions of people’s lives, but will that impact be fulfilling (to you or them)? You may only impact a small number of lives, your children perhaps, but that impact should really mean something.

An eternal impact is much more valuable than a superficial feeling. I can say that Michael Jackson’s career had an impact on my life. I grew up listening to Thriller. I could moonwalk with the best of the white kids. He (and Madonna) made pop in the 80s. Farrah Fawcett was just barely before my time. I was growing up when she was on tv, but I was too young to watch (maybe it’s just that I was too young to remember watching). But who didn’t have feathered bangs back then? But, what of it? Those impacts were superficial. There is an eternal side to everyone that we must focus on.*

In the end God wants to bless us, no matter what we go through: “For I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11) It is our duty to call them blessings, to take our gratitude and give it away. Call it what you may: evangelizing, proselytizing, preaching, whatever. God has a gift and it’s too great for just one person.

Make sure that you recognize your blessings and from where they come. Jesus paid a huge price for them. And take that gratitude and make a true impact on the lives of others.

*Please don’t see this as me making light of either death. I am sad for their families and pray for comfort for everyone who mourns.

Moving on

up! To the east side…

WE GOT THE HOUSE! The owners accepted our rental application including the request to add more lighting. We signed the lease today and all that’s left is for the owners to sign. We hope to hear final confirmation tomorrow. The only down side to this is that our move in date is 01 August. That’s 37 days in case you wanted clarification. To further clarify, that’s 37 days of two adults, two kids and two cats in a one-room hotel room (with a mini kitchen). But the bright side? When we move into that 1500 square foot house we’re going to think it’s a mansion!

Until we try to move all of our possessions into it, that is. This brings me to the title of my post. I’m moving on from the searching phase to the planning phase. Now I can start trying to visualize where we’re going to stuff everything. I can start shopping for bunk beds. I can start shopping for storage solutions. ALL THE FUN STUFF! This planning phase is probably the best part other than seeing the final result, which often takes months if not years to achieve. We don’t have years though so we’re going to try to get it right the first time.

I’m also excited because I’m going to do some container gardening and I get to start planning that. What zone are we in? When does our deck receive sun? How shady is it? Where is the nearest nursery? (Why, right across the street actually). One cool thing is there is an extension office several hundred yards away and they are experts on local flora. I haven’t had even a semblance of a garden in three years; barely even plants in pots, so I’m hoping to do some cute things.

Another cool thing about the house is its proximity to everything we’re going to need. Du has an 8 minute bus ride to his work. The girls and I are an 8 minute bus ride to the metro. The bus stop is about fifty feet from our front door. There is a playground/park two hundred yards away. There is a pool (with a splash pool) two hundred yards away. The community center is two hundred yards away. Y’all I’m not even joking about the closeness. There are shopping centers within walking distance. My favorite grocery store is about a ten minute drive. Old Town Alexandria is about ten minutes away. If we wanted to drive into DC that would be about ten minutes as well (in good traffic). We still have to find a church, but that will happen once we actually start living there.

Every time we’ve driven through the neighborhood (which is a lot. We’d be considered house stalkers if anybody had been keeping track of us) we’ve seen women walking dogs, women pushing kids in strollers, women jogging, young families taking a stroll. I think I’m going to feel safe enough picking back up that little health habit I’ve been trying so hard to avoid maintain.

So here’s to moving on to bigger (than a hotel room) and better things!