My living room and kitchen were 'kay. They get tidied up almost every day (except on the weekends when I'm too busy sitting in front of my PC for 12 hours, eating out of Tupperware and cans.) However, every other room in our house looks like the inside of a closet. I throw stuff in and shut the doors and say "Look how nice and perfect it is in the living room, Joe!" and just try not to think about it.
But the more unperfect it gets, the more it bothers me. I start to feel...sort of stretched...like butter scraped over too much bread. (LOL that was from Lord of the Rings. I made myself laugh.)
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| In April. note the Christmas tree. |
Constantly in the back of my mind as I went about my daily business was the massive cascading pile of a year's worth of cardboard boxes on one of our enclosed porches that I've been avoiding. You can't have Christmas with the haunting presence of a pile of empty boxes hiding, waiting. So, finally, Joe and I flattened them all and took them downstairs.
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| Someone didn't want to have Christmas with those couches. |
I put like three of those giant trashbags there. And the cardboard pile, it doesn't look so big now that it's flat. That white spiral is the base of the fan I put out to keep the cardboard from flying away, at least until someone takes the fan not knowing that it got fried months ago when I plugged it straight into a 220 outlet.
That's the porch last year, when we first moved in. Before the boxes and the frying.
It's amazing how you can re-home anything instantly here. Just put it downstairs, and someone will take it within a few hours. Bag full of rancid recyclable milk bottles? Gone. Dead microwave with sign on it saying "broken" in English and Korean? Gone. $20 bill? Gone. That pile of cardboard (and the fan, of course) was already gone this morning, and the trash guys don't even work today.
So. I got the unperfect room organized. Thank goodness for that giant cabinet I found outside. (See? put anything downstairs, and someone will come along and get their very kind friends to help them stuff it into the elevator and drag it into their apartment.)
Also, I cleaned out our four "stuff drawers," and the fridge, and the freezer, and a few weeks ago I cleaned up the other porch. All that's left now is NOTHING. Christmas morning, whenever that is - I think this year it will probably be on the afternoon of the 26th, but some years it's at night on the 27th or 28th after we drive back home from visiting our families - will be peaceful and beautiful and lovely and I won't have to feel like butter at all.
In other news, on the 15th, I had a party. There were red ribbons hanging from the windows of my apartment so people could find it more easily. So many people came over with delicious food and spent time together. It was nice to be with almost all the ladies I like here in Korea (though there were a few missing - sad.)
Advent calendars. I love them. These were the only ones they had at the PX. I bought them, we ate some of the days, then we forgot about them. Joe had maybe nine advent chocolates to eat yesterday, the lucky duck.
We made a business trip to Seoul. On the way, we stopped at Osan Air Base's Chili's restaurant. This is the only place we've been in Korea where we get American food with American service. I mean, just LOOK at this, guys!
Yes, those are both mine! One of them has been dranken (hehe, "dranken") out of until it's almost gone. AND THEN OUR WAITRESS BROUGHT ME ANOTHER ONE EVEN THOUGH MY FIRST ONE WASN'T EMPTY YET.
If you're like, "Yeah................cool........?", then you OBVIOUSLY haven't eaten at a restaurant in Korea. Think of the second-worst service you've ever gotten at a restaurant, and you're pretty much thinking of what it's like here all the time. Maybe it's because servers don't get tipped in Korea. You get a drink after you arrive, like normal, and you'd better make it last until your food comes so you can ask the server for another one, and then you'd better make that one last through your meal because you can pretty much expect to never get another drop unless you go wandering around with your cup until you find out where the Coke comes from.
Then, there's this.
Some nights, moving the furniture in the living room and dragging our mattress out of the bedroom, watching Christmas movies (It's A Wonderful Life and Die Hard,) the Christmas tree the last light to go off before we sleep. Retreating so deep into home that time stops. Love. Love.
It's Christmas Eve now. We'll play video games and go to the grocery store and check the mail. Dinner will be crockpot BBQ ribs with cornbread and sweet tea, and Christmas morning will be in a couple of days. It'll be perfect.
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