Not Winning Christmas

In keeping with the Christmas pile tradition:

Joe's pile

My pile

Our pile

This year, my mom made everyone stuff. Special awesome stuff. Like the table runner here, and the two pillowcases with Charlie Brown Christmas fabric. Heirloom stuff.

The pink giraffe, sewn by my sister, is a replica of an ornament made for us by one of my grandmas. I think my little sister and I fought over ownership of it at one point, and she won. This year, she made Joe and me these little guys. LOOK WHO WON NOW!

Speaking of winning, my parents compete each year to see who can give the other the best Christmas presents, who will "win Christmas." I guess Joe and I kinda do that too. It's okay for my parents, because their birthdays are in the middle of the year and within a month of each other, but Joe and me...his birthday was three months ago. He got cool stuff. There was nothing cool left to get for him for Christmas, especially since he never wants anything.

That is why my most exciting gifts were a Razer gaming mouse and mousepad and a Razer keybaord, while his most exciting gift was a case of a discontinued flavor of Canada Dry ginger ale.

I don't think there are many gifts we could give each other that would change our lives much. I came to the conclusion that whatever I got Joe, it would be about making his life better while he played video games.

It reminds me of the olden days, Christmas in my family, when we all played together and Christmas gifts were video cards, RAM, and EverQuest expansions.

Now We Can Have Christmas.

I cleaned the house yesterday. Now we can have Christmas.

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.)

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.

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.

Annual Shoe Candy

I spent a couple hours of my super-busy Army Wife day yesterday with a thread and needle and a bag of cranberries to make a garland for our Christmas tree. I also made "orangeaments," dried slices of orange with twine threaded through holes at the top, to be hung on the tree. (Last year, I had dried slices of apple as ornaments too, but this year that didn't work out very well so it'll just be the oranges.)

The funny thing about having all these natural ornaments for our Christmas tree is that our tree is made out of plastic and lead.

Anyway. When I was growing up, every year St. Nick - not to be confused with Santa - well, he kind of is, just on a different day - would visit after we went to sleep on the night of December 5th. He'd leave candy in our shoes for us to discover in the morning. I'm pretty sure the reason he visited us and skipped most of the other people in the U.S. (and Korea) is that my mom's family is German, and St. Nick is also German, so he likes us. He still visits me, and now Joe, too.

I got the best of three seasons: Christmas candy, Cadbury creme eggs, and a caramel and marshmallow and chocolate pumpkin. St. Nick knows exactly what my favorites are. I love how the cranberry garland was used to decorate, too.

Joe got a lot less than me, probably because St. Nick thought he'd be happier that way. Just one box of Moose Munch and one Hillshire Farms lunchmeat tupperware full of handmade sugar-free peanut butter cups that tasted like they probably should have been thrown away but St. Nick probably ran out of chocolate after making a second failed batch of them and decided to just go with it. Still, half of the peanut butter things are gone.

Maybe I'll have some candy left by Monday. Probably not. That box of Milk Duds is already empty.

Winner of Stupidest Gas Station Name Contest

When people ask what I miss about America, the first things that come to mind are: carpet, dishwashers, Wawa.

Yeah, it's a gas station, but they also sell eggnog and 10 cent candies and plastic cups with grapes in them. And things like Lunchables but instead of pizza it's hummus and pita bread, but I never really ate those, but now I like hummus so I might when we go home again. They also sell fresh sandwiches like at Subway. (We have Subways here so I don't miss them.) Wawa is cool because they should get a lady with a Ms. Doubtfire accent to say "If you're on the road and you need fresh food, stop at Wawa!" because with that accent, "road" and "food" might rhyme.

One of the sandwiches they sell around the holidays is THE GOBBLER. It's a turkey sandwich with gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. I miss THE GOBBLER. So one day we had that for dinner.

We had it for dinner the next day, too. And you can't have a THE GOBBLER without egg nog, and I thought the Commissary wasn't carrying eggnog yet (but it was really just in a different refrigerator,) so I made some. I thought it was pretty much impossible to make eggnog. I was wrong. (I did ruin the first batch, though.)

This is how you make eggnog.

It was really good. (The batch I didn't ruin.)

Surviving?

For a while, zombies were my favorite animal. Or maybe second favorite, after velociraptors, I don't know. So the few times I've dressed up for Halloween in the past ten years, I've used the same costume idea: cut up some old clothes - suggestively but tastefully - pour like a gallon of fake blood on myself, and drag one of my feet behind me while chasing people and groaning. (Although last time, I never actually made it out of the bathtub where I applied the blood.)

Then came the five years when I did nothing for Halloween.

But this year was going to be different. I assumed we would be going to a party, and I wanted to dress as a League of Legends character. I was so excited, I started trying to plan my costume in August. Then I didn't buy anything for it and never made it, and there wasn't going to be a party anyway...and it was 8:30 on Halloween morning when I decided maybe I still would do something. Something different.

This year, I was a SURVIVOR.

I put on some of Joe's old worn-out Army boots that look all dirty and scuffed up, and some baggy black pants, and a sliced-up white tanktop. (I wasn't planning on going anywhere in my costume, and it's not making an appearance on my blog, either.) I didn't have any fake blood, so I used red food coloring, red lipliner, and brown eyeshadow to make scrapes and bruises. Then I put sheets over the windows (so no one could see the light coming from my fourth-floor safe haven) and lit little candles in clusters everywhere, since of course the power's been out for weeks because the zombies have killed everyone and I only want to use the generator to power my freezer. Then I hid the fresh wound on my arm with some napkins, medical tape, and an Ace bandage and served dinner with water bottles from my stash. (I still have a decent supply of water from an office building I scavenged through.)

He wasn't using it anymore.

My last companion died a while ago. There isn't enough room for him in the freezer, obviously, so I've had to eat that meat first. This is pretty much all that I have left of him. The maggots grossed me out at first, but they're not so bad once they stop moving.

And my arm...I told Joe that I got cut. I want to just pretend everything's normal for a little while longer.

Back From the Dead!

I haven't posted anything in months, so it would be awkward for me to start again. Occasionally, though, I think of something I want to share.

This seemed like a perfect way to break the ice.

Mummies in their tomb, preparing for their assault on the living

The scrambled eggs are just in a pile. Joe said I should have made a pyramid out of them. I wish I had thought of that.

It's Complicated

Last year, I made a post on our wedding anniversary about how happy I was to have been married to Joe for five years. Someone, I don't remember who, pointed out to me that we hadn't been married for five years...it had only been four. I subtracted 2007 from 2011, and, uh-oh, they were right! I hurried up and changed all the mentions of "five years" before anyone else could notice my error.

Well, this year, it really has been five years (as of last Friday.)

I'm learning that it's complicated. I knew almost from the beginning that perfection wasn't possible, but I never believed it when people told us we'd struggle, that things wouldn't always go the way we wanted them to. Maybe everyone else would eventually run into problems, but we were just too happy together.

Then came reality, and I'm learning that it's complicated, the balancing of two people's needs and wants, flaws and failures. It's complicated, the bond that grows slow and steady and strong, twisting through the hard parts. The commitment to getting it right, even though the work is so difficult and painful...getting it right, finally, someday. Together.

and here we are in an ancient Korean graveyard

Happy anniversary, Joe. I've spent almost a fifth of my life with you, now, and I hope I get to spend like a total of 75% of my life with you. Or more.

I still think you're the greatest.

What's Different About Korea

I've now been in South Korea for one year (and one week.) I want to be like, "Oh wow guys this is so different," but living here feels so normal now.

Once in a while, though, I'll see an advertisement for a common product which I'd forgotten existed. Our Commissary is the size of a large 7-11 and has a relatively small selection of goods, so a lot of products just slip from my memory. Or I'll look at the pictures I took of our storage unit, where almost everything we own is stored right now, and see stuff I'd forgotten we had. I think there are a lot of things like that: Forgotten products, forgotten belongings, forgotten what it's like in the States.

Like, when I think about it, I'll remember that I own a KitchenAid mixer. And a round cookie sheet for pizza. And we have a fan for our bedroom with a remote control. And we have way too many little junky things that will probably be getting thrown away when I rediscover them. In a plastic container, we have two pounds of quinoa. We have a red cooler and our own refrigerator. We have a whole bunch of lamps. We don't have desks anymore because they didn't survive the move into the storage unit. I have houseplants waiting at my grandparents' house, and a dog at Joe's parents' house, and my birds at someone else's house. We have plastic mats for our computer chairs to roll around on. We have...a car. With a CD player in it, and a SUNROOF, and a huge trunk. In the car are my CDs, hopefully not melted.

I think the biggest difference with our life in Korea is travel. Without a car, going anywhere new requires extra planning and other people's timetables. Also, when you don't have a little pod of climate control on wheels, almost every form of weather just feels oppressive, smushing against your apartment door, keeping you from going anywhere. And you definitely can't wear painful shoes whenever you feel like it.
 
Without a vehicle, multi-errand trips have to be strategically planned. Whatever you buy, you have to carry around, since you can't just dump it in the trunk. One bright and sunny 90-degree day last week, the plan was: Go to the bank first, it's nearest; then go next door to check the mail; then walk across the big gravel lot past the Commissary and go to the library to check some stuff out; backtrack, go to the Commissary and buy only what will fit in half of my backpack; carry groceries and books allllll the way over to the military clothing store near the pool; then, carrying groceries and books and a couple of new uniforms, walk alllllllllllllll the way over to the ACS building, the farthest walkable point from home; then, backtrack allllll the way back to the library and PX area, buy a microwave; then, thank goodness I've collected enough stuff to justify taking a taxi home. I was proud of myself for saving at least $12 in taxi money. I really needed a shower.

See how much I've gotten used to it here? I'm in a different culture, and all I talk about when I think of what's different about living in Korea is not having a car. It's not the rice fields or the mountains (I don't even see them anymore) or the Buddhist temples or beautiful Seoul, but having a remote-controlled bedroom fan. I'm pretty sure I need to do some more exploring.

100 Candles!

This is my 100th post. I didn't have any cake with which to celebrate, so I just stuck some candles in a half-eaten loaf of zucchini bread, which is like cake. I was going to write out 1-0-0 with the candles, but I only had room for 1-0. Then I got to blow them out! It was like my birthday, except now I've gotten to blow out candles twice this year! I felt like I was doing something naughty, like when I was a kid and would sneak out of my room after bedtime and eat Fudge Rounds from the "School Snacks" basket on my parents' kitchen counter. (I eventually tattled on myself about the Fudge Rounds. I remember I was crying really hard, hugging my mom and probably coating her with snot.)

If you haven't subscribed to Bucketful of Happy, you're missing out on the great satisfaction it would bring me to not see a single-digit number next to "Members." Over there, to your right, there are three ways to subscribe. Pick one and do it! Let's see if we can get that number to...ELEVEN!

There's a publicity stunt I've seen on other blogs that I've always wanted to try. So, in honor of my 100th post: Leave a comment telling me which post has been your favorite, and you'll be entered into a drawing for me to mail you something! It's going to be a random and inexpensive something. A surpriiiiiiiiiiise. One day you'll open your mailbox and a package will be in there! WHAT COULD IT BE?

I'll choose the winner this Sunday. I'm only going to get three comments. One of them is going to be penis enlargement spam. This is going to be awkward.

You Are My Sparklers

HI GUYS!

It's the 4th of July here in South Korea. We usually spend Independence Day with Joe's family (mine gets Easter,) but this year we are 93487534 miles away from our families, and that is sad. So here are some pictures to make our families less sad.

What we're doing today:

Does anyone else think I look a little like Aunt Saundra in this picture?

SURPRISE! It's video games. In the background is the crockpot where the BBQ pork to shred is cooking. The stuffed animal is Raffles from Singapore. The banner on the wall says "HAPPY TURBOFIRE WIN" because Joe made it for me when I finished my workout program before we went on the vacation. My hands are like that because I'm showing you that I painted 8 of my fingernails yellow, and 2 of them pink, because I am so hip and cool and snazzy and impressed with myself. We aren't going to any festivities. I did want to climb out of the window in the elevator engine room onto the roof of our apartment building to look for fireworks later, but I think we might just skip that.

This is fruit salad:

This is the puppy we're babysitting - whose mom will be happy to see her in this picture - sitting next to the sock she's been dragging around, and the puzzle we started last night which would have been on the floor normally but is instead taking up our table so the puppy doesn't eat it:

This is inside our freezer:

That's a bag of vegetable waste to be recycled, which is in there to keep fruit flies away. As for the ice cream, I took a picture of it so I could show you which ice cream to never buy. It's got Chips Ahoy cookies in it. That sounds great in theory but doesn't work in ice cream. They've turned powdery and disgusting. We'll have eaten all of it by tomorrow evening.

I hope you noticed I'm wearing red white & blue. I miss you, Joe's mom and dad, and I also miss my mom and dad, and Robby and Katie, and my grandparents, and my cousins, and my aunts and uncles. So: I love you all, I'll see you in like ten months, and don't buy Breyers BLASTS! Chips Ahoy! ice cream!

Zoom Zoom

I spent $40 to triple my nail polish collection. But the really cool thing is, my camera. This picture was taken with the lens that came with the camera, an all-purpose 18-55mm:

The lens:


hi

It's a pretty bad picture, the one of the nail polish. It obviously involved little effort, except for stacking the bottles on top of each other. I wasn't really trying to "make art," but I thought I could probably do better without putting much time into it, so I switched lenses.

This is the 75-300mm lens I got for my birthday. When I opened this gift, I was kinda disappointed, because I didn't know what to do with it. All I knew was that it could zoom a lot farther than my 18-55mm could. I thought it was only good for use as a one-eyed binocular, or for trying to see into other people's apartment windows. But I've slowly been learning that it can do more than that.

Due to aperture or something technical like that, I don't know, this lens puts a lot of blur (aka "bokeh") into the background when you're taking a picture of someone or something close-up. The blur in the background draws attention to the in-focus subject of the photo. That's why this lens is fantastic for portraiture.

Blur.



Now, look at this one again. One of the main reasons this photo looks so point-and-shooty is the weird fisheye effect my 18-55mm gave it, and how everything on the right side of the picture is tilted away from you because I wasn't paying enough attention when I took the picture. This next one is what I got when I switched lenses (and moved back about 10 feet):

The background is the arm of my couch with some pants draped over it, yes, but ignore that part and see how much flatter and better the whole picture looks! Wow! There's a lot of science stuffed into those camera lenses!

Best Spot in the House

Modern Korean culture surrounds us here. Our carpetless, dishwasher-less, central-AC-less Korean apartment has a floorplan like no apartment I've seen back home. At lunchtime, when our windows are open, the scents of cooking fish and foods I can't recognize drift in from other people's open windows. When we go out, I stare at the clothes the Korean women wear, because I've never seen so many people get so dressed up for just another average day; in the States, at least 80% of the people you see are wearing jeans, and here, 80% of the people you see aren't.

So, despite my actually very small experiences of Korea, I feel like I have some idea of their modern culture. I have no concept, however, of their more traditional culture. I guess it's available, in the temples and the museums and stuff, but I've only been to a few temples and only one museum. That's why the Korean culture show at our Army post was so interesting.

A couple of friends and I were sitting maybe 15 rows back from the stage 'cause the front rows were reserved. I couldn't get good pictures from there, so during the pause between a drum show and the first dance, I ran up to the front row and asked a lady who was 3 feet from the stage if I could sit on the floor in front of her. She said I could. I think I almost sat on her feet a couple of times, and I had to hold on to the stage to stabilize myself, which means I had THE BEST SPOT IN THE HOUSE.

We saw traditional instruments being played, traditional dances, and traditional clothing. We also saw Tae Kwon Do guys kicking boards in half, but I don't have any pictures of that because I went back to my seat so I wouldn't get splinters in my forehead.

After the show, we had the opportunity to try special sweet rice cakes filled with bean paste which originally were only served to royalty. Mine had a faint grape flavor. It was disgusting.

I don't know how hot pink became an anciently classic color here. I think they do that in India, too. I learned that my camera takes really grainy pictures when set to a high ISO. It's time for me to leave now, and I don't have time to figure out how to nicely wrap up this post.

THE END