A Fisher out of Water: August 2009

Saturday, August 29, 2009

What are the odds, huh?

So when I was in college, I had several friends. In fact, BYU has some awesome people, and I liked just about everyone I met.
But every barrel has its rotten apples.
Enter "Adam." He was a stinky jerk.

I really just thought he was kind of annoying for a while. Then one time he was really really rude to me, and I cried for like the next 3 hours. After that day, I just couldn't stand him. But I still had like 3 more semesters of classes with him.

I had all these classes with him because he was studying Chinese. As luck would have it, he was also once in one of my non-Chinese classes.
I was happy to graduate for many reasons, one of them being that I wouldn't have to see "Adam" anymore.
Then I married Kevin. Turns out the one friend he kept in contact with from his major was the one guy who also spoke Chinese: Adam. And so even though I'd graduated and no longer went to the same school, I still had to see Adam once in a while.
Over the next few years, Kevin and Adam would get together to play video-games, and even when he wasn't physically there, I could still hear Adam's tinny little voice over Kevin's headphones. It grated.
But then Adam moved to like Indonesia or China or something. And Kevin stopped playing that game. And life has been good. And quiet.
Until today.
Kevin got a phone call this evening from said friend. Apparently he's back in the States and now in the same hemisphere where calling old friends isn't much of a problem. I only got to hear one side of the conversation, but the part that alarmed me went something like this:
"Yeah, we live in Boise..... Oh really?! We'll have to get together some time!"
!!!!!!!!!!
What are the odds we'd both end up in Boise?!

Thursday, August 27, 2009

I'm not winning any prizes

Photography has never been my thing. I guess I'm okay with that. At least I now have a zoom, so at least I get my subject in the picture, more or less. I used to have all these pictures with some tiny thing in the middle, super far away, and I'd have to just remember what it looked like.
So here are a few pictures.
In this one we have Penny in her swing. I think 75% of my pictures of her are in her swing. That's where she usually is when I have two free hands and a camera within reach. Good thing it's a cute swing. I just thought she looked particularly beautiful in this one:

Whenever Penny's asleep, it's a great time for me to catch some Zzs or just get a few things done in my life. However, it's also the time when she's the most snuggly and sweet to hold. It's hard to put her down.

I couldn't decide if, in this next picture, she looked more like the Statue of Liberty or one of the Quintessential Socialist sculptures I've seen. Hee hee, either way.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Primary activity

I got a calling in our ward to be the pianist in primary. This means I was invited to go along with the primary kids to their activity on Thursday. It was so good that I went. I mean, I sat there with a sleeping Penny the whole time. Wooo.
No, but really, it was a great activity. It was pretty simple, but the kids enjoyed it and had a fun as well as spiritually-uplifting time.
For the activity, we drove over to the Boise temple. There were three stations.
At one place, they took pictures in front of the temple.

At another station, the kids lay on a blanket while this couple from our ward told them about the temple. I didn't hear all of it, but they were talking about the pillars and how tall they are, along with other structural tidbits, as well as baptisms and other things that go on in the temple and why it's important.

Then (this is not a picture of it), they got to go inside the front lobby area and... I don't know. Probably nice temple workers came to say hi. I didn't go in. I sat by the fountain.

And then they had a snack.

It was such a simple activity, but the kiddos were all happy about it. It kept their interest and was simple but well carried out. A good activity.

And of course some pictures of my Penny. Here we were playing dress-up. I like this pictures, and I think she looks particularly Chinese in them. :)

Friday, August 21, 2009

Foreign Service

Now that Kevin is done with law school, everyone's question for him is, "So, in what area of law do you want to practice?"

There is no short answer. Well, there's no TRUE short answer.

Right now he's working as a court clerk for one of the judges here in Boise. He's learning a lot and says that it feels like the first year of law school all over again-- tons of work and a HUGE learning curve. I know it's hard to deal with a job that's so challenging, but I also know that challenging usually means rewarding by the end of the day (or week, or month). I'd much rather have a challenging-but-rewarding job than a boring and fruitless job.

So that's the job for this year.

Next year is in the air. Should he stay in law, he wants to be a litigator for a while. I guess those are the guys who actually go to court and argue for their clients. He had been talking about being a prosecutor or defense attorney, but this is all Plan B.

Plan A is to join the Foreign Service!

The Foreign Service Exam is in October, and it's basically like a game of Jeopardy, minus Alec Trebek and the money. There is a lot of random stuff they test your knowledge of, and it's very competitive. Only a small percentage of the test applicants move on to the next level of interviews. Thankfully, though, Kevin is one smart dude, and he has a lot of knowledge. It should come in handy. I think he may pass.

If he passes the test and then the interviews, we would be moving to Washington D.C. next year for a year or so of training. Then after that he will get sent to work in an Embassy somewhere in the world. Every three years you get transferred somewhere else.

When we were living in Beijing, about half our ward was working for an Embassy. And they were some of the most amazing, friendly, well-educated, and family-centric people I've ever met. Now, I realize that you can be all those things WITHOUT working in the Foreign Service, but I loved the idea of it. Your family moves around a lot, and so while your friends and neighbors are important (and you have to really be outgoing and proactive about meeting them!), the one true constant in your life is your family. I saw brothers and sisters who were friends with each other, and that is something I would love to have in my family. And these kids got to experience the world. We'd have discussions in Young Women's class at church, and one of the 13-year-olds would say, "Well yes, and while we were in Vietnam, we got to....While here in China...." It was pretty amazing.

And above all else, it sound so cool! So exciting! So exotic!

But now that reality is setting in and I realize that within a year I could be living in Washington D.C. preparing for a lifetime of jet-lag, I'm starting to get nervous. It's not the bad-feeling, I-shouldn't-be-doing-this sort of nervous. It's more like the "so much for ever having a backyard garden" type of nervous. It's the "what if they send us to somewhere that has lead poisoning, racist people, or violence?" type of nervous. It's the "I grew up in a small town and went to high school with 95% of my presechool class, I never moved, and I loved every bit of it" type of feeling, knowing that my kids will not have that. They won't have a "hometown."

And the saddest realization: I won't be able to bring my grand piano as I tootle around the world.

It's daunting.

It's scary.

It's intimidating.

I'm so excited!

Monday, August 17, 2009

My ring fits again!!

Friday, August 14, 2009

A month

And what a month it's been! I have a new job, one that teaches me the true meaning of "full time."

Sometimes I sit and marvel about how much my life has changed-- and how it's never going to go back to how it was. That's always a daunting feeling, to realize that you've taken steps forward and can never go back. Life is always like that, and I can't say I ever WANT to go back, but just realizing I cannot go back is so humbling. I loved high school, but would I ever go back? Would I ever want to undo everything I've done since then? No, absolutely not. But do I ever miss those days of inside jokes, laughing so hard I couldn't stop, friends that meant the world to me, band, choir, boys, and spending-money? Sure. But life moves on, onwards and upwards. High school was great, but it wasn't the pinnacle of my life. And while it was fun to be married, just Kevin and me, it is amazing to now have our little Penny.

And she's a month old!

These pictures are from the last couple days.

This was on Wednesday, when I moved her up from newborn to 0-3 month clothes. (Yes, you'd think 0-3 would include newborn, but it doesn't. I think the sizes are completely random anyway.)

She was really sitting in her swing holding her hands like this! I think she's practicing her Harry Potter spell skills.

And just today she noticed the mobile on her swing for the first time. She's been getting better and better at focusing on things, but just in the last two days, she's "woken up" and just been so aware of her surroundings!

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Four years

We sure look more tired, don't we!

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Cheeky chubs!

We had an exciting weekend! On Friday my cousin, Richard, got married in Utah, and so we drove down to show off the baby-- oh, ahem, I mean to support Richard in this awesome step in his life. :)

We brought our camera but didn't take a single picture the entire weekend. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, at the wedding, luncheon, and reception, we had other people to take pictures for us. You have to understand that Richard is half-Japanese, and his wife is full-Japanese-American. Between those families and my mom, there were about 78 cameras taking pictures of everyone and everything at all times. You should remember the phrase, "more cameras than a Japanese wedding," for whenever it comes in handy.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to steal pictures from my mom's camera before I left. I will have to wait for her to post pictures on facebook, download them to my computer, and then post a few on here.

Basically, on the wedding day, Penny got to meet everyone on my dad's side of the family. She got showered in love, attention, and kisses, and she was plumb tuckered out. I think this means she slept really well, and it also means she didn't eat as much as she usually does.

This leads me to my second reason I didn't take many pictures: feeling terrible. This whole "baby" thing would be super easy if I felt well and had a personal assistant at all times. Unfortunately, two weeks ago I got my first run-in with mastitis. At my job last year, one of the assignments I got to grade all the time was a 2-page biography of Abraham Lincoln. One of the facts about him, as told by Wikipedia, is that his mother died of milk fever. I thought that was one of those made-up diseases from the 17- and 1800s that they just cited whenever someone died and they didn't know why.... at least I thought that until last week. Holy cow! I really felt HORRIBLE. I can see why people would die from it! And all it was was a tiny little breast infection.

Then on Saturday (of this weekend), I went to visit Heidi and started having the same exact symptoms. I called the doctor again (and I love how I NEVER get sick during weekday office hours, but that's another story), expecting to go get some antibiotics. Well, it turns out I was just suffering from engorgement. Lovely. I had thought, in my naivete, that engorgement was just when you felt, well, kind of full. Um, apparently not. It feels like you're going to die of milk fever, just like Lincoln's mom, except that you have no excuse as you have access to modern medicine.

Anyway... I was basically told to just pop some ibuprofen and deal with it, which I did.

That kind of put a damper on Saturday and Sunday, although we did get to visit our old ward in Provo. That was so nice to see some of our friends... and show off the baby again. We went to see our old yard.... basically everything I'd put on the drip line was doing great. Everything I hadn't (which really only amounts to one section of the garden that I felt I'd FINALLY gotten to look cute and cottage-y) was completely dead. Seriously, people. All it needs is water! And the fish pond is completely inundated by algae. That was disappointing, but not completely unexpected. I'm just glad that my goal was to make the yard as (I was going to say idiot-proof, but that would be rude) low-maintenance as possible.

And that was our weekend. I'll put this picture up to show you guys how chubby my little one is becoming.

Look at those chubby cheeks! Pretty soon she'll upstage her cousin, Naabaahii, although she has about 20 pounds to go before that will happen. :) I really don't care how chubby she gets, as long as she is healthy and growing. However, I do hope she stays on schedule with her clothes, because my Aunt Sonia sent us a way-cute 4th of July outfit, and it's a 12-month size. If Penny turns out like Bahii, she'll be wearing 24-month clothes when she's 6-months old, and that will not be so patriotic to be wearing it in October. Nor will it be very patriotic.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Typing w/ one hand

Kevin got me a new computer today. But it is really just a hand-me-down, because he got himself a new one. I think that's how it will be in our family, because I don't really care pr remember to get a new one. On my current laptop, it is super slow and the fan only works sporadically, so I have to give rescue breaths in the vents when it starts to overheat. But I'm still using it even so, since I haven't taken the time to transfer my files and stuff over.
Kevin was super excited for his new computer. He (and therefore we) knew when it had left the warehouse, how long it was in Las Vegas, Salt Lake, and then when it would arrive here. Online package tracking is a blessing... and a curse. :)