Then there was that day in October ‘01. . We were on our way to work when PC rear-ended someone. The other car was a CRV and the only damage was a cracked wheel cover on the back. Eugene did not fare as well. His pop-up headlights, the bumper and the hood were crunched.

We bought a new hood and found one pop-up headlight at a junkyard. At the time we didn’t have the money to paint them so poor Eugene, the light blue Accord, had a black hood, one silver pop-up light and the other one was uncovered- it was just the bulb with no cover. Let me tell you – klassy doesn’t begin to cover it. And then we just left it like this. Im not sure if it was laziness or not wanting to spend the money. I was embarrassed that we lived in a nice neighborhood but had a car that looked like it belonged in a trailer park, but not embarrassed enough to actually fix it I guess.

We considered getting rid of Eugene when we moved to Virginia but then thought better of it (thankfully) and really it was the perfect car for PC to get to work. We considered getting rid of it again when we moved to Japan but the gov’t will store one vehicle for free and the fact remained that we owned that car outright–it wouldn’t cost us anything to store it. We sold my car, dropped Eugene off in Maryland and for the last 4.5 years he’s been sitting in some storage lot, hopefully getting started once a month, but maybe not. Who knows if the oil has been changed or the tires have been inflated or….yeah, who knows. Because of this I told PC we best be prepared to get two cars once we move. If Eugene can limp along a little longer, I guess I’ll swallow my pride and we’ll keep it (PC loves that car, ugly or not, so I guess I shouldn’t let it bother me), but Im thinking Eugene will have aged quite a bit in the last 4 years.

Now here is the part where you come in: what do we get? I posed this question on FB and am now even more confused than I was before. The cars we are considering are a Subaru Outback, a Lexus RXh, a Prius, uh….yeah, thats about it. I was hoping people would be all “yeah- get the outback” or “Prius’ are so cute!” but instead the two resounding comments I’ve gotten are “Waaaaait just a minute……you’re going to want a 3rd row of seats” and “minivans are the way to go.”

Here were my two criteria: 1) must not be American made 2) must not be a minivan.

Do you really think a 3rd row of seats are that critical? Even when we have visitors come to Japan (that usually means they are here for a couple weeks- not just a long weekend) we just suck it up and drive two cars. We aren’t going to buy a huge van for the 1-2 times a year we have company. I think the same would be true in the US. People mentioned needing the space to do carpools but Im too lazy to be installing and uninstalling carseats every other day for carpools. I’ll just drive myself. As for taking friends- we still have 1-2 empty spaces in the car depending on if PC is with us or not. I guess what Im saying is that Im still having a hard time seeing the practicality of having a less fuel efficient, larger, more expensive van/car just to take 2 more passengers. I know you can fit more in a van and Im sure there are occasions that its really useful to have that extra space, but, I dunno, to that I just say we’ll manage. We’ve lived over here for almost 5 years and every time we’ve bought a piece of furniture or have had to move something big we just borrow a car or pay to have it delivered or whatever. For the few times we’ve needed it it certainly wouldn’t justify owning a larger vehicle.

So tell me, what kind of car would you recommend? What do you like and why?

Occassionally, when I have nothing better to do (and really, that just means Im too lazy to be folding the laundry I should be folding, instead putting it off until just before PC gets home) I will look at property there. And I think it serves two and only two purposes 1) too see just how unaffordable everything is and 2) to upset me, make my heart sink and make me question the path we’ve chosen.

I love my life, I do. I think I find happiness and fulfillment and joy and grace and humility and gratitude in just about every day. But sometimes I wonder- if we moved back there- would I find even more of that? I was talking to my sister-in-law about this and her take is that ‘you can never go home again.’ That the things we loved would just be different now- we’re in a different stage of life (kids) and things would just be different. But maybe thats the point. After all, we’re different. We’re not the same people that left in 2004. We’re better people. We’re more humbled, generous, simple. We’re more experienced? traveled? Im not sure what the right word is there, but I sometimes wonder if we had to go to the far reaches of the Earth just to find out that we are supposed to end up exactly where we started from.

I had emailed one of my close friends about my property searching telling her that it was totally irrational, what I was doing, “isn’t it, iSN’T IT?” That I just need to keep reminding myself to stay the course. Just fourteen more years and we’ll have the freedom to do whatever we want. We’ll be 45 years old and won’t have to work anymore….we’ll have health insurance and a paycheck for life. Its a deal you can’t beat. My friend told me there is nothing “JUST” about 14 more years. And she’s right. This chapter of our lives (kids, family) will be closing. Nathan will be 19 and Mackenzie 16- we’ll almost be empty nesters. And really- who knows what life may throw at us before we reach that day 14 years from now. Its sort of do-or-die in that regard. There aren’t any second chances. There are no do-overs. I think that is the thing I wrestle with the most- you only get one chance to live this day. I love what we’re doing at the moment. I love where PC is at at the moment and  I love having my own parking spot (I don’t think I mentioned that on the blog did I? Well, I do. I may not have an ice maker in my freezer but I do have my own parking spot at PC’s office.)  I love the places we’ve gotten to go and all the things we’ve been able to see. Life is great (and to be clear- I have no regrets, and I think joining the Marine Corps was the best decision we’ve ever made) but I do wonder; maybe we’re missing something and don’t even know it? I guess that’s the  great quandary of life isn’t it?

Im sure a lot of this is stemming from the fact that its just time to get off this rock. We’ve been here for an awfully long time and right now, any place that isn’t sandy and tropical seems far more like ‘home’ than here….

This will always be home....

...no matter how far away we are.

This weekend we went to the Torii Beach salsa and jazz fest. Both nights- yes, it was that much free fun. We had a fantastic time eating way too much unhealthy food, listening to good music, watching beautiful sunsets, fireworks, and enjoying the ocean breeze.

Why can’t every weekend be like this?

Eating edamame....between funnel cakes.

but funnel cakes are good. They're even better if you dump a bag of BBQ chip crumbs on top.

I love photos, I do. I love having pictures up. After we got married I started with a set of those gallery frames from Target– at that point it was pretty easy to sum up our life in the 12 frames we had. Wedding, honemoon, few family shots. Then we eventually bought another set of frames, and we continued down this path until Mackenzie was born and then we sort of lost the Pottery Barn-esque ness (if we ever had it to begin with?) and it just looked like a messy collage of frames. Futhermore, our iPhoto library was hovering around 15,000 photos. Even if I printed a fraction of those there were still thousands of pictures that we weren’t enjoying. I told PC I wanted a huge digital frame and we landed on this-it works wirelessly with iphoto which is quite slick [read: idiot proof for me.]

The problem still remains that despite the fact that we’ve taken close to 20,000 photos now, Im really not very good at photography. Im willing to accept that it will never be a great strength of mine. Im not pining to be like every other MWC (mom’s with cameras) and start a photography business, trust me. But I’d like to know how to take a decent shot. I’d like to have nice photos instead of thousands upon thousands of snapshots.

My friend Catherine is a wiz at photography. She and my other friend Abbey took, like, my most favorite pictures ever (and Im not sure who shot what at this point) when Mackenzie was a newborn.
See for yourself:

Look at that little ball of pink getting photographed like some sort of celebrity! I miss that little ball of pink. She's more of a ball of 2yr old trouble now.

Love. Adore. Cherish. This is one of my very most favorite pictures ever.

She’s offered to help me learn and whoa; I hope she knows what she’s getting herself into. Based on our conversation she has every right to think Im mentally challenged in the realm of photography (me: yeah- I like that lens because it makes everything in the background blurry.” Cat: “um [wondering how she can put it nicely], *every* lens can do that.”)

When she was over at my house the other day she was going to show us a few things on my trusty Rebel. She flipped it on and was trying to change the aperture. She went to turn the dial on the front of the camera and it was stuck. Not like, “oh, funny, those are my cute kids with sticky fingers” stuck, but like, stuck stuck. Like….oh…….ooooooh, I remember.

The day I went into labor with Mackenzie I was yelling out the front door to my neighbor Tricia who was across the street. My water had broken, and I told her it was TIME TO GO NOW. Because, well, this wasn’t exactly how *I* had planned it all going down we sort of had to pile everyone (Tricia, myself, her two girls and Nathan) in my [then] car, the Capa- you should envision something like a clown car here- containing a very pregnant, leaking, clown in addition to the others. My hospital bag was in the backseat and in the great rush to pile in the car it got stepped on. More importantly, the camera got stepped on. We noticed right away that the pop-up flash was damaged. But it wasn’t until just the other day, approximately TWENTY months later, that we realized the dial was busted. Thats the kind of photogs we are….the kind that shoot on auto pilot each and every time.

After realizing our camera was broken Catherine recommended the 7D. PC’s friend Liam, also a great photographer recommended the Canon t2i. I like the user friendliness of the 7D; it seems more intuitive (and I need alllll the help I can get). Its like the Mac version and the t2i is the Windows version. But, really, the bottom line is, both cameras will net me the exact same pictures until I actually learn what Im doing. So, would you buy the more learny version (T2i) with the husbands assurance that “if you outgrow it you can get the better one” or, would you just spend the extra $900 and buy the really nice one and not have to spend the money twice?

As you know I went to visit my brother and his fiancee two weeks ago. My brother Scott (or you can call him Scott-a-lot or scotty potty or Scottaretta. I think he’ll answer to any of those) is in the Navy. He’s a nuclear engineer in the Navy which is pretty much like the most brainy, smarty pants, difficult thing you can be in the military. Because he’s in the military, and we’re in the military (stationed on the other side of the planet no less) it means I haven’t seen him in THREE years.

There are 7 years that separate Scott and I so we haven’t always been close. I left for college when he was….uh, I don’t know, 18-7….11? Yeah. 11. And when I would come home from college he was just the dorky little brother and my mom would always get mad at Stephen and I because we’d be all ‘we’re cool, lets go to do stuff’ and my mom would (literally) come running down the driveway as we’re backing out, waving her arms yelling (hissing?) at us to “take your brother with you…..he wants to go too.” And that was decidedly uncool. Like we were the freaking Partridge family heading to the mall or something. Two’s company, three’s a crowd mom.

But eventually Scotty grew up and turned into the handsome nuclear engineer he is today. And I no longer think he’s the dorky baby brother; I adore him and am just so proud of the person he’s turned into. In the three years its been since I’ve seen him he managed to snag a girl, ask her to marry him and have her say yes. And I missed all of it. Damn. After numerous failed attempts I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to meet Ashley until their wedding day. PC knew I needed to get off this rock and so a plan was hatched.

Now, this meeting wasn’t quite as awkward as say, when I met PC for the first time, because we’ve Skyped and FB’d and talked on the phone and exchanged beautifully wrapped Christmas presents (hers, not mine). Its like I told Scott, she’s the kind of person I’d love to have as a friend and now I get her as a sister. We had a lot of laughs, a particularly funny “you had to be there moment” inside a Macy’s bathroom, got cat called in Scott’s ghetto neighborhood in Ct., had to retrieve her towed car, a little food poisoning, some military adventures of trying to get on base, a girls spa day, good food, a late night trip to Rite Aid for an air mattress pump and an extension cord, and a particularly difficult time ordering a pizza one night. I had such a great time. Well done Scott. Love you both.

Pictures courtesy of April K. Photography, not only is she Ashley’s friend, shes super nice. And takes amazing pictures. And she’s cute. And fun.  And were friends on FB. And she wants to move to Colorado. And I heart Colorado. So…..I like her. Thanks April! (Of course, April is in most of these pictures, so maybe I should thank little Yenny. And I pretty much think that makes me part of the cool crowd if I can call her little Yenny.)

Today, we got a brief reprieve from the rain. And I do mean brief because the 5 day forecast is more clouds, rain, thunderstorms, and rain and more rain. So, we took full advantage of our one sunny day.

This morning Nathan woke up complaining that his stomach hurt and his ear hurt and he couldn’t hear. Im approaching the end of my rope with his chronic congestion (and subsequent ear pain). We’re going to ENT this week but this poor child. Im not exaggerating when I say he has not been able to breathe freely through his nose for at least 2 years. At first I thought it was just the dog- and once she was gone his congestion would go too. That didn’t happen. Then I thought- it must be our house, mold is a big problem here so I figured once we got into a new house with new ventilation that would help. It didn’t. He is on two allergy medicines, a nasal spray and an asthma medicine and guess what- it hasn’t made a lick of difference. His hearing is being affected because his ears are plugged, he has trouble sleeping and has a bit of sleep apnea he is so congested. I feel horrible and guilty for letting this go on for so long but hopefully we’ll get somewhere this week. Or maybe its just time to get off allergy island.

Mackenzie is still sick with coughing and snotty. I get burned out quickly with sick. If Im sick, obviously I find it difficult to take care of the kids and perform my household jobs. When the kids are sick I burn out because I feel like I have to be on high alert all the time “how do you feel? are-you-still-sick?-are-you-going-to-throw-up?-how-is-your-ear?-can-I-get-you-anything?-How-about-a-popsicle?” and on and on and a girl quickly runs out of steam. But when both kids are sick AND Im sick? I pretty much want to throw in the towel and quit.