Okay... so we have to move. Not right this minute, but we need to make some plans. We have always known we would move. When we chose to adopt our first child from Ethiopia and we looked around the corner of South Dakota where we live, we knew it wouldn't be fair to bring our beautiful brown baby into the sea of whiteness. We have jobs we like with great benefits and a house that is truly our home, but the school our kids go to is 99% white. This doesn't bother Meron yet, although it may in the future, but Hana doesn't like it. She hates to be different, and her beautiful dark brown skin is a novelty in her class. People touch her hair. They feel her skin. They ask her questions. Some kids might be tolerant of this, but she isn't... and she shouldn't have to be. So... we need to move. Someplace she doesn't stand out in a crowd for her appearance. Someplace where our kids can be around people of all colors. We want this to be our last move. We want a home and roots, because I don't like the idea of our kids needing to rebuild their lives over and over again. Even now, with one in kindergarten and two in preschool, they have friends. Social lives. There are people they love here. Those things are hard to lose and we don't want them to have to do it more than once, so where ever we choose to move, we want to be there for at least the next 15 years. The problem is, the needs and wants of all of the people in our family are vastly different.
The kids need diversity, opportunities to explore the things that they like and have more options other than football or cheer leading, close proximity to grandparents (because Meron wilts like a flower if she doesn't have frequent Grammy time and my mom doesn't fair much better) and ideally, a house in the country so they have room to run and play independently.
Nathan needs someplace he can open a taekwondo gym and expand. This is more difficult than it sounds, because he is part of an organization and he can only open schools in areas that aren't already taken by other members of this organization.
I want to live in a specific area... I need trees and hills and water and green. It soothes my soul and I have spent the last 7 years living in South Dakota which, while has its own type of barren, desolate beauty, does not fulfill this need. I also need to live in a place that tends toward liberalism. There are wonderful people here, and many people I have grown to treasure (even some that are very conservative). But it gets tiresome. I am always walking that line between trying to educate people about issues about which I am passionate and realizing that I need to live in this place and not offend all of the people around me. I often don't feel at home, and that is a hard way to feel when you are trying to build a life in a place.
So... all of these things? They are impossible. In no place on the planet can all of these needs be met. So what do we do? Who loses? Well... me. The kids obviously come first. That takes out about 90% of the towns in the area where my parents live. And then it comes down to what Nathan and I want. There are two areas left... one that has the things that I want, one that has the things that he wants. And I'm going to lose. Taekwondo is his career... how can I ask him to give up something so important to him for something as abstract as...pretty. It is what it is... I'm kind of sad about it, and Nathan hates to see me give up on the things that make me feel at peace, but I don't see any way around it. So, what's my point?
I don't know. I think it is more of a question... how do you balance in a family. How do you make sure everyone has what is most important to them? How do you maintain who you are and what makes your heart happy when you have to weigh that against the needs of the family as a whole? Marriage is hard, yo. Families are hard. I wouldn't change my family. I love them. I love us. But that doesn't make it less hard. And that doesn't mean I don't sometimes long to be able to have things my way.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Friday, September 14, 2012
A Battle...
First, you need a little back story.
When I was in college I lived in a little apartment in a brick building. It was great, but I slept on an air mattress because I couldn't afford a real bed. A dear friend of mine came to visit me one day and made fun of me for 'camping in the bedroom.' She offered to give me an old mattress she had in her garage. Score, right?! I was so excited. She delivered my new mattress and I slept on it blissfully for weeks. I started noticing odd things happening in my apartment. For example, all of the buttons were suddenly gone from the cordless phone I frequently left on the floor. That kind of thing happens, right? The buttons are suddenly scraped off of your phone? Sure. Then one night I saw a mouse. I had NEVER seen a mouse in my apartment. No pests of any kind! I spent a whole night chasing it around, caught it, and put it outside. I chalked it up to some weird fluke. After all, 3 years of rodentless bliss should count for some security, right? I told my landlady about it and she immediately called in a pest control guy to check for holes and cracks. They didn't find anything amiss. He decided it probably had wandered in from outside when the door was propped open.
A week later I was sleeping peacefully in my lovely mattress. I awoke to a... thump on my head and something scrabbling around in my hair. I sat up quickly and turned on the light. There was nothing in my hair. I thought it was a bad dream... until I heard a distinctive thump to the floor and a scurry. Yes, you read that right. A scurry. I saw a mouse running through my bedroom to the living room. I leaped from my bed and started chasing it, moaning in disgust. It took me 3 hours, but I caught it in an upturned bowl and tossed him outside. Bleck. So. Gross. I went to my parent's house to get some relief from the relentless rodent invasion. Having been up for most of the night catching my uninvited guest, I was extremely tired. I fell asleep on their couch with a blanket pulled over my head to protect me from mice. While I was sleeping, I once again, for the second time in 24 hours, was awoken to a thump and a scurry on my head. No, I'm not kidding. Seriously. There was a mouse on my head. I. FROKE. OUT. This was only made worse when I got back to my apartment and found yet another mouse in my apartment. I checked my messages and had one from my landlady, saying that she had happened to notice me moving a new mattress in recently and wondered if it might not have been stored in a garage. Why yes, I thought, it had. What of it? Turns out I had moved an entire mouse city into my tiny apartment. Not just moved it in, mind you, but SLEPT on in. For WEEKS! Who knows how many midnight visitors walked in my hair or over my face while I slept the sleep of the college student crashing after finals week?! Did you know that mice pee continuously?! Every time they take a step they pee!!! (excuse me, I can't write about this without feeling dirty. I'm going to take a shower)
Where was I. Oh yeah. Mouse city. That I slept on. During the time period BMC (Before Mouse City), I wasn't scared of mice. I didn't like them in houses because of the filth thing and the plague thing, but I generally thought they were cute if they were outside and bore them no ill will. AMC (After Mousal Contamination) I noticed a shift in my attitude. I went from being mildly startled when I was caught unawares by a mouse to an absolute hatred/terror of them. Seriously. I shiver just thinking about them.
This all leads me to what happened last week. Meron and I were sitting around, waiting for her dance class to start, when I saw one. A rodent invader. IN. MY. HOUSE! My safe, cozy house. BLARG! The house next door to us has been vacant for a long time but someone finally bought it and is renovating it. I supposed that a mouse had come looking for a quieter place to sleep (clearly it hadn't met my children yet). I called my mother and told her. She squealed with me for a while and then told me that I would be safe in bed, because mice can't climb stairs. I yelled at her, "I'm 32 YEARS OLD MOTHER! I KNOW MICE CAN CLIMB STAIRS!!" She replied that she was only trying to help, because she remembered that time that the mice kept crawling around on me while I slept. GARRRR! I envisioned them scurrying up the stairs while I slept and climbing over Nathan to get to me. While I appreciated Mom's attempt at soothing me, it was unsuccessful. I called Nathan and told him we were moving out. He told me that was silly. So I told him we were burning our house down. He declined. I told him that he had to come up with a viable alternative to keeping me safe from THEM. He mumbled something smarmy about mice being known as the assassins of the animal world and said he'd get a trap. Now.... I hate mice. Really, I do. But I also hate killing things. I have seen mice caught in traps before and it is horrible. Especially when they don't die but are all broken. Awful. So I made him get live traps so that we could catch the filthy bugger and put him out in the country somewhere.
A great plan, right? Nathan and I put peanut butter sandwiches in some live traps and left them in the places we had seen the mouse. We left for our big trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, arrogantly certain that we would return to a mouse free house. Or, at least, a house that contained a mouse in a live trap.
Much to my dismay, we didn't have a mouse contained in a live trap. We had a live trap full of mouse poop with no peanut butter sandwich in it. Now, not only did we have a mouse, we had a stronger, faster, peanut butter sustained mouse who had learned to crave our food!!
Off to the store for a different brand of live trap. We set them up. We caught nothing. And I found a piece of mouse poop in the strainer in the kitchen. That's right, the place where we put clean dishes. After rinsing my mouth with bleach, I went over to talk to the dogs. They LIVE in the kitchen. Stu freaks out if there is a FLY in the kitchen. How could he have let this happen?!?!
Then I saw what was in Rosie's mouth. It was the trap. One of the traps that was completely out of the normal range of where Rosie and Stu go in our house. And there was a puddle of blood on the carpet. Normally, I'd have a problem with blood on the floor. This time? Not so much. I feel bad that the mouse had to die. Dogs have bad breath... it couldn't have been pleasant. But am I sorry? Not gonna lie... I petted the dogs just a little bit extra last night. And Nathan is a little embarrassed that Stu and Rosie saved me from the assassin mouse when he couldn't.
When I was in college I lived in a little apartment in a brick building. It was great, but I slept on an air mattress because I couldn't afford a real bed. A dear friend of mine came to visit me one day and made fun of me for 'camping in the bedroom.' She offered to give me an old mattress she had in her garage. Score, right?! I was so excited. She delivered my new mattress and I slept on it blissfully for weeks. I started noticing odd things happening in my apartment. For example, all of the buttons were suddenly gone from the cordless phone I frequently left on the floor. That kind of thing happens, right? The buttons are suddenly scraped off of your phone? Sure. Then one night I saw a mouse. I had NEVER seen a mouse in my apartment. No pests of any kind! I spent a whole night chasing it around, caught it, and put it outside. I chalked it up to some weird fluke. After all, 3 years of rodentless bliss should count for some security, right? I told my landlady about it and she immediately called in a pest control guy to check for holes and cracks. They didn't find anything amiss. He decided it probably had wandered in from outside when the door was propped open.
A week later I was sleeping peacefully in my lovely mattress. I awoke to a... thump on my head and something scrabbling around in my hair. I sat up quickly and turned on the light. There was nothing in my hair. I thought it was a bad dream... until I heard a distinctive thump to the floor and a scurry. Yes, you read that right. A scurry. I saw a mouse running through my bedroom to the living room. I leaped from my bed and started chasing it, moaning in disgust. It took me 3 hours, but I caught it in an upturned bowl and tossed him outside. Bleck. So. Gross. I went to my parent's house to get some relief from the relentless rodent invasion. Having been up for most of the night catching my uninvited guest, I was extremely tired. I fell asleep on their couch with a blanket pulled over my head to protect me from mice. While I was sleeping, I once again, for the second time in 24 hours, was awoken to a thump and a scurry on my head. No, I'm not kidding. Seriously. There was a mouse on my head. I. FROKE. OUT. This was only made worse when I got back to my apartment and found yet another mouse in my apartment. I checked my messages and had one from my landlady, saying that she had happened to notice me moving a new mattress in recently and wondered if it might not have been stored in a garage. Why yes, I thought, it had. What of it? Turns out I had moved an entire mouse city into my tiny apartment. Not just moved it in, mind you, but SLEPT on in. For WEEKS! Who knows how many midnight visitors walked in my hair or over my face while I slept the sleep of the college student crashing after finals week?! Did you know that mice pee continuously?! Every time they take a step they pee!!! (excuse me, I can't write about this without feeling dirty. I'm going to take a shower)
Where was I. Oh yeah. Mouse city. That I slept on. During the time period BMC (Before Mouse City), I wasn't scared of mice. I didn't like them in houses because of the filth thing and the plague thing, but I generally thought they were cute if they were outside and bore them no ill will. AMC (After Mousal Contamination) I noticed a shift in my attitude. I went from being mildly startled when I was caught unawares by a mouse to an absolute hatred/terror of them. Seriously. I shiver just thinking about them.
This all leads me to what happened last week. Meron and I were sitting around, waiting for her dance class to start, when I saw one. A rodent invader. IN. MY. HOUSE! My safe, cozy house. BLARG! The house next door to us has been vacant for a long time but someone finally bought it and is renovating it. I supposed that a mouse had come looking for a quieter place to sleep (clearly it hadn't met my children yet). I called my mother and told her. She squealed with me for a while and then told me that I would be safe in bed, because mice can't climb stairs. I yelled at her, "I'm 32 YEARS OLD MOTHER! I KNOW MICE CAN CLIMB STAIRS!!" She replied that she was only trying to help, because she remembered that time that the mice kept crawling around on me while I slept. GARRRR! I envisioned them scurrying up the stairs while I slept and climbing over Nathan to get to me. While I appreciated Mom's attempt at soothing me, it was unsuccessful. I called Nathan and told him we were moving out. He told me that was silly. So I told him we were burning our house down. He declined. I told him that he had to come up with a viable alternative to keeping me safe from THEM. He mumbled something smarmy about mice being known as the assassins of the animal world and said he'd get a trap. Now.... I hate mice. Really, I do. But I also hate killing things. I have seen mice caught in traps before and it is horrible. Especially when they don't die but are all broken. Awful. So I made him get live traps so that we could catch the filthy bugger and put him out in the country somewhere.
A great plan, right? Nathan and I put peanut butter sandwiches in some live traps and left them in the places we had seen the mouse. We left for our big trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, arrogantly certain that we would return to a mouse free house. Or, at least, a house that contained a mouse in a live trap.
Much to my dismay, we didn't have a mouse contained in a live trap. We had a live trap full of mouse poop with no peanut butter sandwich in it. Now, not only did we have a mouse, we had a stronger, faster, peanut butter sustained mouse who had learned to crave our food!!
Off to the store for a different brand of live trap. We set them up. We caught nothing. And I found a piece of mouse poop in the strainer in the kitchen. That's right, the place where we put clean dishes. After rinsing my mouth with bleach, I went over to talk to the dogs. They LIVE in the kitchen. Stu freaks out if there is a FLY in the kitchen. How could he have let this happen?!?!
Then I saw what was in Rosie's mouth. It was the trap. One of the traps that was completely out of the normal range of where Rosie and Stu go in our house. And there was a puddle of blood on the carpet. Normally, I'd have a problem with blood on the floor. This time? Not so much. I feel bad that the mouse had to die. Dogs have bad breath... it couldn't have been pleasant. But am I sorry? Not gonna lie... I petted the dogs just a little bit extra last night. And Nathan is a little embarrassed that Stu and Rosie saved me from the assassin mouse when he couldn't.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Things you have missed...
Kai's first day of school. Seriously. What a charmer.
Lots of school, lots of work. Kindergarten and preschool going great for everyone. Work crazy crazy busy, but going well.
I turned 32. And... well... that happened.
Then, oh, did I mention THIS happened?
For reals... I painted my toes before we left. Hiking/canoe trips are hard on a girl's nail polish. Details to follow. Seriously... one hell of a trip.
I turned 32. And... well... that happened.
Then, oh, did I mention THIS happened?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
