Something New

Erin & I bought a new computer in January. The old Dell laptop was beginning to die again and it was obvious it wasn't going to last much longer with regular use, so we went to the Apple Store and bought ourselves a Mac Mini. It's a nice little computer for a very reasonable price, especially since Apple offers student discounts. If you're thinking about getting a new computer, I'd highly recommend a Mac.

One of the cool things the computer came with is a very easy web publishing software called iWeb (yes, much like the iPod and iTunes, many programs have the ubiquitous 'i' as part of their name). I've been playing around with the program lately and a couple weeks ago, made this. It's not much and our trial to the .mac web host ends in about ten days, so it's hard to say if we'll keep it up. In the meantime, have a look around.

Happy Hallowienerdog!

This afternoon, we went to our local dachshund society's 2007 Howl-O-Wiener party. Charlie was a lobster. It. Was. AWESOME.

Sorry we haven't updated in a while--we've been awfully busy with full time grad school and a full time job (Travis) and two part-time jobs that add up one one full time job and then some (me). In addition to that, I've been able to pick up some freelance feature writing with our suburb's local weekly newspaper. In case that wasn't enough to keep me out of trouble, I'm also going to be doing some volunteer work (mostly public relations stuff, writing press releases and doing some photography) with the Gateway Pet Guardians, an area organization that helps find homes for homeless cats and dogs.

We're doing well, though. Travis has been doing extremely well in his grad classes (I'm so proud of him!), we've finally finished unpacking and are 100% settled in, and the dog and cat are playmates and, dare I say it, friends. Because it's getting colder (FINALLY), the cat has been sleeping in a tightly-wadded kitty ball at the end of our bed every night. Charlie sleeps under the covers, always making sure he's touching both of us. It's cozy, two people and two pets to a bed, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm still planning to blog about our last few weeks in Indonesia and our wonderful trip home, where we flew Cathay Pacific's incredible business class all the way from Jakarta to Los Angeles. (Best. Flights. EVER.) I'll do it soonish, I promise. In the meantime, I hope everyone is having a fabulous autumn, and I will leave you with these lovely photos of our fuzzy "kids" in their Halloween finery. Charlie, as I mentioned, is a lobster and Beans is a business cat who sells paper for Dunder-Mifflin. He's assistant to the assistant to the regional manager. Dinkin' flicka.

Turn, turn, turn

This whole changing seasons thing is fascinating.

I know that sounds weird. I spent the first 24 years of my life in the Midwest, where there are four distinct seasons. In Indonesia, there was a rainy season and a dry season, but where we lived the two tended to blend together. We lived near Bogor, affectionately (or not) known as the Rain City. It averaged something like 335 thunderstorms per year, and since it was about 10 minutes down the road, we shared a lot of its weather.

There's nothing like a tropical thunderstorm in the hills of Sentul. The lightning posed the only real danger, but as long as a person wasn't standing outside with a metal pole, there was no major threat. (As for appliances and electronics...well, you might remember that we lost a brand new desktop computer to a particularly mean-spirited lightning strike.) The thunder, unlike any I've ever heard, would shake the very foundations of the houses. Usually the storms occurred later in the afternoons and evenings, but occasionally one would roll in before school let out for the day and the sky would grow so dark that the automatic light-sensitive lamps in the courtyard would turn on. The rain would come in violent torrents, and usually the storm would pass as quickly as it had arrived. I always said I loved the tropical thunderstorms so much because there was no need to worry about tornadoes.

Anyway, it's been three years since we've experienced any real seasonal change. Sure, we came home to visit for our first two Christmases, but there wasn't any changing of seasons--when we got on the plane in Jakarta it was warm and by the time we got to our second-to-last stop in Chicago, it was obscenely cold. When we went to Istanbul we experienced gorgeous spring weather, but again--no actual, gradual change. When we got on the plane in Jakarta, it was hot. When we got off the plane in Istanbul, it was chilly and drizzly.

For the past few days I've watched the Weather Channel with newfound fascination. It's getting cooler! Like, a LOT cooler! And the weirdest thing? It's going to stay that way for a while. I had no idea that something I'd taken for granted for all of my life would seem so amazing after having missed out on it for three years. I can't wait for fall. I feel like a little kid. I'm going to step on every crunchy leaf I see, and drink apple cider and carve pumpkins...and I'm going to appreciate every minute of it.

"...let men label you as they may." -Mark Twain

Not sure this was what Mr. Twain was talking about, exactly...

We got a new label-maker. It's quite useful.

Erin and Travis return to America, part 2

Yeah...remember when I said I was going to blog again soon and then I kind of didn't? Sorry. I promise I will try to be better. I really will. So here, in a nutshell (or a number of bulleted points) is what's going on with us.


-We're now into the full swing of working and, in Travis's case, going to school. Travis is working full time at a nearby Target, mostly in the electronics department. The job's not glamorous, but it comes with good benefits for both of us and will be a great job to get him through grad school. Plus, it comes with a discount, and Target is fabulous!


-Travis is currently working on his Masters of Arts in Teaching at Webster University, which is right down the road from us. He's a full-time student, which for this program means he's taking two night classes that last for eight weeks, then another two for another eight weeks. He's only had two weeks of class so far, both education classes (one history and one more psychology-based), and he seems to like them quite a bit. I can tell he's learning--yesterday we drove past a Presbyterian church and he started spouting off the history of the education system in America and its links with Calvinism and Puritanism.


-It is quite difficult for one to type when one has a dozing, purring cat laying across one's arms, mostly immobilizing one's hands and partially obscuring the keyboard. I should know. Yet I press on...


-I'm working as an online writing tutor, which is challenging but fun. The best part is being able to work from home--or from anywhere with internet access, for that matter. OK, maybe that's the second-best part. The best part is a toss-up between being able to work in my pajamas and not having to attend staff meetings. It's a part-time job, and so I'm also working 15-20 hours a week at the St. Louis Bread Company (Panera, for the rest of you) that's about four blocks up the street from our house. I work weekday mornings only, with the exception of a couple hours on the occasional Saturday afternoon. Again, not a glamorous gig, but I actually kind of like it. I love the two women I work with in the mornings, Stella and Barb--more on them later, but for now let's just say that if I actually enjoy being around them rather than wanting to kill them at 6 a.m., they must be fairly amazing people.


-If all goes according to plan, I'll be starting massage therapy school in January. There's a nearby college that specializes exclusively in medical careers, and massage therapy is one of their biggest programs. It's a reputable school, and with the program I'm enrolling in, I will finish in 30 weeks, or about 7 1/2 months. That means by this time next year, assuming the anatomy and physiology courses don't kill me, I'll be a licensed massage therapist in the state of Missouri. We've looked at it from all the angles, figured things out, and we'd be able to make it work if I started in January. I'm pretty psyched.


-Beans and Charlie are getting along swimmingly. They moved past their initial suspicion of each other and, for a long time, seemed content to coexist peacefully. Lately, though, they've even moved past that stage and have become playmates. They make a regular game of chasing each other through the house. Admittedly, this doesn't take very long because our house is tiny, but if you're a cat or a small dog, there's lots of room to race about. Last night Beans was disgruntled because Charlie was more interested in eating than he was in playing. As soon as Charlie finished his food, Beans walked up behind him, swatted him on the butt and took off running. Charlie, realizing he was It, joined in. Earlier this evening, Charlie was laying next to me on the couch with his head on my lap. Beans jumped up on the other side and, after tiptoeing forward to sniff at the dog's head, settled in on the other side. Their noses were about three inches apart. Of course, no one was home but me and all cameras were out of reach.


-We're officially crazy pet people. We have joined the Gateway Lo-Downs, which is the St. Louis-area Local Dachshund Owners society. Yes. We're members of a wiener dog society. You thought we were cool before...


-Our shipped items from Indonesia arrived unscathed a few weeks ago. We're almost unpacked now. Almost. We were worried that everything would look too cluttered in our small living spaces, but it actually looks very cozy and inviting. (I can't lie--it's the Turkish hookah that makes it so inviting...)


-We continue to adjust to living in St. Louis. We're getting around the city pretty well now. I'm capable of getting to a number of important places all on my own--Kristin's house, Nate and Alli's house, Matt and Lisa's house, the post office, the library, the grocery store and no fewer than three major malls. I like city driving, except for the fact that nearly every single day seems to be Drive With Your Head Up Your Ass Day in St. Louis. Stop signs are mere suggestions, and the general rule seems to be that if you are old and/or drive a fancy European car, you always have the right of way. Still, it's nothing compared to Jakarta driving!


-We LOVE our neighborhood. There are coffee houses, excellent restaurants, unique shops, cool pubs and nice little cafes within walking distance. The library is so close it would be crazy to drive there, and right across from our driveway is a little sno-cone shop. There's even a doggie boutique nearby, which was having a "long dog special" the day we visited, so we received 10% off any dachshund items we purchased. The homes surrounding our humble apartment complex are gorgeous. We went on a long walk with Charlie Friday evening and nearly tripped over ourselves trying not to obviously ogle the stately homes set back on vast, manicured lawns, each one more beautiful than the last.


-We love St. Louis in general. I always teased my college friends who hailed from the area about their unabashed obsession with their hometown, but now I really understand it. It's a fantastic city, with a million things to do and see. I feel like I could be a tourist in my own town forever.


-As much as we love it here, we miss Indonesia so much. Homesickness comes in waves, much like it did when we moved there from Nebraska. The first fall I was in Indonesia was horrible. I was so miserably homesick. I wanted to close my eyes and, upon opening them again, be sitting on my front porch in Nebraska. I was so lonesome for the fall weather, my friends and family and everything familiar to me. If I imagined hard enough, I could hear the jingling of the tags on my dog's collar. I could feel the brisk, fall breeze on my face and smell the crisp, clean air.

Now it's almost fall in Missouri and sometimes I miss Indonesia so much it physically hurts.

My heart literally aches. I wonder if I close my eyes and wish hard enough, I'll open them to find I'm sitting behind my desk in my classroom, the warm tropical sun streaming through the big windows. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can hear the lobby fountains, the idle chatter of students whose mother tongue was once foreign to me but now is soothing and familiar to my ears. I want my desk, my room with blank walls waiting for cheery seventh-grade doodlings to decorate them, a brand-new gradebook waiting to be filled with marks of the new year. I want my coworkers who became friends and family. Most of all, though, I want my students-my wonderful, funny, bright stars of students, all of whom I loved so dearly.

Erin and Travis return to America, part one

Hi. Yes. We're alive. Yes. We'll keep blogging--reverse culture shock is an odd thing and certainly deserves being written about. Sorry for the obscenely long lapse between posts. I'll get a nice, long update on what's been going in the last two months posted soon--very, very soon.

Until then, please enjoy this nice tale of how we narrowly avoided living in Crazy Cat Lady Trash Heap Hell.

***********

So, up until we moved to St. Louis, we'd been pleasantly surprised by how well things were going for us with our Indonesia-to-America transition.

Friday morning we headed down the road with a fully-loaded 17-foot U-Haul truck and arrived at our new apartment by 5 p.m. We'd never even seen the place, and were a little nervous.

Right.

The apartment itself was fairly cute--the living room had nice wood floors and there were plenty of big windows. The rest of the building, however, was an absolute disaster. It was a small brick fourplex, and apparently the other three apartments were rented by complete lunatics.

The rickety wooden stairs to our second-floor dwelling were covered in dead plants and cobwebs. The hallway between our door and our neighbor's was almost completely blocked by an assortment of junk-cat litter tubs, broken furniture, stacks of newspapers and boxes and other unidentifiable crap. Our lovely new neighbor had been thoughtful enough to leave an eight inch space for us to squeeze into our front door.

There was no way we were getting anything, not even small boxes--let alone furniture--up the stairs. Upon further inspection, the basement was even worse. We'd been promised by the real estate agent that there was "ample storage space, PLUS washer and dryer hookups for each tenant" in the basement.

Um.

In reality, the basement featured junk piled at least seven feet high, filling every single corner so that there was only about two square feet of space to walk amongst the heaps of trash. Additionally, there was a rather inexplicable pile of chicken feathers and dog poop in one area.

I burst into tears. My mother burst into tears. Travis's mother stood looking horrified and as if she could also burst into tears at any moment. My father, on the other hand, was furious.

I called the real estate agency in a frenzy and played the powerful "I just moved from Indonesia, and today I drove nine damn hours with a huge moving truck and cannot move in" card. Within 25 minutes, one of the real estate company's brokers showed up--not ours, but another woman. Ours, I think, does not really exist. We've only been able to correspond through e-mail, as she apparently has neither office hours or the courtesy to return phone calls. A few minutes later, the owner of the entire realty company arrived.

Long story short, he's a powerful man. He says "jump," his employees say "how high?"

He, too, was appalled with the condition of the building. I have a feeling our real estate agent is in some serious trouble for basically lying to us about the building and not taking care of her properties.

He said he would have the basement and the rest of the place cleaned up within a week, and that if we weren't satisfied them, his company would personally find us a new place and pay to move everything for us. We told him that wasn't good enough.

Somehow it was mentioned that we were on a tight budget because Travis was starting grad school at Webster University. The owner said, "Oh! We do have an apartment complex in Webster Groves, not even a quarter mile from the university." He offered to show them to us and, if we liked them, we could move in. The rent was quite a bit higher, but he said he'd drop the price just for us because the one we'd initially rented was so awful.

Within 60 minutes of this offer, we had a new place to live. It's PERFECT.

We live in Webster Groves, which is probably one of the most gorgeous, fascinating areas of St. Louis. The houses are gracious, charming and ludicrously expensive. The historic downtown is too adorable for words. We are a five-minute bike ride from Webster University, a five-minute walk from a Starbucks, a St. Louis Bread Co. (Panera, for you non-St. Louis folk), and so close to the most amazing boutiques, bars and cool little cafes and restaurants. I am head over heels in love with this place.

Even better, our apartment is wonderful. Sure, it's small, but that's OK. It's on the ground floor of a very secluded, quiet complex. For its little size, it has a TON of storage space. There are three closets in the bedroom, one of which is a giant walk-in. There's a front and back door, with a little patio/yard just outside our bedroom for Charlie to sniff around and do his doggy business. Our neighbors are friendly, and the property's manager is on-site. The guy who oversees it has his office in the apartment two doors down from us, and is incredibly nice.

It's so funny how things work out. If we'd never signed the lease on that horrible apartment, we'd never have found this great one. We wouldn't have ended up in Webster Groves, either, mere minutes from almost everything we need.

I've always said God has a weird sense of humor, but He does seem to know what He's doing, and for that I am infinitely thankful.

Big bag o' crazy

Beans has a new, fancy imported cat toy: a paper grocery bag, sent all the way from the States. I don't know why people spend a lot of money on cat toys--this one was free, and it hardly took up any room in the FedEx package it was sent in.

As you can see, this bag is nearly destroyed. The reason is because it's actually two toys in one--little bits can be torn off, and then can be swatted around the living room floor like a kitty hockey puck.

I'm hoping that moving to the Land of Paper Bags Aplenty will ease Beans' transition to life in the U.S. Maybe if he has a few dozen bags to hide in, to jump out of and terrorize the dog, he won't hate us so much for the traumatizing move.

Beans had his final visit from the veterinarian two days ago. For the move, his vaccinations all need to be current no more than one year and no less than 30 days before the move. Dr. Diah, our wonderful vet who makes house calls, came and updated his shots and carefully recorded everything in his little official kitty passport. Beans used to love the vet because she has a big leather bag he could climb in. He didn't even mind the shots. Then, one fateful morning in May 2005, she took him away in a green plastic kennel and brought him back a few hours later, a little less of a man. Now no amount of convincing will get him to believe that she won't do it again. We have to wrap him up in a blanket like a furry, angry little burrito. Once the shots are over, he retreats to either under the table or the landing on the stairs, where he blends in with the shadows and appears only as a big, frightened pair of bright green eyes. Then, for the rest of the evening, we're treated to the Nobody Loves Kitty Show. Poor Beans.

On a completely unrelated topic, I had a seriously entertaining Abbott and Costello moment with some of my 10th graders the other day. They're reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and they're working in reading groups a large amount of the time. The exchange went something like this:

Boy: Mrs. Erin? What do you call this thing? (He points to the cover of the book, which is an illustration of various objects sitting in the knothole of a large tree.)

Me: Knothole.

Girl: See! I told you it was not a hole!

Boy: So what is it?!

Me (confused): A knothole!

Girl: It's not. A. Hole. I'm right. Told you so.

Boy: But Mrs. Erin, if it's not a hole, then what do you call it? What is its name?!

Me (laughing): It's a k-n-o-t, knothole. Not "n-o-t."

Later in the same period, the students were supposed to be in their groups, reading out loud to each other. One kid, notorious for being a little...different, started out by shouting. His group members were more confused than alarmed, and shushed him quickly.

"No! No, I'm supposed to do like that!" he insisted.

I looked over at him. "What exactly are you doing?" I asked.

"Reading loud!" he told me, in complete seriousness.

I tried my best to ignore the giggles and eye-rolls from his group members, and avoided eye contact with them so I didn't crack up.

"You're supposed to be reading out loud, not loudly. Out loud means you read to your group instead of silently inside your head. You only have to read loud enough for them to hear you."

"Oh..."

I honestly don't know what I'll do with myself when I don't get to teach these kids anymore. I try not to think about it. I'm formulating a massive, heartfelt, outpouring of a blog in my head, but I have to wait until I'm ready to write it. That might not make sense. If you're a writer at all, even just in journals, it will. I have so much I want to say but it's still in my head, getting itself together. The words have to be just right. I can't sum up the enormity of leaving with just any old words, so I have to wait. In the meantime, I'll keep posting random, everyday stuff like usual.

For now, please enjoy the photo of His Royal Loudness in his Big Bag of Crazy.