Country Living

No, that's not a description of my life recently, that's the title of a magazine that's stalking me. For some reason, I've started receiving issues of Country Living magazine, which is pretty much irrelevant to my life. Today, they apparently took it up a notch because when I came home, I found a package on my front porch with a Country Living tote bag. The magazine says I've paid for a subscription. Even weirder, this magazine comes to my correct address. My address is not that complicated, but 85% of the mail I receive has some sort of error.
Here's the thing. I get something like 15 or 16 magazines a month. The reason for this is that I had about a zillion frequent flier miles but I wasn't planning any trips at the time they were coming up on their expiration date. Luckily (?) said airline offers other rewards, and I used up all my miles on magazines about either fashion, health, wine, or food. The funny part (to me, at least) is that the airline still had my parents' address as my default address, so my parents get shitloads of magazines every month for me. As they come in, they tell me the title of the magazine so I can go to the magazine's website and change the address so future issues will be sent here. I plan to take a huuuuuge stack of these babies to a used book store around Christmas.
Country Living, however, remains a mystery, because it never arrived at my parents' house before coming here. There was no yellow forwarding label or anything. And now, the mysterious tote bags. I even interrogated my mom, thinking that maybe she signed me up as a joke, but no dice. Maybe the publishing company saw that I'm getting every single other magazine they print and assumed that I had a subscription for that one, too. Whatever.

You came in with the breeze...

...on Sunday morning, you sure have changed since yesterday.
Anyone else remember that song? Ah, it takes me back.
For the past week, my beloved sunny South Carolina has been anything but sunny. It's been switching between stormy, drizzly, and gloomy. I know we could use the rain, and I remember that last August it was like this for a few weeks too, but it sure is depressing. Somehow it seems to match certain events in my life lately.
My classes are starting soon, and I found out yesterday that the financial aid department has screwed up my awards. My husband says they'll be able to fix it easily on Monday, but I'm not so sure. I always seem to have the worst luck with things like this. I haven't even bought my textbooks yet, so I need my financial aid awards ASAP. I'm worried that, due to the nature of the office's error, I'm going to have to start the whole process over and re-apply for what I was already awarded and it will be several weeks before I see a dime of it. I know it's pointless to sit here and worry about it, but unfortunately that's one of the things I'm best at.
My car had been acting up, getting progressively worse over the summer. After I dropped a few hundred bucks on it during our vacation fiasco in May, I thought everything would be all right with it. No such luck. It started shuddering and making noises, and then on Friday it had one heck of a time even getting over 15 mph. I began toying with the idea of trading it in for something more reliable, because I had a feeling the transmission's days were numbered. So yesterday, we spent the day browsing used car lots. Long story short, the last place we went to took a look at my car to get an idea of how much I would get for a trade-in, and they ran a quick test to come up with a number. The number they gave me was half of the Kelly Blue Book value, because the "tranny" as the salesman called it (interestingly I've only heard that term associated with transvestites before this), was ready to fall out- in addition to everything else that was wrong with it. Sigh. Two hours later, I waved good-bye to the car I had driven since junior year of high school and rode off into the sunset in a shiny green car that's only a couple of years old. I hate the idea of having to deal with a monthly car payment, but it's better that than my old car keel over on the highway and have to pay for a tow and thousands of dollars' worth of repairs on the spot. The new one isn't nearly as sporty as my old one, sadly. It's an actual "grown-up" car, with four doors and everything. Weird. But even weirder than that, last night after I got home, I was cleaning out my purse and I found a fortune from a fortune cookie I got a couple weeks ago. The fortune reads, "Something on four wheels will soon be a good investment for you." There are lucky numbers on the back, and I'm really tempted to play them in the lottery!
The other big news that I haven't felt much like talking about is that my grandma, who I'm very close to, has been having health problems for the past year and a half, and was officially diagnosed with cancer about two weeks ago. She's been hospitalized since then at one of the top cancer centers in the country, but the symptoms of her particular cancer are making it next to impossible for her to eat anything. The prognosis they gave her was not very bright, but also not terribly dire; however, with her caloric intake hovering around 500 per day, her condition is not improving. I had already planned to drive up for a few days this coming Thanksgiving, but yesterday my parents called to say that they were flying me up next weekend to see her. I need to visit her, but I'm also terrified of it. I don't think I can eloborate any more about it right now, I'm finding that it's even difficult to type about this.
Meanwhile, it's really been helping to play with my cats. It's comforting that no matter what is happening in the outside world, cats still need attention every morning at 5:00 am and kittens still cause mayhem in surprising ways.

Long See No Time?

Where have I been? Around.
But I've been doing lots of things this summer. I can't believe it's August already and classes begin *gulp* next week. I'm a little reluctant to go back because I'm nervous about starting my thesis for real. I already have a fat stack of library books on my desk waiting to be skimmed for potential interest to my project. I found a professor who is willing to direct my thesis, and my adviser says it sounds promising. Let me tell you, it gets a whole lot scarier once you tell people your ideas and commit to following through with it. I've also signed on to do part-time environmental volunteer work in exchange for room and board on the island where I will do research.
In addition to getting that set up, I've been tutoring several students multiple times a week in ESL, reading, grammar, writing- anything you can imagine that has to do with the English language. It's actually a lot of fun, and I'll continue to work with three of my students throughout the school year. I'm glad I get to keep working with them, but I don't doubt it will be a full schedule what with taking classes full time, not to mention my assistantship, which I've already started. My professor e-mailed me early in the summer to see if I'd be interested in helping him with one of his many projects over the break. No assistantship was available for the summer, so he's been giving me as many hours as I want on his own dime. I really like working with him, I just hope he's not putting any kind of financial burden on himself to keep this going. I'll be happy once the department is handing out my paychecks again in a couple of weeks. Right now, my work with him consists of proof-reading typed transcripts of letters written by Civil War veterans with the original handwritten manuscripts. It's incredibly interesting, but every now and then I give myself a bit of a headache trying to figure out what a certain word is.
I got my back-to-school haircut this morning, hurrah! I realized I hadn't been to get a trim since March... wow. Slightly embarrassing when my hair stylist pointed this out to me. But she's great and understands how scatter-brained us grad students can be. I just need to do a bit of back-to-school shopping and I'll be set. I got myself a couple of spiffy new lunch boxes-- well, bento boxes-- in Osaka, so that base is covered.

Things I want to do before summer vacation ends:
1. Go to the beach. The ocean beach, not the lake beach.
2. Finish the novel I'm reading.
3. Go for a walk by the river.
4. Get Korean ice cream one more time (melon flavor of course).
5. Sip a pina colada in my back yard.

New home, new friends

(water bottle shown for size comparison, not for kitten food or bedding!)
As you know, or maybe you don't know, I love animals and will feed any creature that shows up at my front door looking hungry. For the past 8 months or so, I've been feeding a stray cat that I call Butternut, as well as her grown-up kitten Sprinkles, and a male cat. They have gotten so friendly and tame that they will just walk right in the front door and into the kitchen to get a snack, and sometimes jump up on the couch afterward to be petted for a little while. Well, a few months ago, Sprinkles had some kittens of her own. I was hoping to pet them, but they're pretty skittish and we still haven't been able to get close to them. We figured that Butternut wasn't able to have kittens anymore because her hips are kinda messed up and her tail just kind of dangles there, she can't lift or move it.
And then one night last week it stormed. While it was raining, we heard a strange little sound, like a bird. Husband got up to look out the window on the front door and didn't see anything. So he opened the door and said "OH. MY. GOD." So of course I ran over there. There on the doorstep, taking shelter from the rain, was Butternut. Next to her was the tiniest black and white kitten I've ever seen, mewing pathetically. We scooped them up and dried them off and put the kitten in a box with a towel. Butternut was pacing and acting weird, so we let her out after a while. She didn't come back, so I decided to sleep on the couch with the kitten box next to me so our other cats didn't interfere with it (earlier Bijou gave it a good bop on the head...). Husband had an early shift and left around 4:00 in the morning. Butternut still wasn't back. But around 7:00, I was awakened by a familiar sound... I opened the door to find a tiny, shaking orange kitten all by herself, crying. I sighed and picked her up, dried her off, and put her in the box next to the other one. Obviously they were siblings, as they curled up next to each other and went to sleep right away. Sure enough, a couple of hours later, Butternut returned and came in to feed them. And now, almost a week later, they are still in the apartment.
It was all adorable and I love kittens, but we already have two cats. Plus, Butternut decided to bring them the week before we give up that apartment for our new one. The selfish part of me wants to keep all three of them, but that doesn't seem very practical. It's like a cat soap opera around here, honestly.
Well, I'm glad I can enjoy playing with kittens at least for a few days :)

Sweet Summer Nectar

ATTENTION: If you are lucky enough to find this jar in your local grocery or specialty store, get it!!

This is a jar of yuzu tea mix. It looks a little like runny marmalade, but you don't spread it on toast. No, you mix a few teaspoonfuls into a glass of ice water, or soda water, or hot water, and make iced yuzu tea, yuzu soda, or hot yuzu tea, respectively. It's that easy. My favorite way to have it is in iced tea form. During these hot summer days, this stuff is heaven.

I first had iced yuzu tea at a Korean restaurant in Japan on a hot day. I had never even heard of it before, even on previous trips to Japan, and I was sad when I finished because I didn't know where to get it. But then I did a little internet research recently, and discovered it comes in huge jars like that. And lo and behold, one of the Asian markets in my city carries it!

I'm trying to not use the entire jar today. But, no guaruntees.

Postcarding

Well, to follow up on my last entry, all is well in the household world. Well, my household, at least. Husband was not mad at me and later told me that I was right and he was sorry (!!). Can I get that in writing, please? Haha, just kidding. He really is a good guy when you get down to it. And right now, he's at work! His new job, despite the unsavory schedule, seems to be something he likes and the pay is decent. "Decent" is about all you can hope for here in South Carolina. He gets to travel all over the state and sometimes across state lines, which is really neat, but it also means that often he will be out until 3:00 a.m. or later. So, although I feel a little lonely, I much prefer this to the alternative.

To try to fend off this loneliness, I've decided to take up some new hobbies. One of these is Postcrossing.com. It's a site that lets you send a postcard to a random person who could be anywhere in the world, and then you in turn receive a postcard from another random person anywhere in the world. Today I sent one to the Netherlands! It's really cool, and it blows my mind that someone, somewhere, is preparing a postcard to send to me.

When it rains...

Well, you know how the saying goes.

We managed to make it back home on Saturday, after having to get a tow to a garage in the nearest town. Luckily, my FIL snuck his AAA membership card to my husband before MIL demanded they leave (without saying good-bye...or anything else, for that matter). So, the tow didn't cost us anything. The repairs were a different story, unfortunately, because it wasn't just the absent belt that was the problem, it was a part that holds the belt in place. After spending half of Friday in the smoky waiting area, we were able to drive back to the beach house, our wallets considerably lighter. We thought we would be able to relax then, but of course we discovered that in her haste to leave us, MIL hadn't cleaned a single thing in the beach house, leaving us to scrub down the entire thing. The way the rentals work is you either clean everything yourself before you leave, or you pay an extra $100 for maid service after you check out, which, at that point, we obviously did not have. So, instead of relaxing on the beach or the dock, our Friday evening was spent cleaning and packing. By the way, I found out that the reason she ended up hating me did not start out as my fault. She became irate that the brake pads on her car needed to be replaced (which she demanded be done the minute they started squeaking a little, on the first day we were at the beach house) and she didn't want to spend that amount of money. So, stewing about this, according to FIL, I became the easiest target because I began avoiding her when she was in such a mood- and when I say "mood," think of the way a sulky four-year-old child acts immediately after throwing a tantrum. She bitched about every single thing FIL did, and most things husband did, so I wasn't about to get in her path. Apparently this angered her to no end. I also didn't jump up right after every single meal and offer to do the dishes while she was slamming things around in the kitchen, which pretty much sealed my fate. And then, each morning when she emerged from her bedroom cursing and stomping and husband and I were safely watching TV out of her way, I neglected to say a cheerful "good morning, how did you sleep?" to her, the final nail in my coffin. My husband won't speak to her because he's so angry about the whole thing. Not that she has deigned to apologize, though.

I felt relieved, although still smarting from MIL's treatment on the ride home. Just when we thought we could finally relax and get back into our normal routine, we found out that husband had lost his job. This was not a total surprise, but it still didn't help matters considering what we spent the day before on the car. Then, I checked my e-mail, only to find that my summer teaching position at the university had been canceled. Newly unemployed, we looked over the pieces of mail that had arrived in our absence. Among them was a curious certified letter from the court system of the county where we lived a year ago. Lo and behold, it was an order to appear in court as a result of a claim our former landlord made- that we hadn't paid the final utility bills. Last summer, I thought all of this had been resolved when they sent us a letter demanding a ridiculous amount of money for it, and we sent them photocopies of the cancelled checks with the proper amount and "Utilities for [address]" written very clearly in the memo. They never responded to that letter, so we considered the matter closed. And now, here we are an entire year later, receiving this bullshit.

And lastly, we are moving to a new place, which should be a joyous occasion. The new place is smaller, but it has a tiny yard, plus a washer, dryer, and a dishwasher! Hallelujah! Also, it's $50 cheaper per month that what we've been paying. The not-so-joyous part is that we had to fork over the first month's rent yesterday when we picked up the keys. We also had to pay the final month's rent on our present apartment, which left us stretched a little thin. Then, we found out that the water company wants to charge us a whopping $75 to start service at the new place.

My husband turned to me and said, "Well, at least we can't say our lives are boring."
I looked at him for a moment, then replied, "Have I ever, in the six years you've known me, complained that my life has ever for a single minute been boring?"
"No," he said. "No, you haven't."