New Plans

My dear blog friends, I’ve missed you. And I know you have missed pictures of Normy! You might have noticed that I haven’t been posting much. Okay, I haven’t been posting at all. Many of you might have thought I was busy exploring Seoul, enjoying house-keeping and room-service, or maybe recovering from jet-lag. Sadly, that’s not it. The Smoochy family is still in California. And it seems that is where we will remain. No Korean adventure for us. We were shafted.

As my last post (over a week ago) indicated we had made the journey to Kansas to leave our poor puppies with my in-laws. Smoochy, Normy, and I were thoroughly enjoying out family in KS when Smooch received a phone call from his boss. Sorry pal, your plan for Korea has been scraped. That’s a no go.

How do you say WTF in Korean?

Words cannot express how disappointed I was (am). Nor can I clearly articulate how infinitely annoyed I was (am). Here we were: dogs and car in Kansas with flights booked back to CA in only a few days and NOW you tell us we aren’t going?!?!? WTF! We were left with two options. Either Smoochy could turn around and drive back to CA with the dogs. Or the dogs and our one and only car could stay in KS and we could fly back as planned and have the company rent us a car until ours could be shipped to us.

It wasn’t that tough a decision really. Smoochy was in no mood to make that drive again. Imagine driving over 24 hours in two days with only a couple of dogs for companions, twice in one week. No thank you. So now we are driving around in a big white Dodge mini-van. It’s OK, but not exactly my dream car. However, it does have this awesome button on the clicker that opens the big sliding door automatically. A practical feature for the soccer mom in us all.

The one good thing about the whole debacle was the week we spent in Kansas without using any of Smoochy’s vacation days. Not a bad deal. Normy got to visit with all of his paternal grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles. And Smoochy and I were able to go out sans baby for our anniversary! Thank the lord for breast pumps and doting Aunt Betsy.

Visiting with the family was refreshing and a much needed break from our isolated little life on the West Coast. We returned to California with thoughts of moving closer to family on the forethought of our minds. It’s funny how we can jump from daydreaming about life in Asia to desiring to be closer to home. In the same breath I could honestly tell you that all I want is to see the world and put down some roots. I’m not sure there is a way to find a middle path between those two extremes.

One of my favorite couples in the world is in there late twenties and at this point they have decided they don’t want children. Though I cannot imagine life without Normy, I can also understand their choice. These two have the time and money to do and see it all. I love living vicariously through my friend and hearing about all the places she’s seen and all the trips she’s planning. Another crummy thing about this whole Korean fiasco is that I missed the opportunity to see her when she made her yearly pilgrimage to San Francisco to visit her childhood best friend. Horrible timing, I am so sad I missed your visit, Lisa-Lou.

All said, I HAVE chosen to have children, and I don’t regret it for a minute. Loving my child has made me redefine what love is. I believe I love everyone in my life more because loving my baby has taught me to love deeper, to take it to a new level. And to me that is worth more than ski trips to Tahoe, back-packing through Germany, and lazing in a Turkish Hamam. And seriously, if you’ve ever been to a Hamam you know what a big deal this is.

Maybe there is a middle ground between planting roots and seeing the world. If we live near our families and see them on a regular basis we will not spend all of our vacations going home. That would leave us the ability to TRAVEL for our vacations! My parents moved our family from New York to Florida when I was four years old and I don’t think they have EVER taken a trip that wasn’t to visit with family. And who can blame them? When you live that far from the ones you love OF COURSE you’re going to spend all you frequent flier miles going to see them. That is if you have frequent flier miles. We’ll probably end up like the Griswold’s, careening down the highway with a picnic basket full of sandwiches the dog has pissed on going to Wally World.