Much to my own embarrassment, much has been keeping me of updating this blog recently, most of it good.
First, we leave for Europe tomorrow. This trip to the land of chocolate, cheese, and fabulous bread was highly sought-after until this week when Christian decided he couldn’t leave the house in a mess. You see, I am the type of person who prefers to leave a house in complete disarray upon leaving for a trip. It’s not that I do it on purpose, but since there’s usually so much stress occurring before a departure, it just seems silly to multiply it by trying to tidy up a house as you’re packing, looking for suckers to take your pets, trying to keep ahead of the laundry so you actually have clean clothes to stick in your suitcase, finish off your last minute projects and keep all the important parties updated of how you’ll be reachable while you’re gone. Well, this time around, we’re trying it Christian’s way, and boy is everything a thousand times more stressful than it needs to be. Plus, the apartment’s still a mess. So there.
Second, I have gone from writing a single article for the latest issue of a local magazine as a favor to a friend to finding myself in the permanently recurring position of travel editor. So far, this seems to involve writing articles about places I’d rather be than inside my apartment and editing other people’s articles about places they’d rather be than their apartments. Despite the seeming simplicity of it all, it’s amazingly time-consuming.
Third, though this shouldn’t technically be on this list because it has nothing to do with why I haven’t been blogging, but I find it note-worthy anyway. A friend of mine who lives around here, and is also doing the whole local pregnancy/delivery route went to the hospital a few days ago with pre-term contractions. They pumped her full of drugs to stop everything, and sent her home after a 24-hour observation. Everything looks to be good, but here’s the thing: they told her that if this happens again and they can’t stop the contractions, there’s nothing that can be done. NICUs are not standard in China. In fact, the nearest one might be in Beijing, not exactly an easily accessible trip in an emergency. We are in a third world country after all.
Fourth, Nico’s a freaking pig. We finally managed to find the place we have to go for his vaccines and stopped by for his first injection last week. Our little two-month old butterball is tipping the scale at over 11 pounds. Christian, who, unlike me, did not find that puberty destroyed all his math skills, broke it down into percentages, “That’s a 40% gain!” See, Christian? I told you the Gas Man’s been eating a lot!