Day 19
The drive to our gala ball was long and filled with traffic delays. Some people who came from the Area 1 region were stuck in traffic for over 8 hours so I can’t really complain about our three hour drive! It just felt like forever. When you’re stuck in traffic, it was always does.
We arrived and raced into the bathrooms to change because last year anyone who was late was apparently locked out until the official ceremony portion was finished, luckily for us, so many must have been delayed that they pushed back the formal portion for a bit and all was good. I have to say that I looked very nice. Yes, I just said that. But here’s the catch, firstly, I bought some blue contact lenses for about $10 here. I wanted light blue but couldn’t find any so a darker blue they were. Well yesterday morning I decided to put them on. It had always been the plan since I had decided on my blue dress, to wear the contacts. I bought a beautiful blue eyeliner as well. I had put them in before going to have my hair done, but hubby and I had crossed paths very quickly in the am whilst I raced out to get to my appointment thinking we were in a hurry. I got home from the hairdresser and as he was looking at my hair, my darling husband exclaimed, in a not so promising tone, “Oh, what happened?” I looked at him and he at me and his look was one of almost horror! I laughed because I knew what he was now referring to, the damn things were uncomfortable, so I was very aware of them at all times. “I don’t like them at all! In fact, they make you look soulless!” Wow! Ok, didn’t see that coming, but it was too late, my mind had been decided. I was wearing the dark blue contacts. I ended up having time to put my makeup on before we headed off for the mammoth journey and off we went. So firstly let me explain that these contacts are different to ones I had bought years ago, they didn’t quite cover my entire eye, so my eyes went from dark blue to green to black pupils. They also impeded my vision somewhat, making everything have a greyish hue. It wasn’t like I was blind, but reading anything small was even more difficult. And they were a bit uncomfortable. So we get into the social area and hubby knows a few people and is talking away to them and here’s the other thing going back to yes, I looked nice, but…. I am that girl, the one who looks like she’s all held together and I speak very properly, but I am an absolute spastic! I know it. My husband knows and still loves me for it. So he is introducing my to one of his colleagues (who happens to be a lawyer and he holds out his hand to shake mine and I go to shake his and my greyish hue isn’t helping matters, nor is the tiny part of my hem that seems to have come undone a tad, and as I step forward I miscalculate where the hem is and trip on it and my glass of wine is literally mid transition from right to left hand so I can shake his hand with my right and somehow I save my glass but a large quantity of wine jumps out, not getting anyone else mind you, just me, but lands all over this hand that is reaching for his. It was comical and I just saw that look on hubby’s face, the one that says, “I know you’re a spastic and I love you for it, but sometimes, I really wonder.” There was no hand shake. 😜 thank god, the east of the night was uneventful as far as calamitous events go. The great thing was that my friend Michelle that I met on our crazy journey here to South Korea, was actually there at the ball. It was so good to see her. On top of that, there were many people we knew from Hawaii and Colorado. The Army is a small place. I met some really good people. It was a bit of a strange ball, we were greeted by a man on stilts as we descended on the escalator, but it was nice nonetheless. Unfortunately, we couldn’t hear a lot of the speeches because of the echo in the back corner, but it was entertaining. I just wish we hadn’t had to drive so far to get there and back. I also wish we had known about the childcare option. Oh well, next time.
Saturday May 7 was a beautiful day in South Korea, a nice day to celebrate being 21 (x2) and definitely time for us to get out of the house. We decided to head out for lunch and I was in the mood for Mexican. So off we headed. We found what looked to be ok Mexican restaurant up on the second floor in the main Vill outside of Osan. The service was a bit shoddy but the food was actually really good and they did a frozen kiwi margarita, that was great. We even got the kiddos one virgin mango margarita to share and she put it evenly in three plastic margarita type glasses for them too. The first thing I ordered unfortunately was not to my liking at all, I guess South Korean mole and I don’t see eye to eye, though I’m sure I’ve had it (true Mexican style) a few times before and liked it, but this particular mole enchiladas was awful! My darling husband went and talked to them and got them to switch it over to the burrito that he was having that looked and tasted absolutely amazing! Thank you husband! That was the best move you, and I, could have made today.
Then it was time to go to the movies. Captain America, Civil War! Epic. Now, I didn’t like the whole civil war part of it, but the movie, the action, the everything, was awesome! What is really interesting about seeing a movie at an overseas military base (& we had completely forgotten because it had been years) is that the national anthem is played and everyone must stand. This would have been fine if that’s the way it had gone yesterday, instead, they started playing the Korean national anthem with no introduction whatsoever. I hear this music come on as I am beginning to write my blog on my phone and look up and it is some Koreans scaling a very picturesque mountainside (an advertisement for Korea, is what I thought) I go back to writing until my daughter says, “Mum, stand up!” I stand up before I even know what I’m doing and look around and everyone is standing. It’s the Korean National Anthem, followed but the US national anthem. Please, a little more introduction wouldn’t go astray, we haven’t all been here for a long time, we also aren’t all familiar with the protocol, it might be nice for our new spouses (and not-so-new spouses) and new soldiers for that matter, to at least know what’s going on, especially if you never go to the movies.
The movie is over, it has been long, but fantastic. We are all getting up to walk out of the movie theater when I look down at my seat as something feels odd and low and behold, there is chewing gum everywhere! Someone has thought that putting chewing gum all over a movie theater seat is a really good idea, and I am the victim to it. Thanks! Like I’m not uncoordinated enough as it is. And, I’m wearing my new gladiator high heels as well, with a really cute, short dress. Yes, you are a winner! You got me! Gum all over the back of my dress, right on my bottom. Thank you! From the bottom of my heart, thank you, you super immature idiot! You put a big dampener on my birthday! Oh and I still haven’t gotten it off my dress, plus the fact that you germ infested that gum! Eeew! Disgusting in so many ways!
Hubby and Maddy went in and got a birthday cake from Baskin Robbins after the movie as I didn’t want to go anywhere given the gum situation. We then headed home and spent a very quiet evening playing family games, and just enjoying each other’s company. I was very spoilt with a beautiful gift of a Colombian emerald necklace. My wonderful husband had bought it when we went on our cruise back in the beginning of January! I had tried this necklace on at least five times and it was magnificent but I had also said no. We couldn’t afford it. It was a great deal, but it was something frivolous that I didn’t need. My husband had snuck back there on our last day and had bought that necklace and had made secret payments (I pay all the bills from our main account). He is such an incredible trickster and awesome present buyer! He was sure I knew, but I had no iota! None whatsoever. I’m sure I’ve said before what a crappy present buyer I am, and how amazing he is, this once again proves it!
Today is Mother’s Day in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Belgium and the United States. We were able to sleep in a little bit, but duty called eventually. I had some beautiful cards from the entire family, but yesterday’s present was an all inclusive one, just as it should have been. Hubby was going to make breakfast but soon realized that given last week’s crazy schedule, we had very few groceries. Breakfast soon came off the table. The kids ate whatever we could muster and hubby and I drank some good coffee. Neither of us were feeling so great, this bloody horrible thing ripping through our bodies, is leaving us drained and full of yuckiness! The coughing is getting old. Today was probably the worst it has been for me so far, but then again, I’ve been taking mucinex (an old prescription from Colorado that is for this exact type situation and wasn’t out of date) but hubby can’t take anything prescription based unless it was currently prescribed to him. So he’s had to suffer without. He didn’t really want to go anywhere but was willing to if I wanted to. I knew we needed to get some supplies in order to function tomorrow, so it was off to the bigger commissary we went. I told them all they could choose a restaurant for lunch given our limited food, and of course, they all chose Chilis. Thank god it was amazing today! The woman who served us was truly incredible. Our food was as good as it gets at that Chilis, no complaints though. We then went to the Commissary and grocery shopped. All very exciting I know. From there we came home, unpacked, called my mother to wish her a happy Mother’s Day (I had called her numerous times already but this time she actually picked up) and popped over to our friends’ house with a bottle of Champers to celebrate both my birthday and his birthday. We had a lovely time with them, but alas, it was a school night and we had to call it early. We got home, tried to finish our family card game after putting little man to bed, when I realized my emerald bracelet was no longer on my wrist! Let me give you some background on this bracelet; The husband had bought this for me last year when I came back from Australia to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary. He had to go away and wanted it to be something special. He had found this bracelet at an estate sale at a well-renowned jewelry shop. He had gotten it for a bargain (an expensive bargain but it was incredible) but we had had it appraised for a whole lot more. My Christmas present was a beautiful emerald ring he had made to match the bracelet. This pendant (my birthday present yesterday) had matched both. Now my beautiful bracelet was gone and we hadn’t even had it insured. I’m not sure why, I think we were waiting for the paintings or to figure out the whole mess with the paintings not being here and the fact that we had to insure our stuff back in the US even though we are here and we just have had so much other shit to deal with, we hadn’t gotten around to it. This was literally a one of a kind bracelet. I was heartbroken. Let me go back one further. When we lived in San Antonio, our house had been robbed, these bastards had literally waited until the husband and I took my Mum and Dad to the airport, then went in and robbed us of all they could. They went through every draw, every cupboard, every everything they could in our bedroom. They did however, leave our baby’s (Ally’s) room alone, but they stole everything else of value that we had. My husband and I had saved up all we could, he had gotten out of he Navy and had joined the Army. We had just bought our first house, literally using our savings to pay for 1/3 of it because no one would give us a loan unless we could. We had lived in the Middle East and hubby had my sister get this beautiful emerald pendant handmade (in Saudi Arabia) for me for my birthday/our wedding. It too, was one of a kind. The bastards stole that. I just happened to be wearing the matching earrings, so they never got those. They got our Video camera with all of Ally’s 1st year of footage on it. They took everything we had worked for. It was a complete violation of us and made me very bitter towards San Antonio, for no other reason than I needed to blame something and I didn’t have a person/s. To come home and find your door kicked in and your baby’s entire first year of memories gone because some bastard thought it was worthwhile taking the video camera and you hadn’t even given it any thought to transfer those videos because you had it in a safe place and the ‘tape’ still had 20 hours of footage to go on it! Gone! Forever! Our baby girl’s first adventures in Italy that we filmed will never be found and we can never show her because some arsehole broke into our home and stole them from us, not only did they do that, but they took every piece of jewelry both my husband and I had ever saved up for! Long story short, I am bitter and the minute something goes missing, I completely freak out. That’s what happened tonight. I freaked out. I literally lost it. I was out with my torch (flashlight) and my neighbour, Geoff happened to be out there and asked if I had lost something and I couldn’t even talk, I just mumbled, “emerald bracelet! I’ve lost my emerald bracelet.” He asked if he could help me look and I couldn’t even answer. I just kept saying I don’t know, I don’t know.
I called my friends and had them searching on the rooftop, I searched up and down the road, the girls and hubby were pulling everything apart searching inside. Nothing. I couldn’t even feel anything. All I could think was not again, what did I do to deserve this? Every part of you that has done the most minute thing wrong starts to wonder exactly what it was that you did to cause this. I know it’s only a material possession and as I said to my girls later on; “I got this upset over something materialistic, but something precious to me because Daddy bought it and it was very special, imagine that at the end of the day, that means nothing and you guys are everything, imagine just how devastated I would be if something happened to you when a bracelet means this much, but means nothing! They both seemed to understand and nodded and promised they would always be careful. They promised they would always let me know where they were, they promised they wouldn’t do anything stupid. I used the bracelet analogy to even mention that I didn’t actually ‘lose’ the bracelet, it fell off, so sometimes we don’t even mean to do anything but it happens, and told them they just always need to make good decisions. Very deep, I know, it was all I could do to keep my shit together after freaking out over my bracelet then realizing the only thing that is truly important is my family.
The bracelet was found! Thank god! Hubby found it in my handbag. Either on our way to our friends’ house or on our way back, it fell into my handbag. I wasn’t being punished, just tested. I didn’t pass well, but afterwards I was able to draw on it to send a point home to my girls to let them know how much they mean to me. Happy Mother’s Day. The only thing that matters is your people. That’s it. We get involved with the material things and they are lovely things but the people are the most important. My people, your people, our people.
Well, that’s all for me, today, I look forward to your feed back and as always:
I hope you have a wonderful day and/or night, wherever you are!
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