We forgot Easter

This is our kid's second Easter and we forgot it. Again.

We started out with the best intentions - we talked about doing an Easter Egg Hunt in the back garden, we chose a big Easter present for them and we even planned to video tape their happy hunt to send to our family back home.

Yeah, none of that ended up happening.

It started with the need to buy the kids a log cabin windy house for the back garden - and only a log cabin would do. (our plan is to pop a full Canadian flag on it and call it an RCMP post). They're about £350 brand new (screw that!) but go for about £100 used online so it became Paul's mission over the next few days to get this magical log cabin - and thus began his dark obsessive spiral into the murky world of Ebay.

Ebay is fine and good if you're after something trivial, don't really care much and have a crapload of time on your hands. However, this was a log cabin and we needed it, which necessitated Paul entering 12 different bids and obsessively watching, waiting and strategising. He stopped eating. He set alarms throughout the night to check the bids. We mapped out bid locations throughout England, Scotland and Wales in terms of driving distance and gas cost on top of end price. We even factored in how many Burger King stops would be necessary on such road trips, and added the cost of these. We're down to 6 feasible bids.

Two full days we were at this, determined to give our kids the best Easter ever with the surprise of a glorious log cabin. Two full days of obsessively checking Ebay, not straying far from the house in order to maintain bidding position. Two days of googlemapping and cost analysis.

We were outbid on all 12. I don't know who these people are that paid upward of £160 for a log cabin made of cheap, faded plastic that probably smells of cat pee and homeless Eastern Europeans.

Thus our plan to give the girls a brilliant second Easter (and making up for having forgotten their first one) was already on a downhill slope.

Okay, that's fine. Easter isn't about presents. It's about zombies and chocolate, right? Well, we could at least get the chocolate right, and off to Sainsburys we went - coming home with £28 worth of chocolate goodness on Friday, and having eaten every last piece (don't worry, we shared with the kids. A bit. Well, they have small tummies and chocolate isn't very good for them anyway) by Saturday night. And all of the stores are closed until Monday.

Okay, so we failed on the chocolate front. It's a good thing, I guess, because with chocolate this:

Plus this:

Turns into this:

So we kind of dodged a bullet there.

Still, it's Easter, and Easter is all about chocolate ( they're too young still for zombies ) so Paul ran off to the store to buy at lease some Easter chocolate goodness for the kids (Aero bars) and we had the best intentions to wake up early before the kids to hide chocolate bars and a couple of their stuffies throughout the garden for the kids to find.

But it rained. And we slept in. And honestly? The kids couldn't have cared less anyway.

So for the kids' second ever Easter we spent it hanging out, eating omelettes, playing outside, eating Aero bars and having good friends over for a roast and veggies.

So despite our very best intentions, we failed at Easter as parents. But we don't have to tell them, in fact, maybe we can photoshop some nice Easter memories for the kids this year.

Parenting Win after all!

The Man Flu. It got me.

Alright, I'm feeling bad about giving Paul such a hard time about his Man Flu the other day - it's now hit me like a tonne of bricks.

Poor, deathly ill Paul and the kids picked me up from work and given that we were all so freaking sick (and traffic was a nightmare) we opted to go out to eat rather than attempt to cook and then, god forbid, clean, at home. So our eating out as a family routine  started in typical fashion with a debate about what to eat, going something like this.

The American Diner? Nope. Wrong way down the A40. Have you seen this traffic?
Chinese? No way, we're never paying for Chinese food as long as Xiaona lives with us. Her's is better. Chinese food has been ruined for us forever.
Indian? God no, are you insane? Lochie had 4 consecutive diaper changes in a 10 minute period after the last time. We're too low on wipes for Indian food.
Greek? Too slow to come out. Kids are starving. Plus, hummus is a bitch to get out of their hair.
French? Too posh.
Italian? Still too posh.
Polish? They hate kids and don't have high chairs.
Baskin Robbins? (he just gave me the side eye)

We figure that a Denny's would do wonderfully over here.

See, part of our problem is that we struggle to eat out with the twins. We feel as though taking the twins to nice restaurants is rude to other patrons - whereas in somewhere like a pizza hut I couldn't care less because hey, they chose to go to pizza hut. If an establishment has less than 4 highchairs we figure that it's out of obligation rather than actual acceptance of screaming, food tossing mini patrons that crap themselves at the tables. If an establishment has an army of highchairs right at the door and some sort of balloon feature we figure that we're good to eat there, guilt free. And we'll leave an ungodly mess as well.

But alas, there wasn't a pizza hut to be found and we ended up at a local pub on the lake. Very nice, and we managed to scoop 2 of their 3 high chairs. Our kids were covered in flu-snot, my husband was dripping sweat from his fever and I was coughing up a lung - along with Kaitie's death rattle cough/gasp - so we were quarantined to the back of the pub. We had a nice view -

of the ice cream machine

and it scared the freaking bejeebers out of all of us every time it came on.

At least it covered up the coughing, groaning, moaning, sneezing and hacking coming from our table. We hope.

Training the Dog, Part 2

Reclaiming the Sofa

Apparently, Huar Huar feels that because he uses the furniture like people, we're all his prison bitches. The solution to this, as was kindly pointed out to us again by Liane and Roy, is to either A: get him off the furniture or B: buy taller furniture. So for now, Huar Huar has entered phase 2 of our attempt at turning him into a normal dog, and he is no longer allowed on the furniture. Eventually we'll let him up on it by invitation only, but for now, no furniture for him.

In our new place it's been quite easy - the only furniture that he can reach downstairs is the sofa - 3 days of kicking him off repeatedly has paid off in that he doesn't really even try any more. Or, so we assume. I have no idea what he does at night while we're upstairs, but I'm sure I wouldn't approve. He's probably been making sweet sweet love to our shoes or something. I wouldn't put it past him.

Now that boundaries are being set, we're going to try place training him onto a mat by the garden door, and see how that goes.

The Man Flu

The Man Flu

It all started with the kids getting sick. Poor Lochie has been sick as a dog with a high fever and chesty cough, Kaitie has now followed suit (and we've learned that when Kaitie is miserable, we're all miserable). We thought it would stay with the kids, we'd keep them in a drugged up stupor, they'd get over it and then we'd move on with our lives.

Then Paul got it.

I'll give him this, the guy is sick. I was sleeping soundly when suddenly Paul comes staggering into the room clutching his head in one hand and the cat in the other, pouring sweat and claiming to be near death. His fever was raging out of control and was quite possibly the worst fever that any man has ever endured and survived to tell the tale. He was near delirium and needed water, green death nyquil, motrin and sleep. Alone. I slept on the floor of the nursery with the sick kids while he and the cat star-fished on the soft king size bed - Paul in a drugged up coma sleep and the cat in the sheer satisfaction that he had finally usurped my position in the household as Paul's preferred bedmate, that furry, ungrateful bastard.

Did the coma sleep help? No. Because not only did Paul have the wicked virus that was raging through our household, he also had a touch of THE MAN FLU.

And God help the one that points this out to him.

See, I was feeling quite ill myself. However, my day was very different. I had the same virus that was raging through the household, as well as my general diseased state, I was recovering from a stroke and still managed to take the tube into the city to spend the day at a stroke clinic having hordes of tests done, walking back to the tube, getting home, picking up groceries, cleaning the living room, answering work emails, cleaning the kitchen, bathing the kids, putting the kids to sleep and taking care of Paul.

But he was the deathly ill one.

See, while men suffer greatly from Man Flu, woman flu involves being sick and getting on with everything that needs to be done. But oh, you'll hear about it for the rest of your natural born life. And he has.

So, convinced that Paul's illness was near terminal, we called the out of hours clinic and appointments were made for all 4 of us at the hospital clinic nearby to get checked out. The kids go first, one at a time. "Just a virus" the Dr. declares. Paul is dubious. He explains about their horrible fevers and coughs. We're instructed to give them calpol and nurofen - both over the counter meds that we already had at home. Paul checks that the over the counter strength is going to be enough. The Dr. assures him that yes, it will do the trick. Paul is visibly doubtful.

It's his turn.

She listens to his chest. It's clear. Takes his temperature. Normal. Paul points out that this is only because of the overdose of Super Strength Motrin that he recently took. The Dr. isn't swayed. She checks his ears and throat. A little red, but nothing alarming. He again points out that this is because of the grotesque amount of lozenges and cold medication that he has been taking. She's still not swayed, and announces that he too has "a flu-y like virus". Paul asks if this is going around, has it been in the news, what is the name of this horrid, life threatening virus-flu - the norovirus? Hantivirus? Influenza Maximus? Swine Flu? Bird Flu? Nope, just "a flu-y like virus".

He's not happy and thinks she's a quack. It's not helped that when she checked me out she declared a bit of inflammation on my tonsils, though I don't have any tonsils. He's now convinced that she's just a first year med student that clearly should have either loaded us up with virus killing antibiotics or admitted us and we leave, resigned to take our wussy-pants over the counter drugs for our wussy pants flu-y like virus that has nearly killed us all.

And Paul's final words on the subject?

"You know, this never would have happened if we were still in China. In China they would have given us so many drugs that we'd have left there loaded up like drug mules. The drugs wouldn't have fecking done anything, but at least we'd have them."

To his credit, when he got home he made us all soup, hot chocolate and chocolate cake with ice cream. Even with the Man Flu.

Training the Dog, Part 1

So, I kind of lost my shiznit on the dog about a week ago after he nearly bit one of the twins because well, she touched him. Our friends Liane and Roy have a rescue dog and have thankfully done years and years of dog training research, reading, trial and error so that they can pass on their wisdom to me in quick 10 minute cliff's notes intervals - which we're hoping to use, along with our Tivo being set to It's Me Or the Dog - US of the occasional tip and for that little bit of validation that at least we're not as bad as the people on TV.

Step 1 - The upstairs is a no - dog zone. For now.

This is good because:

• He can't piss on my bed if he can't get to my bed. ( I told you he was a jerk )
• He can't piss on the twins' stuff if he can't get to the twins stuff. Well, the stuff upstairs anyway. He got the RaRa Tree House play set this afternoon. The bastard.
• He can't growl at the kids while they're sleeping
• Apparently this is going to set some sort of boundary with him, that the kids can go upstairs and he can't because he's lower on the great family totem pole. The cat is on the top, and has made this very, very clear.

We expected to have some very rough nights with Huar Huar howling, yowling, dirty protesting on the sofa and unleashed hatred and revenge upon us and the twins. But nothing seems to have happened. He's cool with it for the most part. We've got a baby gate at the top of the stairs (not yet at the bottom. Parents of the year, right here ) and he just hangs out either downstairs all night or at the top by the gate, but not technically upstairs with us.

I'm quite happy with this, and after a full week of him being a "downstairs doggie" I'm going to claim this one a win:

US: 1 Dog: 0

We're going to keep him downstairs, until he's stopped being an overall jerk about everything else. However, if he keeps this up he may not get shipped off to Canada after all.

My dog is a jerk, but we're working on it.

My dog is a jerk.

The Jerk. Sideways. Because I'm technologically challenged. Very.

His name is Huar Huar and we brought him over to the UK from China, he was a jerk before we brought him over here, but 6 months in British quarantine has given him PTSD and made him into even more of a jerk.

See, I've watched enough Caesar Milan to know that the problem is me. And Paul. Mostly Paul. But I still think that deep down, my dog is just a jerk. Here's why:

He:

• Growls at the kids
• Nips at the kids
• Tries to eat anyone that comes to the door
• pees on stuff
• just to be an asshole
• Anger poops
• Makes a point to puke all over me whenever he's in the car
• Bites our friend Roy but is totally cool with homeless squatters sleeping in our back yard. Ass.

But:

• We've had him for so long and he's always been my best bud
• he saved us from being robbed / murdered in China more than once
• he keeps the cat in check

So, at 11 years old for him and 31 years old for me, we're for the very first time going to try to train the dog.

And the kids. You know what? Fuck it. We're just going to try training everybody around here.

Fireworks and Ginger - how I loathe thee

Spring Festival in China is a wonderful thing.

Weeks of colourful celebrations, elaborate dining, random red envelopes full of money, stories of mythical beasts.... basically you get to stuff your face and blow stuff up for 2 weeks straight without consequence. Like I said, it's a wonderful thing.

Last year I spent the festival with the family of a kindergarten doctor, Gao Su Chien. We stayed in the city and ate at her family's home, went to blow up some explosives and then on to Karaoke. Good times, good times.

This year, Paul and I went to Liang Shan Guang, a small village an hour outside of Benxi and also a little bit of tiger territory, to spend the holiday with our friend Sun Li Li (Sandy)'s family. We had a wonderful time, and it was so nice to get out of the city for a few days. Clean air, different people, no cars, no running water, etc.. Just beautiful.

Of course, no wonderful time of mine is ever without incident...

We started our little trip with Sandy buying the tickets. The tickets were so cheap! Only 10RMB per person for a trip that would normally cost about 50. Ah, the Chinese way of travel. Apparently we were leaving Shenyang at 3:00am, so as to save the 40yuan (£4) on the fast train ticket that left at 10am. Joy. So Sandy slept at our house ( which actually sucked a lot, because her alarm was set for 2:15am but while she was sleeping the dog took off with her alarm clock and hid it in our house, so after we got back home the bloody thing kept going off at 2:15am for 4 days until we finally found it.)

We got up and left for the train station. Once we got there we found out that it's a milk run train, and would take 5.5 hours for a 1.5 hour trip in a taxi. ( It would have only taken 2 hours on a bus but Sandy didn't feel it was safe for us to ride on a bus. The foreigner thing. ) So after 2 hours of the train full of people all staring at us, spitting on the floor and asking Sandy questions about us as if we weren't even there ( Where are they from, do you work for them, what are their jobs, how much money do they make in a month? ) we were thanking God/Buddha and any other diety that would accept our appreciation that we at least had seats. A lot of people were just standing right over us for hours.Staring and chewing.

Sandy's village was clearly quite poor, but beautiful. The best part- Sandy's parents were so excited to have us over, and it was such an honor to them that they told everyone in the village that we were coming. They also told them all to be very polite, not to ask questions about us ( that they would just give them all a rundown later ) and not to stare! It was wonderful! For the first time in my life here in China people were not staring at us wherever we went, people didn't drop what they were holding as we came around the corner and for 3 whole days I didn't have to hear "Ni men shi na gua ren ma? Ni men doa da la ma? Ni shi u le shi ma? Zai yi ga yue yo doa chien ma?" (where are you from, how old are you, are you teachers, how much money do you make in a month) It was wonderful.

Sandy's parents are wonderful people. Her little sister was at home too, from her high school in Ben Xi. They were so kind to us and treated us like gold.

Sandy's parents house is a traditional courtyard style Chinese farm house. A kitchen in the back, a cold room for storing food, a bedroom/dining room/living room and a second bedroom with a TV. The bathroom is outside ( the reason that Paul put up such a huge fight to stay at a hotel. Despite that there wasn't a hotel to be found for at least an hour on a train from the village ) The toilet is an outhouse, but rather than a deep hole it's a run off style that runs off into their pig pen. (shudder)There's no door, either, and it was freezing cold while we were there. All trips to the bathroom were blindingly quick. As well, there wasn't any toilet paper. In a small tray near the roof of the toilet are her sister's old notes and test papers. They apparently are better for the garden than regular toilet paper, and cheaper. Have you ever had to wipe your backside with someone else's test paper? It just feels wrong while you're doing it. She does have good grades, though...

I even got a picture of Paul using the toilet there. He made me erase it though, but it was great! We were standing guard for each other ( as there was no door and we had been trying desperately to hold it all in for 2 days we were both bound to be in there for awhile ) As he's going in, he hands me the camera that was in his pocket saying "Hold this, I don't want it to fall in."

What would you have done??!!! How could he not have expected that I would jump in and take a picture??!!! (The picture was actually really funny because he had to hold himself up using the walls of the outhouse. Oh my God it was funny!) He was so mad, though. He said the next time I had to use the bathroom I was on my own for door patrol and he's going to run up and throw a chicken in there with me.

Anyway, the house is heated in a very interesting way. The kitchen is behind the bedroom/dining room/living room, which is just a small room with a waist high wooden platform taking up nearly the entire room with a thin walkway from the door to the platform. The platform is hollow underneath and has plastic covering on top. The mother is always cooking something, and all of the smoke and steam from the stove is directed into the next room and trapped under the giant platform thing, so the platform is alway really hot. We spent 3 days in that one room, on that one platform (kong). When it was time to eat they would put a table on the platform ( if you're standing beside it it's about mid-shin high ) so you sit cross legged on the platform to eat. Then they take the table away and bring out the cards.  Then we ate again, went out for a walk with the cows, came back, ate again, played more cards, watched tv, ate again and then brought out the blankets and all slept lined up together on the platform.

When in Rome, right?

Then came the night of the Spring Festival. Traditionally, on this night people will eat dumplings, light off fireworks and firecrackers to scare away the nian beast, watch the traditional Spring Festival Variety Show on TV all night and eat a huge, massive dinner at midnight.

We were expecting this. We were prepared for this. We were looking forward to this. This is not what happened.


Fireworks were going up all over the village, and it was so loud that you felt like you were in the middle of a beautiful, multicoloured assault on bagdhad. The fireworks were lighting up the shapes of the mountains all around us, and you could even see the fireworks that other villages were lighting off. This went on for a good 2 hours.

It would seem that all of the new fireworks go to the cities, and all of the old fireworks go to the country. Wanting to repay the kindness of our hosts, we bought the largest, most expensive fireworks available - a good Y300 worth. However, it would seem that all of the new fireworks go to the cities, and all of the old fireworks go to the country. As these were so expensive, I gather that they had sat there for some time and were indeed, well past their sell-by date. They were still incredible, but not quite as safe as the new ones.

We lit their cornhouse on fire.

The biggest and best that we had bought was a set of 12 rockets in a large box - you are meant to light the fuse and run as far away as fast as you can as rockets explode out of the box and into the sky - this is what should have happened, had 3 rockets not misfired and blown out the side toward the corn house - exploding in a shower of red and blue lights and leaving the wooden building aflame.

Paul is such a pyro with fireworks, but one of the big rockets misfired so that 9 rockets went straight up properly but the last one shot sideways right out the side of the box and straight at Paul! It missed him by like, an inch or so and lit the corn house on fire! (We all had it put out pretty quickly, but once it hit the corn house it showered and little rockets went off in all directions. Paul got the brunt of it, his glove was on fire. I just had some singed hair and a hole in the side of my pants. It's all good.

Then came the midnight dinner.

It actually didn't go over with us all that well. After spending a night sleeping on a burning hot wooden bed with no padding the next morning we were exhausted. Then we went out for a huge walk. Then we were nearly blown up by fireworks. Then we came back to make dumplings, which were really good. ( but the vegetarian ones had pieces of ginger in them, and if you get a whole chunk of ginger in your mouth it's just disgusting. While we were making the vegetarian dumplings her mom didn't tell me that you had to seperate and mix the ginger, so I just threw it into the mix in whole pieces. No body noticed this, so we carried on making the dumplings. It was horrible. I was the only one eating the vegetarian dumplings so no body else noticed, but every time I put one in my mouth it was a complete mystery whether or not it would be a good one or a horrific ginger one. Every bite was so full of suspense, but if I didn't eat them it would really insult Sandy's mom. I ended up trying to swallow each one of them whole. Then I choked on a big one and dumpling innards came flying out my nose onto the table. I'm so graceful.

The worst part is that we made so many of the stupid things that we were eating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 2 days. Oh god, oh god oh god.

I guess I can't really complain. Paul didn't have vegetarianism as an excuse, so they kept trying to make him eat the most disgusting things imaginable. First it was chicken feet, which Sandy's father kindly demonstrated how to eat for us. You have to actually suck the meat off of the toes. Oh god, oh god oh god. (at KFC here you can get a bucket of feet. yum.) Then there were silk worms and pig brain.

Then there were pig feet at the midnight dinner. Right in the middle of the table was a bucket of boiled pigs legs with the feet. I nearly threw up just now typing this. Blech!

Paul tried to get out of eating it by saying that he didn't know how to eat it. They all grabbed it like a chicken leg and gnawed the meat off. Paul still wasn't eating it. Sandy's father asked Paul why he wasn't eating it, and Paul said that he just doesn't like to eat meat with bones. So Sandy's father stood up, grabbed a pigs leg and foot and proceeded to tear all of the bones out with his bare hands. He turned it upside down, grabbed two toes in each hand and pulled the entire leg apart. I can still hear it ripping and squelching. At this point I nearly threw up into my giant pile of dumplings I was still trying to work though. Paul had turned completely green as the father was ripping that foot apart and putting the "meat" onto Paul's plate with his bear hands.

I think that's what topped it for me. I was so tired from the day and the bad sleep and the fact that it was now well after midnight, I had an incredible migraine from hearing nothing but screechy Chinese opera for the last 6 hours, my migraine was steadily growing worse from the constant fireworks and noisemakers around us, I was so full from those bloody dumplings and now completely nauseated by the sight before me that my head was swimming and my eyes started watering and I couldn't make them stop. I had turned completely white. Everyone thought I was crying because I was so homesick or something but I just needed to get some decent sleep. Her parents were horrified but I tried to act like nothing was wrong by forcing my self to swallow even more mystery dumplings but the squelching continued from the pig's feet being pulled apart so I ran outside and threw up. By the time I came back in dinner was over and they were busy making up the beds for the night. I was so happy! I had never in my life been so happy to see a bed! (albeit a hard, burning one ) Unfortunately, the Variety Show was still on until 3am which was full of a lot more Chinese opera. Sigh.

The next day I was really feeling awful. So was Paul. We had had a wonderful time and loved it here, but just needed to go home, shower, go to a proper bathroom and relax. I guess Chinese county life is not for us. We had a talk about possible excuses and "rock paper scissored" to figure out who had to "take one for the team". I lost.

So I took Sandy aside and made up an excuse that I had my period and it was really painful and I just needed to go and relax at home where I can take a shower and some western meds- Sandy told her mom who told her neighbor who told the entire village and they were all talking about my period and suggesting what I should do, which included showering in their sink, eating ginger (blech!) and lying down in strange positions. We finally escaped back to Sandy's home but her mother set me up on the bed/stove thing to watch Chinese opera all day while everyone worked around me. It was horrifying! I didn't dare get up because if I did her mother and her mother's friends would bustle up to me like a pack of chickens trying to force me back down, re arrange my blankets and feed me some other god awful kind of tea and more mystery dumplings. No matter what I told them, they were convinced that the pasty white color of my skin meant that something was seriously wrong with me. And the whole time, the Chinese opera on the TV didn't stop. Oh god, oh god, oh god.

We finally convinced them that we were eternally grateful for their wonderful hospitality and care, but really do need to go home today. They flatly said that we couldn't go home today because, sorry, there is no train today. Well, that sucked but sounded reasonable so we bit the bullet and resisted the urge to attempt walking home. Then, around 2:00 we heard the train come through the village, stop at the station and take off again.

We were village hostages.