The Downtown Diner

Another Tender Tennessee Christmas

2011-12-20T22:00:00.001+08:00

Well technically for us it's the first one but still, we are totally enjoying this Christmas in Nashville.

I would have eventually forgiven you for losing half our sheep

2011-12-15T12:07:00.014+08:00

We've been going to The Vine Street Church in Nashville lately and they have a wonderfully active kids' choir program.

Which one of my kids do you think bonded with the choir director right away? And then agreed to be part of the Christmas play, even though we got to the church just two weeks before the performance whereas the other kids had been rehearsing for weeks? And willingly stood in front of the audience tonight, singing loudly and proudly? With lots of adorable head bobbing?

No, not this one.

It was this one.

Audrey was in the audience and Grant was on stage as a shepherd. At first he told me he had been cast as a cowboy, and then no, maybe it was German shepherd. We finally figured it out. (His English has improved by leaps and bounds but some words still throw him for a loop.)

When he knew the words he sang them clearly. When he didn't know them he faked it so well, only his mother would know the difference.

You guys know me, I was in the audience crying, of course. Partly because my boy was such a charming little shepherd. He is exactly the type of boy, curious and brave, who would have followed a star to see the Baby Jesus on that night 2011 years ago.

There's also a good chance that on the way to see the Messiah he would have left his sheep on a hillside somewhere and the next morning we would have spent hours wandering in the wet grass trying to round them back up again, with Grant in the background reminding us again and again that it was AN ACCIDENT, AN ACCIDENT! Oh dear, these 8-year-old boys and their accidents. It is almost more than a mother can bear sometimes.

So back to me crying.

It was partly because he was such a convincing and sweet little shepherd. And partly because I could not BELIEVE how well he learned those songs in just two short weeks. This is a kid who could hardly say a complete sentence in English five months ago when we arrived here from Beijing. And here he was singing so clearly, "Will you be ready for the light, ready for the light to shine upon you?"

And partly because he had dared to do this thing. Even the dramatic and daring Audrey had shied away from this performance. But there was Grant, standing on the "boomer" (riser) singing and I was in the audience crying. I put my hand on my cheek, hoping it would look like I was lost in thought or admiration and not simply bawling. I faked it pretty well, I think. At least, well enough that only my son could tell the difference.

I am ready, Grant. I'm ready for the light to shine upon me.

And I would have eventually forgiven you for losing half our sheep.

Newest Member of the Gao Family

2011-11-30T23:18:00.000+08:00

Dear customers of the Downtown Diner, I give you the newest member of the Gao Family: Cooper Ziggy Gao.

He's a shih tzu. Isn't he adorable? Audrey tells me at least two times every hour, "I just love Cooper." Or she comes to me with an excited report that goes something like this:

"Cooper came over to me and he went like this. And then I went like this. And then he went like thiiiisssss! Isn't he just so cute?! I just love Cooper!"

Grant made an astute observation - he looks like "one of those dogs you see on a girl's binder."

Doesn't he though?

Let me tell you though, the shih tzus, they are hard to house-train. Cooper got me up five times during the night last night. Two times he peed. The other three times, he and I stood there in the freezing cold under the stars, shivering and looking at each other.

I might have said some curse words.

And this is probably not a shih tzu thing but a normal puppy thing - he eats EVERYTHING! Just now I pulled Grant's Chinese textbook out of his mouth. A minute ago he was nibbling on a soccer ball. Sometimes he even snacks on rocks.

Welcome to the family Super Cooper!

Henry the Dead Rat

2011-08-29T00:14:00.001+08:00

There is a dead rat at the end of the driveway of our new house. It is so badly decomposed that I thought it was a big brown leaf but Audrey looked at it one day and saw what it really was.

Much screaming ensued, I can assure you. From her dramatic performance you would have thought she had uncovered a mass grave in our front yard.

Anyway no one has moved the carcass so it just sits there. One day when we made a family trip to the mailbox (I don't know why the kids have to go with me to check the mail but they do, every time) Audrey took a moment to visit with the dead rat.

"Let's name him," she suggested. "Mr. Henry. His name should be Mr. Henry."

I was engrossed in a packet of coupons and Grant just shrugged. Audrey continued.

"Mr. Henry, we want to say something to you. We want to say that we're so sorry."

Grant was jolted from ambivalence - his reaction was lightning-fast and assured. He kicked the gravel at Mr. Henry and Audrey. "Sorry?! What am I sorry for? I didn't do anything to him? I'm not sorry for anything!"

You have to understand that Grant is busy enough taking responsibility for the crimes that he really did commit. He has no time to accept blame for things he didn't do.

Audrey kept her eyes on Mr. Henry, unfazed by the rocky disturbance her brother was causing. "Mr. Henry, we are sorry. We're sorry that..." Her eyes were cast downward but I could see that she was searching the ground for some way to complete the sentence she had just started. It's a poor dead rat. Surely there is something we should be sorry about here...

"We're sorry that, that you died."

Grant scoffed. I put a coupon for Disney on Ice (4 for $44) under my arm and threw the rest of them in the recycling bin. Audrey took one last look at Mr. Henry and started a solemn retreat back to the house.

And sadly, no one made any attempt to dispose of Mr. Henry.

No, that ring is not "hoochie"

2011-08-25T02:00:00.010+08:00

Yesterday Grant asked me to come to his school to have lunch with him. Fortunately his school not only allows this but encourages it so I gladly said yes.

This morning I asked him if he had any ideas of what I should wear to his school. "Anything is okay, just not anything too hoochie, okay?"

Pardon me? When did he even learn the word "hoochie"? And have I been known to wear "hoochie" clothes?

I tried to go for a demure yet casual look for our lunch date but I couldn't resist wearing my green flower ring. Does this count as hoochie?

I think not.

I had forgotten how wonderful the bulletin boards are at elementary school. As I waited for Grant outside the cafeteria I taught myself the sign language words for "P.E." and "read" and "backpack".

Then Grant came around the corner and saw me, and he looked so excited. It was the sweetest thing in the world. He held my hand but didn't talk to me since talking isn't allowed in the hallway.

Maybe that explains the sign language bulletin boards.

Then he showed me how to get food in the cafeteria and I was reminded of the day 15 years ago when his father did the same thing, in a different cafeteria, one that was halfway around the world at Chiba University in Japan. That was our first encounter, and the rest is history.

Sunrise, sunset.

I had a ball talking with Grant's classmates during lunch. This one little girl was so cute. Here's a recap of our conversation:

"Did you know they sell cookies for a quarter up there? You can get four for a dollar!"
"That's very impressive math, Madeline. And you're right. Four quarters is a dollar."

Moments later.
"You know, you could go up there and buy four cookies right now."
"I guess I could, Madeline, but I could never eat that many cookies."
"You could give them to us!"
"That's a great idea Madeline!"

And me, being the pushover that I am, I bought four cookies and gave them to Grant's classmates.

After lunch Grant's teacher let me hang around for recess, which Grant calls "Reese's". He's confused as to why they don't hand out peanut butter cups at Reese's break.

Then after Reese's the class lined up and Grant asked me for a hug and a kiss goodbye. This is huge, folks. When I picked him up at his school in China he completely ignored me. He said, "If people see me hugging an English woman they'll think I'm English."

News flash #1: I'm not English.
News flash #2: Even if you don't hug me, people can tell you're half white.

But after a few weeks in the U.S. he is not only not ashamed of me, he's proud of me. I guess he sees that in a different context, I'm not a bumbling, lost fool. Instead I'm smart and capable. And I have some cool rings.

Of course we all know I've always been smart and capable rather than bumbling and lost, but you have to see it from the perspective of an 8-year-old.

All I can say is thank God for different contexts. And for 25¢ cookies. And for schools that encourage parents to come to school for lunch.

And most of all, thank God for 8-year-old boys.

This girl walks into a shoe store and

2011-08-09T22:20:00.013+08:00

We have wi-fi at the house now and it is so dang fast and I can access ANY site I want! I feel so free after years of trying to get around the internet censors in China. And the censorship was getting heavier and heavier as time went by, which always left me with this ominous feeling that one day I might wake up and be able to access chinadaily.com.cn and nothing else...

Anyhoo, have you all been looking at the green stuff? I hope so.

Since segues don't appear to be my strong suit this morning ("anyhoo" is not a segue, I admit that) I will make no attempt to give you one now. I'll just go straight to a great Nashville story for you.

My BFF Pat came to Nashville to help us get settled in and we wanted to celebrate with a glass of wine. The kitchen was completely bare so I went out in search of a liquor store where I could get a bottle of wine, some wine glasses and a cork screw.

The name of the one I found was so perfect for the Deep South. "Mr. Whiskers Liquor Store".

I quickly picked a Yellowtail Chardonnay from a collection of wines so impressive you'd hardly believe it belonged to a man named after his mustache. But I could not find the wine glasses and cork screws. I walked through the whole shop twice and finally gave up.

As I was checking out I asked the guy at the register where the corkscrews were.

"We can't sell cork screws here. Tennessee law," he said.

"You can't sell cork screws?"

"Tennessee law," he echoed.

I must have looked really pitiful at that point. I was after all wondering if I would be able to swing the bottle of wine at the side of the house and open it without shattering the whole thing.

He whispered to me, "You can buy a corkscrew at the shoe store next door."

"Seriously?" I asked. "You can't sell me a corkscrew but the SHOE STORE can?"

"Tennessee law."

By then I was actually enjoying the thought of opening the bottle of wine with some unconventional method but I wondered if he was kidding about the shoe store so I decided to find out.

The shoe store next door wasn't one of those crappy shoe stores that sell last year's shoes at next year's prices. It was a serious operation. One of those orthotic places that make molds of your feet and do heat-sensitive impressions and stuff.

"Can I help you?" asked a friendly, white-haired lady.

"The guy at Mr. Whiskers told me I could buy a corkscrew here?"

"Yes, let me finish with this customer and I'll get one for you," she said.

"Oh, I don't really want one. I just wanted to know if you really sell them," I answered and then walked out.

So let's re-cap here. In Tennessee wine is sold in liquor stores and corkscrews are sold in shoe stores.

Shoes, it seems, can be sold in shoe stores.

Everyone got that?

Tennessee law.

Take Time to Look at the Green Stuff

2011-08-01T10:42:00.003+08:00

We arrived in Nashville on July 18 and we're slowly settling in to our new house. Every day is chaotic and fun right now - I'm drinking wine out of paper cups and mixing chicken salad in a soup pot and we're sleeping on a mattress on the floor but we have everything we need.

There are so many stories I want to tell you but for now I'll share the one on the top of my mind -

On the drive from Birmingham to Nashville Grant stared out the window for several minutes and then told me, "I've looked at green stuff so long now, my eyes can see further. When you look at trees and grass for a long time I know it makes your eyes gooder."

More later, once we get wi-fi established in our house. For now, don't forget to look at the green stuff.

Oh, and Reba McEntire is going to be my neighbor

2011-07-05T20:08:00.003+08:00

People have been asking me the same questions about our upcoming trip to Nashville so I decided to simplify things for all of us and post an FAQ.

(Do normal people post FAQs about their personal life? Someone tell me they do.)

1. Why are you going to Nashville?
The kids' English is falling behind their same-age peers in the U.S. and I want them to catch up right now. There's a certain window of opportunity for learning a language like a native speaker and I don't want that window to close before I realize it. So the main goal is to get their written and spoken English back up to their age level.

At the same time I really need some time back in my home country, close to my family. I do love China and my friends and family here but after six years, it's time for me to get back home for a while.

2. How long will you stay?
At least a year. Buddy and I will an assessment after six months and see how everyone is doing academically, socially, health-wise, etc. Then we'll decide whether we'll move back to China in 2012 or if we'll stay in the U.S. longer.

And wow did I just put "academically" ahead of "health-wise"? I did, didn't I? That is just not right.

3. Why Nashville? Aren't you from Alabama?
Yes, I am from Tuscaloosa and my parents are still there but we picked Nashville because it's a very open-minded and vibrant place. Nashville is a city with soul.

Plus my baby sister Amanda lives there and she and her husband Jeff are expecting their baby Bliss in September.

(When your baby sister has a baby do you have to stop calling her that?)

4. Where will the kids go to school?
Nashville public schools. Julia Green Elementary School for Grant and J.T. Moore Middle School for Audrey. We're going to live right across the street from Amanda in a 2BR/1BA duplex.

Yes, one bathroom. God help us. I hope Reba doesn't mind if Grant occasionally pees in the bushes in the backyard. Maybe she will write a country music song about him.

5. When do you leave?
July 14.

6. Have you started packing yet?
Yes. Grant packed the first suitcase over the weekend. He used our biggest suitcase and filled it with Nerf guns.

So we're set, basically.

7. Are the kids excited?
Yes, totally. They can't wait to see what American schools are like. And they love cheese grits and Taylor Swift.

8. Will you miss us here in China?
Yes, absolutely. I love you guys. We will be back, I promise.

Parking in China: The Joke I Do Not Get

2011-06-28T20:30:00.001+08:00

When you were little did you ever have those times when everyone else was laughing at a joke and you didn't get it but you pretended like you did?

It happened to me all the time. And that's how parking is for me in China. I think we're all just parking wherever we can find a space but apparently there is some rhyme and reason to the whole thing that I DO NOT GET.

For example today I drove to the subway station and parked on a side road. There was another car parked right in front of me so I thought it was okay to park there.

But alas, 2 hours later, Buddy sent me this picture.

It's a parking citation.

But seriously folks, I don't get it. I think we're all just parking wherever we can find a space. Aren't we? (I took these pictures of parked cars on the way home today. These are very typical parking jobs.)

So why did I get a citation for parking like this?

China, I just don't get it.

Overheard in the Gao household last week

2011-06-20T16:55:00.012+08:00

1. Pepsi is a cheap knock-off that must be punished
Audrey hates Pepsi. HATES it. She told me this yesterday in the car. I never knew.

She doesn't hate the taste of it. She hates it because Pepsi copied Coke's idea. Coke had a great product and Pepsi "came along and copied it and is just trying to make money".

And we all know how altruistic Coca-Cola is.

2. Ashes to ashes
The other night at dinner Grant told us his friend's grandpa died in a house fire. It wasn't smoke inhalation, he burned to death. The rest of the meal was eerily quiet - unusual for the Gao family - as we all thought about the poor grandpa's painful demise.

Audrey was dubious and decided to investigate Grant's story a little further. She interviewed the friend yesterday after school.

Turns out his grandpa died in his sleep of cancer and the cremation was last week.

You can see where the confusion comes from. If you were an eight-year-old boy who was fascinated with fire and uninterested in details.

And Audrey's Big-Sister-Know-It-All crown rests firmly atop her head.

Mother-Daughter Spinning Class - The Non-Freaky Kind

2011-06-12T21:58:00.003+08:00

Audrey takes this class called GAB (Girls Achieving Balance) that is offered by Stella Chan Marinaro and if you live in Beijing and have a tween daughter you really should contact Stella because she has a great way of talking to the girls about fitness and nutrition. They listen to her. She says the same stuff we moms think we're saying but Audrey listens to her in a way she won't listen to me. Maybe it's because Stella's not her mom, maybe it's because she's sweet and cool, maybe it's because she's totally fit herself. I'm not sure what it is but I'm so glad we found GAB.

Stella gives the girls a chance to try all kinds of different sports. They've done kick boxing, cheer-leading, yoga, Nia, and spinning.

Audrey loved the spinning. She wanted to do it again and asked me to find her a regular class, which I dutifully did. I registered her for a trial session, to which she said, "I hope you registered for two because you know I'm not going to do this by myself."

In fact I hadn't known that but luckily I was able to get another spot in the class for myself.

Turns out the class I found wasn't quite what she was looking for. The music, the lights and the spinning were all too "freaky".

I have no idea what "freaky" means in this context, except that Audrey will not be attending that spinning class again.

And if you're the parent of a tween, you know that if I asked her what she meant by "freaky", the word "freaky" would have come up several times in her explanation. Which would have left me feeling not only confused but decidedly uncool. I guess this is pretty much how the next few years are going to be.

I lamented to Stella the next day at kick-boxing and guess what she put together? A special mother-daughter spinning class just for tween girls and their moms. The music was Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus, the lights were normal and the spinning was as hard or easy as you wanted it to be. It was perfect, nothing "freaky" about it.

If you can translate the word "freaky" into English please help me out, in the comments section.

Farewell to Lan Lan. And my sanity.

2011-05-09T14:03:00.001+08:00

Yesterday I came home from work and was met at the door by a clearly distraught Audrey. She wiped a tear from her cheek and drew in a deep breath before telling me, "Lan Lan ... is ... gone!"

My mind raced. Lan Lan. Lan Lan. Who the hell is Lan Lan?

A classmate of hers? No.

A relative? No.

One of the turtles? No, we haven't named them yet.

I decided sympathy was in order regardless of who Lan Lan was so I gave her a warm hug and said, "Oh sweetheart, I'm so sorry for your loss."

And then, gently, "Now remind me, who was Lan Lan again?"

"My dolphin!" she yelled indignantly, as if I had blanked on the name of my own grandchild. "Grant poked a hole in her and she deflated!" She ran to her room and slammed the door.

I knocked on the door and tried to comfort her with the fact that Lan Lan had gone to be with her Maker. Probably somewhere in Guangzhou.

She yelled at me to go away.

I went to find Grant, who was stretched out on the guest bed watching a Chinese drama about fighting the Japanese in the 40s. On an interesting side note, you can turn on the T.V. at any time of the day or night in China and see a dramatization of the fighting with the Japanese.

Well, I think that side note is interesting.

Anyway, Grant showed no remorse for his crime.

"She poured 酸梅汤 (sour plum juice) in my water gun so I killed her dolphin!" he cried.

He said it with such conviction, as if the dolphinticide were his God-given right. As if he had killed in self-defense. As if the dolphin had been armed and Grant had no choice but to take him out.

I felt compelled to say something but I didn't know where to start.

"Grant, you can't just..."

"Do you really think killing a dolphin is..."

I gave up because I couldn't think of way to complete those sentences that wasn't completely ridiculous.

Alright, Downtown Diner customers tell me what you would have said to Grant if you were the lucky woman God picked to be his mother. You can also leave condolences for Audrey, in the Comments section.

My niece hugging the "First Woman"

2011-05-07T09:40:00.001+08:00

April 29th was "Take Our Daughters to Work Day" and for my sister Christi, that means she took her daughter to the White House. Christi is a White House correspondent. I'm a little bit proud of her.

I saw Mandy on Friday and she told me all about it. Her highlights were:

The "necklace" they gave her at the door. That was her press pass, which you can see on the lanyard around her neck.
Hugging the "First Woman". I thought about telling her she's called the "First Lady" but her expression was just so darn cute...
Wondering why the press can't clap when the First Woman enters the room. We talked about how the press is supposed to remain impartial and that's hard if they're in the habit of cheering for lawmakers. Mandy was unconvinced but I love the fact that she's learning first hand about the importance of journalistic integrity. She might just follow in my sister's footsteps one day. If that happens I will straighten her out on the whole First Lady vs. First Woman business.

As for me, I love the way Mrs. Obama is holding that little girl's face in her hands.

She is taking her so seriously.

And cherishing her.

This is my hometown

2011-04-30T22:13:00.008+08:00

I thought I was going home for Easter. Turns out I was going home to sit in the basement with Mom and Dad through the worst tornado Tuscaloosa, Alabama has seen in generations.

I was supposed to fly out early Wednesday morning but the storms were already brewing so I had delayed my flight to Thursday. I thought we'd sit through a few heavy storms on Wednesday and then I would drive to the airport the next morning.

Looking back now, my concerns about getting to the airport seem ludicrous because an F5 tornado was heading right for our backyard.

In the early afternoon Mom and Dad and I realized the storms were serious when our local weatherman, James Spann, hijacked the TV broadcast and started streaming news about the approaching tornadoes. There were a bunch of them and they all looked mean.

Modern technology is great in many ways because James could show us radar and images and streaming video and all kinds of great stuff about the storms. He told us a twister was going to hit Tuscaloosa around 4:45. It's scary when someone gives you an educated guess about What Time You Might Die.

He pointed to what he thought would be the storm's approximate path and he sent chills up my spine when he said it would likely go through Alberta City, which is where we were. Again, James was surprisingly accurate, the storm took almost the exact path he had predicted. I'm sure that all this technology, combined with James' analysis of it, saved many lives that day.

Mom and Dad and I were hunkered down in the basement watching James and the weather report. We had candles and flashlights and the weather radio and I had my laptop too, which turned out to be a serendipitous thing.

Remember I mentioned how great all the modern technology is? Well, it didn't seem so great when the tornado got dangerously close to Tuscaloosa and we got to look our storm straight in the eye as it churned towards our city. We could see it was a monster - it was a mile wide and it was hugging the ground like a vacuum cleaner.

To put that into perspective, the average tornado is around 100-500 feet wide at the base and it skips over the landscape. I've never heard of one that is over 5,000 feet wide and stays on the ground.

And this one was headed directly for us in Alberta City.

Just as James was shouting, "If you're in Tuscaloosa take cover immediately!" we lost power... No more images, no more radar, no more James Spann. Just us in the terrifying blackness.

Although we had brought flashlights with us to the basement we couldn't find them now in the dark (note to self: you really need to keep the flashlight in your hand) but my MacBook Air was in my lap and it gave off a nice glow. We used it to light our path to the safest room in the basement, where we got down on the floor and pulled a mattress over our heads.

That's when I heard the freight train noise and I knew the storm was close. I can't even describe the sound to you. It was adjectives like HUGE and POWERFUL and RIPPING come to life. It was I-DON'T-CARE-WHO-OR-WHAT-YOU-ARE-YOU'RE-IN-MY-PATH. It was HORRIBLE.

I could hear things hitting the roof outside. Mom still had the weather radio on and I asked her to turn it off. "I think our ears are going to tell us more now than your radio will," I told her.

After about a minute the freight train passed. We waited a few minutes and then emerged into the daylight to see trees down on power lines, branches and debris all over the neighborhood, but no one was hurt and no homes had serious damage. We were so lucky. Just 1/8 of a mile to the north complete neighborhoods were wiped out. Gone. All that's left are piles of rubble and remnants of trees. It looks like a bomb went off there.

This is my hometown.

There was a tree house on Forest Lake where I got my first kiss.

Krispy Kreme was the place where Christi and I played hooky on Sunday mornings with my Dad. Lemon-filled for me, chocolate with peanuts for her.

Rosedale Baptist Church was reportedly haunted and on weekend nights we used to sit in the parking lot and scare ourselves silly, claiming that we had seen a face in the 2nd floor window.

All that stuff is gone now. Dozens of people are dead or missing.

I'm grateful that we're alive.

Jiminy Cricket!

2011-03-25T16:48:00.007+08:00

Today I got in a cab and was ready to listen to my "Inspiration" song list during the ride. It has some great tunes on it collected from my best friends and I will share it with you one of these days.

However as soon as I got in the cab I heard this creaking noise. My first thought was that the meter was stuck or broken or something and the driver was going to try to overcharge me.

Oh I am so jaded. Because the driver was the kindest person I was going to meet all day.

The creaking noise was coming from none other than his pet cricket!

"Guo Guo" crawls around on the dash, sits on the steering wheel -

And doesn't fall off when the driver turns the wheel -

The driver bought Guo Guo in November and although it's very hard for crickets to survive the winter, this hardy little guy did. Crickets like this usually don't live more than six months so Guo Guo is in his twilight days. God bless him.

He eats just a few shreds of vegetables every day and otherwise is no trouble at all. Except that he did start wandering towards the backseat today and I had to ask the driver to get his animal under control. Because I was having visions of Guo Guo crawling up my pant leg and me flailing around in panic and crushing him to death. That would have been bad.

It was so cute to watch the driver and his pet play during the drive. Guo Guo sings. The driver picks him up and holds him in his palm. The cricket crawls up on the driver's sleeve. The driver strokes his wings.

Then we nearly side-swiped a Hyundai.

I guess between the roaming cricket and me leaning up from the back seat to snap pictures of him, it was a ride fraught with peril. Anyway I made it home safely and after saying good-bye to the driver and Guo Guo I chirped my own little song as I walked to the door.

Alright now seriously imagine Guo Guo was crawling up your pant leg. Would you have the presence of mind to gently shake him back out or do you think you would flail around and crush him? Tell the truth, in the comments section.

Drama Queen

2011-03-21T16:54:00.007+08:00

Lately I'm trying all kinds of new things. Like kick boxing and starting my own business. And now, theater.

Well, let me back up. One day this woman named Luciana came to my kick boxing class and she said she was putting together a show for International Women's Day and she needed some fighters for a fight scene. My friend Dee and I volunteered.

We didn't realize that the show would require real acting with speaking parts and all but we were good sports about it. We set two not-so-ambitious goals for ourselves:
1) Have fun.
2) Make the audience laugh.

We achieved those goals and in addition we gave each other countless bruises and cuts during our rehearsals.

And we became fast friends our co-star Tom Lone and our director Aashna Sen.

The play ran at the Penghao Theater. If you live in Beijing then attending a play at this theater needs to be on your bucket list. It cozy and hip and you will love it, I promise. Be sure to get the carrot cake from the cafe. You wouldn't expect to get the best carrot cake of your life in a theater cafe, would you? Oh, but you will. Normally you get carrot cake because of the cream cheese frosting but would you believe their cheesecake has chocolate frosting? Carrot cake with chocolate icing! It rocked my world.

Let's see, where was I? Oh right, the play.

The proceeds from the play went to a non-profit called Wokai, which provides micro-financing for women in rural China. Click on this link and you can see women just waiting for funding for their projects, and it's easy to donate.

Here are some scenes from the play. As you can see I've overcome my inhibitions about hitting, kicking and biting.

I'm not planning to keep the gold jacket that I wore in the play. What should I do with it? Please tell me in the comments section.

Who's following up on the salmon issue?

2011-03-17T11:12:00.000+08:00

Grant asks a lot of questions. Here are some classic examples from the last few weeks. I swear I am not making any of these up.

- If sharks could cook their food, would they?
- Could you teach a dog to start a fire?
- If a shark and an octopus had a fight, who would win?
- Who invented the traffic light?
- Do bugs go to heaven?
- If I was riding my bicycle really fast and I hit a pig, would the pig die?

Last night I was cuddling with my inquisitive son before he went to sleep when somehow his thoughts turned to arctic fisheries.

He asked, "What kind of fish do they have on the North Pole?"

I had to guess and said salmon. That could be right, right? I mean, I'm pretty sure I've seen pictures of polar bears with salmon in their mouth. Or are those black bears in Oregon...? Anyway, he's seven, how factual do I need to be here?

"Where else in the world do they have salmon?"

Again I guessed and said mostly in cold waters like the Northern Atlantic and arctic regions.

"Where does the salmon come from that we eat in China?"

At this point I was completely winging it. "I know a lot comes from Norway and Sweden. But it could come from any part of the world, I think." (Totally CMA'ing with that last sentence.)

"What tastes better - arctic salmon or Atlantic salmon?"

Do you ever reach a point where you feel it's best to just come clean and admit you have no idea what the hell you're talking about? That last question brought me to that point. So I dusted off an old phrase that I haven't used since my days as a high tech manager. Come on, it's the one you use at the office all the time. Let's say it together.

"That is a really good question and I'm going to have to check on that and get back to you."

You have no idea how sweet I am

2011-03-15T15:59:00.012+08:00

About four months ago I strapped on a pair of boxing gloves for the very first time at Vince Soberano's Black Tiger Fight Club and now I'm hopelessly addicted.

At first I was VERY uncomfortable with the idea of punching and hitting and kicking. I'm a pilates kind of girl. Swimming. Long walks in the park. Yoga. That's me.

But my friend Helen said I would love Vince's workouts so I decided to give it a shot. That first workout was hard on me because I was not in fighting shape at all. But I pushed myself, I sweated, I strained, I refused to quit.

And then Vince said, "Okay, great warm up. Let's start our workout."

I nearly died.

But now four months later I make it through the workouts with energy to spare. Vince has gotten me toned and shaped up in a way that I didn't think was possible after age 40. In fact I'm in the best shape I've ever been in.

Which is more a statement about the shape I've been in than my current one.

The gym is a little far from our house and I keep telling Buddy that when my current card expires I'll find a closer gym or class but in the end I keep going back to Vince.

I wish I knew how to quit him.

The other day my partner noticed something interesting, which I managed to catch on camera for you all.

Do you see that? I sweat in a heart shape! I am a seriously sweet and loving person.

Happy Year of the Rabbit from the Gaos

2011-02-01T20:52:00.009+08:00

Much love to you from Buddy, Melanie, Audrey and Grant. 恭喜发财！

You picked the wrong dead end street to beat up your GF

2011-01-27T21:16:00.016+08:00

I love the picture window in my living room. Right in front of the window is a dead end street and just past the street is the Olympic Park. The park has lots of lovely green foliage - it feels like an ocean that holds the city at bay, far away from us.

The other night around 9pm I was walking past the window and I saw a car parked on the dead end street. Nothing unusual there - people often park on this street and make out.

But what happened next is not common.

Two people came out of one car and started fighting. Like a fist fight. Now that I think about it, I've seen more fist fights in my 6 years in China than I've seen in my whole life. I don't know what it is about Beijing but it seems to turn people into some amateur version of Mike Tyson.

So anyway, turns out this fight was between a man and a woman. And the man was kicking her ass. Literally. He pulled her out of the car, pushed her on the ground and punched her.

He picked the wrong dead end street for this.

I yelled at my husband to call the police, which he dutifully did. But I ran out of patience when they didn't arrive within 30 seconds and besides the poor woman was really taking a beating out there. So I put my long black coat on over my pajamas and headed for the door.

Buddy stopped me mid-way and asked me what I had in mind.

That's when it occurred to me that I didn't have a plan. Those of you who know me are nodding your heads knowingly. I love you guys. And please know that if anyone is ever kicking your ass I will come to rescue. I will have no plan but at least we can get our asses kicked together.

I made up a plan quickly. I was going to stun the guy by speaking English and then kick him a few times.

Per usual, it all sounded good in my head but kind of fell apart the more I talked.

Buddy came up with a better plan - he would go down.

This was a much better plan, for many reasons:
1) He's stronger than me.
2) He speaks better Chinese than me. (Yes, I know, English was one of the key points in my battle plan but let's face it, we are in China and both the attacker and victim were presumably Chinese.)
3) He was not in his pajamas.

So he got in our car and drove over to them. He rolled down the window and asked the guy what was going on. This embarrassed the guy, who like the true coward that he is, quickly got into his car and drove off. Leaving his bruised female companion on the street. Classy.

Buddy asked the girl if she knew that guy and she said no but he owed her 5,000 RMB. This is where her story starts to fall apart. I mean, either someone is a complete stranger or they owe you money. Can't be both. Unless you're a really stupid loan shark. But this doesn't matter. Guys shouldn't beat up girls for any reason.

And definitely not on the dead end street right in front of our house.

-------------------------------------

Epilogue: The girl walked to the subway station and we never saw her again. The police showed up about 30 minutes after the whole thing was over and took some random pictures of the gravel on the street. They might as well have taken pictures of the stars for heaven's sake.

It is what it looks like

2010-12-31T15:56:00.008+08:00

There's this hotel close to my house called the Schengen. It has the most unusual sculpture out front.

Every time I drive by it I think, "That can't be what it looks like..."

The other day I had the chance to go inside the hotel and if I had any doubt about the sculpture out front, the lobby decor makes everything perfectly clear.

---------------

Post Script: After seeing this post my Mom sent the following mail to the Schengen Hotel: "As an artist I'm interested in the sculpture outside your hotel and in the lobby. Could you tell me the name of the artist? I would like to know what his/her vision is for his/her work. I also would like his/her name, address and social security number."

As always, dear Readers, I'll keep you posted.

Traffic Jams and CDs

2010-12-30T11:07:00.009+08:00

Traffic in Beijing is a nightmare.

The government estimates that 2,000 new cars hit the road every DAY. That means about 800,000 new cars joined the roads in 2010. That means I spend a lot of time at traffic lights looking at other people's license plates. Lately I've noticed a new phenomenon - the CD over the license plate trick.

Why would anyone do that, you might ask?

To avoid the traffic controls. The controls are based on the last digit of your license plate, so if your last digit is a 1 or a 6, you can't drive in the city on Wednesdays. 2s and 7s can't drive on Thursdays, and so on.

The idea is to take 20% of the cars off the roads every day of the week but guess what? It didn't work out that way. Lots of people like to have a license plate with the number 8 in it because they think it's lucky. So on the day the Lucky 8s are banned from the roads there is considerably less traffic for the rest of us.

File that under "To Talk About At Next Cocktail Party".

Some people find these traffic controls cramp their style so they simply cover the last digit of their license plate on the day they're not supposed to drive. A CD has apparently become the preferred medium. I have no idea why. If you do please leave me a comment.

I would think the police would pull over anyone who attempts this trick but based on the number of CDs I see every day, they don't.

On Dec. 24th the government instituted new measures that will reduce the number of new cars to 400,000 in 2011.

They should institute a crackdown on the people who cover their plates with CDs too. I would be happy to help out. If they would just give me a police woman hat and a note pad I could catch ten of these guys every day.

That's what I will be fantasizing about next time I'm stuck behind one of them at a red light.

Most Irresistible Dish at Thanksgiving Dinner

2010-11-28T20:41:00.011+08:00

I hosted Thanksgiving Dinner at my house on Friday night. Check out the fruits of my labor.

Appetizers. Yes like a true Southern Belle I have a deviled egg plate, and the goldfish crackers are homemade.

Sweet Potato Casserole

Turkey and Ham (both of which I outsourced this year)

Mac and cheese

Cauliflower au gratin

But this juicy little morsel stole the whole show:

When Grandparents Make Newbie Mistakes

2010-11-22T08:21:00.006+08:00

vs.

My Dad is in over his head.

I mean, he’s 75. He has four daughters and four grandchildren. How could such a veteran make a newbie mistake?

It all started when he sent us an email with lots of cute dog pictures in it.

That prompted Grant to reply:
“Dear Popo, I want this dog and this dog and this dog and this dog and this dog and this dog and this dog. I really like all these dogs and I wish I had some.”

Afraid that Dad might not recognize the obvious trap, I sent this follow-up:
“Dad I know this goes without saying but please don't buy us a dog.”

But he fell right in to that trap:
“Tell the kids I’m going to rent a dog for them for Christmas. love, Popo”

A few weeks later Grant double-checks:
“Popo. Are you still going to rent a dog for us when we come to Alabama at Christmas?”

Popo begins backpedaling:
“Grantmeister would you consider a parrot that could learn Chinese?”

Grant remains polite but firm:
“Actually I want a dog more. With a parrot, you can't play with it. It's just not cute. You can't cuddle with it."

One last feeble attempt from Popo:
"How about a rented gerbil?"

Grant is less polite and more firm:
"Popo it needs to be a dog. A gerbil is too small."

Popo gives in:
“I will contact a dog rental service and Grant and I will go down and select one.”

Already victorious, Grant delivers a surprising coup de grace:
“Dear Popo, is it a big dog or a small one? I want a small one. But not like a baby one. Babies aren't cute, they're all white. “

At peace with his role as beta male, Popo replies:
“It will be a small dog and he likes small people. love, Popo”

So basically I see two possibilities for this Christmas:

1. Popo rents a dog. The chaos that we normally enjoy at my parents’ house at Christmas gets whipped into an outright frenzy. Someone will be hospitalized.

2. Popo doesn’t rent a dog. My children spend the holiday wailing and gnashing their teeth at the injustice. Someone will be hospitalized.

Dec. 31 update: My brother-in-law Jeff came up with a brilliant idea that saved the day. He has a beautiful, sweet dog named Brunnen and instead of kenneling Brunnen in Nashville he brought him to Alabama for the holiday. Brunnen was happy to be on a chain in my parents' backyard for the week and Grant was able to play with him any time. It really was a win-win and I don't know if my Dad appreciates how his newest son-in-law saved him! I do Jeff - thank you!!!

-------------------------------------------------------------------

p.s. We would never call our grandparents "grandma" or "grandpa" in the South. We are more creative than other Americans.
p.p.s. I have never heard of a dog rental service. In Alabama or anywhere else in the world.

My Sister Asking Obama a Question

2010-11-20T10:49:00.013+08:00

Last week I went to visit my sister Christi in Japan. She was there to cover Obama's participation in the APEC Summit in Yokohama and had a few days free afterwards, so I went to hang out with her.

BTW this is Christi asking the President a question in India.

Here's Obama answering.

Cool, huh? I know, I totally know.

Since I was going to Japan I decided to take Grant so he could spend some time with Buddy's parents also live in Yokohama. They're Chinese but they live in Japan.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself to believe this is really my life.

Grant had to miss school but we figured loving attention from his grandma and grandpa would more than make up for it.

Plus they did homework with him every day.

This is only tangentially relevant but I want to insert here that I adore my in-laws. I think I'm the luckiest wife in the world because they love me like their own daughter. And I'm grateful to them for raising their son to be the man he is.

Here are some reasons I love Japan.

You can go into any random sushi shop on any corner and be assured that it will be reasonably priced and will taste FABULOUS.

Sometimes you're walking in the city and you stumble upon an absolutely serene temple in the middle of all the urban chaos. You walk through the stone gate and suddenly - welcome to Heaven!

There are lots of doughnut shops where you can sit and have a coffee and a pastry and watch the world go by. This pictures captures one of the best moments of my life.

The kids' menu has sushi on it. Which Grant LOVED. Go figure. A 7-year-old loved sushi. That's how good sushi is in Japan.

As you can see I'm so feeling the love right now. I love my in-laws, I love sushi, I love my sister, I love my son, I love coffee, I love Obama. It was a good trip.

Would you have stayed or left?

2010-10-28T10:03:00.008+08:00

Last week Buddy and I went to lunch together, which is something I would never have done back in my days of full-time employment but now that I'm free as a bird I can meet my husband for lunch and watch movies in the afternoon and go for jogs whenever I want.

Employment is so seriously over-rated.

Except when the time comes to pay the bills, then it seems like a pretty good idea.

This is me right now, at 10:40 on a Thursday morning in Starbucks.

Anyway at lunch two interesting things happened.

1. A mouse scampered across the dining room floor. We debated for a few seconds about whether we should leave or not but I had ordered this Cajun shrimp wrap and I really wanted to eat it so we stayed. Which just goes to show that although I got married and changed my last name, deep down I am still a Parsons.

The wrap wasn't actually that great.

2. Just outside the window there was this 2-story building with something like a 2,000 square foot footprint. There was a bulldozer next to it. As we ate lunch the bulldozer started to tear down the building. By the time I finished my Cajun shrimp wrap the building was gone. GONE. In the time it took us to order, debate the wisdom of eating in a restaurant that clearly had a rodent problem, and eat our lunch - that building just disappeared.

Things can change so fast. Yes in China, to be sure, change comes quickly. But lately I've been noticing changes in general and appreciating them. I don't know if it's the fall and the turn of the seasons, or the fact that I'm transitioning between careers now. But for some reason I'm in awe right now of how dramatically things can change.

And how quickly.

And how nice the new can be.

Beijing Marathon!

2010-10-24T16:37:00.007+08:00

We finished the "mini-marathon" (迷你马拉松) 4.2k in 30 minutes and 8 seconds. Buddy and I crossed the finish line together, hand in hand. Isn't that sweet?

Just so you know, that means Buddy waited for me just in front of the finish line for something like 10 minutes. That act, and the "all we have to do is run" quote sums him up pretty well.

You might remember I was stressing about finishing within 25 minutes because I thought all runners were going to get picked up by the van after that but somehow that rule was not enforced. However the pick-up van did drive right alongside me for much of the route. Taunting me.

This race was my first and I had so much fun. I felt GREAT the whole time. Everyone was in a good mood, the runners smiled and waved and high-fived each other along the route. It was raining and we got soaked but that helped keep us cool while we were running.

Once we stopped running and our bodies cooled off, that soaking wet clothing was awful. And we had to take the subway back home so we shivered for a good hour.

Buddy thinks he's getting sick.

Here are a few observations from the race.
- The AQI was over 300 today, which is "hazardous". And yet there was no discussion of canceling the race.

- Is it strange that there was not even an attempt to record our time? I'm not sure the race officials even know I ran.

- All of the foreigners I saw were listening to music and almost none of the Chinese were.

- Did you know it's possible to run while holding an umbrella? Possible, yet oh so inadvisable.

- Getting up at 4:45am, getting the kids to Xin's sister by 5:45, and getting to the race venue by 7:00am was a mini-marathon of its own.

"All we have to do is run"

2010-10-19T20:51:00.002+08:00

It all started one sunny day last month when Buddy called me and said that we should run the 5K leg of the Beijing Marathon. His company would pay for our registration, all we have to do is run.

All we have to do is run.

That statement right there sums my husband up so well.

If I had to choose between registering for an event and running 5K, I would easily choose the former. But not Buddy Gao. He has the energy of 12 cheetas pent up in one human body.

"Sure, let's do the marathon," I said.

-------------------

"We will never run in that marathon," I thought as I hung up the phone.

Something always comes up when Buddy and I attempt things like this. I can see it now - sick kid, flat tire, sprained ankle, broken garbage disposal. Something will happen that prevents us from running in the marathon.

I checked the website to get some details on the event, because Mr. "All We Have To Do Is Run" couldn't even tell me the date. The website says our event is actually 4.2K and there's a time limit, a fairly aggressive one if you ask me - 25 minutes. After 25 minutes all 4.2K runners will be asked to get in the pick-up van.

How humiliating would that be? To cross the finish line on my first race in the back of the pick-up van?

So basically I'm fixated on one goal, which is to finish the race before that damn van. And I think this is a smart move on the part of the Marathon organizers. If it weren't for this time constraint I would probably be stressing over whether I can complete the race at all. Now I've moved my anxiety to a whole new level.

So I'm running laps around my complex this week like crazy, trying to get my time down.

And as a back up plan I am grinding corn cobs down my garbage disposal.

I love your comments. I shout out there into the internet and you all shout back. It warms my heart so comment, please. Even if you don't think you have anything important to say. Come on, it's a diner.

Clearing up some rumors about me

2010-10-15T19:56:00.000+08:00

Number one I'm thrilled - THRILLED - that there are rumors about me. I mean, this means someone is talking about me and that there is presumably something interesting to say. This is big for me, really big.

I'm considering putting a small dog in my purse and seeing if the papparazzi will follow me around.

If that happens I'll learn how to spell "papparazzi".

So by all means please continue talking about me, I'm flattered beyond belief.

(For the record, I know no one is talking about me anymore but humor me.)

Now let me clear up these rumors.

Rumor #1: Melanie is going back to the U.S.
Nope, we're staying in China at least until Grant finishes 6th grade and he's in 2nd grade now. Most likely we'll stay until both kids finish high school.

Rumor #2: Melanie is going to Africa.
I'm not sure where this one came from. I think I said once that I want to go to Africa and I do but I meant to visit.

Rumor #3: Melanie is going to work for Adobe.
Although scores of Sun employees, especially those from the G11n department, have gone to Adobe I don't plan to.

Rumor #4: Melanie is dating George Clooney.
Not true, but you can see where the confusion is coming from.

Turn the Page

2010-10-12T22:24:00.008+08:00

You can probably tell from the nostalgic nature of my recent posts but I'll go ahead and make it official -

After 11 years with Sun, my last day with the company was August 31, 2010.

It feels weird, really weird. I adored my job. I loved the company. I had the best manager a person could ever hope for. I worked on a wildly successful product. My co-workers were like family. My whole management chain, all the way to Larry Ellison, was rock solid. Sun trained me to be a corporate trainer for the company and they let me deliver classes once or twice a quarter.

I had it all. Truly.

But I wanted more.

I want to be a free-lance corporate trainer. I want to do what I love all the time. I want to make a difference in people's lives, a real difference. I want to be able to say I don't work in the summers when my kids are on vacation. I want to take them to the US so they can fish and swim and eat grits and sing along with Miley Cyrus and shop at Target and drive-thru at McDonald's.

I could go on and on. But suffice it to say that corporate training, and especially being a free-lance trainer, is the right thing for me right now. I know it. I just know it.

And just in case I was considering not heeding His calling, God made Sun give me this amazing severance package which gives me some padding in case I need some time to build up my business. That pretty much sealed the deal for me.

And by the way things are looking good. I've already got 2 jobs lined up for November. Maybe I won't have to touch that package.

On a parting note I give you a picture of Melanie Gao in November 1999 on her first day at Sun Microsystems. Wasn't she cute?

Thank you Sun for the great managers

2010-09-18T18:57:00.003+08:00

They say the #1 reason employees leave a company is because of their direct manager.

I worked for Sun for 11 years, and the main reason I lasted that long was because I had great managers the whole time. There were 14 of them: Render, Michele, Dilshad, Francis, Brian, David, Austin, Pat, Wendy, Mike, Mimi, Shripad, Jessica and Peter. These folks were honest and hard-working professionals and they all cared about me and the company, often in that order.

I could tell you tons of stories about how wonderful they were but I'll pick just one.

It was the spring of 2001 and I had just screwed up a project schedule. We had this translation vendor who was supposed to send a translation to my team's project alias but instead they sent it just to me. And it took me a while to open that mail and realize that the delivery hadn't gone to the whole team. Once I did realize it I forwarded the translated files to the right person but this caused a delay which made us slip our schedule.

I felt awful.

I decided that my manager Francis should hear about it from me instead of from someone else so I took the Walk of Shame into his office and gave him the full report. I told him I had learned from this mistake and it wouldn't happen again. I told him I felt really bad about it. He was very understanding.

I left his office and went back to my own, still feeling like shit.

And just at that moment Francis popped his head into my office. He said, "Hey, don't beat yourself up about this. We all make mistakes sometimes."

If it had been appropriate to hug him I would have.

You know why that comment meant to much to me? Because at that moment I knew that Francis knew me. He knew that I was in fact beating myself to a pulp over this mistake. And he knew just what to say.

To boil it all down - he knew me. Isn't that what we all want, really? We want someone to recognize us as individuals. To know what's different about us. What's special about us. What makes us tick. What ticks us off. We don't want to be a face in a crowd or a number.

And although I was employee #100840, my managers at Sun always knew who I really was.

Thank you Sun for that visitor badge

2010-09-15T14:28:00.011+08:00

In October 1999 I interviewed with Sun Microsystems in Silicon Valley. It was a program management position in the Sun-Netscape Alliance. Do you remember that alliance and iPlanet? Good times.

Buddy had offered to drive me to the interview because he knows I get nervous before interviews and he didn't want me on the roads in my condition.

I was dressed in my best, and only, suit. It was a navy Jones New York suit and I loved it. In fact I still have it. Is it crazy to wear a suit for over 10 years? I think the style is classic but maybe I'm deluded.

Anyway, in the car I was having a drink yogurt for breakfast. And Buddy went over a speed bump and my yogurt spilled on my jacket lapel. Yikes!

(P.S. don't you love the way I wrote that last paragraph, making it look as if Buddy were partially if not fully to blame for the accident? It's an art that you all should aspire to.)

There was no time to go back home and change. And anyway I didn't have another suit, so going home would be kinda pointless.

I tried my best to clean off my suit using old parking receipts and hand sanitizer.

Surprisingly, the yogurt was still obvious.

And all I had underneath the jacket was a silk tank top. I couldn't show up for the interview wearing just that.

So I resigned myself to showing up with a faint yogurt stain on my lapel.

When I got to the reception desk the attendant asked me to fill out a visitor card. It was about 2" x 3".

She took the card back from me, fiddled around with it and did something I couldn't see, and then she handed the card back to me. Except now it was in a plastic holder with a clip on it. And she said, "You can just clip this to your lapel."

Folks did you hear that?!?!

She said, "YOU CAN JUST CLIP THIS TO YOUR LAPEL." Except she didn't yell. But I was yelling inside my head, let me tell you.

I was yelling - HALLELUJAH!

I heard angels sing. Clouds parted. A beam of sunlight came through the window and shone directly on me. It gave the receptionist a halo.

And at that moment I knew that Sun and I were meant for each other.

We were like yin and yang. Fred and Ginger. Peaches and cream. Hall and Oates. Yogurt stain and a visitor badge.

Thank you Sun for the babies

2010-09-15T13:34:00.008+08:00

In the summer of 1999 I was at my wits' end. I was working for a start-up localization company in Monterey, California and the overtime was killing me.

It wasn't just normal overtime, it was unexpected unplanned "honey-i-don't-know-when-I'll-be-home-go-ahead-and-go-to-bed" overtime.

For example a client would call me at 4pm and complain about a delivery and suddenly the whole team had to stay in the office until we fixed it, which could sometimes be 10pm or midnight or 1am or God knows how many times I saw the sun rise through the windows of our conference room.

Now I'll admit that I might have been able to manage our clients' expectations a little bit better and spared myself and our team some of that over time but I was a green project manager and these nuances were beyond me at the time.

When I say green, I mean really green. This localization company took me in with absolutely no experience in project management and they taught me a LOT in 18 months. Seriously, when I walked through the doors on my first day there, I didn't understand how a computer's file system worked. I didn't know how to save things to disks. I didn't know the difference between Microsoft Office and Windows. It was bad. But they took me in and they taught me and for that, I will be forever grateful.

In exchange for everything they gave me I managed $1.6 million dollars worth of projects for them in 18 months. Not bad for a green project manager.

But in the summer of 1999 I turned 30 and my biological clock was ticking. Buddy and I had been married for two years and we wanted a family. But my job was so demanding that I could not imagine how a baby would fit into the picture.

When this sudden overtime would rear its ugly head I would often wonder, "What if I needed to pick a baby up at daycare right now?" I had heard of daycares that charged a dollar for every minute you were late picking your kid up and I calculated what it would cost if I picked my baby up at 2am.

It would be $480.

I looked around me and wondered how my colleagues managed to care for a family and work in this environment.

And it hit me.

None of them had families. Seriously, not one single person had children under the age of 18. Except for Stayce and she was a wonder woman. And I wouldn't even write about her except one of my colleagues from that localization company will read this post and leave me a comment reminding me about Stayce. And I would feel bad if she thought I had forgotten her.

Anyway, that's when I realized that if we were going to start a family, I needed to get out of this job.

Because there is no Wonder Woman hiding inside of me.

I applied for a job with one of our clients, whose office was an hour north in Silicon Valley. I went for an interview one Monday and asked the hiring manager to be sure not to tell my current employer that I was interviewing with him because I hadn't let my current employer know that I was interviewing outside.

He assured me that he and his team would keep it confidential.

On Tuesday I walked into work at 7:00am. 7:00am. That's early, right? Well, the news about my interview had made it to the office before I did. One of my co-workers stopped me before I even got to my desk.

"I hear someone's been interviewing at (an unscrupulous company that can't keep their word when it comes to confidentiality)."

I thought maybe playing dumb would work for me.

"Oh really? Who?" I asked.

"You!" he said.

Playing dumb has never worked for me. Which is too bad because I often do really dumb things.

Naturally, things were a little uncomfortable for me from that point on. One night I was crying on Buddy's shoulder and he said, "Why don't you just quit?"

"Quit? Without knowing where I'll go next?!" I asked. I have never been a risk-taker when it comes to this sort of thing.

I mean, I put a snake around my neck in Thailand. I rode on a motorcycle with no helmet in India. I stood on the left side of an escalator in Germany. But it would not be like me to quit a job without knowing where I'm going next.

"Sure!" he said.

Buddy is a very "sure" kind of guy. Things always work out for him and I'm sure it's because he expects them to. "They're hiring like crazy in Silicon Valley. You can get a new job. Don't worry."

I looked deep into his brown eyes and realized he was right. So I took a deep breath, stopped crying, and turned in my resignation the next day.

Naturally as my last day approached I had to tell my clients that I was leaving the company. One of my clients was Sun so during our weekly progress con-call I told my contact, Michele, that I was leaving the company. As soon as the call was over my phone rang. It was Michele and she wanted to know where I was going next. When I told her I didn't know yet she invited me to come in and interview for a program management job at Sun.

And that was a monumental event in my life.

One week later I accepted an offer from Sun.

Two weeks later I was working for Sun and their wonderful health insurance kicked in.

Four weeks later I was pregnant.

What phrases drive you crazy at work?

2010-08-14T15:49:00.003+08:00

I'm working on a project (more on that later) and I need to compile a list of all the terms you hate to hear in the workplace.

You know, things like:

1. Man hours
This is my all-time most-hated phrase ever! Sometimes I pipe up in a meeting and say, "Is everybody working on this project a man?"

People love that.

Why can't we just say "staff hours" and make everyone happy?

By everyone, I mean me.

2. Bodies
As in, "We need more bodies on this project." This term gives no respect to the people who will be working on the project. I mean, if all you need is bodies I'm sure there are plenty of unclaimed ones at the morgue.

What we need are engineers, we need soldiers, we need help, we need more resources.

We don't really need more bodies.

3. Please tell me what you would put here.
What are the phrases you hate to hear in the workplace? And what do you wish people would say instead?

You're also welcome to disagree with me about my pet peeve words. Leave a comment.

A billion channels and nothing's on

2010-07-07T22:50:00.008+08:00

Sometimes I feel like the internet has a billion channels and nothing's on. But not lately. Lately I've been getting so much goodness from the internet.

So first I'd like to say thank you to the bloggers out there. You are the ones producing the interesting content out there.

Here are some of my favorites lately:

1. The Well Grounded Life

Lisa's mission is to "help busy moms take great care of themselves."

I know, she had you at hello, didn't she?

Here's the best part - Lisa is doing a free online seminar for busy moms. I've signed up and it would be so cool if some of you were there too. There are conference calls and stuff so we would actually get to talk to each other! I think! Let's all sign up and find out!

2. Sweet Lily Tutus

Cherimarie moved me to tears with this post. Why? Because we all have days like this when we realize how hard this parenting thing is. And how hard life can be sometimes. But few of us have the courage to write about it honestly the way Cherimarie did. I think we should do it more so we can encourage each other through the rough times.

BTW she wraps up the post with a note of gratitude. This is very typical of her.

3. Consulting Adult

This post cracked me up. Nancy is a former HR person and she makes the point that HR people aren't funny. Yet this post made me laugh so hard I cried.

Open Letter to my Wii Fit

2010-06-20T20:12:00.001+08:00

Dear Wii Fit,

I think we should take a break. Lately I've been feeling smothered by you.

When I bought you and installed you in my living room I didn't think I was making a commitment to visit with you every day. In fact I'm sure that was never part of the setup or configuration. I did share some intimate details with you like my weight, my age and my fitness goals but we never agreed on how often I would visit you.

But somehow you had that expectation well-programmed onto your hard disk. You expected so much more than I could give and I couldn't find a user setting where I could re-set your expectation.

And now it's like every time I go to see you you say, "Oh! It's been a long time since I've seen you!"

A week is not a long time! You see me more than my own mom.

Let's not be bitter as we part ways. Let's focus on the good times we had together. Remember the time you told me my Wii fit age was 28? That was so sweet. Or the time you remembered my birthday.

Okay that was about it as far as happy memories with you.

Anyway, just remember - it's not me, it's you.

I'm keeping the cat.

- melanie

I am probably not Stage Mom Material

2010-06-11T16:06:00.014+08:00

I don't like to blog about how great my kids are. I think they're great but I don't expect you guys to understand so I don't waste space on the internet trying.

But today I just have to. Because Audrey played the lead in a play called "鸡婆花" last week. I knew she was going to be in a play, I mean I'd been dragging her across town for rehearsals for a couple of weeks and all. And Buddy had told me she had a significant role.

But I didn't realize how big her role was, or how professional the play was, or how many people would be in the audience.

Until I was sitting in the audience watching my baby perform in front of 900 people, a packed theater. Singing and dancing and saying lots of words. In Chinese. And looking so incredibly cute. I snapped this picture with my iPhone so it doesn't give you the full effect, but if you squint your eyes you get the picture.

Please note my baby is standing on the stage all by herself! She was up there by herself talking to the audience. Of 900 people! Did I say that? It was 900 people.

I wanted to stand up and tell everyone in the theater that five years ago she couldn't say a word in Chinese. And here she was, performing in Chinese! And on top of remembering all her lines she remembered all her songs and dance moves too.

She had a mom in the play and it hurt me to hear her call, "Mommy!" and another woman comes dancing across the stage to hug her. I saw her Other Mom backstage and I shot her all kinds of nasty looks. But I don't think she noticed. Anyway I'm the one she spends Sundays and holidays with.

I am probably not Stage Mom Material.

I asked Audrey if she gets stage fright at all and she said she's usually a little bit nervous for the first few seconds on stage but then she's fine. This composure is going to serve her well no matter what she does in life, I think.

This is Audrey and me backstage after the play.

Alright, I will stop now. Thank you for tolerating this brief rant.

Happy Birthday White Chocolate!

2010-06-10T19:45:00.005+08:00

I missed my friend Aaron's birthday last week. So I'm going to make up for it by wishing him a happy birthday on my blog.

Because don't you think there's an inverse correlation between the timeliness of birthday greetings and the public nature of the greetings?

Thank you, this is why I love you guys, because of your unwavering support.

When I look back on my long and illustrious career, the Years I Worked With Aaron stand out in two ways. They were the FUN years. And they were the low-stress years because I knew someone had my back.

First, let's start with fun. Once our co-worker Cindy took a group order for these frozen Chinese pork buns. When they arrived she sent an email to our team alias saying, "Your buns are in the freezer."

Aaron replied with, "I thought I felt cold."

And he used to call me a lot. That's normal, right? Except that he worked in the office next door to me. Yes, he would call me from 5 feet away. I could hear his voice through the wall. This from a man who runs marathons.

Aaron had my back. I was never late for meetings when Aaron was around because he would always always always come get me. When I was on vacation I knew Aaron would cover for me. There were so many times when he saved me, and when I thanked him he would just wink and say, "Hey, I got your back."

Do you have any idea how good it feels to know someone has your back? Studies show that it reduces your stress level by 65%.

Those would be my studies, thank you.

Does someone have your back at work? If not I encourage to go out and get someone's back. And let them know you're doing it. Let them know that from now on, you are looking out for them and will do your best to make sure no harm comes to them. They are naturally going to return the favor. And a virtuous cycle is born.

All thanks to Aaron.

Happy birthday White Chocolate!

How to Walk from Brazil to Vietnam in One Day

2010-06-07T21:42:00.009+08:00

Saturday 10:00am - Grant and his cousin singing a little song before getting in the cab and heading to the Expo.

Six hours later, somewhere in the Pacific Islands -

The Expo is a distant cousin of the World's Fair - countries form around the world come together, erect immense structures called "pavilions" and promote how great they are.

I know, it is their loss that the Expo Committee rejected my application for their Chief Marketing Officer position.

The best thing about the Expo is that it shrinks the whole world down into one square mile. You can literally walk from Tunisia to Australia to Chile in one day. (See, now don't you think that sentence would have looked great in the brochures?)

The worst thing is the lines. The queues! Whatever you want to call them, they are ridiculous. You have to wait in line for at least 3 hours for any of the decent pavilions.

Alternatively, you can go to the pavilions that have a shorter queue, but there is a reason for those short queues. Because there is nothing interesting inside that pavilion.

Around 4:30pm we were walking past the Japan Pavilion. An Expo staff member told us the wait was 4.5 hours.

Four point five hours!

I said to Buddy, "If we get in line now, we'll get into the pavilion at ... 9:00 pm!"

Buddy said, "If we got in a plane now, we could get to Japan sooner than that!"

Which made us both laugh so hard we cried.

Seriously, we could have gotten to Japan sooner than we could have gotten into that pavilion. Who in their right mind would stand in the line?

Well, obviously about 4.5 hours worth of people.

My verdict on the Expo 2010 is that you should go if you're in the area but don't plan on going into the pavilions. Just walk around and take in the atmosphere and look at the pavilions from the outside.

And if you're taking young boys with you, bring along a couple of gurneys.

“I have a chicken eye on my foot”

2010-05-27T23:14:00.006+08:00

Grant is wearing a band-aid on the bottom of his foot that has to be replaced twice a day. It's the weirdest-looking band-aid I've ever seen.

He said his tutor found something on his foot and thought it was probably a [something in Chinese that I don't understand].

Then Buddy took Grant to the doctor, who said it probably was [something I don't understand] and gave him the band-aids and said it would probably go away in a few days.

I asked Buddy for some details but he gave me the same story Grant had given me.

Normally I'm okay with not understanding all the Chinese words that my kids and husband throw into a conversation. But since this was a medical issue and I was so out of the loop, I did what any mom would do.

I broke down.

Today when I was changing Grant's band-aid for the fourth time because he keeps picking at it I said, “I don't understand why your tutor was looking at the bottom of your foot! And I don't understand what he thinks he's found. And I don't understand why the doctor couldn't confirm it, or why he would give you medication for something that doesn't have a confirmed diagnosis!”

Ever calm, Grant said, “Look, I'll tell you. I have a chicken eye on my foot.”

Oh thank you, that clears EVERYTHING up for me! My son has a chicken eye on his foot. Beautiful.

{Let's insert a pause here for me to regain my composure.}

{And to try to that image out of my head. I mean seriously, a chicken eye? That is so gross! Yet I wonder if Chinese people are grossed out when they hear our vocabulary like "shingles" and "Adam's apple" and kidney stone".}

After a few minutes of reverse engineering on google.com/translate, I figured out what Grant has on his foot is a corn and the band-aids are salicylic acid. And salicylic acid is a common, benign treatment and the corn probably will go away in a couple of days.

I still don't know why his tutor was looking at his foot though.

This guy broke my heart this morning

2010-05-24T08:40:00.002+08:00

He had way too many boxes piled on his scooter and they had fallen off. He was sitting on the sidewalk next to his useless scooter and all the boxes with his head in his hands.

It almost made me cry just looking at him.

You guys know I have delusions of saving the world from the driver's seat of my Honda Odyssey so I decided to go check on him.

Learning from my recent misadventures in roadside assistance, I took a minute to prepare what I was going to say to him in Mandarin. I was quite proud of what I came up with.

I sat down next to him on the curb and said, "Hi there. I saw you from the road. You poor thing, you have so many boxes. Is someone coming to help you?"

"Yes," he said, pointing to his cell phone. And just at that moment his friend pulled up. "He's here now."

I realized that what I thought was a moment of total despair was actually just him, sitting on the sidewalk waiting for his friend to come and help him.

Someone had his back.

(And I can be a little dramatic sometimes. I admit that.)

Caution - Drive Safely

2010-05-18T02:54:00.000+08:00

That's what this sign says.

I'm glad we were stopped at a redlight when Audrey and I spotted it because we both laughed until we cried.

Thank you, Tea Kettles

2010-05-14T00:27:00.000+08:00

We're grateful to you, little tea kettles.

Grateful for all the piping hot tea that you supplied to us on frosty winter nights.

Grateful to you for warming our babies' baths night after night, and letting them splash with delight while all the day's soil and germs were gently washed away.

Grateful to you for the relaxing foot baths that we gave to our parents and grandparents, soothing them after a day of hard walking and working.

Grateful that you never needed repairs or new batteries or re-charging or polishing. Grateful that you were simple and reliable.

And now here you are with so many of your brothers and sisters and you're going on to your next life.

I'm not sure if the person who loaded you onto this truck was going for an artistic effect but I think you all look spectacular. So random and yet so uniform, so massive and yet so intricate.

Maybe in your next life you'll come back as a flagpole and you'll get to preside over something grand and important for decades to come.

Maybe you'll come back as a hubcap and you're going to see the whole country.

Maybe you'll be a Coke can and that might not be that interesting. Sorry if it does turn out that way.

But whatever it is, I wish you well. And thank you again for all you did for us.

If you can't amaze them with your brilliance ...

2010-05-11T19:49:00.001+08:00

Then stun them with your craziness. I decided this will be my new motto in life.

The other day I was waiting to turn left at a red light when I noticed some commotion on the sidewalk to my right. Apparently two high school boys, about 15 or 16 years old, were walking on the sidewalk and one of them somehow caused a guy to fall off his scooter. I don't know if it was intentional or not but my guess is that it was not.

The scooter guy was in his mid-40s, short and stocky. And he was mad. He had fallen on his face and his upper lip was bleeding a bit.

He started pushing the high school kid around and the kid pushed back.

This kind of road rage is very typical after an accident in Beijing. Usually the two parties lunge at each other and their friends or family restrain them, harsh words are exchanged, and then they calm down and go about the business of negotiating responsibility for the accident.

But this squabble was to be different.

Scooter Guy reeled back and punched High School Kid hard in the nose. His glasses went flying and his nose started bleeding profusely.

I realized this fight might be getting out of hand.

Scooter Guy shoved High School Kid, who fell backwards. Then he straddled High School Kid and started choking him.

I decided it was definitely out of hand and I should do something.

I quickly checked the three lanes to my right and thank goodness, no cars were approaching. So I pulled my car out of the turning lane and navigated my Honda Odyssey so I was perpendicular across the three lanes. If this sounds awkward, well ... it was, but fortunately it put me just about 10 feet away from the dueling couple on the sidewalk. I rolled down my window and it was at this moment I realized -

I had no idea what I was going to say. I needed to mediate a heated fight ... in Mandarin ...

Here's what I came up with after .75 seconds of contemplation -

"Do you need me to call ... 102?"

They both gave me this stunned look. I glared back at them, cell phone in hand, trying to look like I was crazy enough to call the police if needed.

And I probably did look plenty crazy right then, considering that the number for the police is 120, not 102.

Misguided as it might have been, my threat had the desired effect. They stopped fighting. I'm not sure if it was because:
a) they didn't want me to call the police.
b) they had no idea what I was saying but they figured a crazy foreign woman was more of a threat to them than they were to each other.
c) it gave them a chance to pause and realize they were over-reacting.
d) something else.

Anyway they stood up and Scooter Guy gave a tissue to High School Kid. Then they found his glasses hanging in the branches of a nearby bush.

Scooter Guy got on his bike and drove away. High School Kid started walking again. I pulled myself into the right direction in traffic.

And we will all live to fight another day.

Can you kill a rabbit with bok choy?

2010-04-29T16:59:00.013+08:00

The movie was supposed to be a reward for studying hard.

Because Grant studied so well with his tutor on Saturday morning, I let them go to the movies in the afternoon. When I went to pick them up afterwards Grant looked so incredibly happy. "Wow, the movie was just the right thing," I thought.

Not quite.

He was happy because his tutor had bought 2 white rabbits for him. One for him and one for Audrey.

Now before you get all "awwww" on me, let me say he used my money to buy the rabbits.

The kids were thrilled.

I was not.

Because seriously - owning a pet is a big deal. It should be something you enter into after a great deal of thought and preparation. Not an impulse purchase.

Our family is sooooooo not ready to take care of another mammal. I could stretch that word "so" out from here to Ontario and it would still not convey how not ready we are.

I have trouble taking care of the 4 hearts that are already beating in this house. I can not handle any more. I love the way Kristen put it a few days ago - I have to avoid any activities "that would deplete my time, money, and sanity (three dangerously low resources right now)."

But anyway, we were proud pet owners. The kids adored them. I resigned myself to them. Buddy is on a business trip so he didn't care either way. Isn't it amazing sometimes how these things transpire while the partners are out of town?

The pet store gave Grant some strange advice when they sold him the rabbits. They said not to give them water. And make sure that any food we gave them was dried out.

Is that weird? I thought that was weird. I checked several pet care websites and none of them say that.

Last night I decided the rabbits needed some bok choy with a few drops of water on it. I mean, I think rabbits actually need water and even if they don't, surely it wouldn't kill them! Grant begged me not to do it. But I explained to him that all living things need water. It's a law of nature.

Both rabbits died overnight.

Guilt and relief, they are playing tug-of-war with my heartstrings today. Right now guilt is winning, as it always does.

At first I was sad that during our short time with the rabbits I never got to take pictures of the them. But then I realized.

I have kids.

I have an iPhone.

OF COURSE I have pictures of the rabbits!

Do I need a breathalizer for playdates now?

2010-04-14T21:01:00.000+08:00

One of Grant's friends came by today and wanted to play but Grant was studying so I asked him to come back at 5:00.

The kid was drinking something that looked like a beer.

I looked more closely and discovered that it was a Bacardi Breezer.

He's 8.

I asked him if he knew what he was drinking.

"Fruit juice," he said.

"Yeah, and rum. Do you know what rum is?" I wanted to check for understanding because depending on whether I got my Chinese tones right, I might have said "rum" and I might have said "spicy wood".

"Yeah, my mom lets me drink it all the time," he said.

I have a feeling his mom does not let him drink rum (or spicy wood) all the time. I'm interested to see what state he's in when he comes back at 5:00.

Update: He sat outside our building and drank the rest of his Bacardi Breezer, then came back with the empty bottle. I asked him how he felt and he said fine.

I give you the empty bottle, which he left in my front hallway, as evidence. Please also take a moment to appreciate the orange table runner that I bought at the Silk Market last week. Isn't it beautiful?

How Tough Is Your Love?

2010-04-05T14:10:00.001+08:00

The other day I was explaining to my kids what tough love is.

I told them about my friend Steve, whose mom kicked him out of the house when he was sixteen for something so terrible he never would tell me what it was.

But anyway Steve called me from the YMCA one day and asked if I could bring him some groceries. Things that didn't need to be refrigerated because he didn't have a fridge.

Now as a mom I know that Steve's mom's heart was breaking.

My kids asked if I would ever kick them out of the house. "If you ever did drugs in here then yes, I would kick you out," I said.

Audrey looked shocked. She looked at my husband.

I looked at my husband.

He smiled.

So I said what all of us were thinking.

"But don't worry, Daddy would come pick you up from the YMCA a couple of hours later."

Dear Singapore,

2010-03-25T14:10:00.021+08:00

Hello you lush little island, it's been a while since I've written to you. How've you been? I'm good, it's been dry lately in Beijing.

You probably noticed your population increased by one this week and I want to make sure you recognize the significance here - for that one person who landed on your shores this week is none other than Dalton Dorne.

Here are four reasons you are going to love your newest inhabitant.

1. The name!
I mean really, Dalton Dorne (dor-nay) - could it get any more fabulous? When you say that name in your head does it not absolutely sparkle? And she is as brilliant as her name, let me tell you.

2. The accessories
This girl has her jewelry, scarves and bags working for her. And I am not alone in admiring her knack for accessorizing. Once she lost one of these earrings

and when she told us about it at dinner one night, I saw more than one girlfriend furtively wiping away a tear.

3. Her graciousness
We went for a girls' weekend at a hot springs resort a couple of weeks ago - it was our final hurrah before Dalton left Beijing. We arrived there and found that there was a grand total of ONE hot spring within a 100-meter radius of our hotel room.

I should clarify that there were in fact 20 springs right outside our room, however none of them had WATER.

You wouldn't think to clarify that point when you call up to make a reservation at a hot springs resort now, would you? (Now these hot springs - do they have water in them?)

Well you should.

Anyway you know what gracious Dalton Dorne did? She jumped into that one hot tub and did not leave until the very last girlfriend was shriveled up like a prune and ready to collapse in the bed.

Wait, she did leave the hot tub once. But it was only to get a cork screw.

4. Her story-telling abilities
She has the best stories. Remember when you were nine and you would call the local radio station and ask the deejay to play "Eye of the Tiger" 100 times?

Maybe islands didn't do that.

Well, I'm like that with Dalton and her stories. I love to hear her tell the story of the time she and Helen tried to get a receipt for the toilet they bought at B&Q. Or the time she and Dom stayed up the whole night and then went to meet a tour group for a cross-country bus trip. Or the time her she had to fire a housekeeper.

My only consolation is the fact that she blogs so I can still get her stories that way. But it won't be as fun without her gestures and tone of voice.

5. Her husband and kid

I know I said four things but I thought of one more. So cane me already.

Dalton is bringing her husband Dom and her daughter Niamh (pronounced "Neeve", please start practicing this now) to your luscious shores.

Niamh is going to tell it to you straight. She will call it like her 3-year-old self sees it. Get the durian out of the subway. Niamh has arrived.

Dom holds everything together so that Dalton can do the traveling that her job requires. He is one of the most supportive husbands and loving fathers you'll ever meet and if you're lucky he'll write some articles about you for the local magazines.

Please take good care of Dalton. Send her back to us every once in a while. Thanks in advance, Singapore.

love,
melanie

These are some friends I have actually met

2010-03-05T22:56:00.000+08:00

I talked about my blogosphere friends as if they were actually friends. Because they are!

The fact that we haven't met is irrelevant.

Nie Nie is my friend who gave me the world's best pear-granola muffin recipe. (Just go preheat your ovens to 350 right now and then click on that link, you will thank me later.)

And I have a friend named Stretchmark Mama who sends me lists of the books she's reading and it always makes me want to read more. Like this book she recommended last week - "You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning."

Penelope is my friend who gives me things to talk about at parties. Did you know for example that we all make a choice in life to be either interesting or happy - but not both? And if you haven't read Penelope's blog, you're probably choosing the latter.

Christin and I met in Penelope's comments section. Her life is the life I would lead if I had taken that job offer in Chicago, instead of the one in Monterey. But sadly I would not have her hair.

Jocelyn is so much like me it's scary. We're both American women with Chinese husbands and we look alike! Seriously - look at her picture on this post and tell me if we are not twins.

I could go on and on.

Now I want to switch gears and introduce to you some blogosphere friends that I have actually met. Shocking, I know. I met the Fishs in the airport and we talked for about 10 minutes but it was long enough for me to get their blog URL. They were in China to adopt a little girl and they posted a picture she drew of her new family. This line brought tears to my eyes, "Two months ago she had no family. Now she has pages full of them!"

I hope you enjoy clicking around on these links, and that some of these bloggers become your friends that you have never met too. I'll introduce some others to you later.

SPAM: nutritious and delicious (sometimes)

2010-03-02T21:20:00.004+08:00

My dad sends me a ton of spam. I bet I have the entire contents of snopes.com in my email archives. But I love it because it shows me that my dad is up and checking his email and thinking of me. I don't care if I get viruses every once in a while, it's important to know that gojoepro is plugged in.

The other day I discovered a piece of wisdom in one of Dad's emails. It was something I needed to hear right at that moment.

"Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It's about learning to sing in the rain."

Have you ever seen SPAM that nailed it like that? I don't think so.

It's true - it's too easy to waste our days wishing that they were over. We wish it was Friday, long for Christmas, hang in there until the day the kids grow up and go to college. When in fact life is really about the Tuesdays and the March 2nds and the crazy days when the kids are tugging at your necklace.

If you're still not smiling yet then please look at this picture of a 25-foot crocodile carrying a 12-point deer in its mouth, compliments of gojoepro. This is spam at its very finest, folks.

We could be that deer. I'm just sayin'.

So it's not okay to give your kid's teacher a digital camera...?

2010-02-14T00:25:00.000+08:00

While we were in the U.S. at Christmas Buddy bought a digital camera for Grant's teacher. Mrs. Wang was Audrey's homeroom teacher for two years and now she's Grant's homeroom teacher so we feel close to her. She's played a big role in our kids' education.

Now a digital camera is kind of extravagant and not something I would give a teacher in the States, however I tend to defer to Buddy on these sorts of things because he grew up here and I figure he knows what's acceptable.

We wrapped up the camera and sent it to school with Grant last week.

Today the camera came back with Grant, neatly wrapped back up in the wrapping paper.

When I asked Buddy why the teacher returned it he said it was probably too expensive.

You guys know I love this man more than life itself but he is useless when it comes to explaining any of life's mysteries.

Dear readers, can some of you shed some more light on this for me? Do students ever give their teachers gifts in China? If so, what is appropriate?

And for that matter, what do we do in the US? I don't remember ever giving a teacher a present. Is it done today? If so what's a typical gift?

Wear This or That?

2010-02-12T19:55:00.000+08:00

I don't know about you but when I was a teenager, any outfit I was going to wear to a significant event (a trip to the mall, a day at school, a Civinettes pancake breakfast) had to have a stamp of approval from at least two of the women in my family. The women in my family were my mom and my three sisters.

Then when I was 17 I moved to Germany for a year as an exchange student. I got dressed for the first day of school and modeled my outfit for my host family. Their reaction was a mixture of confusion and disapproval. You see it turns out I had landed in a place where academics were actually the reason people went to school. Not fashion!

(I had this one classmate in Germany who wore the same sweater every single day of the week. He just changed the shirt underneath the sweater. And that was okay!)

(With everyone else. Not really with me.)

Over the years life has taken me further and further away from the women in my family and today I am half a world away from them. But this morning my baby sister Amanda sent me a website that can bring them back into my circle of wardrobe consultants.

It's called http://wearthisorthat.com and it's exactly what it sounds like.

People post pictures of themselves in a couple of outfits and you vote on which looks better.

If you go there please be on the lookout for said baby sister Amanda, who is asking for feedback on her wedding dress.

Please do not adjust your screen, one of the dresses is indeed orange.

Option #1

Option #2

My Sister Christi is Awesome - Part 2

2010-02-08T18:25:00.001+08:00

One thing I never grow tired of is gushing about my sister Christi.

Christi Parsons, White House correspondent for the Chicago Tribune.

She started her journalistic career as the editor for the Central High School Falcon Flyer in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And look at her today! She covers the President of the United States.

She flies on Air Force One, you know.

I was perusing her bookshelf last summer and I found this one book that looked interesting. So I started flipping through it and I found the bookmark was a menu from Air Force One.

As a bookmark?!

In my house that menu would be framed and hanging above the mantle!!!

This is probably why they don't let me on Air Force One.

So anyway, Christi recently appears on the Gwen Ifill show. Please watch her here and leave me a comment telling me how smart and GORGEOUS she is.

I know, I totally know.

Keeping My Day Job

2010-01-27T22:42:00.009+08:00

I cut Grant's hair yesterday. I started with this -

And ended with this -

I know, he doesn't look very happy in that shot. Perhaps it's related to this -

Clippers, they just aren't as easy to use as you would think.

My Baby - Still in Japan

2010-01-26T22:00:00.004+08:00

Man 16 days is a LONG time!

Tonight I talked to Audrey and I asked her, "What's new?"

She said, "Everything!"

Duh, when you're in a foreign country everything is new.

Today she and her grandma took the train into Tokyo. Audrey said it was just a bunch of adults and her and they were all staring at her. I was trying to figure out why that would be but she quickly explained - it was because Japanese kids aren't on vacation right now so people are looking at Audrey and wondering why she isn't in school.

At least, this is her interpretation of things.

She also learned how to say the Japanese alphabet. With a darn good pronunciation.

Pretty soon Japanese is no longer going to be a secret language for Buddy and me.

Just for fun, this is one of my favorite pictures of Audrey. She was just 4 hours old but look at that smile!

My Baby in Japan

2010-01-25T22:22:00.003+08:00

When Audrey was 2-1/2 years old her baby brother went in for a surgery on his spine and our friends Trisha and Kevin offered to let Audrey stay overnight with them, allowing Buddy and me to focus solely on Grant.

As we made our way from Stanford Children's Hospital to San Jose, where Trisha and Kevin and their two kids lived, I explained to Audrey that she was going to be there for "a long time" but I promised to come back and get her.

I was nervous about leaving her alone overnight, and I find when you're stressed about one kid going in for major surgery, it's always nice to stress about the emotional well-being of the other child as well. Don't you agree?

I went back the next day to get her and when she heard my voice she came out into the living room, one hand propped on her chubby little hip, and proclaimed, "Hmm! You said you were going to be gone a *long* time!"

Well, now at age nine Miss Priss is in Japan for 16 days visiting her grandma and grandpa.

We talk every night and she tells me about her adventures. Apparently her grandma told her that she should dress neat and clean every day because other people will judge you based on your appearance. Audrey told me that night on the phone, "I don't think that's right!" I reminded her that when she's staying with her grandma she should go along with what grandma wants her to do, and when she gets home we can go back to our ragtag ways.

But inside I was so proud that she has her own opinions, even about something as simple as whether people will judge you based on your appearance.

Search Engine Battles

2010-01-13T20:22:00.009+08:00

Did you hear the news today that Google is considering pulling out of China?

Google's Beijing office happens to be right across from my office and this afternoon people had put flowers on the Google sign like it was a memorial.

Reporters from around the world were there.

I think it's cool that Google is taking a stand. But I'm afraid that if Google makes good on this threat to pull out of China, China will forget about them in the time it takes to say "baidu".

Beijing Subway Line 13, Monday, 7:37 a.m.

2010-01-12T20:32:00.009+08:00

It was packed, I mean packed.

In fact for several minutes I didn't even realize there was a small kid, probably five or six years old, standing next to me. The poor little guy barely came up to my hip. It's hard enough putting up with the crowds when you're eye to eye with them but imagine being surrounded by a wall of black trench coats and you can't see over them. And with each stop the trench coats keep pressing in around you, tighter and tighter.

One very kind man offered his seat to the little boy but his mom declined, saying they were getting off soon anyway.

Eventually, the inevitable happened.

The tumor-like crowds, the thick air, it was all too much for him. The little boy told his mom he felt sick and that he was going to throw up.

Anything that came up out of that little boy's stomach was never going to hit the floor, I can tell you that for sure. We were one solid unit of Packed People on that train.

And you know how throwing up can have that viral effect on everyone? I was trying hard not to think about that.

I was focusing instead on the goodness of the man who offered his seat to the little boy. I was grateful that people do things like that. I was glad to know that if it was my son, someone would show him compassion and consideration. I was proud to call Beijing home, a place where such selfless acts are not unusual.

Goodness. Gratitude. Compassion. Consideration. Selflessness.

By meditating on these good things, I managed to keep that little boy from throwing up, at least until I got to my stop.

And I can't confirm this, but I think I sustained him until he got to his destination.

Let's Start a Trend

2010-01-11T22:06:00.000+08:00

I need all the sisters out there to unite on this new trend I have in mind.

In our lifetime, we have seen the ascent of ripped jeans and distressed furniture.

Can we make CHIPPED NAILS fashionable?

I think we can.

A spiritual journey (to the office)

2009-12-17T17:26:00.007+08:00

This morning I went down to meet my regular driver who takes me to work. It's always just him and me in the car.

But today when I got to the garage the driver was standing there, and next to him was a Buddhist nun. She was wearing orange robes and a brown cloak, and her head was shaved. I thought, "Wow, I've never seen a Buddhist nun in the garage before!"

The driver and I got into the car and to my surprise, so did the nun.

Now when you stand or sit before a buddhist monk or nun, I think you want to make every effort to be as calm and serene as they are.

Which was hard for me because there was this one thought swirling around and around in my head - "Why is there a nun in the car?!"

i never did get an answer to that question. Maybe my driver is Buddhist and he was supporting a member of the clergy since they can't buy bus tickets or subway tickets. But it seems like he would have given me some sort of heads up.

Anyway I decided to just let it wash over me. (Very zen-like, don't you think?)

i did however get answers to some other interesting questions.

Q: How long have you been a nun?

A: 4 years.

Q: How did you get introduced to Buddhism?

A: I met a Buddhist monk when I was in college and he became my teacher. After several years I decided to become a nun.

Q: Do Buddhist nuns take a vow not to get married and have kids?

A: Yes, that's right.

Q: How did your parents take the news when you told them?

A: At first they were upset but to their credit, after a couple of months they were fine with it. Now they support me. It was harder for my fiance but even he came to accept my decision in time. He was Buddhist too.

Q: You were engaged?

A: Yes, but I broke off the engagement 12 days before my wedding.

Q: How can I learn to meditate?

A: I can teach you. Over email, if necessary.

She has a gmail account. Which suddenly made Buddhism feel much more accessible to me.

Sometimes I blog about why life in China is hard or confusing for me. But at the same time I love my life here because it's always interesting. I just never know what's around the corner but I can be sure I'm going to learn something every day.

This morning was a perfect example.

Perfect.

Postscript: I checked this website to see what kind of protocol one should follow when talking with a Buddhist nun. Sure enough, asking them why they're in the car would have been rude. I was also rude to put on lip gloss while I was talking to her.

Worst Parent-Teacher Conference EVER

2009-12-16T23:26:00.008+08:00

Last Friday Audrey came home with a notice that there would be a parent-teacher conference on the following Tuesday.

This is the first thing that I hate. Why can't the school can't decide more than 2 days in advance that we all have to drop everything and be there in the middle of the afternoon? And in my case, dropping everything was impossible since I was signed up to teach a communications class for Sun. So we agreed Buddy would attend.

Now I have to tell you that in China, parent-teacher conferences consist of the teacher, you, and the parent of every other student in your child's class. So you've got 40 parents sitting in their kids' desks, and the teacher talking to them. And normally that's all it is - the teacher just talks to the parents. Tells them what they should be expecting this year, what they should look out for, etc.

But this parent-teacher conference was to be different.

Audrey's homeroom teacher, a 40-something male Math teacher, decided to give feedback to each parent about his or her child's intelligence. He went around the room parent-by-parent, and told them if their child was 'smart' or 'not that smart'. About 10% of the kids were 'smart' and about 25% were 'not that smart'. As for the other 65% it's anyone's guess. Maybe they're average. Maybe he has no opinion. Maybe he wasn't really paying attention.

Apparently his goal was to set the parents' expectations appropriately, so that they wouldn't be surprised or disappointed when their child's grades started to fall in later years. For that notion, I have 3 words: self fulfilling prophecy.

And where, you might ask, did my progeny fall on this teacher's scale?

'Not that smart'.

I am not even going to dignify his evaluation with a response.

Buddy told me the whole story that night after the kids went to bed. He was just as upset as I was. And God love him, he protested heavily against the teacher's judgment. To the extent that one of the other parents gently prodded him, probably after Buddy had been protesting for several minutes, that at a parent-teacher conference it might be interesting to hear what the *teacher* had to say.

I prayed for one thing as I fell asleep that night. "God please let the other parents show good judgment tonight. Please don't let them go home and tell their kids what they heard today. Please let these awful indictments stay in that parent-teacher conference, among the parents and teacher."

But God had other plans for me. Because sure enough, the next night at dinner Audrey said, "Why did you guys keep that secret from me?" We played innocent as best we could. But we're lousy actors and we were most certainly not innocent.

"What secret, honey?"

"That I'm not that smart."

Yep, sure enough. One of the parents told their kid, and the kid told Audrey the next day.

And the worst part is, she asked us why we didn't tell her that she isn't that smart. NOT - why didn't you tell me my teacher said I'm not that smart. But - why didn't you tell me I'm not that smart.

It breaks my heart. And I'm having a hard time controlling my anger at this teacher. I wish you guys could have seen this post before I deleted a whole bunch of words. It was spicy.

We've considered talking to the principal but a) he probably doesn't care and b) the damage is done.

If you have ever had a worse parent-teacher conference than this please tell me about it.

So much for the green revolution

2009-11-26T19:12:00.001+08:00

Grant drew this picture at school yesterday but his teacher wouldn't accept it when he tried to turn it in. Do you see the reason?

That's right, the tree trunk should be brown, not green. And thus, she rejected his picture.

Grant told me that when his teacher rejected his picture, he said, "小气!"

That is to say, "I'm only six and I can see how incredibly petty you're being."

I asked him if he seriously said "小气!" to his teacher.

He said he said it in his heart.

Bless your heart, Grant. I love your picture and am forever immortalizing it on my blog.

I just called to say "Put on a sweater"

2009-11-12T01:35:00.002+08:00

管
guan, v.: 1. to care for someone; to tell them what to do; to tell them what not to do; to tell them what to do after they finish doing what they're not supposed to be doing; 2. a common expression of love from Chinese parents to children.

Example: If I didn't love you I wouldn't guan you.

Today we were at my in-laws' for dinner and my father-in-law started guan'ing Grant for something. (I didn't completely understand what he was saying, but guan'ing is easily recognized even if you don't speak Chinese.) This went on for several minutes until my mother-in-law called from the kitchen to tell her husband to stop guan'ing Grant so much. She told him that if he guan's the grandkids all the time then his guan'ing will lose its meaning and the grandkids will grow to resent him to boot.

He told my mother-in-law that she shouldn't guan him when he's guan'ing the grandkids because that hurts his credibility and undermines everything he's trying to do.

Never one to miss an opportunity to be a PITA, Grant chimed in and said that his grandpa shouldn't guan him all the time because he can't hear the TV over all the guan'ing.

Poor thing. Because we all know that if you miss a single word of the dialogue in "Ultraman" you are lost for the rest of the show. Ultraman is an old Japanese show, where a plastic action figure fights with a plastic dinosaur, or a paper mache volcano, or a styrofoam space ship, or a tinfoil robot.

So essentially this is what we had.

Grandpa guan's grandson. Wife guan's husband. Husband tells wife not to guan him. Grandson tells Grandpa not to guan him.

Meanwhile I was laughing so hard I nearly choked on a dumpling.

And no one else appreciated the humor in the situation.

Except, hopefully, some of you out there.

I realize they have the same school uniform and all but ...

2009-11-11T22:48:00.001+08:00

you'd think one of them would have noticed something was awry...

November 9, 1989

2009-11-10T07:44:00.015+08:00

In 1986 I left the U.S. for the first time - I was just 17 and looking back, I have no idea how my parents let me leave the country at such a young age. Alone! I was an exchange student in Germany, thanks to a generous scholarship from the U.S. and German governments. Shortly after my arrival in Germany my host family took me to the border between East and West Germany.

At the border, my host father Willi handed me a pair of binoculars and I looked into one of the guard towers on the East German side.

I was shocked to see that an East German border guard was looking right back at me through his own binoculars.

Here's a picture of the border. The sign in the front says, "Stop, this is the border."

Isn't that funny? The dividing line between East and West Germany wasn't a wall, it was more of a quaint picket fence. At least here in Schleswig-Holstein. There probably was a wall at other stretches of the border.

Fate and luck came together and brought me back to Germany again in 1989. I was living in a dorm in Hamburg and I remember when one of my floormates, Olaf, came into the kitchen and said, "The border is open! People are coming from East Germany to the West!"

Disbelief - that's the only way to describe that moment and the days that followed it. The Wall was such a fixture, something we believed would always be there. And now it was down. Incredible.

I went to the border and picked up one of my most prized possessions. My own little piece of history.

I brought back two pieces of the Wall. My kids have already told me they want them when I die. Which is so sweet that of all the jewelry and stock and property that I own, the thing they want the most is a piece of the Wall.

It's not so sweet that they're already planning ahead for my untimely death.

But that's another post.

I wish you all peace and the freedom.

Honey the Parking Attendant

2009-11-09T21:14:00.000+08:00

This is the attendant in the parking garage of Tsinghua Science Park.

I love her.

I don't drive to work often but when I do I park in her garage. As soon as I drive up to the window to pay her, she starts singing a lovely litany, a combination of any of the following:

"You are so pretty!"

"I've missed you!"

"I really like you!"

"I wondered if you had moved back to America."

I don't know what her name is but I imagine it's "Honey" because she is so sweet.

Don't worry, Honey, I'm not going back to America any time soon. The parking attendants over there don't have a clue!

My resolve is fading

2009-11-05T18:38:00.001+08:00

Okay so my last post was pretty passive-aggressive*. It went something like - if the powers that be don't want me to access popular websites like blogspot.com and youtube.com and facebook.com (yes, Facebook, for crying out loud!) then fine!

I won't access them.

And blogosphere will miss me.

And blogosphere will think how terrible it is that access to information isn't free here.

Only guess what? The blogosphere party is pretty much going right on without me. Dr. Cai narrowly avoided a couple of fistfights in his taxi in Singapore. Penelope got engaged in Wisconsin. Mr. Clark didn't win his bid to be mayor of Provo, dangit. Skrocki is leaving Sun, double dangit.

And all I got was a T-shirt that says, "I'm being passive aggressive."

It fits me very well, by the way.

And my blogosphere friends did feel bad that information wasn't free here but they were like, "It's your own fault for moving there."

[BTW I know like is so '80s. In the '90s we said all as in, "He was all, 'It's your own fault for moving there'. " But someone please tell me what we say here in the '00s so I can update my vocabulary.]

And although I thought free access might be restored in October it wasn't. So I don't see the light at the end of my passive-aggressive tunnel.

So if free access isn't restored soon, I'm afraid I will just find ways...

(*For the uninitiated, or mentally healthy, passive aggressiveness means you do exactly what someone tells you to do, hoping that they will regret it one day.)

Why I seem so anti-social lately

2009-09-21T17:33:00.001+08:00

At least for some of you I'm sure it seems that way. I'm talking about the folks that I normally chat with via Facebook and my blog or their blogs... I haven't been logged in to these sites lately because we're having trouble accessing our favorite internet sites here in China. Sites like Facebook, blogspot.com, etc. have been blocked for quite some time. There's a rumor that full access will be restored in October.

And like all rumors, I have no idea if it's true.

Except for the rumor about me being a supermodel when I was younger. That one is totally true.

So if you've invited me to be your friend on Facebook or if you sent me your pictures on flickr.com or if you wonder why I'm not commenting on your blog, please know that I'm not ignoring you on purpose. One day soon I'll be back out there gallavanting on the Internet.

And until then, just imagine for yourself what I'm having for breakfast every morning. Whatever you imagine is probably way more interesting than whatever I'm actually eating.

(Postscript: I know there are ways to get around the restrictions. I mean clearly I know that, just look at the URL of this blog. But aside from this one short foray into blogging I don't want to circumvent things.)

To have and to hold. And to put her scissors back where they belong

2009-07-27T22:03:00.008+08:00

This is week 3 of our summer in Alabama. Originally we were supposed to be here for 5 weeks but I cut it a few days short because Buddy and I are missing each other too much. We'll fly back to Beijing on August 9 instead of on August 15 as originally planned.

I'd like to say the kids miss Buddy and they do in a way but he's competing with things like fireflies and popsicles and swimming and sunshine and smores and long breezy summer evenings. Meanwhile Buddy is back in Beijing, which they associate with school and homework and alarm clocks and such. Very hard to miss those things.

Last weekend we drove up to Nashville to visit my sister and see her new condo and meet her new boyfriend. She got them both around the same time and it looks like she's going to keep both long term.

The condo is beautiful. Let me tell you about her closets - they are color-coded. It's is a well-organized wardrobe rainbow in there. It's the kind of thing that makes moms like me stand there and cry.

And she has this little place in her kitchen drawer where the scissors fit just perfectly. I kept opening the drawer to look at the scissors and every time I did ...

they were still there!

I was like Rainman, opening and closing that drawer all throughout the weekend. Open, scissors are there. Close. Open. Scissors are still there!

At my house if you want scissors, the last place you would look is the little slot in the kitchen drawer where they fit perfectly. No, you would be better off following a crafty trail of shredded paper and glitter and sequins and ribbon. Through the dining room, over the sofas, under the guest bed and out the other side, around the potted plants. At the end of that trail, that's where you'll find your scissors.

Glued to the floor, naturally.

Amanda's boyfriend is even better than the condo. His name is Jeff and I will tell you one thing about him that will show you what kind of person he is.

He wanted to spend quality time with me.

That means he and I went out for lunch together, just the two of us, and had an adult conversation. While Amanda took care of my kids.

You see Jeff has met everyone in the family except me and before he and Amanda talk about anything serious he wanted to meet everyone in the family. I thought it was so he could make sure he likes us but Amanda said it's so we can be sure we like him before we consider accepting him as a member of our family. But either way, I'm so impressed that this guy cares this much about Family in general and about our family in particular.

Of course before we finalize anything I need to test him and see if he will put the scissors back where they belong.

If he does that I will change his name to Bubba

2009-07-24T11:13:00.000+08:00

While I'm working every day the kids are in day camp at Forest Lake United Methodist Church. They told me they weren't going to pick up Southern accents while they're here but now that they're surrounded by kids their age who are dripping in Southern drawl, Audrey and Grant are picking it up too.

For example this morning when Grant dropped his French toast he said, "Dedgummit!"

And he asked me to put fried catfish and hush puppies in his lunch box today.

I'm just waiting for him to say "y'all", that's all that's missing.

Barack Obama's Reporter's Husband's Backyard's Trampoline!

2009-07-22T11:06:00.000+08:00

The kids and I are in Alabama now spending 5 weeks with my parents. My new boss is AWESOME to let me do this and I can say that because she doesn't read my blog, she doesn't even know about it, so this doesn't count as a$$ kissing. She agreed to let me work remotely from Alabama for 3 weeks and then I'll be on vacation for 2 weeks.

My whole family (mom, dad, 3 sisters, husbands, cousins, etc.) will go to a lake house at Lake Guntersville and we'll celebrate Mom's 70th birthday and Dad's 75th. And someone else had a big milestone birthday this year but that seems to have totally slipped through the cracks.

Good thing I'm mature enough to handle this without doing something immature like complaining about it on the world wide web.

One sad thing, Buddy's not with us. He just started a new job as a business development director at HP and he can't get any vacation time. I thought we were going to be able to last 5 weeks without seeing each other but it's just now been 1.5 weeks and I miss him so much already.

On our way to Alabama the kids and I had an overnight layover in D.C. and we stayed with my sister and her family except my sister was in Africa with Obama at the time.

My kids are so impressed with the President. While at Christi's house I told Audrey she could go outside and jump on the trampoline.

She paused at the door and said, "I am about to play on Obama's Reporter's Husband's Backyard's ... *trampoline*!"

Bathroom Conference

2009-07-17T17:19:00.000+08:00

The other day Grant summoned me to a bathroom conference. He rarely takes time for real conversations but for some reason when he's in the bathroom he transforms from an insanely active 6-year-old into a thoughtful, expressive young man.

I think it's because he's stranded when he's on the toilet, with nothing within reach that can be turned into a sword or a gun.

Grant had a clear agenda for this bathroom conference - he confided in me, "I love my new teacher at school. I told her a lot of stuff about me today. I told her my favorite color, my favorite food, and I told her you are older than Daddy."

At first glance that might seem like a strange collection of facts to share on the first date, or on the first day of school as the case may be, but later it occurred to me why he told her that I'm older than Buddy. He was telegraphing to her that his family is okay with May-September romances and that the two of them wouldn't get any resistance from us.

Now granted my relationship with Buddy is more like a late June-early July romance since I'm just three years older. Just for the record, now.

Grant also told me, "Miss Ma is prettier than you but you're nicer than she is."

"Oh great, you're saying I have a great personality!" I said.

He consoled me by saying, "I want to marry her but I want to marry you more." When I told him that I couldn't marry him because I was already married to Daddy he flippantly said Buddy and I could get divorced.

Naturally I would never let Buddy go for anything in the world, and most definitely not for my son. But at the same time I find myself already resenting Miss Ma for stealing my little boy's heart from me. I will probably be a quintessential monster-in-law one day. Woe be to the little tramp that he one day brings home and introduces as his girlfriend.

I will tell her that the only reason he's not marrying me is because I was already married.

Artwork for the Godparents

2009-06-17T21:44:00.025+08:00

Grant wanted to give one of his kindergarten pictures to each of his godparents: Mr. Al, Miss Barb, and Aunt Caroline. He and I thought long and hard about which picture he would like and then we came up with a great idea - we should use my blog and let them choose their own pictures.

So Barb, Al and Caro, this post is for you. Grant says, "You can look at all of those pictures and if you want which one, you can have it." Just leave us a comment with your preferred piece of art and we'll mail it to you.

#1: Underwater Playtime. Note the blue fish on the left is eating the smaller gold fish. It's all about the food chain.

#2: Our family. He says the larger figures on the right are him and Audrey. Buddy and I are the dwarves on the left.

#3: Helicopter, hot air balloon and plane flying over a cityscape.

#4: Rainy Day in our Neighborhood. Those dots falling out of the sky are raindrops. Those big brown dots behind the picture are his adorable eyes.

#5: Black-and-white collage of our neighborhood. A bird, a jet and a hot air balloon in the sky. Rockets on the ground. Please note that are in fact no rockets in our neighborhood.

#6: Heart Monster. Two little girls in his class contributed some extra hearts to his collage, they thought his wasn't warm enough. I think it's sweet that he accepted their contributions.

#7: Our neighborhood. Helicopter flying overhead. Note three rockets on the ground, sandwiched in between the sky scrapers.

#8: The four of us and a jack-in-the-box.

#9: Calligraphy.

#10: Fruit trees, buildings, airplanes, helicopters. The green one flying "the other direction" is a bird, not a helicopter.

#11: Traffic light.

I Heart Us

2009-05-13T22:04:00.002+08:00

Tonight after dinner Buddy and I took the kids for a walk around our apartment complex - they rode their bikes while we jogged. Grant doesn't know how to control his bike very well yet so at times he rode his bike *into* me while I jogged.

He was like an obstacle course that moves right along with you.

The weather was perfect - balmy with just a soft breeze. The mosquitoes aren't out yet. We could hear scores of frogs croaking in the moonlight. It was one of those moments where my heart swells up with contentment and gratitude for all my blessings. God is so good.

Then Grant ran into my shin again and kinda killed that moment.

Anyway there's a lake in the middle of the complex and it has a sandy beach. We sat down for a few moments to enjoy the evening, and to put some direct pressure on the cut on my shin.

Audrey wrote "I {heart}" in the sand.

And then my heart swelled to new heights when she completed the sentence.

"Us."

I love us too.

A secret admirer

2009-04-27T20:53:00.008+08:00

Today Audrey got a postcard at her school from a secret admirer. It says:
"Audrey Gao
Audrey Gao I miss you.
Audrey Gao I {heart} you."

The whole thing just makes my heart flutter. I asked her all kinds of questions like:
- Do you have any idea who it is? (No.)
- Why do you think they say 'I miss you'. Has someone left your school lately? (No.)
- Do you think it's from a boy or a girl? (Not sure.)
- Are you going to do anything to try to find out who it is? (Of course not.)
- Will you smile at all the boys tomorrow and try to guess by the way they smile back if they're the secret admirer?

In answer to that last question she said, "You never got one of these when you were little, did you?"

"In fact I didn't. How can you tell?"

"I can just kinda tell."

I need to try to be more cool.

"I'm sure only half of them will come"

2009-04-23T23:39:00.000+08:00

For Grant's birthday we decided to invite his whole class to our house for a party. We thought maybe half would come since it was in the middle of a long weekend but to our surprise almost everyone RSVP'd so Buddy and I found ourselves planning a party for 18 kids and 14 adults! He and I were up until 3am the night before the party - dyeing eggs (120 of them), making sandwiches, pizzas, soup, ants-on-a-log, and 160 Easter cookies.

Check out my work - I was so proud of myself!

Lollipops, Tanks and Lakes

2009-04-15T23:41:00.008+08:00

My son Grant has a little bit of a competitive streak. He gets it from my husband, who once heard that the lake in the apartment complex next to ours is bigger than ours and he makes us all jog over there every once in a while after dinner to look at it and see if it's true. The whole family has to stand there analyzing the lake from many different angles trying to decide if it really is bigger than ours. And if it is, would we consider moving?

He says he would move over something like this.

I say that he would be moving by himself then.

Anyway when Grant and I do homework together we usually have to have competitions to see who can write their Chinese characters better. Grant gets to name our teams. Last night he was the Tank Team.

He named me the Lollipop Team.
Yes, the Tank Team was lobbing cannon balls at the Lollipop Team before the games even got started.

So far I am letting Grant win in these games. I could kick his butt if I wanted to - I'm decent at writing Chinese characters since I used to live in Japan and Japan borrowed China's letters many centuries ago (and still haven't given them back) - but one day soon Grant will start kicking my butt, I know he will.

That will be a sad day for the Lollipop Team.

2009-04-13T20:58:00.006+08:00

Audrey goes to a regular Chinese school so they weren't celebrating Easter last weekend and she had her regular load of homework. Which is always a lot on the weekends.

Saturday night we told her she had to finish her homework before we would let her decorate Easter eggs. She said we were very mean parents and voila, the ensuing English essay:

"Easter. I like Easter but this Easter is not god [sic], because I did my homework.

Tonight was not fun, but today was fun. I hope I will have a great day tomorrow."

Why "The Downtown Diner"?

2009-04-13T20:57:00.004+08:00

If blogs were restaurants mine would be a downtown diner. The food you get here wouldn't be haute cuisine or especially nutritious but it would always taste good.

Basically I'd be the grilled cheese sandwich of blogosphere.

But the waitress here knows your name and she always has a smile for you, and it's a good place to stop by whenever you need a little break.

If your blog was a restaurant what would it be like? Leave me a comment.

I'm not sure these children are mine

2009-04-13T19:33:00.009+08:00

Here's something you would never seen in my childhood home.

It's a chocolate Easter bunny. In its entirety. Two.days.after.Easter.

TWO DAYS!

This is why I'm not sure these children are mine. No self-respecting Parsons would let a chocolate bunny see the sun set on Easter Day.

I grew up in a home that was absolutely Darwinian when it came to snacking. The strongest got the best snacks and if you showed any sign of weakness at all you would soon find yourself at the bottom of a heap and they would be eating your Ho-Ho.

Except you'd have lost the right to call it "your" Ho-Ho when you put it down on your plate to take a sip of your milk. You hesitated. Don't blame the shark for eating the wounded fish, it's what he was made to do.

My youngest sister Amanda was naturally at a disadvantage since by the time she came along there were already three sharks swimming the waters. She says that sometimes when a fray ended and she had once again gotten nothing she would climb up to the the cabinet and sneak herself a grape-flavored Flintstones vitamin.

She does have great teeth.

There was no hierarchy in our snacking power struggles. Adults got no more respect than kids. Once my mom bought a pie for Easter and she wrote "Don't Touch" on the top of the box. So naturally my two younger sisters ate it before the rest of us got up on Easter morning. When my mom discovered what they had done - I can still see here there in her bathrobe, gasping, pointing at "Don't Touch", saying something about Easter being a holy day and company and could we not show some restraint?! - they feigned wide-eyed innocence, swearing they thought that box top said "Don's Touch" and that that was the name of the bakery.

We were creative.

And we did well under pressure.

And thus I just cannot figure out how my own offspring have left this chocolate bunny on the table this long. There was another bunny, which they've eaten, so I know they know what it is.

Meanwhile there's a half-eaten pan of granola on the stove top. (Which by the way comes from Boomama and believe me it is every bit as delicious as she says it is!) (I prefer the baked oatmeal from Stretchmark Mama. But that's just me.)

Is it possible the hospital would have switched them both at birth?

Overheard at The Orchard today

2009-04-11T21:14:00.000+08:00

Today some friends and I had lunch at the Orchard and I wish I had recorded some of the comments.

"Frequent flyer miles are like fireworks - they're just for fun." (- Buddy)

"I find gnomes repulsive." (- Chantal)

"Next week I'll be in the land of free diet Coke refills." (- Greg)

"My son is good at mopping? Is that all I'm getting for $10,000?!" (- Helen)

"You need eggs, vinegar and food dye? Can you write that down for me?" (-Ray)

"Just stay calm, I'll talk you through this." (- Sheri)

"I had some serious trust issues after that." (- Grace, after her husband completely surprised her with a huge birthday party)

"I'm sorry I lied to you. And it was a bad lie. I was under duress." (- Dalton)

"I'll watch the kids." (- Damien, noted here because those are the sweetest words to any mother's ears)

40

2009-04-10T12:23:00.000+08:00

I'm excited about turning 40 today because I think this is the sexiest age ever. (You see why I moved from the corporate blog over here, I would never have ventured to write "sexy" on my company's blog space even though I mean it in the most un-sexy way possible.) (You know what I mean.)

So what is so sexy about 40?

40-year-old women know themselves. I mean, we've been living with ourselves day in and day out for four decades now so I guess we really should know ourselves. We know our strengths (first impressions) and our weaknesses (anything cheese-flavored). We know what looks good on us (long earrings and scarves) and what doesn't (hiking boots and shorts). We know what we like (a long dinner with good friends, bubble baths) and what we don't (pettiness, sesame paste). We don't waste time on things that we used to (reading trashy magazines, worrying about our thighs) and we invest in the things that we find rewarding (doting on our friends and family, flax seeds).

And we've come to love ourselves as we are. When we look in the mirror we see more good than bad, more character than wrinkle, more curve than lump, more shine than oil, more sparkle than grey, more radiance than ruddiness. And we've learned that in order to love ourselves more, we need to look in the mirror less anyway.

And people who know and love themselves are more capable of knowing and loving others, and really, what more does anyone want than to be known and loved? And thus the virtuous circle is created that, trust me, leads us back to the conclusion that 40-year-old women are sexy. Just trust me on this one. You'll understand when you're 40.

In addition to feeling sexy at 40, I am completely content. I have every single thing I ever wanted in life. I have had more love, adventure, fulfillment and joy than I ever thought would be possible in an entire lifetime. And here I am just now 40. So I figure if anything good happens to me in the next 40 years or however many I have left, it's just icing on the cake. My cup runs over. I am blessed beyond words.

And thank you Mom for all you did for me this day 40 years ago. And every day since then.

I am bang

2009-04-07T17:52:00.000+08:00

One of the best things about Beijing is the taxis, or more specifically the hearty guys (rarely women) who drive them. There's something about them - they've been around the block a few times so they know you the moment you sit down. Most of them love to chat and they have great stories to share. And you can share all kinds of crazy stories with them and know that a few hours later over potstickers and beer they will share your story with their friends, who will share it with their friends, and suddenly you are even more intricately woven into the colorful tapestry that is Beijing folklore.

And it's all anonymous. That's good for us introverts. Or maybe it's good for the paranoid among us, either way it's a good thing.

I love it when my husband drops me off somewhere to get a cab. The same conversation always ensues.

The cab driver asks me where I'm from. I say I'm from America.

He asks me if that man who just dropped me off is my driver. I smile and say he's my husband.

The driver asks incredulously, "Your husband is Chinese?" I smile again and say that he's born and raised in Beijing. (Have you ever noticed that lots of Chinese girls hook up with Western guys but it almost never goes the other way around? I have many theories about that, that'll be a whole other post some time.)

Then 9 times out of 10, the driver turns around - don'tworryaboutthosecarsinfrontofustheywillswerve - and gives me a big THUMBS UP sign and says "zhen bang!" which means something like "great!"

Which is so sweet. Buddy and I have wondered together what's prompting the thumbs up. Is it that I'm married to a Chinese? Is the thumbs up for him, that he's married to me? Is it that an American and Chinese would marry? Is it a sign that relations between China and America are getting better and better? Is it overall world peace? We have no idea.

I tried asking once.

"What's great about that?"

"It's just great," the driver replied. "Zhen bang!"

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. I have no idea why but I'm bang. Or we are bang.

Got the words right but the music all wrong

2009-02-03T12:56:00.000+08:00

The other day I was at the playground with my kids and started chatting with one of the other moms. In Chinese. My Chinese is okay but not great, as you are about to see.

Me: "So what do you do?"
Her: "I'm a teacher."
Me: "What do you teach?"
Her: "Skiing."
Me: "Oh cool! I tried that once and broke my leg. I didn't have a good teacher like you."
(She looks a little confused.)
Me: "So do you work mostly in the winter?"
Her: "No."
(She looks more confused. I decide to stop pursuing this line of questioning.)
(About two questions too late.)

I found out later that this woman was in fact a CHEMISTRY professor and not a SKI instructor.

The tones in Chinese are so annoying. They're so subtle and yet so important.