We Have Our Departure Date and Plane Tickets....in 10 days WE MOVE TO CHINA

I can not believe that in ten days we move to Beijing!!!

I AM FREAKED!!!!!!!!!!

Eeek. In that amount of time I have to write 100 pages, meet with an agent WHO LOVES MY WORK :), finish an online class for TEFL certification, fly to New York with Shiloh and meet my online friend for the first time, see friends, have a goodbye party (or several)repack our 5 um...I mean 6 bags, buy stuff that we need....and then get on the airplane. WHAT?

The Pros....

The kids are climbing the walls at my mom's house cause they are so ready for their adventure and they are not used to apartment living. While Gaga Drama is doing an excellent job keeping her cool, I would be freaked if the Diva's were sparkle spirals of craziness in my abode....bravo gaga Diva. I am not sure I would be as cool with it!!!


I still don't believe this is happening but in less than two weeks it is. EEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKK.


The upside, we have had some amazing goodbye experiences....

Wonderful playdates, an amazing goodbye camping trip, a great cocktail catch up party a great goodbye party being planned with swimming and Chinese food and fun stuff... and then another goodbye brunch and a goodbye party at both of the girl's schools...and a deep sadness that I will miss everyone so very much. Wow...its overwhelming.

I will miss everyone...and I will, deeply, but tomorrow I get on a plane and let my dog adventure with a dear friend. I will leave her house, her beautiful children and her family and Shiloh will stay with them. Shiloh who has been the best friend any mom could ever hope for, Shiloh who fell off of a five story building and survived, Shiloh who is the reason I met Diva Dad, Shiloh who Little Diva walks every morning and hugs every night. Shiloh who has laid beside both girls cribs as they slept, who used to walk back and forth from the front of the pack to the back when we hiked, making sure that not one person was unaccounted for. Shiloh, simply the best dog on the planet~~~~~~~

THE ONLY ONE AND VERY MAJOR DOWNSIDE (apart from missing my friends and family desperately)IS SAYING GOOD BYE (for now) TO MY AMAZING BABY GIRL, my very first and most beloved dog, Shiloh, better known as Squish!!!!!

Dear Shiloh (Squishy as we call you)

I love you baby, I love you so very very very much, I pray you know that you are in loving hands, that you will be with a family dear to my heart. This is not goodbye sweet soul, dear little one, this is just so long for now. I hope you enjoy your adventure, I know that I will see all the exciting things that you are up to, and take good care of their family as you always do. I must say I have never been apart from you more than a few days and the reality of this is really hitting me tonight. So all I muster to say at the moment is, I love you.....I love you dearly.

"Hi Mommy, Where'th yo Jahketh" and Everything is Gone!

Well, we did it. Everything I own is now is a few suitcases and one small blue pod. After the dust has settled it feels good to be free of all our worldly possessions. I am finally in the headspace to move. I have grieved, kicked, screamed, lamented, panicked and all...and finally I am free. Free to raise my amazing divas and free to write the next greatest fantasy series and many other exciting things. This freedom is very nice, while strange and oddly unsettling, it is nice. In hindsight my stuff was just that...stuff, while some of it was bitterly hard to part with, now that it is gone...we move on. I have no idea what the future holds, but for this moment, we have made the first jump.

So....here are some pics of where we will be headed...

I will probably have real pictures for you in a few weeks, but these are some of the images I am showing me and the kids to help us prepare for our new life in China.

Also...I have gotten word that my meeting with the agent is a "go" , so so far so good. :) Cross fingers.

Finally...

"Hi Mommy, Where'th yo Jahketh?" Is a sentence I hear every single morning when I drop Little Diva off at school. Her best friend Alex comes running over to us and at the top of his lungs yells this phrase and beams from ear to ear. Everyday I get the same question..."hi mommmy, where's your jacket?" Alex's smile is so wide and his eyes so bright when he greets us each morning. According to the teachers I am the only mom he ever approaches and he does so effervescently every time I enter the room. This is a nice reception and its even nicer that Alex is Little Diva's best friend. Alex, in his own charming little way, takes Little Diva to her seat and thus Little Diva's school day has begun. What is more endearing is that Alex is autistic. I am so proud of Little Diva that she has befriended Alex, the first special needs kid her school has had. I think Little Diva, somehow understands special needs because of Big Diva. While you would NEVER know that Big Diva has special needs, you would if you spent time with her. While Big Diva is the most popular kid in every school/neighborhood she has ever attended, she does have quirks that show her sensory challenges. However, Little Diva, having grown up admiring Big Diva and being used to the those quirks, does not shy away from special needs as other kids do, rather she happily embraces them. So the floor rolling and repetitive speech that calms Alex, also calms her sister when she is in the throws of a sensory meltdown, so I am proud of Little Diva, I am proud that her first friend that she has made on her own is a special needs kid and I love the fact that he calls me "mommy" and worries that I don't wear a jacket.

A Village Loses Their Queen, or Our Last Night in The Hood

So today is the last day in our house... I gave all of my patio furniture to our neighbor as well as the dining room table 4 chairs and sundry other items. All of these things she has wanted since we moved in and now she has them. I will confess, I was a little bitter at first, I felt very frustrated that the very thing I hated about the place was the drinking and disrespect from the "dad" and yet I had just set him up with a really sweet outdoor living room. However, I really like Neighbor Mom and always have, we are both trying to make it work, we are both parenting very um...expressive, active, strong willed kids and apart from a few times when she had tried to steal my plates and DVDS (ie, I made something and gave them my plate and NEVER SAW IT AGAIN until I was in their house and said "hey that's mine!" to which she responded, "I was just about to give it back to you" um...no you weren't, same with a few DVD's I think I got all but one back finally and it was because I sent Big Diva in there to retrieve them.) BUT SERIOUSLY apart from that I have enjoyed having Neighbor Mom next door, she found me cheap furniture, car parts, food and fiesta's, she's shared food, we've decorated our yard for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, we both are lifeguards at our backyad pool and each offer harvest to one another from our small gardens...etc....I appreciate her.

But the real neighborhood tragedy today is the loss of Big Diva. We drove in as usual while her fans were eagerly awaiting her arrival. Usually around 2:00 I start getting the knocks at my door asking when Big Diva will be home from school, when she does return, a throng (and I do mean throng) of children rush to our car to greet her. Usually I stop in the driveway so that she can get out and meet the masses. Today they literally escorted her from the car.

The neighbor boy introduced her to his "new" patio and she graciously cooed and fawned even though she noted that it was filled with her things, but I give them props as he was genuinely happy to have it and she was genuinely happy to give it...wow, we have been doing something right here.

The neighbor boy did confess that he wished she could stay and he could give the things back, he said he would rather not have any of our things if we could stay. I admit I shed a tear. I then heard laments and confessions of boredom and how the kids weren't sure what they were going to do without Big Diva, how it wasn't fun unless she was there. Even Diva Dad noted that Big Diva ruled the kingdom and everyone waited for her instruction, which was so often given with infectious laughter, grace and understanding, and a side swipe to the head or two if she found them out of line. There have always been the neighborhood scuffles, but Big Diva knows how to make you feel loved, funny and included, she can also strike up an interesting game on a whim that has everyone engaged. She is really the ultimate leader and diplomat, despite a fatigue induced tantrum here and there and the wayward "phwap" of her arm.

Tonight, the neighbors bid their Queen farewell. Even Little Diva was thick in the mix, "playing with her friends" and I saw a little Queen in training, following her big sister's lead. Some of the tricks she's picking up are, make sure to remember names, mention names often when addressing people, always share, whatever you have, always offer some, plan big extravagant experiences, like using trash to create a pioneer village, or old boxes to make rockets to space. If you have a pool, find a chair from which to catapult your body heftily into the air, risking bodily injury and drowning to emerge victorious from the water. Have Popsicle hour! If things become tense, giggle randomly. Flirt often. Compliment occasionally. Yell and whoop more than animals at the zoo do. Have an incredible sense of style and graciously, enthusiastically and nearly fanatically except all invitations to play!

When we arrived here almost one year ago to the day, the neighborhood looked on quietly at my deep brown skinned baby and my little big haired Diva...they were like feral beings lurking in the shadows of sweeping willow trees and chain link fences as Big Diva, effervescent and enthused sussed each one out and commanded them to play!!!! Within 20 hours of moving in, I had 8 children to dinner and within three days, the posse formed, lining up beside my car as I brought the Queen home from school. Not one single day has passed when that posse wasn't there awaiting her arrival. And tonight was the last time they will wait for her...and there was a silence when she arrived. An indescribable quiet that spoke volumes. She was impervious to it...why waste today...China awaits, but today is here....let us embrace it. She wiped the "long" off faces and made the day rich with a freezing swim in the pool, a baby doll hunt where they had to find her dolls in trees, a moving party where children schlepped drawers and lightweight objects to each other's houses and finally an incense burning party where each participant got a stick of Nag Champa and the licence to write their names in the sky. These exciting times were punctuated by not 1 but 3! Popsicle hours.

Throughout the day confessions mounted....

"I don't know what we will do without "Big Diva"?" Matthew

"You are such a good mom...thank you for taking care of me! Thank you for feeding me better than my mom does!" Alex

"I wish you could stay, it would have been better if you just could have stayed" Edward

"I have had a great year, I have been so happy, I have loved you here. I would rather go to Salvation Army to have stuff, I would rather you have your stuff here. You come back. You will come back, I will find you some place here or tell the new neighbors that you are coming back. I want you back. I'm not going to cry, cause you will come home." Neighbor Mom.

By the end of the day, Neighbor Mom had put the word out that free furniture was available and a posse of people filed in and cleared out my house. Only a few things remain...but I don't have to hire a mover to move it to Goodwill...good will has been done, people have things they need and wanted and I am almost completely free of every thing I have ever owned.

I had planned a big bon fire and roasted marshmallows as a way to say "Goodbye" and we did set the fire, but for some reason it didn't stay lit, so instead me, Big Diva, Mathew (Neighbor boy) and Alex (Next Door Neighbor boy) and I laid on the ground and watched the moon, a conversation about "light years" provoked me to get my "Smart Phone" (said in a sassy prideful tone as Big Diva tells everyone that her mom has a "smart" phone). I pulled up "Google Sky" and we all laid on the ground and looked at Saturn, the moon and some random constellations. And then it was time to go to bed...and that was it, simple and uninspired "Good night and thank you." And that was our last night in the hood.

WARNING THIS IS REALLY RAW!!! and Sad, but don't be worried, I assume it is part of all of it all... :(

So, another subletter fell through, the reason...NO ONE WANTS TO LIVE IN THE GHETTO and I get it, its loud, its Latino and anyone who owns a computer (cause I advertised on Craigslist) can't really deal with these poor people. So, I understand. They are obnoxious if you are educated (and I am not saying that Mexican's are NOT well educated) and didn't plan on living in Mexico (I will say it is like living in a foreign country) and by obnoxious I mean, they DRINK A LOT, they play loud music, their freaking puppy runs into your house all the time, the kids are everywhere, they have no boundaries...etc. Even my neighbor admitted that "Mexicans" are "hot" people who tend to spark up a lot. I have a lot of friends who are Mexican and Latino and this is in NO WAY a cultural slam, but the reality of our neighborhood. In fact one of my single mommy Latino friends, I seriously think is a manufactured human, because she is one of the best, most organized, fun moms I know and I have many other Latino friends who are great people and great parents, this is not a reflection on them, this is a reflection on the people I have lived with in this neighborhood. For example on the day the last subletter came, her husband was playing music at ear drum shattering decibels and NO LESS than 30 beer cans laid strewn about them, enough beer cans to illicit a curious comment from the potential subletee who pulled up with his fiance in a Mercedes. I have been dealing with it, trying to be Zen about it, but part of me wants to shout "STAY ON YOUR SIDE!!!!" I'm fine if you are irresponsible on your side (ex. drink til you pass out, don't buy dog food for your dog, just put down melted ice cream and some hot chili Cheetos for doggie dinner, let your rabbits run loose in the yard etc.) BUT...this was the nicest place we have ever lived in :( I mean we had a really nice place in Eagle Rock, but I had to leave it (because of adoption related drama), this was bigger and two stories and felt like a home. I learned to deal with the neighbors and the noise and we were loved in the neighborhood. (next post is about the village losing their queen :) We taught them to learn new things as we learned new things...but alas...it is gone come Friday and we are free to move on...

So here's the thing...every time I lose stuff (and trust me it has been a lot of times) I just lose it...nothing nice and new replaces it, until now...but again...its gone :( It's like I can't catch a break. Even though I have a pending opportunity in place, I still feel worry that it will fall though like everything else has over the years. I have been promised the moon...and yet I have seen only dark skies. I have worked harder than anyone I know for my dreams and still they elude me. :(. But...I'm gonna believe that this is it...cause that's what I do...I believe in me despite all of it.

However, I am ready for a change, I lament the fact that I was beautiful and now I am fat :( I was hopeful and now I am skeptical. I know China and a new adventure awaits me...but I can't seem to get myself to believe that it has any real promise outside of a Chinese pay check...but hey any steady pay check is welcomed.

I can't seem to feel any feelings right now for fear that an avalanche of feelings will overtake me.

This I know is normal...this is grief, this is loss, this is a hundred shattered dreams revisiting me, this is about letting go and letting God... and I understand that this is healthy. And yet... I'll confess, I don't entirely trust God. I have seen good friends get cancer, lose jobs, go to homeless shelters, die... I know that this is all part of life and in life there is struggle, but it doesn't really promote confidence in God. Sometimes I wonder if God HATES ME and yet I know that I am loved, so even if a mythical figure like some all knowing, massively divine being isn't so fond of me, many amazing, wonderful, incredible PEOPLE are.

I also know that this is part of releasing every single piece of who I have created myself to be over the years and reinventing it into something different and trust me I'll take different. Once I was very proud of who I am...I was verging on narcissism as I thought myself beautiful, talented and teetering on the edge of success...I just pray I can return to that perspective, minus the narcissism.

So this is to God, or whoever....first Thank you for my children, they are incredible and so far have been able to accomplish all I have seemed challenged to acquire. They are happy, strong, self motivated, expectant, giving, fulfilled, content and confident. While I am infinitely grateful for them, my family and friends...I am challenged by your expectations of me. I do pray that you have some sort of end date for the constant struggle, that maybe this next opportunity is real, then I'll gladly give up my home and all of my worldly possessions (as I have just done) for the chance to live my dreams. But, if you plan on dashing me again...just expect a sternly worded letter to management and a cancellation of my membership to anything even remotely faithful!

Signed, angry, disappointed and reluctant to grow!

PS. while I am struggling, stubborn and reluctant...Big Diva is not! When I was caught crying Big Diva asked....

BD: Momma are you sad we leaving our house forever for China?
Mom: Yes I am sad.
BD: We can always visit here.
Mom: Sure we can, but I will miss this place.
BD: I know, but we are going to have a better place in China and then a place here, I know what will make you happy, I'll make you a salad, I have a tomato we grew in our garden, MOM! a salad will make you feel much better.
Mom: Okay, I'll have a salad, with some tomatoes from our garden (mind you, I have grown to tolerate tomatoes and we do grow them in our garden (evil side of me says: WHICH WE ARE LEAVING), but I still sort of hate them, like I can only eat a few as long as there are no seeds in them. And yet Big Diva's salad was Divine!!!!

And Big Diva is divine and this poor child has watched me sell all of her toys, is leaving her friends, her school (and school in general to be home schooled)has no clue what "China" really is outside of Ni Ho Kai Lan and Big Bird in China and yet is a thousand percent more stoked to go, like right now...or tomorrow! than I am. She knows our dog is going to New York and that she won't see Momma and Daddy Music,her cousin, her God Parents, her friends, teachers and Diva Dad (who may come for a visit, cross your fingers and so may my cousin and her family) for over a year and yet she is ready for this adventure, in fact she and Gaga Drama (Grandma) are both much more ready than I am. Little Diva just keeps saying "I go to China on airplane!" but she's stoked too...the only one not ready to go is me...and this maybe the best thing that has ever happened to me...and yet...I'm just not there yet, but I will be...I hope! But right now I am like a cold empty room...I have no feelings and no thoughts...nothing. I have a meeting with an agent next week and my stuff has been sent to them...and still...I am a vast open expanse of nothing.

Ahhh coping techniques.... I know these posts will eventually shed light on the obscure but at the moment the obscure wins!


OH and two pieces of random news :)

Here is our new car in Beijing:

And here is the house I want to live in Beijing :) (cross fingers) Its a townhouse in a complex that has a pool and a playground, it is WAY out of my price range, but this Realtor can give us a deal, however, this may be a scam/ploy so I have other fun places picked out and you will eventually see the real place we find, but I like to dream that this place may eventually be ours ;)

http://www.beijingrelocation.com/beijing-greenland-garden-61.html

It Has Begun.... Bye Bye Stuff....and um...a book deal, maybe, finally?

Well, this first step of the adventure is almost complete. I have held a garage sale and have sold off most of my things, a very few things still remain, and sadly there is a little too much to put into 5 suitcases (yes, I gave us another suitcase) and a very small (much smaller than I envisioned)pod.

Thanks to Momma Music and her hubby (my sis and bro - in- law) they made the process so much less painful. Especially when we had NO customers until almost 9 (we started at 7). After watching my stuff get picked through, prodded, coddled, horded and most of it discarded, I acquired a healthy detachment to it and now it is all gone. I am still reeling a bit from having it all go away and I have a lot more to get rid of, but wow...okay. One of my favorite customers was a woman who brought her tiny toy Maltese to the sale where she bought a HUGE plush octopus chair that my kids have really loved and it looked it, but the chair was for the dog, so who cares if it had a stain or two, a play tent (toy sized) for the DOG to sleep in and various other child toy, turned dog furniture items. When we inquired about the dog, we discovered that he is the baby of her brood which started with two Malteses a brother and a sister, who just kept having babies and their babies kept having babies (sensing a little backwood twang happening here???...remember they are ALL brothers and sisters) the final amount of dogs this woman owns was a concept too staggering for us to fathom, but I believe it was like seven and this woman came with only two dollars and haggled us to DEATH (I think we must have wrangled a few more bucks out of her) anyway the big laugh (as if all of it wasn't scary hillarious) was that she drove away in this car...

This folks is a $50,000 dollar car. Slap My Head!!!! really?

So, we leave my house on Friday, I am desperately trying to find a subletter as my guy fell through, but have no luck yet. If I don't get one by Friday, I say good bye to our house too. Again all of it is still sort of hitting my like a numb sack of bricks.

What I did learn is at the garage sale is how economically depressed everything is, my stuff sold for pennies cause we live in the "ghetto" but it wasn't only the people who had nothing who came, but the people who had lost everything and were struggling came too...and in a way selling and giving my stuff away (which ended up almost being the same thing) was a great act of charity that lightened my load and hopefully gave a few people some treasures.

I kept one box of stuff that was worth a lot that I planned to sell on Ebay, but as I was walking past it trying to move a television that was small but weighed as much as a dead body, my plentiful backside knocked it over and everything shattered....and there you have it...GONE.

Mommy Music and Hubs came over the next day to help box up the remaining stuff and probably by the end of the day Wednesday, it will all be either gone or in our pod/suitcases. Then we move in with my mom for the next month while I finish an online class for Disney, a Diva Memoir book and the second of my horror series books....so I will be writing.

I am also keeping something kinda of under wraps till I know a bit more, but there might be some big things happening in my professional writing career. The timing will be perfect as the deal will probably not be done and ready for me to be in the United States until next year, but when I come home, well...it might just be spectacular. Let's send out good vibes and when I book the meeting next week with THE AGENT!!!! and LAWYER who I hope are planning on representing me and KamiSama I will let you know more. :)

Children

Something That Really Has My Panties in a Bunch!!!!!!

So...here is a link to an article that I find arrogant and disgusting...granted, I often am angered by parents that don't discipline their children...so I get it, but what I am most angry about is a society that doesn't provide parents with healthy family choices that allows us to live our lives in peace and harmony.

Yes, I am a single parent...and yes it was my choice...and I adopted "special needs" kids. Or are they just "kids" regardless, does this condemn me to NEVER going out to eat, NEVER sitting on an airplane, NEVER enjoying a phone conversation that doesn't cost me ($30K, the cost of my children's schooling over the last five years) which I had to raise ALONE...and no I did not go to a bar and get knocked up to have a kid, I adopted "special needs kids" which essentially "no one wanted", which is untrue, plenty of people wanted them, but I digress.

So this article got me fired up

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/05/granderson.bratty.kids/index.html

Sorry you will have to cut and paste it, I can't get blogger to link to the site.

And not because, unruly kids are annoying, cause they are, but because society hasn't given us a great place other than Chuck E. Cheese (expensive and disgusting) or Mc Donalds (expensive and disgusting) to go and have our children be children in peace.

And don't get me started about the airlines, I am TERRIFIED to take my kids on the plane to China, Little Diva was such a pain in the patoot on our Denver trip, I have no idea what she has in store for us on a 17 hour journey to China. I stayed up for almost 24 hours before our Denver trip getting ready, working on writing assignments, going to therapy for the kids etc, that I was vastly sleep deprived when I arrived at the airport and then to have my kid act up the whole way and physically have to subdue her for three hours was excruciating. I sang, talked, cuddled, sang, played, talked, disciplined, etc...only to have her finally fall asleep (which she needed) when we landed, which meant lugging luggage, a heavy 35lbs toddler, while holding a sleepy 5 year old's hand through a crowded airport. Remember mom is working on less than three hours sleep and my shoes cut a hole in my foot that was bleeding.

So.... I will say this and I will say it boldly F* and I mean that in the very bad word sense YOU people who think you are holier than thou and who also think that smacking, spanking and otherwise hauling off and hitting your kids is a great way to parent. I will admit that I have done it and really...I have seen zero positive results from it. The techniques I have learned in therapy are better suited to my kids...but what plane has an angry center...much less a place for kids to exert their anxiety (and yes they have it) or energy on a plane...which brings me to the point of my post.


AMERICA!!!! THE FREE...THE BOLD...or DISNEY! Please create a family friendly airline!!!!! PLEASE!!!! Please make it affordable and mousified so that our little ones are happy, loved and entertained, we will look at other parents wrangling screaming toddlers and offer goldfish, organic apple bars or a look of loving support to say "hey I've been there" let there be wii at the chair back consoles and motionless tables that don't disturb the seat in front of you, have flight attendants pass out crayons and toys...really I'll pay for it, just not to be demonized by the mass public of "hands off dads" and "career minded" people who secretly hate my kids even though I have braved sleep deprivation, forgone personal hygiene and nourishment to ensure that my every moment is spent trying to keep my rambunctious toddler quiet so that she doesn't disturb your flight, one that I have have spent the same money on. Trust me, my fight is a million times worse than yours because I am trying to make "you" happy.

And while we are at it Entrepreneurial America, can we get a family restaurant that is fun, nice and loves kids that isn't over priced or disgusting....I would do it, I would create one, but I'm really busy raising my kids...trust me you will make MILLIONS just create a family friendly airline and a chain of restaurants that serve great food at a good price that loves children!!!!! So you! and your "I can't sleep with screaming babies" attitude can have your first class...fine!....just give us Disney Air!!!! And first class families with first class brats...will have the time of their lives.