Straight-Up Hong Kong

 Mmmmm.  Just look at that air quality.  There's a reason many residents wear white masks everywhere they go.

The Hubs had to go to Hong Kong a few weeks ago for work 

and asked if I wanted to come along. 

Duh.

I didn’t even know what to do with that city.  It’s not like any place I’ve ever been before. So many people occupying so few square feet. I mean, I’d heard, you know—

how they ran out of space on the ground, so they just went up. And up and up. 

 And up.  

But I didn't know. Until I'd seen it with my own eyeballs, I just didn't know.

It was a quick trip, but we managed to fit a few things in.

We went up to The Peak for what we'd heard was the best view of the city. 

 

 

  

We went to the temple. We were asked to be the witness couple, which was funny,
considering the session was in Cantonese. Not a big deal. Until the prayer….  

And then...well...and then it's too late, isn't it?

We took the escalators up to the Mid-levels.

 And then we had dinner and walked around SoHo taking pictures. 
That was our favorite night.

 

 

We went to church. Which was not in Cantonese, even though the sign is.

We ate some pretty legit Chinese food, although deciphering the menu was no small task.

And we just enjoyed seeing another part of this amazing world we live in.

Good times, they were.

Mom, can you please hold my wand?

I heard a little girl say this to her mother as I passed them on the street the other day and couldn't help but laugh to myself.  The child was wearing a poofy pink skirt and clearly had something important she needed to do that would require both hands, which meant parting with her wand for a moment. 

It made me think—even when we don’t need our moms, we still need our moms. There are those days where we just don’t feel like we can do it alone and need someone to help us through.  Or days when we just don’t know if we can deal with all it means to be an adult. Or days when we just need someone to prop us up a bit until the rough times pass and we can pick back up where we left off.  To lend us strength when we feel like we’ve run out of our own.

It seems that no matter how “grown up” we get, Mom is still the one we run to for advice, comfort, encouragement, validation…or just to hold our wands for a bit.  And what would we do without her?

Happy Mother's Day to all the amazing moms. Especially my own.  Heaven knows she's held my wand more times than I can count.

There's Nobody Here

(Actually wrote this a few months ago...but never posted it. 

J-dub left for Shanghai again this morning...and it mostly still applies. Except it's fall now.)

I’m the loneliest girl in the world.  No, really.

Okay.  Not really.  But I’m PRETTY lonely. 

But how can this be?

I lived alone for four of the six years before I got married.  I KNEW how to live alone. And what’s more…I liked it. Not that I didn’t love the roommates I had when I didn’t live alone, ‘cause I did love them.  I still love them. But I also loved living alone.  In my very own apartment.  With my very own front door.  And my very own refrigerator.  And my very own everything. Knowing that the whole place was the way it was because I alone had caused it to be that way.  Having every speck of floor space and air space to do with it whatever I pleased.

The Hubs left for Shanghai this morning.  From Shanghai, he will go to Tokyo.  And I won’t see him again until the end of next week.

This is a short trip compared to his last one, which lasted over 2 weeks.  But he hasn’t even been gone 24 hours yet and I’m already going crazy. I’ve been married now just over four months.  Four months! I lived totally and completely alone for FOUR YEARS.  Have I really forgotten how to be alone so quickly??  And I only spend an average of three and a half hours a day with the boy anyway (awake, that is…).

So I find myself needing to do a little self-evaluation to see if I can identify the reasons I might be suddenly feeling THIS lonely. And the results are in:

1- It’s summer, which means it’s spider season.  And in Australia, the spiders are the size of my hand.  And I spotted one in our building yesterday.  And I just KNOW there’s one lurking somewhere in our apartment.  And if it shows itself sometime before next Thursday, I will have to deal with it. Alone.

2- I have no access to American television.  No Fox News to fill the void.  No Candice Olson or Ina Garten or Glenn Beck to keep me company.

3- My family and 99.9% of my friends live approximately 8,000 miles away.  I can’t imagine how far away that would actually feel if it weren’t for g-chat and skype.

4- It’s raining.  Hard.  And rain always makes me lonely.  Even when I’m not alone.
5- While I used to love living alone, that was before I had ever lived with a boy, which I always suspected I would rather like. Now I live with a boy. Which I do rather like.

And now I feel better. ‘Cause it turns out that I’m not such a miserable failure at being alone, after all.  It’s just that being alone has gotten lonelier. 

But mostly, I just miss The Hubs.