Kirk Cameron, shut up please. You were so much more likable when you were on "Growing Pains."

Tonight at class, we did an exercise called Autobiography as Haiku. (This used to be a column in the Washington Post several years ago.) Here's mine.

I disappointed my parents, which is the ultimate sin for an Asian girl. I didn't become a rich and fancy doctor. I didn't go to Harvard or Stanford or Berkeley. I didn't marry a Korean man. I can't make kimchi. I have no idea how the lunar calendar works. I speak Korean with the fluency of a six grader. But I watch my parents laugh and play with my beautiful children and know that maybe I did one thing two things right.

If this offends you, I don't care--it's hilarious!

Jesus Has His Say

I've been plussed.

The man in the Lexus hybrid with clean fuel plates drove 5 under the speed limit in the left lane. Then he rolled down his window and chucked, with lots of arm behind it, a cigarette butt out his window onto the grass in the median.

I believe the irony was lost on him.

Holy cow! This woman had a baby the size of my five-month-old! >.<

There is no such thing as privacy anymore, is there? Or self-awareness?

Argh.

Let gays get married already, geez. All those fabulous, extravagant weddings, the thing of many a gay boy's dreams. It will be good for the economy.

This is what's wrong with our country, and why other nations laugh at us: http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/16/obeidallah.cain.muslim/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Officially the driver of a... minivan.

Feelings of inadequacy... rejection... and the accompanying heartache... they never really go away, do they...

At my son's party on Saturday, two of my cousins were discussing surgery to create eyelid folds. I'm against it, of course. (Maybe because I don't have narrow eyes.) It's no surprise that the video story is about the Korean women who get the surgery--most Korean celebrities, if not naturally blessed, will get them, as my parents like to point out when they watch TV. Does the surgery make you look any better?

I just read an article called "8 famous Harvard dropouts not named Gates or Zuckerberg." It lists nine famous dropouts. Hmm...

100 Days

Jungle Favor Birthday

Create funny birthday invitations at Shutterfly.com.

View the entire collection of cards.

Anneli [pointing to a wedding photo]: "Umma, that's you in the picture. You was being a princess."

Only two weeks of maternity leave left... it's sad. I'll only have two months left to teach, but I can think of more relaxing ways to spend those two months. I'd much rather deal with an infant and a toddler than five classes of teenagers.

Mom has been back for five weeks, and we've had to do a lot of adjustment. There will be more adjustment when Dad comes home. The two of them are going to have a hard time getting used to the idea that the house isn't theirs anymore, as much as we'll have a hard time getting used to sharing the house with them. It's not so hard for me--I spent most of my life in this house--but I know it's been a bit rough for Ryan since Mom came home. We've cleaned and rearranged most of the house, and there's still a lot more to do. Eventually, I'd like to get to the point it really feels like our house. It'll help once we get all the bathrooms redone and we get some new furnishings--just little things here and there.

Dad is doing well. Doctors are optimistic. The entire ordeal has left my parents with a stronger relationship. Dad has definitely come out of this a much different person. I don't know quite how to describe this difference, but he's... different. He seems to enjoy life more, but I suppose that's only natural after you come back from almost dying.

Doing well in week twenty-three. Baby Boy is kicking but it hasn't become uncomfortable yet. People want to know if we've considered names, but I've yet to reach that point. Even with the first one, it wasn't really something we thought about until fairly late into the pregnancy. My parents didn't even discuss her Korean name until I was doubled over in pain at the hospital. And to be honest, we've still got a lot of work to do in the house to even think about names. He'll just be "the baby" until we get closer to February.

Dad is also doing well. He had his penultimate treatment last week. They changed the treatment so he doesn't feel so terrible after it. He has one more in November, with a follow-up with his oncologist a couple weeks after that. If all goes well, my parents may plan on returning to the states for a few months before returning to Korea for the three-month follow-up in February. Mom is worried she will miss Baby Boy's birth, but it's probably more important that she be with Dad than me. Granted, I could use my mom's help in the two weeks immediately following the birth, but I think I can manage to take care of myself and the baby (and Baby Girl and Husband). Everything is still conditional, so we'll see what happens.

This weekend we tackled the yard and got a lot done. We picked the last of the peppers; pulled up the rest of the plants; raked and bagged leaves; and mowed the lawn. I got a lot of laundry finished, and we started sorting and organizing Baby's toys and books. Next weekend's project will be to find a nice shelving system to put in the living room to hold the toys and books. That way, we can also unpack the rest of Baby's toy/book boxes.

It's been a productive weekend--probably the most productive since we moved in. (Hey, I had morning sickness. I was in bed for about two months.) We got our new washer and dryer yesterday, got everything hooked up today, and  I'm now on the third load of laundry. There's something quite satisfying about breaking in new appliances... :) I cleaned out as much as I could from the laundry room; there's still quite a bit of random stuff that I'd like to be rid of, but I'll leave for my mom to sift through. Last night, Husband and I spent an hour sorting about 500 golf balls. It could have been more, I didn't bother to keep count. I know my parents like playing golf, but that was ridiculous. I also cleaned out most of the pantry and sorted things so there was some sort of logical organization. After all that, all I could think about were the people on the show "Hoarders"; my mom isn't as bad as any of those crazies by any means, but I found five bags of napkins in five different places in the pantry; five boxes of golf balls in five different places in the laundry room; empty photo envelopes from the 80s; receipts from the 80s before we moved to this house... you get the idea. I can't imagine how much trash we've thrown out since we moved here, and there is probably just as much still left to sort through and throw away. Phew.

On the bright side, we spent yesterday morning at Cox Farms doing fall and Halloween things. Baby had a lot of fun seeing and petting the animals, eating kettle corn, and going down the enormous (and fast) slides. We had to cut our visit short because our washer and dryer were being delivered, but we'll definitely go back next year. Maybe we can even get in another trip before they close in November.

And the New Baby is kicking away!

Life just got really complicated. On top of having sold our condo, we need to find a new home quickly, I am pregnant, and I got news today that dad has been diagnosed with diffuse large b-cell lymphoma. I did some quick research and found it's the most common non-Hodgkins lymphoma in men, and it's treatable. This just means my parents will be out of the country for quite some time until they know if and how much it has spread, and how the doctors will treat it. It is definitely a lot of added stress I don't need right now. I'll do the best I can, but I don't know how this will affect me once school starts in August. A logistical nightmare is all I can foresee. Sigh.

More pictures I took today:









Again, I have to say these turned out very well using just a simple digital camera.