singledipmom
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Below are the 7 most recent journal entries recorded in the "singledipmom" journal:
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10:24 am
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Summertime Blues
Okay, so I'm not very good at blogging. Thank goodness it's not a part of my job description, or I'd be looking for another job!!!
Summer has started, and most families have left Post to travel to the States or other places for vacation. I'm trying to decide whether I need to go to Astana permanently, or continue to commute from Almaty every week. The flight is taking it's toll, as is living out of a suitcase, but I dread having to pack up my home AGAIN (third time in 3 years) and move 1000 kilometers. And, if I move to Astana, I'll be even more isolated, if that's possible, since there are only 2 flights/week out of that hell-hole.
My neurotic cat can't decide whether she wants to love me or hunt and kill me. I think that she's pretty frustrated and lonely when I'm traveling. Before, Sean was at home with her when I was in Astana -- now, it's just the quiet of the apartment. If she were human, she'd probably have already left me.
I'm glad that Sean got to go back to DC for the summer, but it is really quiet around here, especially on the weekends. No reason ("Mom, wil you take me to Alexander's?") even get out of my pajamas, unless I want to go to the market place and buy raspberries and peaches, which are in season and very cheap. (I ate about 2 pounds of raspberries this week!) And knowing that Sean will be away at boarding school for the next year or two is hard on me. Of course, it's a wonderful opportunity for him, but I can't help but feel that tickle of guilt (i.e., I'm abdicating my parental responsibilities to a boarding school staff. How do the Brits do it???) We're deciding between a school in Switzerland (really nice, good track record with strong university acceptances, international environment) or the US (small, close to my parents, good music program).
I am going to visit CENTCOM (which is in Tampa, FLA) this week, and am hoping for a long (well, 24 hours) layover in DC. It will be a nice surprise for my family, who are certainly not expecting me. How does one go from a moderate, dry climate to 100 degrees and 100 percent humidity? Especially in middle age? I'm dreading the trip, but it comes with the job. (Why can't they do this in November????)
I'll take my first home leave in more than 2 years in August. I'm really looking forward to goofing off and doing NOTHING for 3 whole weeks. I'll go to NC to visit my grandmother, stay at the lake and go skiing, and eat heaps and heaps of "foney baloney" "not dogs" and "tofurkey" because I can get it!
That's about it for this summer. My life's really not very exciting, is it?
Current Mood:  blah
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10:15 pm
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Single parenthood and the checkbook, part II
Okay, so it's been a month, and I'm back.
Actually, Sean lived up to his promise. Every day, he makes his lunch. Sunday evenings, we walk down the hill to the grocery store to pick out bread, lunchmeat, and yogurt for his lunches. I even went so far as to ask my parents to send Cheesits and Pringles to make lunch even more fun.
But here's the catch - in the past month, his X-Box's power supply burned out. (Note: There is definitely a circle in hell for Microsoft. If you look around the internet, you come across hundreds of people complaining about the power supply and how easily it overheats and burns out. Microsoft, however, when contacted, offered to let me purchase a replacement for $100. How big of them!)
And the TI-84 calculator that he talked my father into buying for his high school geometry class? It cost $120, and he dropped it when he was showing it off to other kids in the class. It doesn't work anymore.
To top it all off, he didn't tell me that he'd broken these two super expensive toys. Wonder why? (I won't even go into the story about how he hid his report card from me for 3 weeks...)
I was counting down the weeks until we could buy the iPod, and instead of being $100 in the black, we're $220 in the red. By my calculations, he can replace his power block now, and it will be Spring Break before he makes up the other $450 he'll need for the calculator and the iPod.
So, now my dilemma is a bit different. I did promise him that he could earn this expensive toy, but now things have changed. Is it fair to say to him, "Look, you have two things to be replaced that cost $220, and they take priority over the iPod," or do I stick to what we decided originally, since you can't expect to demand honesty in a child if you don't keep your word?
I'll let you know what I decided when I work it out for myself. I'm such a wimpy mom...
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11:38 am
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The straight line of life...
I looked in the mirror yesterday and saw my mother and father, and even my grandmother, as they are today. Not just a glimpse, but really SAW them. I'm aging quickly in many ways, with sagging jowls and wrinkly eyes. I thought I was aging gracefully before, and I didn't think much about face cream and sleeping on my back, so now I'm paying. I keep telling myself that I'll have surgery when I come back to the States in 2009, so I'd better start saving. By then, techniques will be even more refined. I'll have my eyes lifted and my jawline contoured - that ought to take about 5-10 years off my age.
And that got me thinking about how life is a series of procrastination and waiting. We are all just waiting for everything to click into place, the last puzzle piece, the sunset at the end of the formula movie.
Life isn't a circle, it's a straight line. Or more accurately, a line with two distinct points at either end... a series of points in between.
I need to grow up. I need to admit to myself that I'm middle aged now, not young and spry and able to wear the trendiest clothes and buy silly little purses. I need to stop secretly wishing for a baby or for a new chance at a normal life. Those opportunities don't exist any more, in so many ways, so I need to mourn them quickly and get on with things, get on with the present.
If I drift into this depression slowly, I'll get mired and I will waste my time with Sean wishing for other things... then I'll be sorry that I wasted my time and didn't appreciate what I had. Just like I didn't appreciate my time with a 2-year-old Sean or a 7-year-old Sean, because I was waiting for everything to "click."
What is it about life? I know that many have made their peace and that they accept life for exactly what it is. Those are the truly happy people, the people who love life for what it is and enjoy every moment.
But there is some part of me - and it is not a small part - that believes that I get another chance. A chance to go back in time and do things right. A chance to spend time with my 2-year-old Sean. A chance to do things differently when I'm 15, 22, 27, 35... Even though I understand intellectually that I'm 42 and that I'll never be young again, I don't believe it.
The only waste of time in life is all the time we spend waiting and hoping instead of living for today: enjoying the moment for what it is, savoring the quiet mornings with coffee and a good book and the drives in the steppes with a teen-aged son.
So, when will I be cured? I'm even waiting for THAT, damnit, and can't get past that sense that somehow, everything will fall into place. The "love of my life," a baby, a chance for a "normal" life, which probably entails a life in a nice house in the suburbs with a running stroller, SUV, and volunteer work at the elementary school library. But maybe everything is in place, it IS the way it is supposed to be for me, and I am wasting my time waiting for fate to get around to me. Waiting, hoping, don't I deserve to go to the end of the road with a satisfied feeling?
Do we ever change our stripes? Do we ever develop an ability to just enjoy the moment, if we were not born with that ability?
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09:41 am
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What's stress got to do with it?
After watching my weight creep - no, skyrocket - since my move to Kazakhstan last year (30 pounds, unbelievable), I decided to do something. As many people who battle weight issues can attest, it's one of those things that you will get around to eventually.
When you've gained 30 pounds in one year -- more than 1/2 pound per week -- and have to recycle the same fat clothes over and over again, you start to get serious.
One of my best friends has been at me for 2 or 3 years to get my weight under control. According to him, it's not about how I look, it's about how I feel. Well, I think it's about the way I feel about myself when I look at myself more than anything else, actually. :-)
When I saw him in DC this summer, on my way to pick up Sean and bring him "home," he hugged me and told me that he loved me, but that I had to do something. Thus started the constant nag. He would write me e-mail ("have you seen a doctor?" "have you had your blood tests?") and call me ("so, did you work out today?") to the point where I was almost afraid to pick up the phone or open the mail.
Well, I signed up for an account on fitday.com -- which my NCO highly recommended -- and I haven't regretted it. I learned, for instance, on that I really needed to do at least 30 minutes of exercise per day (with the added bonus of catching up on my reading while pumping away). I had been skating by with 15 minutes on the eliptical. I also learned that there are a whole lot more calories in a sandwich than one would tend to think. And, get this, 11 calories in ONE PRINGLES chip. Eleven!!!!
So, one week of calorie-counting and sweating later, I've dropped about 5 pounds. It is rather motivating, but the task of the other 25 pounds is daunting.
Now, you might be wondering what the subject line has to do with this post. Last night, during our daily chat, my friend pointed something intersting out. For months, I suffered the tyranny of a 2-star boss with a distinct lack of empathy. I made myself sick on a daily basis worrying about getting that nasty e-mail or somehow proving my worth. Well, I somehow broke the code. I'm not sure how, but I did. At about the same time I was shrugging my shoulders and saying to myself, "What's the worse thing that can happen if I get fired? He'll have to pay to bring me home! Would that be so bad?" he was saying, "You're doing a great job. I'm really impressed. Would you care to stay for another 2 years?" I even got a bonus!
The stress bubble popped. My body left its constant "fight or flight" state behind, and I started enjoying life. I'm not even sure I remember when it happened, but my friend pointed out last night, "You haven't complained about your boss for weeks." And it hit home. I like my job, I like my life here, and I am enjoying my family life. I'm content. And now I have time (and room) to worry about my health and how my son is doing in school - normal, everyday worries that cause regular, everyday stress.
A strong work ethic is enough to bring us to our knees if we let it rule our lives. It's the detachment, the lesson that we work to live, not live to work, that allows us to be free to be parents, friends, and lovers -- without reservation. That detachment allows us to explore other things that could enrich our lives.
And I've been able to shed the first 5 pounds.
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08:30 pm
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Tax dollars at work, part 1
I just had to share this.
As you may know, the capital of Kazakhstan was changed from Almaty to Astana about 7 years ago. I won't go into all the speculation as to why the capital moved from a temperate, mountainous city to a windy, desolate location in the steppes - only Mr. Nazarbaev knows the answer to that question. What I will tell you about is the new embassy move, and what I'm doing today.
Last week, we packed up all of our boxes and computers and telephones, marked them carefully with our office names, and the moving company picked up everything. You see, the plan was that we'd come to work on Monday morning and the boxes would be in our offices/cubicals, and our computers would already be up and running, and we'd have phone connectivity.
The reality was that the new embassy was built with US standard receptacles. Not European (round prong), but US. In a 220-voltage building. In Astana. In Kazakhstan. Ummm...
So, here we are with a bunch of computers that won't plug into the walls until we get adapters. Oh, and the network needs adapter plugs, too. Did I mention that the phone system runs on electricity, as well? The Embassy will order the plugs, which cannot be easily found abroad (since nobody needs to plug anything in to a wall socket that has square holes).
I went home and got on the internet via my lightening speed dial-up ISP (a whopping 46kbs!), and have been here all day. I wonder how many more days I'll be working from home...
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03:40 pm
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Single parenthood and the checkbook
I’ve been kicking this can down the road for years – how to teach my kid how to be fiscally responsible. I have always pretty much gotten him anything he wants, within reason (whatever “reason” means). I don't know why. I guess he's a pretty good kid, and doesn't give me cause to want to punish him very often. He is good natured, and I really want him to be happy. I know, I know... you can't buy happiness. But dang it, it really feels good when you give someone something that he really wants. Most of the time, that is.
This summer, he lived with my parents in Alexandria and his father came to visit from Georgia. Not having spent a lot of time with Sean, Shalva feels pretty guilty at times. When Sean asked for the latest X-Box 360, of course he obliged. So now Sean has a Nintendo 64, a Nintendo Gamecube, and an X-Box 360, about 20 games spread out among them, and all the accessories. He also has that tiny transistor radio that he begged me for, a digital video recorder that he absolutely had to have, and a cat (not electronic).
Now he wants an iPod. Not just any iPod, but the 80Gb video iPod. His friends have a 60Gb iPod that we listened to all the way to Tamgaly on Saturday. He had already asked about getting the 60Gb version several times up to the trip. Granted, it is a really cool little gadget. But $399? Then he went on line and saw that Apple now has an 80Gb version – and it’s $50 cheaper! I’ve been listening to him beg all day. He even lowered himself to tell me that the 6 pounds that I’ve shed look more like 20. Pathetic.
Of course, I’ve wanted an iPod, as well. It is a neat little thing, and very portable for all the traveling that I do, but I didn’t say that. I basically asked him to tell me how he thought he would get one.
At $10/week, it would take him 35 weeks just to get the basic iPod – no accessories. This is his allowance right now, which he (of course) is willing to forego. But does that mean that he’s really “earning” this gadget? I don’t think so.
He offered to do more work around the house. He said that he would wash his own clothes from now on. Impressive, but do I believe him?
Then, as we were talking about school lunches this afternoon, I had a brainstorm. The school charges 550 tenge per lunch. This is about $5.00. Sean buys his lunch ticket in 2-week cards that cost 5,000 tenge – close to $50, or about $100/month. I told him that if he’d help me save money on school lunches by making them and bringing them to school, I’d consider getting him an iPod. Of course, he immediately agreed and started making tomorrow’s lunch. I’m impressed, but I told him that I wanted to wait until November 1st – one month from now – to see if he actually stuck with it.
Finally, a way to have him earn something that he wants, and not just open my wallet and pay. Let’s see how much he really wants it, right?
Tonight, I hope I learned something about being a better parent.
Current Mood:  contemplative
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12:33 pm
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Tamgaly Petroglyphs
After 14 months of living in Kazakhstan with my teenaged son, I decided that we need to do more traveling internally. Up until today, everytime we need a few days off, we leave. Last Christmas, we went on a tour of Thailand. We spent Spring break in Prague. We took a long weekend and went to Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) and spent a couple of days in Tashkent (Uzbekistan).
I'm not much of a camper/outdoors person, and neither is Sean. In Kazazkhstan, you'll mostly see ads for eco-tourism. If you ask someone where you can go for a couple of days, inevitably you're told about the beautiful mountains, or some hidden lake, or a huge nature park.
Now it's nearly October, and the weather will start to get cold soon. Realizing that there's probably only limited warm weather until our return to the US, I asked my friends Anne & Brian what we could do around here that's interesting -- and within a days drive there and back.
Anne & Brian are an interesting couple. They're a foreign service couple - she's the officer, and he's a private photographer. They travel any chance they get, so I trust their opinions and advice.
Anne told me about Tamgaly Petroglyphs. I had heard that there were petroglyphs in Kazakhstan. (In fact, the petroglyphs at Tamgaly are on the UNESCO list of important sites to be preserved.) I just didn't realize how close they were - and how easy they were to get to.
So, Saturday morning found me loading a picnic in the car (French bread, cheese, ham, tomatoes, local apples, and a very expensive Ramstore bag of Doritos) and picking up my son and his two friends at their house in Koktobe (up near the TV tower). We started too late - after 9:30 - so we had to fight the local traffic to get out of town on Tashkent Road (now called Raimbek Road). The first jams were around the green bazaar, the second jams were around the auto bazaar. Then one side of the road was closed for paving, so four lanes were squeezed into two for a 4km distance. The 10km journey out of town and as far as Raimbek took me 1 hour. Thank goodness for Sean's friends' iPod. We sang along to U2, Simon & Garfunkle, and Queen the whole time.
After that, the road opened up like 95 after you get south of Richmond. There were very few cars - oncoming or going in my direction, and the road was as smooth as a US highway with no potholes to avoid. We made the next 90km in about 30 or 40 minutes. The road winded through passes cut through strangely smooth bubbles of mountains, with the Tien Shan range (I think) rising in a blue haze to the left of us.
Almost exactly 60 miles after we turned on to Tashkent Road from Furmanova, we approached the turnoff for "Kopa" - a small, Kazakh village. I turned off the cruise control and began a 30-mile trip avoiding huge potholes and rocks, with speeds ranging from 5mph to 45mph. We passed through herds of cows, goats, and sheeps, pointing out "cowboys" sitting handsomly on their steeds up on the crests of tall hills.
We finally passed the village of Tamgaly on the right, with the "musem" (a building with a yurt out in front and a Kazakhstani flag waving) on the left. After ascertaining that the museum was closed, we asked a herder for directions to the petroglyphs. He pointed us another 4km down the road.
When we arrived, there were four cars in the parking lot. I was a little surprised, because we had only seen one other car the entire journey since leaving Tashkent Road. There was a group of Russian teenagers having a picnic in two cars, and a Niva with diplomatic plates, and an SUV parked next to a yurt (which we found out housed the local Ministry of Culture and Sports employee who collects money for tickets to enter the site).
We lowered our own tailgate, wolfed down lunch, and started to walk towards the entrance of the park. At that point, the Min Culture guy ran over, presented his credentials to me, and asked for 250KZT (roughly $2) per person. I paid the amount, then glanced at his buddy who was standing to the side silently. I asked if there were any tour guides. After conferring between themselves in Kazakh for a moment, Duman agreed to show us around.
As we set off, Sean mentioned that he had not yet changed into his hiking boots. Then we all looked at Duman, who was wearing flip-flops with socks. We shrugged, figuring that the snakes would get him first, and set off.
Duman and I chatted about the park, and he gave me the history. The petroglyphs were discovered, according to him, by a Russian scientist who was there studying some grave sites that had been uncovered in 1951. The petroglyphs, carved onto the flat, exposed surfaces of what seem to be shale, date back as far as 1000 BC (Bronze Age) to the early 20th century. There are as many as 5,000 pictures scattered around the mountains in this small area.
We wound through little valleys and up the sides of steep hills, following the yellow arrows (the trails were very well-marked). Duman stopped from time to time to let us look at the petroglyphs, pointing out particularly interesting carvings ("There's the largest 'sun man'," and "See that camel? It is being hunted by a wolf.") Then we climbed to the top of a particularly large hill (mini-mountain) for a breathtaking view of the dry river bed (it is an active stream in springtime when the snow melts) and the steppes to the east. We rested for a moment, and climbed down to see the graves.
The graves are surrounded by "beware of snakes" signs. Apparently, the snakes use the graves to get out of the hot sun during the hottest days, and actively sun themselves in the area.
The graves are small - not the 6-foot x 3-foot rectangles that we are used to, but more like 3-foot by 3-foot graves. The people were buried on their sides, curled up in the fetal position. According to Duman, there were no bone fragments left to study - those long ago turned to dust, but there have been pot shards and other bronze age tools found in the area.
Then we walked back to the parking lot. I paid Duman 2,000 tenge (about $18) to thank him for his time. He was knowledgable, and patient with the kids. We shared contact information (everyone always wants to have a friend at the US Embassy, I guess), and we drove off.
On the way back, I surprised the kids. Sean, who turned 15 on September 10th, will miss having drivers education at his Fairfax County school this year. I stopped the car -- there were no cars for miles -- and I asked Sean if he wanted to drive. It turned out to be a rather rhetorical question. So I spent the next 15 minutes or so letting the kids take turns "driving" my 5-speed 1995 Isuzu Rodeo through the steppes. It made their day!
One and a half hours back to the traffic jams, then another hour to go 10 km, and we were home in Almaty.
Pictures at http://pics.livejournal.com/singledipmom
Tags: kazakhstan, tamgaly, tourism
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