I Think I'll Be Alright Without These...

This little island home has treated us well for the past four years - I'm not going to lie.  There have been inconveniences, sure, but they came with a much longer list of blessings.  I am really hard-pressed to find much that I won't miss about Okinawa.  Most of what I won't miss has to do with fear of being bitten and dying, as a matter of fact.  Like, I won't miss this "pet" we had for a few weeks: 



 

 

I surely won't miss the Habu, which produces the necessity to carry a flashlight with you at all times after sunset, and the fear of coming across one's path as we stumble home from the Officers' Club:

 

I won't miss bathrooms that I cannot figure out.  Really - what's the bowl for?  And why isn't the sprayer over the tub?

 

I won't miss dinner that looks like this:

 

I won't miss sweeping these up off the floor of my living room in February and March.  Yes, really.

 

Snails that are bigger than a Chili's cup...not gonna miss that.

 

 

I will not miss this phase of my twins' life.  I know you all say "you're gonna miss this - it goes by fast...blah, blah, blah..." but parenting has been HARD these past 3.5 years and I'm glad to be past the baby and toddler phases.  Plus, as it happens with twins, I actually remember very little due to being in survival mode, so there isn't much to "miss"...

 

I won't miss shopping at the BX for clothing and shoes.  I won't miss the slow speed limits.  I won't miss trying to hang things in concrete walls and the lack of storage in these houses.  Or the mold that grows everywhere.  I won't miss postal shipping nightmares and I won't miss that one drink puts me over the legal driving limit.  I think I'll be alright without these things.  The list of things I'll miss is going to be much longer.

Tattoos and Tornados

Today, we drove past a tattoo studio and Adam asked me if I thought they had Sponge Bob tattoos in there.  I said that the people who worked in those places were artists and that they could draw pretty much anything, so I thought they could handle SB, but I didn't think he would want that particular tattoo when he was actually old enough to get one - which, by the way, he thinks is 87 years old because he has basically no concept of age and when he asked if that's how long he had to wait, I simply said yes.  I mean, I can't very well tell him he's not allowed to ever get a tattoo because that would make me a hypocrite.  But 87 seems fair-ish.  Anyway, then he told me a story from a book he had been reading - Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules - where Roderick's parents gave him some money to buy a book so he could study and make a 100 on a test.  But, instead, Roderick took that money and "got himself a tattoo with the name of his band."  I asked him what Roderick's parents thought about that and he said "Well, the Dad just frowned, and the Mom had a tornado on her head." 

I imagine that in the cartoon world, I frequently have tornadoes over my head.