June 28, 2008

• Delectable Administrations

  Dear Folks,

  I just cleaned up some grape juice from the floor, knowing in advance that my son would spill, when I gave him a fairly large dose in his plastic Thomas-the-tank-engine cup.   Just for the record, he is the one who insisted on the large dose, not I.

  One maverick arm of the grape juice flood ran under the bookcase, and will just have to stay there until some blessed varmit, such a loose hamster or deerhorned Beetle on the lam, shelters there for a spell and eats it for lunch. 

  But I warrant you, I am not about moving more furniture about the house.  I schlepped enough pianos and bookcases for a good long time yesterday.  And my arthritic fingers feel it just now.

  It all started with my second son sitting in front of the proverbial Boob Tube screaming in his sensitive way in response to my third son running back and forth behind and in front of him when he periodically came to this end of the house in his cyclical mad dash from the kitchen to the far end of the living room, pushing a large green toy monster truck in front of him. 

  I told the younger one to quit.  I told the older one to pray for the patience of the Lord to help him bear the disturbance which prevented him from watching his DVD.   Neither command was very fruitful towards general harmony and geometric order.

  Hence the quasi-divine idea that sprung within me, apparently emanating from my very visceral region, such was the pressure of that cauldron, knowing that my entire ability to support my children rested, in these cramped apartments, upon my keeping my children quiet to avoid disturbing the immediate neighbors ... because word gets out. 

  If people believe "The foreigner can't control his children.  They are wild."  then right off the bat, demand for my services as a teacher of their children drops off like a rock from a handy neighborhood precipice.

  So, I hit upon the idea of moving the TV to the most remote room of our humble abode, way back in the back, where the piano had lurked, with her keys lying fallow for the most part, almost entirely unstimulated, with a lackluster finish to reflect her abandonment.

  Now, after much reorganization, she shines in splendor and people stop to perfunctorily tickle her lovely white ivories in passing, to her great joy in delectable administrations.

  I shall snap a few photos to post here for you, in good time.  Please be patient with me, dudes. 

  

  Ah... The TV Room.  Now that is a fine thing in and of itself.  Is that an exterior window that manifested itself above my TV sofa?  Or, is it merely that I moved my sofa from the standard center-of-home living room to a diminuitive sequestered chamber in the darker recesses of our domicile? 

  Love, Padooker

  Thanks to a clerical error, I must now fork out one thousand dollars for a tonsilectomy for my third child. 

   A few years back my doctor, speaking in English, said I had until my son was seven years old to decide whether to lop off his tonsils, nip them in the bud, so to speak.  Up to that time, he said, the government would pay for the operation costs.

  In English we say what we mean and mean what we say.  When we don't, we feel a little queasy twinge of guilt. That's cultural, the way we are brought up, thinking fidelity to truth is a great value.

  Now, it turns out, upon a follow up visit last week, the doctor says he definitely needs them out of his head, only that now I must pay, because my son is six, and in speaking Korean, they use three different, conflicting systems of counting age, depending on how pretentious they want to be, downplaying or showing off age superiority, a huge thing here for social pecking order.

  The upshot if that I must pay because he was thinking in Korean, but speaking English.  There is nothing I can do about it; my son is a year late to claim his unchosen entitlement, something we are forced to subsidize, but may not now accept for our own child.  Gotta squeeze out some more dough.  I have decided to work three weeks this summer (weekday mornings only) to make 1.8 million won, about 1.8 thousand dollars, at one elementary school, and one week at my school for a similar summer camp program.  That outta make up the difference.   Without that, I could'a, should'a, would'a taken my children to a water park, and been loaded with cash to contribute to my Long Family US Homestead Fund.

  

  Here you see our budding young living room, about to emerge pristine, stainless and new from the murk of rearranging.

   

  • 10:11 pm
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