Our JennEric Life

Oct

2009

Proudly presents...

In honor of the upcoming Halloween season & to get me in the mood for it (since they don’t celebrate Halloween here) I thought I would delight you all with the first of what I’m sure will become a regular series – thanks to Moo. Fanfare, please.

[Duh, da-da-dah!!!]

Maggie Moo Mystery Theater!

Episode One: Maggie Moo & the Midnight Morsels

[dimming light, dramatic music]

Scene One: 2 months ago

It was late at night. Eric & I were already in bed. He was blissfully sound asleep but I was startled awake by distant, haunting sounds.

crunch, crunch, crunch

It was coming from the other room. And it was getting louder!

crunch, crunCH, CRUNCH!

I looked over at Eric – not a flinch. My super-hero husband was out cold, leaving me to be the lone household defender.

CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH!

I looked over for Moo-Moo, but she was gone! And in my slumbering stupor I thought,

‘Oh my God! IT’S EATING MAGGIE!”

CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH!

What do I do?! What do I do?!

There’s no gun in the house & I lost my Louisville Slugger somewhere in the move from Texas to Virginia.

CRUNCH, CRUNCH…CRACK!

That did it – that sound made me summon all my courage & I raced out of the bed.

I made my way through the darkness of the bedroom, out the door & into the open upstairs area to find Maggie…

CRACK, CRACK….(cough-cough) HACK!

…with the remnant, miniscule bits and mangled plastic morsels scattered across the floor. As she quickly tried to swallow the evidence of her crime.

Can you guess what it was?

mystery-1

FOOTNOTE: No Erin, you are not allowed to guess or tell, since you already know what it was.

[keep reading]

Oct

2009

Fields of Gold

Tiny, little grains of gold

jennifer

fields-1

On the back-roads to Osan there are fields & fields of rice.

I’ve been trying to determine if all these are owned by 1 or 2 conglomerates or if it’s a patchwork of farmers – each with their own plot.

fields-2

From the look of the equipment, it makes me think that these are shared fields.

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What’s the most interesting to me is how they bundle it up. Just as there are big bales of hay that dot the Texas & Oklahoma landscape, here they’re bound up in white plastic bags.

If I had to guess, it’s because they don’t want to lose any of the rice grains – and bagging it up would definitely solve that problem.

fields-4

But slowly one by one, all the fields are being stripped.

fields-5

There must be a processing plant somewhere that takes all their bundles & shakes all the rice loose.

Can you imagine having to do it all by hand?

Category: Life in Korea One Comment

Oct

2009

My Very Own Mud Lady

Isn't she beautiful?

jennifer

mudlady-1

Sometimes I tell Eric, “I need you to pretend you’re a girl.”

It’s usually when I’m having a girlie moment (rare, but it does happen) & want to discuss something that is 100% estrogen in nature, but have no girlfriends to talk to about it.

So I need you to pretend your a girl. You know, the frilly, silly, pretty, pinkie kind of girl – just for a minute.

Ready? Ok…

For our anniversary, Eric bought me a mud lady of my very own!

[jumping up & down]

I’d seen her weeks ago among several other different ones but didn’t have the money to splurge at the time.

And the next time we went back to Osan (they weren’t selling them at Humphries – shocker) they were all gone.

mudlady-2

But last week when we were walking up & down every aisle at the Osan BX, there she was!

(There’s really not a lot to do on base so the majority of the time people hang out at the BX.)

She & a few others were left-overs that had been moved to an out of the way place.

I’d actually never heard of mud ladies until I met a Warrant Officer’s wife at a farewell party for her husband.

We were the two oldest American females at the party so we gravitated towards each other like true desperate Army wives with no one else to talk to.

She tried to describe their beauty & intricacy to me, but at the time I just nodded along & smiled.

(I’m not really a figurine kinda girl.)

mudlady-3

But over the course of our conversation she mentioned that she owned over 100 different mud ladies!

And when I finally saw one for the first time, all I could think was ‘where is she keeping them? And how is it her husband & teenage son haven’t broken any of them?’

Look at the folds on her sleeves…and the dangling bracelet that really dangles…and look at her fingers!

So now she sits in the china hutch Eric added to the list when he ordered our Army-provided furniture.

How I’m going to pack her up & ship her home when the time comes is beyond me.

But that’s it. That’s all I wanted to share. You can stop being a girlie-girl now & go on about your normal business.

Thanks for humoring me.

Category: Jennifer 3 Comments