I will be moving hopefully on Thurday. We will be leaving at night and I will have to do my first 12 hours drive on highway at night. I don’t do good on long drives. I hate driving on the highway. And most of all I hate driving at night. But I would rather do those last two than deal with my screaming son and lots of traffic during the day! So night time we will drive. I am making my husband take the cats in his car. I can’t stand the smell, it acts up my allergies after a while (small area) and I don’t want to deal with my son and two cats. I am not even sure I would be able to fit them all in my backseat anyways.

Here are some of my moving stats (includes current move):

• Total Year Alive: 28
• Total Moves: 24
• Longest Time Without A Move: 8 years
• Shortest Time Without A Move: 2 Months
• Total Houses: 6
• Total Apartments: 18
• Moves with my Son: 3
• Longest Distance Move: New Hampshire (United States) to Yokota Air Force Base (Japan)
• Shortest Distance Moved: One floor down.

BTW I still check my sites and email everyday. So please feel free to leave a comment or send me an email if you need to contact me. Please feel free to contact me if you have a questions or comments. You can use my Contact Me form or post a comment on this post as a means of contact me.

Time goes by so fast. Like for example my last entry was almost a year ago. It’s not almost October and we are living State side. We bought our own house. Liam is a toddler now. I still remember the day he was born like it was yesterday. I sometimes feel the same fears I did when I was handling a newborn. Am I a good parent? What if I don’t know what to do? What do I do?

Sometimes it seems easier, sometimes harder. It really new challenges replacing the old ones. It defiantly keeps me on my toes. It also keeps my weight down. I now weigh 120lbs. Before Liam was born (before I was pregnant) I weighed 150lbs and I had for as long as I remembered weighing myself. I don’t even try to lose weight and now I’m 120lbs and all my favorite clothes are too big.

I’m kinda rambling but then I am on some heavy pain killers. I had my wisdom teeth removed last week. There is still some pain, especially at night. Also the stitches are very irratating. Maybe I should just go to bed.

For a year I have not had most of my belongings available to me. They just arrived here in Japan yesterday. It’s like Christmas. I hadn’t really understood how much stuff we had. Too much. Now we are going through it all and getting rid of some stuff. I’ll be very busy on eBay for the next couple of weeks!

Needless to say I am unable to make a Thanksgiving dinner. It will take us a week to unpack!. But it isn’t really a loss. Sam and I have decided to go to Tama Hills for Thanksgiving. Tama is the Yokota AB “country club”. They have a large golf course, several resturants, bike paths, horses, campground and a lot more outdoor recreation facilities. Our biggest problem is that we have never been there and it’s a 45 minute drive. We plan on leaving early to give us time to get lost.

3 Hours at Logon Airport (October 5)
5.5 Hours flying to LAX
7 Hours at LAX (October 6)
2.5 Hours flying to Seattle
1.5 Hour at Seattle
9 Hour flight to Yokota AB (October 7)
1 Hour of going through security

Total hours of travel = 29.5 Hour

For our first week we lived in Billeting. It’s like a hotel suite. We had a living room, kitchen, dining room (all in one room) and a bedroom. We of course had a bathroom. I guess it was more like a college apartment than a hotel suite. Suites are larger. Anyway we got to move into our apartment on October 15. Furniture was provided (very minimal but good quality).

We haven’t had much chance to go off base. We have been busy every weekend since we’ve got a car (bought Oct 25). Our first weekend after we got a car we had a Halloween party on Saturday and an Annual Fall Picinic, hosted by the Tama Base (Japanese) Meteorology Squadron.

Our next weekend we received our unaccompanied baggage on that friday (Nov 5) and we spent the weekend unpacking and building furniture. We had to buy an entertainment center and a computer desk. The instructions were clear but when you only have the set of screwdrivers you bought at the 100Yen store it is very hard work. Both Sam and I have blisters on our hands. We ended up buying an electric screwdriver on the second day of building.

One thing I did do was attend a demonstration on how to make dream catchers on Saturday. I even brought the dream catchers I made. I had hoped to learn something from the expert. Well it turned out that the “expert” was someone who volunteered to do the demo which consisted of a kit with horribly written instructions that the lady was trying to follow. Needless to say, I ended up doing the demo. I had to teach the lady who was suppose to be teaching everyone else. I plan on teaching a class on how to make a dream catcher at Skills Development.

I am also taking a class in Shodo, a Japanese/Chinese calligraphy. I’ve had one class and it’s very hard. I will scan in some of my work at a later date and add it to this journal.

That is all for today. I hope to add more photos, art, etc at a future date.

104¥� 16°�C/60°�F Cloudy

Sometime during the first week of October I will be flying to Japan to live there for three years. It’s scary. Different culture. Different side of the planet. Just moving can be scary. Especially when you don’t know when you are leaving or where you are living or when your belongings will be arriving.

It’s exciting too. I think of all the wonderful photos I can capture now. All the history and culture I will learn. I hope to learn more about Japanese art and performing art.

I’m going to miss my small town New Hampshire life. Now I will be living on large Air Force base on outskirts of extremely large and crammed packed populated city of Tokyo.