This Past Month

We should be lying on the beach in Hawaii right now, but we’re not. Our trip was canceled last minute. Of course, this was right after I bought tickets, which, of course, were only partially refundable.

Disappointing is one word I would use to describe August. But also tense, unsettled, restless, disjointed, weird and stressful. Time sped by but then also moved so slowly. There were the larger world disaster things. Like would North Korea nuke those of us in South Korea? Like going over our evacuation plans (including kitties) in case they did. Like watching my hometown of Houston get hit with the worst hurricane I have ever seen and seeing news footage of the neighborhood next to where my mom lives completely submerged. I recognized the streets, the houses, once so familiar, now underwater like the lost city of Atlantis.

In between these two major bookends, there were the little bits of life. Sly was really busy the entire month of August working 18-20 hours a day and we rarely saw each other. I should have used all my alone time to study Korean, work out, find the cure for cancer, but instead, I ate Cheetos and watched shows like 90 Day fiance and Inkmaster. I used Sly’s perfectly seasoned cast bread loaf pan to make a turkey meatloaf and ended up rusting the pan. The display screen and timer on our oven melted (for the second time). Our fancy Korean toilet broke (for the second time). We planned to take a trip to the coast when Sly’s work died down, but when that time came, Sly was understandably too tired to do anything beyond vegging at home. Perhaps the worst thing though, was that the price of avocados in Korea rose to $4.50…EACH. How am I supposed to Instagram photos of avocado toast if there’s no avocados?!

And my site was hacked! The best part is that the day before I was hacked, I installed a new security measure, but then never looked at the scans. Had I paid more attention, I could have totally identified and remedied that hacked pages before things got too bad. Naturally, this happened not long after I updated my blog’s template (Did you notice? I’m still tweaking it) and my latest backup occurred just before I updated everything. I had to rebuild quite a bit of my site, but for now, everything seems to be more or less back in order. #&(!@&!@!()$#!*&$*#.

Personally and professionally and I guess all around, it was just one of those months.

A picture of me as a kid in Houston during one of its many floods/hurricanes. This is the street in front of my house where my mom still lives. When the streets flooded, we blew up our inflatable raft and paddled around the neighborhood. 

BUT, some good things:

• The flood water has receded back home in Houston. My mom’s house was miraculously spared any serious flood damage and never lost power. My friends and family who live in Houston are all safe and have begun rebuilding their homes.
• I took a break from social media and deactivated some of my accounts. Why do I feel so much saner/happier when I’m not scrolling through social media?
• I taught my kitty, Max, how to shake his paw (eeeee!). He’s still not consistent, but there are times when he really gets it. Right now he can fetch, sit, stand, and jump on things by command. Rufus, on the other hand, he just bites me when I try to teach him a trick.
• I crushed my reading goal! I have read over 100 books this year, and still going strong!
• After a week of begging, Sly made hot wings. And then we ate cookies and cream ice cream for dessert.
• I finally tackled some of the travel posts that I have been meaning to blog about for ages. Of course, that meant a never ending feed of posts on Thailand (I have a few more to go), but at least I’m chipping away at the pile.

The weather is finally starting to change here in Korea, and there have been a few days when we opened the windows to feel the cool breeze. Fall is my favorite time of year, and I’m looking forward to changing leaves, the smell of roasted sweet potatoes and chestnuts on every street corner, and of course, my annual Halloween scary movie list!

Anyone else love fall as much as I do? What are your favorite fall activities?