Venti, nonfat caramel chai, please.

Toby Keith is singing about half a mile from my house. Right now.

I don't know if that "does it" for any of you, but I'm kinda on the fence. I'm just not the type of person who thinks going to musical concerts is a big deal. I mean, I've been to some concerts before; once I saw Vince Gill and Reba McEntire, and one time I saw Aerosmith, and one time I saw a third group/person (apparently that made such an impression I cannot even manage to remember who it was, and no, I wasn't on drugs at the time, I only did drugs when I was pregnant). And I will say the Aerosmith concert was one of the best things I've ever seen, and to this day they are my most favorite group in the whole wide, wide world, and Stephen Tyler is so freaking awesome that I can't even talk about him in front of Scott because it feels like ADULTERY. But to be the type of person who camps out for tickets, who feels like if I don't get to go a piece of me will be lost forever? Hmmm.

So here's the deal. They started putting up posters all over post that TOBY KEITH IS COMING about a month ago. And boy oh boy did tongues start wagging. Suddenly all the people here in this craphole had something to live for. OH THE ANTICIPATION. It was like pure heaven. Toby Freaking Keith. Here. In Korea. For all of us to go see!

And then. Then the S Korean navy had to go get blown up by the N Koreans some unseen something or another floating independently of the ship.

Let me take a second to say that I am truly, deeply, sorry for all their losses. Their Army is not a voluntary army, so the government makes these young guys serve a tour. And for them to take these young men, and make them serve, and promise their mamas they were going to be fine, and then put them on a ship and lose them, not only to death, but to the sea (as some were not recovered)? It's very sad. The whole country is in mourning. Right now, when Toby Keith is here to sing to us.

I am not saying this in any way to take anything away from any soldiers/airmen/sailors/marines the US has lost in combat. It makes me all kinds of angry when people dismiss the hardships of a military family by saying "Well, they signed up for this."

"They chose to be in the military, so it's their problem if they have to live in Korea where it smells like wet cabbage."

"They chose to be in the military, so it's their fault their kids will be brats."

"They chose to be in the military, so if they are worried about their Daddy/Mama never coming home from Iraq/Afghanistan, well, they chose that life. It's their problem. Don't feel badly for them."

Ahem. At least we didn't choose to be asses about it.

Anyway, I totally understand that when a tragedy of this magnitude occurs it's kind of hard to cement a timeline into place that will appease everyone. Heck, they were still looking for bodies, and here all us ugly Americans were, shopping for what we were going to wear when we all went to see Toby.

So someone from Korea stepped up like, on Tuesday or some day ridiculously close to the concert, and decided that it was totally inappropriate for all us Americans to have an outdoor concert full of good times while S Korea was in mourning. I've heard people ask, and I have even wondered myself about, just how long the period of mourning is going to last. I know realistically you cannot put a time period on grief; each person moves through grief at their own speed. But because there could be no outdoor singing and whatnot, the USO moved Toby from the golf course to the inside of the gym. And the seating accommodations went from "there's room for everyone" to "1200 people can come".

And my goodness did it hit the fan after that.

So people took to Facebook, and it was ugly. And the page I frequent on there, the one I like to read to Scott in the evenings because people get on there for no reason other than to stir up crap and it's hilarious, it literally crashed. They even started to police the site, and you could watch it in real time, and comments would pop up, and when the page refreshed they would be gone, blamed on some "facebook glitch".

Then, someone decided there should be tickets. You must get issued a ticket to get into the concert. And somehow, someway, 1200 tickets are going to be equally distributed between units and companies made up of 25,000 soldiers AND THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS. But it would be fair, mind you, so there could be no complaints. Let me tell you something: "fair" is a state of mind, not a state of being. That's what I think, anyway. There's NO WAY this is going to come close to working. You want to know what would make this fair? Lower enlisted get to go. Period. Those guys, the ones who live in the barracks and don't have a car, that you see at the mini mall at night eating tacos and watching basketball on the big screen from two days ago that everyone already knows the final score to? Letting those be the ones who get to go. THAT would be fair. Only, guess what? The Army didn't ask me what I thought would be the best way to handle it, so instead they just gave out tickets.

And what do you know, it turned out kind of badly. And people went on Facebook and trashed the system, while others said they didn't know what they would do if they didn't get tickets, because their life would be over if they didn't get to go see Toby because he was their favorite and they had waited their whole life to see him and they had gotten a babysitter and everything and NOW WHAT? WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO?

And little by little people started getting tickets. People who had been trash talking suddenly came up with tickets. There were units that were given a total of 10 tickets, and suddenly there were people with 4, 5, even 6 tickets. Today people were actually UNFRIENDED on Facebook because of this. I am not even joking. Lines were drawn, people were called names, bad names, and insults were hurled and the poor moderator of the Facebook page kept pleading "Remember the fallen Koreans!" and it didn't matter. Everyone had moved past the "why" of it all and were too busy feeling cheated to care anymore.

This afternoon someone decided to give out "space-A" tickets. I sincerely hope all 10 MPs here are hanging out near the gym when THAT has to be dealt with. Because I'm sure no one is going to get pushy over who was in which position in line. This will be talked about for months. Months. Not the fallen S Korean sailors, but the fact that so-and-so didn't get to go to the Toby Keith concert because a: the S Koreans were being unreasonable, or b: someone hogged all the tickets because they're in good with so-and-so. And it's a shame, because it's such a small, small thing. Or maybe I just feel that way because I've never seen him in concert, so I don't know what I'm missing. Or maybe it's because I'm just not a concert type person. I'm not sure. I just think it's a big overreaction. I don't feel in any way that my not going to this concert takes anything away from my quality of life. A month from now Toby will be a distant memory and you know what? I'll still be living in Korea. And it will still stink like wet cabbage.

I mean, let's talk about shutting down the Starbucks here if you are concerned with quality of life. (shudder)

Gawd.

Modeling 101

I think we had been in Korea about 2 weeks when one day we were walking to the PX from our house in 12 feet of snow and sub-zero temperatures, each of us mumbling about how we hated everybody else when we were approached by a Korean lady. Actually, we were walking one way and she was on the other side of the street and she started screaming "Oh, Hello!" over and over while trying to cross the road and not get run over by the taxis that routinely go 70 mph, rain, shine, or 12 feet of snow.

She then proceeded to ask me if she could take some pictures of my kids. Now see, this might bother some people, but we got used to this type of behavior from Asians when we lived in Hawaii and had two small, blonde children who tanned very nicely. Back in those days we went to the beach almost every day and spent hours having Asians walk up to us, hand us their camera, and then go stand beside our children and smile. That was about the same time Ashlyn and Haley became masters at getting their picture taken. No matter what else is going on, you say "Smile" and they snap to attention and make an awesome picture. Then along came Owen who, if it is possible, takes a better picture than his older sisters. Finally, along came Skylar, and it all went to hell in a handbasket quicker than you can say "Obama Health Care Reform".

Anyway, this lady is babbling about how the kids should model and she's an agent and SMILE! SMILE! SMILE! I'd heard of this from several people, that agents would approach you and try to represent your kids, because they want good, clean American kids selling clothes to Koreans. "Look! If you wear these clothes you will look just like this blonde, tanned American kid with bright blue eyes!" And they fall for it hook, line and sinker, much like I fall for it EVERY SINGLE TIME I buy something from the Victoria's Secret catalog.

So she took the pictures of Haley, because she pulled a tape measure out of her purse and measured Ashlyn and decided she was too tall. She called me two days later and said Haley was squinting in the picture so she needed to take another one, and could she come to the house sometime. I said sure, just give me a call whenever, what else do I have to do anyway, and that was that. Since then we've been approached by two other people who took pictures of all 4 kids, and really I'd forgotten about it because it's just not important to me for them to model.

Well, they called for Ashlyn. There was a company, the Korean lady said, called "Peer Garden", who chose Ashlyn to model some of their clothes and could we make it? We didn't have anything planned and Ashlyn said she wanted to try it out so I took her and off we went. And the whole time we were waiting for Ashlyn to get finished with hair and make-up I had a conversation with another parent (there were two girls and two boys) about exactly which company it was the children were modeling for. I would like to say before I finish this story that I feel totally vindicated about this because this other parent, who is in the military herself and is a very high ranking person in the medical field and therefore extremely bright, also heard "Peer Garden" and also had never heard of it before, but gosh the clothes hanging over there are really cute and a little expensive looking.

So there were two hair and make-up people, and each child had their own handler-type person who followed them around and helped them get dressed and hung up the cute, expensive looking clothes when the kids took them off and left them in a wad on the floor. There were also two or three seamstresses there pinning and sewing if needed; I'm not really sure how many of them there were because they kept moving and boy do these people look alike here. On top of that there was a photographer and two of his assistants, along with about three other people who seemed to have no responsibilities whatsoever except to comment and ooh and ahh. And they gave us fruit and breads and bagels and something resembling cream cheese, which I decided immediately not to eat because I'VE TOTALLY FALLEN FOR THAT BEFORE SINCE I'VE BEEN HERE, and we're sitting on comfy couches reading fashion magazines like Vogue and another parent comes up and mentions that her son modeled for this company for their last shoot back in the fall. At that point the second parent asks "Oh really, well what is the name? Peer something? We couldn't really understand..." And the lady starts laughing and says "Oh, that's just the Koreans not understanding the way Americans stress their words. It's not Peer Garden. It's Pierre Cardin."

What? Pierre Cardin? Like, in Italy and France and IN THIS VOGUE MAGAZINE? Good Lord. So I acted totally cool about it, probably most likely because I was thinking that maybe that really WAS cream cheese after all. Oh, and Ashlyn (Ash-a-leen as they liked to call her) help model their spring line for what I'm assuming will be some of their print ads. And she got money and a free pair of shoes while I ate croissants and drank sparkling grape juice.

I am such a pimp. But hey, life is good for a pimp.

Baby Genius

"Oh good Lord. What happened in here? Who made this mess? What is that on the floor"

"I don't know."

"What is that liquid on the carpet? Who tore up all that paper? Who wrote on the dog? HOW LONG WAS I IN THE BATHROOM?"

"Mommy, you know what would make it ALL better?"

"No, Skylar, I have no idea. What? What would make it all better?"

"A margarita."