The High Life

We are staying on the 8th floor at the Dragon Hill Lodge as we PCS from Seoul ALL THE WAY to Pyeongtaek.

BTW, we've found it's easier to move halfway across the world than it is to move 41 miles.

Anyway, back to the hotel thing, yeah. 8th floor. Last night I spent WAY TOO MUCH time considering the fact that it didn't feel like I was 8 floors up. I tried to remember back to when we got here, tried to remember what floor we were on then, but I just can't. I'm leaning toward 5th, but just when I get comfortable with it some little voice in my head says "But what if it was 6th?" and I'm torn. Usually I try to go no higher anywhere than the 2nd floor if it's at all possible. Because if you are on the 2nd floor you still have a chance to not kill yourself it you need to jump. You just never know, THERE MAY BE A FIRE, and you must have a plan, otherwise you die from the chaos. Also, I would have no problem chucking kids out of a second floor window if need be, but anything higher than that and I'd probably feel bad. When we first got here and stayed on the 5th/6th floor (4th?) I probably had this same conversation with myself where I tried to reconcile just what I'd do in case of an emergency, but the time difference really gets you when you get on a plane and go left and cross over the international date line (which I think we did). OH! I remember now! Coming over here we spent an enormous amount of time in a plane over water and God didn't let us die, so I was no doubt feeling cocky.

So yeah, right now I'm trying really hard to concentrate on the fact that I'm 8 floors up and I'm just not feeling it. Which is a good thing, of course, because GOD FORBID I be feeling some type of movement or sway. And I most certainly went to the top of the Seoul Tower not once but twice, and wasn't bothered by it at all. I think it's the hotel part that's freaking me out, because of that one time when I watched the movie The Towering Inferno.

If you've never seen that movie and you're prone to spending time in hotels then I'd recommend you just skip it. Because let me tell you, you'll never be the same. To sum it up, some wires on the 81st floor just happen to spark, the spark falls on some paper in the trash below them, and a fire starts, effectively shutting down the elevators and blocking the stairs, so everyone above the fire is stuck. And there's a party happening at the top, but of course there's a party happening at the top. And Paul Newman and Steve McQueen have to explode a million gallon water tank on top of the hotel to put the fire out. And there's chaos, and fire and death and it's just terrible, and it's a movie. Now I live with an irrational fear of hotel rooms that are higher than what I deem a comfortable jumping height.

Which is crazy, I KNOW THIS, but it's been proven by the people on the Discovery Channel that people with plans have a better chance at survival. Well, people with plans and people with an absurd amount of good luck. So since we have 6 people in this family luck is spread pretty thin, so we need planning. And I don't contribute much to this party going on around here but by God I can plan the shit out of stuff. The bad part of all of this is Scott came over to pick up the keys for the rooms, and had I been there I would have politely asked for SOMETHING MUCH LOWER, but he's all "8th floor? No problem." Obviously I'm going to have to focus harder on his training.

note: I was not present at the picking up of the keys because I was having a heated discussion with a polite man who spoke no English about exactly to what degree he needed to disassemble my kitchen table. Taking the leaf out? Perfectly acceptable. Taking the individual hinges that hold the leaf off too? NOT SO MUCH. I mean, come on.

And now, NOW, we are about to sign for housing at Humphreys. A house we have no other info on other than it's located in a high rise. We had originally planned to move into a 2nd floor condo. We looked at one on the 3rd floor, which had a super high vaulted ceiling and a beautiful view of the adjoining rice paddy, but I opted for the condo of comfortable jumping height. Then Scott got all crazy about how we were going to have to pay millions of dollars out of pocket for electricity because our kids can't turn off a light to save their freaking life, so he wished really hard on a star or something and charmed the Korean ladies at the Housing Office to TRY TO DO THEIR JOB CORRECTLY FOR ONCE and lo and behold they have a house on post for us to live in, where electricity is free. And that? That right there? ALL OUR LUCK. Used up right there getting us a house on post. Now all we've got left is planning, planning, planning. Which is exactly what I do. I've got emergency plans for many things, including but not limited to, bridges collapsing (it's very broad and random, because all bridges are somewhat different, but still), fire in structures within comfortable jumping height (the whole chuck them off thing), getting separated from a child on the subway (you wait in that exact spot, and if any person tries to engage you in any way you kick them viciously in the knee-biting is also acceptable in this case), and compound fractures (which I figure is coming someday based solely on the law of averages). So now I'm going to have to work on a plan for fire in a structure NOT within comfortable jumping height.

Oh, and also one for what exactly we're going to do when we open the box at the new house that the nice movers packed the litter box in. With the litter. And the poop.