Goodbye, El Paso.

I don't know why I always do this, but having spent basically my entire adult life bouncing back and forth between GA and TX, with a little bit of FL and MO thrown in, I've noticed that when I'm about to leave a place, I always take lots of pictures of the things that really represent that place. I'll share a few of them as I take them this time. This is how I view El Paso. First, a couple of my favorite views.


This is northeast El Paso at night, as seen from the first picnic area on Transmountain Road. If you've been to El Paso, it's the one that overlooks Cohen Stadium. I particularly like this view because, even though it is a different part of the city than what we first saw, because we were coming from the opposite direction, it looks exactly like what we saw when we first arrived here three years ago. We'd been on the road for five days, moving from GA, and it was late at night. We were tired, hungry, and ready for our trip to be over. Then we rounded a corner, and saw El Paso, all lit up like this.




This one, I took last night from the little stopping area, right by the police academy on Scenic Drive. I was facing south, and if you look, you can see the tall buildings of the financial district, and behind them, the slums of Juarez, Mexico. This is one of the most interesting juxtapositions I have ever seen in my life, and if you can live here, and not see the significance of it, I just don't know what to tell you.

More later.

Assignment, but not really.

There is no assignment. What they had today was a list of definite openings to choose from, and we might have actual assignments by the end of the week. We submit our official final choices from the options that were given today, by tomorrow, and then they do what they will with it.

The options we have chosen are, in this order:
Ft. Stewart
Someplace in Maryland (we're not sure if it's National Guard or Marine Corps, but it's in Maryland)
Tooele Army Depot, Tooele, Utah

Let me explain. Ft. Stewart is obvious. We want to go back. Obviously, that's job 1. Maryland is a nice location that has a lot, so we chose that one second because it's nice there. It would also be easy for Thak to transfer to a job in corporate HQ in a few years if we're already in MD. That's just a nice added benefit to that location. We chose Tooele Army Depot because it is a non-deploying position where we could stay for a few years until all these deployments stop, and then transfer somewhere else. I wanted to put that one second. Thak wanted to put it third because he doesn't like Utah all that much. I told him to trust his gut on it and do what's best for us, and that's what he did by putting Maryland ahead of Utah.

Now, here's the curve ball. You know there always is one. Well, they need two people to go to Ft. Drum, in upstate New York. It's remote, and cold, and shitty. Nobody likes that place. They HAVE TO have two people to go there, though. There are eight people in the class. Three volunteered to deploy right out of training, leaving five to assign stateside. Two have to go to Drum. If two don't volunteer, they're just going to pick two. That's 40% odds that we're going to Ft. Drum. We just have to hope that our ties to Ft. Stewart are enough to pull us there.

Now, here's the thing about Ft. Stewart. I give it about 50/50 odds right now that we can get it. The reason it's only 50/50 is because there's this other guy who is trying to get it, and he claims he has a house in Savannah (most of us think that's BS, but that's what he's telling corporate). This guy is NOT a fit for the Ft. Stewart team at all, personality-wise, and they have talked with Thak about this in the past as well. He's told them that he doesn't think this guy is a fit for the team, and exactly why so they know it's not because he's trying to get that assignment for himself. They already know that Thak is a fit for the Stewart team, because some of his references when he got hired for this job, are part of that team. They have also talked with the team there, and they have said they want Thak to come work with them. They are doing what they can. If it's enough to boost us into that assignment over this other guy, that remains to be seen. I do think our odds are good, but I'm not going to say we've got it yet.

So basically, we don't know much of anything yet, but we do have it down to four possibilities, two of them strong possibilities. Stewart and Drum are the strong possibilities. Maryland and Utah are the lesser possibilities. We may find out later this week.

Bebe Chai does FaceTime

Seriously, everybody who's going to be apart from their family ever, needs an iPhone. I don't know what we did before FaceTime. Oh yeah... webcam, except that Thak was never anywhere that had internet strong enough to support them, we did email... anyhow, that's not important. We have iPhones now, and OMG!!

Bebe Chai is usually in bed when we get daddy on FaceTime for Erin and Orren, and to read bedtime stories (and by read, I mean recite from memory), but yesterday, daddy was on a plane from Utah to Maryland for most of the day, so we didn't get to talk to him much since it was a direct flight with no layovers. When he got settled in Maryland and called us, Chai was still awake, so we went ahead and let Bebe Chai have his first FaceTime experience.

He loved it. Just one question. Daddy, how you got in the phone??

As a sidenote about food...

A friend of mine, whose son is Orren's best friend, just texted me about something that happened at the grocery store that sells all the good organic foods. They were in the checkout, and her son, Orren's friend, was having a lovely conversation with an older couple, who definitely really liked him (If you knew him, you'd understand. The kid is adorable. He's just like Orren, but blonde.) They ended up buying him some cookies to share with his brother. (His brother wasn't there, but he told them that he has a brother.)

See, stuff like that always happens at that store. It's like, every single time I go there, we see cool people, and they're always super nice. I've never gone to that store without getting complimented by at least one person (just random people, not employees) on how nice Erin and Orren are, or how cute Chai is, and people always come up to talk to them. That NEVER happens anywhere else here. Everywhere else, people really don't even look at you, and if you dare to venture into the depths known as Transmountain Walmart, at least one person will either run into you with their cart, or say something rude at some point.

Why are the people at Sprouts (formerly called Sun Harvest) so much nicer than the people everywhere else? Could it be that eating well has a positive effect on the mind?

Let's talk about food.

I've always known, theoretically, that better food made for better health. I had read all the articles about how our food supply in this country is questionable at best, and the various concerns about it. I also know how bad factory farming is, and completely disagree with these practices.

Because of all this stuff, I tried to get organic produce when possible, usually ate free-range or grass-fed meats, and tried to avoid GMO's by using GMO-free sunflower oil, organic flour, and avoiding soy. Then Thak got out of the Army, and we became poor. We could no longer afford even the gas to drive across town to the good grocery store that carries all the organic foods and free-range meats that we had become accustomed to. Even if we could have afforded the gas, we couldn't have afforded the food there. Our only sources of food, for several months, were our gardens, and what we could get from WIC (which is quite a bit when you're breastfeeding a baby, and have a toddler as well). Occasionally, I would manage to get to a farmers' market an hour away in New Mexico when Thak had drill at a nearby Reserve center (he was going anyway, so me and the kids would just ride along). At the farmers' market, I could get cheap organic produce, and that was great. Mostly, though, we had to eat factory farmed crap, because it was cheap, and it was eat that, or starve, so we ate it. This went on for several months.

A few things surprised me about this, but most of all, I was surprised by how much we got sick. Orren got many colds and viruses. His immune system obviously suffered. For a while, I was feeding him breastmilk just to try to boost his immune system any possible way I could. Erin was sick sometimes, too. I got sick several times, and that's very unusual for me. Thak even missed a couple days of work due to sickness. Even Chai got a cold once, and that's pretty rare for a breastfed baby. I know it was the food. The food we bought was dead and empty. It was just something to chew up and digest so we weren't as hungry. The only things that were anywhere near good were the things we were able to grow, and the things we got from the farmers' market. This stuff didn't feel dead, and even the squashes that grew too big and were tough in consistency, were a pleasure to eat compared to the stuff that came from the store. Don't even get me going on the meats. On the rare occasion we could afford meat, we had to buy cheaply, so it was factory-farmed. As if knowingly supporting the worst agricultural practices in history wasn't enough, the stuff doesn't taste all that good compared to the better kinds, and it's hard to eat when you know it's full of synthetic hormones and antibiotics.

I cannot tell you how hard it is to continuously eat that type of food, day in and day out, knowing that it is making you unhealthy, but also that you have no choice, because that is all you can afford.

When Thak started working for the firm he works for now, one of the first things I did was buy good foods for me and the kids. Since I cook everything from scratch, with even $100, I can feed us for a long time on organic, GMO-free foods, and even get a little bit of meat (the good kind!) If you're not picky about what kind of produce you get, you can usually find some of it on sale for really cheap. I got organic apples for $1 a pound a couple weeks ago, for example. Last week, I got organic pears for $1.25 a pound. The non-organic variety goes for more than that at Walmart, so that's quite the deal. You can find deals like that if you look for them. Anyway, between doing that, and cooking from scratch, I was able to get me and the kids back on a diet of good foods before long. Our health has improved drastically, just as one would expect. Erin did get sick earlier this week, but she fought it off in record time, and so far, nobody else has gotten what she had (knock on wood).

The other thing that really gets me is how different the foods are, just in general. Take sweet potatoes, for example. We go through sweet potatoes like crazy because all three kids just love them. The non-organic sweet potatoes that we were buying from Walmart, were more of a mushy consistency when baked than the organic sweet potatoes we get from Sprouts or from our CSA. The organic ones have more texture, and take a little longer to bake. They don't have as long a shelf life either (which is a good thing in my opinion. Produce that lasts indefinitely on the shelf creeps me out.) Since 72% of our nation's food supply is GMO, I can only assume the non-organic sweet potatoes we were getting, were GMO. Broccoli is another one. We go through tons of broccoli, because it's currently Chai's favorite food in the entire world. The conventional broccoli has so much less texture than the organic broccoli, and once again, is a little *too* shelf-stable.

Now, my main thing is, you can't change form without changing function. Everyone with any background at all in engineering knows that. So basically, these foods that are mass marketed to people, and that most people eat (many times, because that is what they can afford) have been modified to make them shelf stable forever. What is that doing to their nutritional value? There could well be some adverse side effects to eating them. They are not plants we have evolved to be able to eat, like the non-GMO varieties are. What are these things doing to our systems? After eating conventional foods for a few months, my entire family's immune systems were shot. That SHOULD NOT be the case. Why is it that only those who are either fairly well off, or fairly resourceful, can afford to be healthy? That's crap. I honestly believe the conventional agriculture industry is killing the average American citizen, slowly but surely.

What I want to know is how most of Europe can have way higher food standards, and still manage to make it, but here in the US, we have such low food standards. Why is that? Why can't we demand that this GMO stuff be put to a halt, that organic produce be available everywhere, that synthetic hormones see their way out of farming? That's not asking much, and it would make a huge difference.

Just do me a favor.

If you're going to cut your baby, despite having the knowledge that it's unnecessary, that there is no way to properly anesthetize a baby, that they feel extreme pain, that it alters their brain wave patterns, that it carries risks including death... DON'T TELL ME ABOUT IT!! If you know all that stuff (and if you know me, you know that stuff) and you still decide to cosmetically alter your perfect little baby to suit your own preferences, then at least have the courtesy to let those of us who know better, live in blissful ignorance.

I try to save them all, but like anyone else, I do not succeed in that. Another little baby I could not save will be strapped into a circumstraint tomorrow morning, and mutilated. I literally feel sick every time I think of this thing happening in our society, in this very country... right down the road from me. It is just so cruel and barbaric. I walk among people who do this to babies. It just blows my mind. How can they think it's ok? How can they honestly believe it's their choice to make? The only ones I can even remotely begin to understand are the ones who do it for religious reasons. I still don't condone the practice, but I can understand their reasoning for doing it. The vast majority are not doing this for religious reasons, though.

I've known it was wrong ever since I started researching it when I was pregnant with Erin, but until I had a couple of sons, it was just a theoretical thing. There's a vast ocean of difference between the abstract, "Would you cut a baby?" and the very concrete, "Would you cut Orren and Chaiyo?" It was never so much as a consideration to cut our boys. It literally never crossed our minds. When Orren was born, and we refused the Vitamin K injection, our midwife asked us if we were planning to have him circumcised. I was surprised by how visceral my reaction was. I held Orren a little tighter, and said, "Absolutely NOT!" She laughed, and commended us on our wonderful choice to keep our son whole and perfect. I laughed at my reaction, but in truth, you just don't know how much this whole circumcision thing flies in the face of every parental instinct out there, until you hold your son for the first time, and see how amazing and beautiful he is, and then have someone ask you if you want to cut a piece off him. My heart literally skipped a beat just to think of the idea.

It's that moment that comes back to me every time someone talks about getting their son circumcised. The thing that kills me the most is that most of them talk about it in such a cavalier way, like in the same tone that they would use if they were telling me they were going to hit Albertson's on the way home for a gallon of milk. Again, while I still don't condone the practice at all, I have a lot more respect for parents who at least take it seriously. While I have no desire to hear about the plans for a bris, I would rather hear about that than this other crap, because at least some thought goes into it, and it's not just one more box to check before going home. The tone of these people's comments about getting it done just show that they haven't thought it through.

In light of this, here are some facts about routine infant circumcision that every parent should know:

FACT: More neonates (babies 4 weeks or younger) die of complications from circumcision every year than SIDS and car accidents combined. 117 babies died of circumcision related complications in the US last year.

FACT: The US Navy released a study in 2011 showing no difference in disease transmission rates based on circumcision status.

FACT: During circumcision, 20,000 nerve endings are severed, and the amount of skin removed would be equivalent to the size of a postcard if removed from an adult and laid out flat.

FACT: Plastibel is not cut-free or painless. The foreskin is fused to the glans until the age of roughly 10 years old, so it must be ripped away (think of ripping a fingernail from the nail bed. It's the same idea.), then crushed, and tied with a string until it falls off. Does that sound painless to you?

FACT: The EMLA cream that doctors often tell parents is used to numb the baby for the procedure, carries a label specifically saying that it is NOT for use during circumcision, and that it is not an adequate anesthetic for such things. If your doctor told you that your baby would be anesthetized with that stuff, he is lying.

FACT: After he's done cutting it off, the doctor will then sell your son's foreskin to a cosmetic company. Do you want your son to suffer so that Oprah can have her $500 an ounce face cream? (Yes, Oprah uses face cream that contains cells from human baby foreskins. The company substantiates this claim.)

FACT: It is more work to take care of a circumcised baby than an intact one. For an intact boy, you just wipe like a finger. Only clean what's seen. Forcible retraction is harmful, studies show, so don't do it. When you circumcise, you have to keep an open wound clean, while it resides in a diaper 24 hours a day.

FACT: Intactivists are obsessed with one thing only, HUMAN RIGHTS. It doesn't matter what part of the body it was customary to cut off without the consent of the person whose body it is. If it were earlobe removal that we were talking about here, we'd be just as against it.


Don't cut babies. It's a really shitty thing to do.

At very least, if you take all this information, read all the studies that are out there, and still decide, for whatever unfathomable reason, to do this, I do not want to know about it. It just makes me feel awful, and I will never look at you the same way again. Maybe this will change when my boys are older, and our decision on this isn't so fresh, but right now, as I have these two little boys, who are so perfect, it's just offensive that there are so many people who would have cut them to shreds just for being born male. My mind simply cannot comprehend how someone can reconcile that decision in absence of religious reasons.

Hey white girl! Yeah, you with the Asian husband! Listen up!

I've been here in White Girl With Asian Husband Land for close to 8 years now, and spent about half of that helping to run the world's most successful website for our kind, which had, before its demise, over 20,000 members. (Yeah... didn't know that about me, did you? It's true. That's not what I'm here to discuss, though.) Anyhow, over the course of all that time and experience, I've made a few observations, as one may imagine. Today, I'm just going to talk about one of them, but it's a really freakin important one, so listen up, ESPECIALLY if you haven't reproduced yet.

I've just got to say it. WHAT THE FCUK is up with the names?!! I'm not talking about ethnic names (obviously, considering I'm Chaiyo's mom), or old school uncommon names (again, obviously, since I'm also Orren's mom), or even stupid names straight off the Top 20 Most Popular names list. No, I don't have a problem with any of that. What I have noticed that is disturbing, though, is that at least half the white girls I know who have babies by an Asian man, whether he's their husband, their boyfriend, or some random guy they met in a bar 9 months ago, name their kids the worst things. I'm talking straight-up dog names.

Is this some kind of backlash against the pushing that so many Asian parents are notorious for doing so that their kids succeed at all costs? Admittedly, the Asian guys who end up with white wives are usually the rebellious sort. Those who aren't, in overwhelming numbers, end up with someone of their own ethnicity, many times hand picked by family (Don't believe me? I'll show you Thak's buddy's wedding pictures from a few months ago. That was special.) Let's also not forget that a significant number of white girls do experience some backlash from their families, and maybe even friends, when they date or marry outside their race, so having an Asian husband does require some degree of rebellion in some cases (not mine, but others). Anyhow, maybe this trend toward these horrible names, is just another way for these already somewhat rebellious people to be even more rebellious. Maybe naming your kid something like Blaze, or Maverick, or Stryker is just the piece de resistance in their gigantic "up yours!" to their traditional families.

Maybe, in some cases, there's not rebellion in it after all. Another thing I've noticed about the Asian guy white girl crowd is that a great many of them see themselves as very progressive. Maybe they think that regular human names are just so last generation, and went out of style with miscegenation laws and segregated high schools. Apparently, many celebrities have gotten on this crazy name bandwagon, too... Maybe these people think they're just doing like their favorite celebrities by naming their kids crazy things.

I just wonder what they expect to accomplish by this. I can tell you why my kids have the names they have. Both of my boys have an English name and a Thai name. Orren's English name is Orren, and his Thai name is Kiet. Chaiyo's Thai name is Chaiyo, and his English name is David. It was important to Thak that his kids have Thai names, and I think that's understandable, and makes sense, because their names represent their heritage. (Although I'm really glad we don't plan on more kids, because while we have an awesome girl name picked out, Thai boys' names are very difficult, and the next son would definitely end up Thaksin Jr, for lack of other half decent options. In general, though, I am very supportive of ethnic naming. I like it. I think it's a way to sort of think outside the box, while still giving the kid a respectable name.

This other crap, though, I just want to ask these parents what they were thinking. Put your child's name behind the title "Senator", and see if it makes a damned bit of sense. Orren and Chaiyo are as convincing in the Senate chambers as they are on the playground. Is Blaze?

Think before you name. I have no idea why this is so common in Asian Guy White Girl Land, but it is. I will just say, there is a definitive line that stands between creative and idiotic. It is best to make sure you are standing on the side you think you are.