I went to physical therapy and usually I feel better after physical therapy. Yesterday, as I was getting off of the table, I somehow hurt my hip. They tried a new procedure on me that was kind of like being put to the rack! They stretched my upper body one way, and pulled my lower body the other way. I thought it would really help because I have so much tightness in my back. It actually felt good while I was there enough to make me sleep. When I got up, I still felt great. My back never felt better. Then I stood up and my left hip went completely out. It was so painful that I was crying. The therapist massaged my hip enough so that could function at least but by the time I got to my car my back was in tremendous pain. When I got home all I wanted to do was rest but my children kept crowding around me demanding to go outside. A similar thing happened on Sunday when I was sick to my stomach and Victoria screamed and cried for an hour to go outside. I finally sat outside with them until Aziz came home. Aziz came home fussing about the fact that I did not cook dinner. He even threw in that I was lazy and was coming up with excuses. He refused to cook dinner and even invited a lady to come over so he could fix her computer. I just wanted to rest so I stayed upstairs. Then Aziz had Aron come to me and so of course Aron would not let me rest. Then Aziz fussed because I was not being social. Finally she left and then Aziz told me to cook something for the children while he stuffed he face with leftovers. It was 8PM. That was it. I put the children in the car and went through a drive through to get them dinner. I needed to go to the pharmacy anyway to get some icy hot patches. So, there, I fed them!

Aziz has this thing that he will not ever help me in the kitchen. He will give the kids their baths and put them to bed for me and he will even vacuum once a month and mow the grass, but he will NEVER touch the kitchen even though that is where I need the most help. He could have cooked hamburgers or cooked some noodles and pour ragu sauce over it. I had rice ready so he could have cooked some eggs and ham and put it over the rice. What is so hard about cooking a meal for the children? His mother has the same attitude. Even if I am throwing up blood it is MY duty to feed the kids and Aziz should just sit around like a ceramic prince poodle to be babied and stared at. I understand he works all day, but the fact that I never get help overwhelms me. I hate that I am sick all of the time and in pain. That is so frustrating for me. I want a neat house and I love to cook, so I already feel down when I am sick or in pain and lately that has been a lot. So I feel even worse when my own husband, the only family I have here, comes home to fuss and tell me I am lazy and gets MAD at me for daring to get sick! I am ready for a vacation. Sometimes the pressure is way too much. Plus the fact I am alone with the kids most of the time.

He wants me to seek emotional support outside the marriage and that is stupid. What is he then? Just some animal like a bull that struts around the farm only to show off his horns? If his only use is to work and pay bills, then I can live elsewhere, closer to family. It is dangerous to expect your wife to seek emotional support outside the marriage. Emotional support is VITAL in a marriage. I feel sometimes like I am literally being tortured.

This novel doesn’t just tell the romance story between Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt. Katherine tells the story of the period of history and how it affected people from the lowest serfs to the highest nobles. Almost every class of society was represented. I cared less about the romance of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt and more about what life on a 14th century manor was like. This book was addictive, I wanted to read more. The Peasants’ Revolt was my favorite part of the book.

It was quite by accident but I have two other books that are about the second half of the 14th century. I am reading a biography of Geoffrey Chaucer, brother-in-law to Katherine Swynford, and the Decameron, a book about the Black Plague.

Katherine Swynford might be my ancestress through her first husband Hugh Swynford, but this is not 100%. Even if she is not, the story was so well told, I feel like I read the story about my ancestors who were not so famous and made their struggles of the late 14th century come to life.

I think the 14th century is important to study as is the 6th for these were times of great changes. (Fall of the Roman Empire, Crumbling of Feudalism and the Church, and now we live after the end of the British Empire and Western European Empires) I believe that we are living in a time of great changes and challenges.

Did anyone else taste the mystery Doritos?

Today was especially hot and we were at code red because the air quality is bad. I still went to the pool with the kids and met a friend and her kids there. I love living in Lake Ridge because of the pools, tennis courts, and play grounds. We had a lot of fun and Aron even tried to swim. Actually, he just wanted me to hold him while he kicked his feet.

Aron has tantrums but over all he is such a fun little guy. He sings songs and dances. He loves to make funny faces to make people laugh. He is just terrible at night and when he fights with Jon. Jon and Victoria are also a lot of fun. I can have long conversations with Victoria and we love scrapbooking together. Jon loves comic books and cartoons. I love sperheroes now because of him. Children are a lot of work, but they are a lot of fun too. They are worth the back pain!

This is also a story about Christians and Jews and I have never seen Jews more sympathetically represented. Walter Scott seems to almost feel what will happen to the Jews over a hundred years later and wishes for them to return to their promised land. His Jewish beauty Rebecca is way more interesting than the Saxon princess Rowenna. It’s Rebecca’s beauty that brings warm passion into the cold Templar’s heart, Brian. Brian also complains of the bigotry in the Templar order at the same time he is doing the evil work of the Norman barons. He even makes Robin Hood and his Merry Men come alive as real people not just a myth.

Sure Ivanhoe is not perfect historially. However, except for some weird “soap operaish” plot changes, the novel is near perfect. Sir Walter Scott is not called the father of historical fiction for nothing. Knights, princesses, Robin Hood, Richard the Lion Heart, the Templars, it is all here in the most entertaining novel written in the early 19th century. Try it out!

Now I am reading Katherine by Anya Seton. Care to join me?

Last night we had the missionaries over for dinner and Aziz asked them to show him how to use the grill. I guess he forgot how to grill since we used to grill in Hawaii. We even grilled chicken in Hawaii. I am also sure that my father has grilled around him at least once.

Well, anyway, the missionaries showed Aziz how to stack the charcoal properly and how to light it. I bought matchlight charcoal so that we wouldn’t have to use lighter fluid.

Aziz defrosted some burgers we have and tried to cook them on the grill even though I had just cooked pot roast. The burgers were a little pink in the middle but were overall ok.

Tonight we plan to make smores (Aziz calls them somemores) over the fire of our grill as part of our family home evening activity.

Oh, yes, another Azizism- “I think the neighbor has asparagus syndrome”

(well, I am sure I say a lot of funny things in Russian!!)

I will also start physical therapy next week for my back pain. According to an article, it has been recently discovered that food poisoning can be long term. After two weeks I return back to the doctor and we will check on any improvements.

today was the first day that I had a fever and chills. I could barely function but felt better as the day moved on. I think I want them to put pesticides back in food and screw all of this organic food crap. The organic food movement was started by Nazis maybe to kill us off!

This video is for those who think rhythmic gymnastics is for wimps!

Aron screams whenever we walk towards an official looking building like a church, doctor’s office, or library. It just has the look of a place that might have a daycare and he screams! He throws a fit when I leave him in nursery. He cries for two minutes and then will play, but every 15 minutes he will start crying again. When I pick him up from nursery he is usually being held by his teacher with tears in his eyes.

It has reached a new level. Now if Aziz comes home late he freaks out. Last night Aziz went to a night class and didn’t come home until 10 PM. Aron kept looking out the window saying “papa go?” When he got home Aron got REAL excited and screamed and danced. Then he wouldn’t let Aziz out of his sight and kept telling him, “I want watch Hulk!” He then continued to cry when I took a shower or went to the bathroom. He stayed up until midnight talking to us. He wanted to lie down next to both of us. He just kept staring at me until he finally fell asleep.

I don’t know what caused this. I know it is a weird phase and that he will eventually get over it. Victoria and Jon do fine. Jon can now fall asleep without staring at me, and Victoria usually always go to bed on time. Sometimes I don’t even have to tell her. She knows the routine: bath, teeth, dressed, book, scriptures, prayer. If we go out of order she freaks out. Aron is the most demanding child I have so far. It is a personality difference.

It is natural for children to be a little shocked at seeing people different from themselves or their family. In Korea, the children made fun of me and followed me everywhere saying “miguksalam migulsalam!” I thought it cute and understood their innocence. I didn’t take offense at all and realized that I was probably the first American the child had ever seen up close. They laughed when I spoke English as they never heard another language besides Korean. I did not think they were racist at all.

Everyone knows that I am a bit multicultural. My children have been around other cultures most of their lives. Still, there are times when they do stare at someone who is different. Even though we eat curry once a week, my son still think it stinks and refuses to eat it. They still laugh when they hear Russian even though they heard it their entire lives. Jon chooses to be called Jon over Salim because Salim is different. It doesn’t matter if I tell him to be proud to be different. At the age of four he doesn’t understand ethnic pride and crap like that. He just wants to be like his other peers. As he grows older and sees himself more as an individual, he might want to be called Salim.

I want my children to think and express themselves freely. So the next time my kid says mechanic, who is Afghani, stinks, say, “yes, he stinks” and will not put race into the equation at all. My child does not see “Afghani” or “oppressed” because he has never oppressed anyone. He just sees a very stinky man. If a redneck (my ethnic group heh heh) came around him stinking like a dirty diaper he would say that man stunk too! I don’t get offended if after I eat kim chi people say I stink. I know it! If someone has black skin they do, so what? The black child thinks the other child is white. That is a fact. They don’t know about slavery and about Jim Crow at two. Racism is not genetic. Racism is a system of belief that is taught. To believe that you are a master race and are genetically superior takes a lot of thought, even if it is misguided. (kind of like Global Warming or Marxism is misguided)

Even if a child makes racist comments he doesn’t understand exactly what that means. I put my foot in my mouth a few times. My best friends were black as a child (remember Tasha?), but I still said stupid things from time to time. My black friends said weird things about white people too. We both learned and moved on. Sometimes we cried, but we moved on. It wasn’t until my black friends learned that they were oppressed because of the white man that they no longer were my friends. Then they were “black” not Tasha and I was the “white girl” not Amber. That hurt more than any word I could have said wrong. Hearing my friend Tasha laugh at me and call me “Look at that white girl!” was far more racist than quoting my grandfather saying the “n” word or confessing that my ancestors were slave owners. My mother had a similar experience growing up with her friends. (and she grew up in the South . . . in the 1960s!!) That is racism, not the accident of saying the wrong word or thinking an Indian is stinky. Tasha was embarrassed to be my friend because I was white. The same goes for those white pride people. I bet if you look in their background, as children they did not care if someone was black and probably had black friends. They were taught white superiority. Shoot, I just recently read white racist theory a few months ago. I thought it garbage by the way! Afrocentrism is equally garbage. (and actually comes from the same source!!)

That is why my kids will never go to daycare. I will live off of ramen noodles if I have to! Marxism, die please!!