Things I've Done Since D's Been Away

(It may seem lame, but writing down things I've done kind of motivates me to do more.)

1. Collected all the business cards lying around the house and organized them into categories, then filed them in a book for business cards. This doesn't seem like much, but Chinese people love to give out business cards, so there were TONS. Also, when we go to a restaurant that we like we grab the card so that we can show the taxi driver if we want to go back because we don't always remember where things are.
2. Paid the phone bill. We hadn't paid it since we moved in (September), and we don't have a local credit card so I had to go get cash, then go to the administrative offices of the complexwe live in. This was pretty simple and I don't know why I never did this before. They've sat in a pile on the desk with a post-it that says, "To be paid" for the last four months.
3. Booked a plane ticket to meet up with D in Shanghai for the weekend and organized a place for Puppy to stay. Part of me doesn't want to go because flying somewhere is such a hassle for such a short period of time; but D wanted me to come and a lot of our friends are there for a conference, so there you go. I'm going.
4. Cleaned out my purse. Ladies, you all know how huge a task this can be.
5. Wiped all the puppy prints from the floor. This I did only because I can't stand seeing those little puppy prints that happen when the puppy pees, then walks in it, then tracks pee-prints all over the hardwood. Our ayi comes twice a week and she washes the floors, but still - seeing those prints for even a day drives me nuts.
   
6. Went and did some grocery shopping. Lately, I can't seem to get out of the house to do this and I don't know why. When we first got here in the summer I used to love going to the market. I don't know if it's the cold, or just my mood, that makes it so hard to do now. In any case, off I went. I even splurged on dill pickles to put on a tuna sandwich. It's so stupid, but a jar of pickles costs almost $15, so it's really hard to justify buying them. I remember telling this to D once and he laughed and said that if I wanted pickled, to just buy the pickles because it's not like we were hurting financially or anything. Still, the cheap French-Canadian side of me is horrified at spending so much for dill pickles. Anyway, I bought them, made a tuna sandwich with pickles, and it was the best lunch I've had in a long time.
7. Thrown out two boxes that have been lying in the den since we moved here. They were full of D's stuff and in fact, these are boxes that he never managed to unpack from when we bought our house almost two years ago now. So, I cornered him last month and told him to unpack them or I was going to throw them out the window. So, he took everything that was in the boxes and put them in a cupboard. I suppose that's progress. Maybe one day he'll actually go through the stuff in the cupboard and sort it out. Anyway, the empty boxes have been lying in the den and I suppose I haven't thrown them out out of principle. I mean, they were full of his stuff. Whatever. I got sick of looking at them and I threw them out.
   

I still have a bunch of pictures and artwork that I'd like to get framed, but I don't want to do this without D since he has a pretty critical eye when it comes to that kind of thing and I don't want to get something he won't like.

So, apart from the framing, there's really nothing left to do in the house. Now what on earth am I going to do for the next couple of days? (Apart from watch Season 5 of Project Runway that I bough the other day...)

How do I deal with this?

The week coming back from London has been a difficult one. I don't know why I thought going away would snap me out of my funk, because in reality it only made it worse. All last week I lounged around in my PJs, showered maybe once or twice, and basically did nothing but sleep. Yes, I was sick, but back home I still would have gone to work. I mean, I wasn't THAT sick.

On Sunday D and I went for brunch and he basically confronted me about being depressed. When I say confronted me about being depressed; it was in a rather complicated and roundabout kind of way. He started off by saying something like, "Well, at least you got dressed and left the house today.", which set me off on something about how what a jerk he was for not proposing back in Canada and how I felt like a fool for being here etc. It went on like that for about two hours while we ate Eggs Benedict.

(One of the benefits to being in China: you can have conversations like that in a restaurant and be fairly certain that no one understands you.)

In the end, he said we have to do something about how I feel and he asked what he could do to help. I cried, and he got teary-eyed, which made me cry more. He asked if I needed a therapist, and I don't know if I want to see one. I'm sure a therapist could help me deal with things, but to me it's pretty simple. I'm dealing with two issues:

1. The issue about leaving my life and living in a country where I don't understand the language and where I don't work. And,
2. The issue of D not commiting to me.

So, I feel depressed about Issue 2, which makes me not really able to deal with Issue 1. I think. Perhaps that's an over-simple way of looking at things.

In any case, I made a list of things to do while D is away this week on business, the first of which is doing some grocery shopping... Well, it's a start, right?

The Puppy Who Chews Everything.

Literally.

Undecided

I've changed the template, and may change it again in the next couple of days. Why? Well, I feel I need something simpler, and cleaner. Also because it keeps me busy and that's always a good thing these days.

Risen from the Dead

I'm currently fighting the urge to kick Puppy in the head because he's biting and chewing everything these days. I can't really blame him because all his puppy teeth are falling out and his new teeth are growing in, which I know is probably pretty painful. I've been wondering if it's okay to give him aspirin or something for the pain, but can't find anything about it on the internet so far. So, I've been giving him ice cubes which he happily crunches on. Also, he's in his crate all day because the minute I let him out he knaws on my hand, or foot, or arm, or any appendage of my body that he can sink his teeth into.

Apart from dealing with puppy growing pains, I've been pretty sick since getting back from London. I don't know if it's because I caught something from the kids of the friend I was staying with, or because flying always makes me vulnerable to colds. In any case, yesterday I was barely able to move because my body was so sore. I called D at work at 6 p.m. and begged him to come home and take care of me because I couldn't even get up to make myself food. Pathetic, I know.

I had a fantastic time in London, though. Just to be able to understand what people are talking about around me and to go into a Starbucks and order what I really want (Grande Non-Fat Chai Latte) was totally amazing. I bought many fantastical things from Boots, shoes for D (they don't make his size in China), and some Jo Malone cologne for me. Other than that, I hung out with my friend and her two lovely boys, met up with Bluesoup (who lives, in a weird twist of fate, two minutes away from the friend I was staying with), and wandered around Sainsbury's like a child in a candy store. I would seriously consider living in the darkest, dampest flat in London to be able to shop at Sainsbury's everyday. Seriously.

The down side was that the damp cold literally crippled me. I don't remember feeling so cold in my whole life. I mean, obviously I lived in London for four years so I know how cold it gets, but I just wasn't used to it anymore. I was constantly having to borrow sweaters from my friend because I didn't pack appropriately. Now that I'm back in Beijing, I've noticed the dry air even more keenly. I wake up in the middle of the night with cracked lips, a bloody nose, and a throat so dry I can't even speak - and that's with two humidifiers running.

I picked up a little treasure in Boots that's been a lifesaver for dry skin though. Organic Body Nourishing Body Oil. I slather it on after a shower and it leaves my skin really soft and moisturised, making the need to re-apply lotion again during the day unnecessary. I should have bought 10 bottles of this stuff:

English Bookstore, Here I Come!

I just booked my tickets. Leaving tomorrow and back on Feb 13th. My heart did a little lurch at the thought of leaving D for a week. It's nice (but very reassuring) to know I still get that feeling after over two years of being together.

Weekend Recap & Other Stuff

I've had the most jammed-packed weekend I can remember, and here I am, on Tuesday, still recovering. It all started on Friday with drinks with some friends to celebrate a birthday. D and I were supposed to only stay for a couple drinks but ended up staying out all night. At this bar, I met another trailing spouse who ranted at me for hours about how difficult it all was and how it will only get worse for me. She suggested I spend my days drinking and looking at porn on the Internet. Seriously. It's nice to know on some level that someone is having a hard time as well, but it made me better that at least I hadn't sunk that low.

Friday night I also made a rookie mistake. I didn't eat a thing. I know, how could a 28-year-old make such a mistake? It's something an 18-year-old does. In any case I didn't eat at this club because we were supposed to leave to eat at this German restaurant but we ended up not going, and consequently, not eating.

After this club, we went out to another bar and then it's like I was magically transported into Saturday because I have NO MEMORY of what happened at this bar. It's usual for me to have memory blanks of an evening of heavy drinking, but not for the WHOLE NIGHT to be erased. I don't remember being at this place at all (and the Facebook pictures that have been posted prove that I was there and posing for the camera), I have no memory of coming home, or of throwing up for hours upon coming home (something D told me the next day).

This is what I'm starting to call a Bad Beijing Booze Experience (BBBE). A lot of the alcohol here is knock-offs of the real stuff, and there are degrees of how bad it gets, but I've been in a bar here and had one gin and tonic that's had me throwing up all the next day; so it can get pretty bad.

Saturday was a write-off. I spent the day in agony on the sofa drinking Fanta. I think at about 5 p.m. I was ready to eat something and ordered in McDonald's (a perk of being in China - everything is delivered). I couldn't even get up to look after the Puppy, who snuck around under the table and ate the heel off my favourite pair of boots.

Sunday we went to The Westin for their famous Sunday brunch. All-you-can-drink champagne and martinis and all-you-can-eat brunch buffet (includes sushi, caviar, fois gras). This is an epic brunch that you take your time with. We get there at 11, and stay until almost 4 p.m. Afterwards, we went to a friend's house to keep drinking and to play Dance Dance Revolution on the Wii. It was a pretty great day, actually.

D took a day off on Monday and we slept in until noon and then went to the market where I bought a really cute D & G knock-off coat and got my nails done. I told D over lunch that I wanted to go to London for a week to get away; that I needed to get out of China for a bit. He told me to go whenever and to book a flight if I found a good deal. So, I may go next week. I hear London got covered in snow, which is pretty weird but I'm pretty sure it'll be gone by next week. In the whole four years that I lived there I think it only snowed once and even then it was just in the air and didn't stick to the ground at all.

Top 10 things I'm looking forward to doing in London:

1. Eating at Wagamamas.
2. Shopping at Boots. I actually had a dream about Boots last night. Yes, most things are manufactured in China and most people think you can get anything here, and that's simply not true. All the things that are made here are exported right away, and the things they sell here are extremely cheap knock-offs. The hand and body lotions and incredibly cheap and smell like dirty lemony dish water. To get the brands that I want I have to go to a luxury mall and pay triple the price because the product has actually been imported from America or Europe, and then a luxury tax has been added to it. So, all that to say I'm looking forward to buying cheap products at Boots that smell nice.
3. Seeing friends of course!
4. Not eating Chinese food.
5. Drinking good beer. The beer here is really cheap, but not great. I'm looking forward to sitting in pubs and drinking a good Guinness that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
6. Going to Borders and buying English books. Oh, I miss bookstores possibly more than anything else.
7. Being away from D. Now, I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just that back home we used to spend lots of time apart and I loved it because a) I like my own space, and b) it gave me time to miss him and to look forward to seeing him. Since we've gotten here he's been so over-protective of me that he's hardly done anything without me. It'll be nice to have some time apart so I can miss him a little. Does that make sense?
8. Getting my hair done by someone who speaks English (I'll need recommendations please!) and going to an esthetician for a good wax by someone who speaks English. I've been in some places here and even though I'm sure they do a good job, there's just something too frightening about getting a Brazilian from someone who doesn't understand a word you're saying.
9. Speaking English to cab drivers and reading English on signs.
10. I'm salivating at the thought of getting a jacket potato with cheese and beans at the Shepherdess on City Road.
    

So, London here I come!