What a year...

So obviously I really stink at the whole blogging thing.  Not making any promises about how often I'll write, or how funny I'll be.  Changed the settings to adult content, do I really think I'm gonna be talking porn or something, no.  However given some of the recent turns in my life, I'm much more likely to be a tad more colorful in my wording of things.  Last time I posted, was  not too long after my father passed away.  I had come to the states for his funeral and was back in Japan, and had enrolled my girls back in the school system on the base.

Well, it's a new school year now, and all the kids are all back in school now, except of course for Monkey.  Thing 1 is in 7th, Thing 2 is in 6th, Beastly is in 2nd, and Monkey is just 22 months old still.  We've moved back to the states again.  It was unplanned.  We were there in Japan on March 11th for the big 9.0 quake, the Tsunami was much farther north than we were, but we sure as hell felt the quake.

Thing 1 was on the bus coming home from school.  The bus stopped and pulled over, and turned off the engine during the quake.  Thing 1's seat was right by a power pole that was rocking so hard she was terrified it was going to fall and crush her, which was understandable even with her sense of drama.

I was picking Beastly up from school, she was playing next to a very steep, wooded hillside with a friend while I visited with the friend's mother waiting on them to open the road to cars again to go home.  They close the road when the kids are walking and riding bikes through there before and after school for about 40 minutes.  While we were talking we became aware that there was an earthquake, it started off as nothing major, then after several seconds we could feel that it was building.  It still didn't seem that bad, but we called to the kids to get them closer to us, at that point it REALLY started to move, there were rocks tumbling down the hillside, into the fence that surrounded the area to keep the kids out of the woods.  I got Beastly into the van with me  and we sat there and waited it out, watching as the teachers and people living along the street were all coming out of their buildings to wait for it to end.  When it was over, I got her settled in her seat and we drove home to where Sailor, Thing 2, and Monkey were all at home, and to see if Thing 1 had made it in yet.

Monkey had been taking a nap during all this, Sailor had as well.  Thing 2 was playing a video game.  He woke Sailor up because the power went out and then he realized there was a quake as well.  Power went out first because the quake was so far north of us and knocked out the grid before we could feel the shaking.  His Dad jumped up, told him to get outside and ran upstairs where he snatched Monkey up out of his bed, and ran out with him as well.  I pulled up and they were all 3 outside, but no sign of Thing 1 yet.  She made it home not long after.

We were without power for about 6-7 hours, we knew there was a tsunami, but not how bad it was until after that.  Then of course the whole Fukushima thing, and we were there in Yokosuka when a plume of radiation blew over our base.  We were allowed to take part in a "voluntary departure" which got us home to my Mom's place on March 23rd of this year.  Thing 2 and Monkey seemed to be fine and not having any issues, but Thing 1 and Beastly had real problems.  Beastly couldn't eat much without getting sick from the time we had the quake till we got to the states and lost 3 pounds, and Thing 1 was having anxiety attacks. 

When we started talking about going back to Japan, the girls both got worse again, so I told Sailor what was going on, and that I thought the worst thing we could do was force them back there when they were still clearly so afraid.  That I thought it would do real harm psychologically to them both.  He seemed ok with that, so the decision was made for the children and I to stay in the States with family until he finished his tour there.  Or that's what I thought anyway.  Then about 5 weeks ago, he sent me a horrible email saying a lot of terrible things, and said I never gave him a choice in this and that he'd never trust me again, and 2 days later told me that he wants a divorce when he's back in the states again.  He told the kids over the computer about 2 weeks ago.  Thing 1 is hurt and angry and doesn't really want to talk to him about it, though she DOES talk to her grandmother and myself both, Thing 2 is dealing with it in typical boy fashion, so I'm watching him closely, Beastly is sad and hurt, but she's doing alright, and of course Monkey is too little to know what's really going on.