Moving. Again.

To quote Judith Viorst’s children’s book, it was a “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” Actually, it wasn’t just a day, but a whole week. Two events occurred at once to make the past six or seven days such a downer—first, we moved yet again, this time into what will (hopefully) be our (semi) permanent apartment. Second, expat wife syndrome set it.

I was warned of this inescapable setback by other expat wives. At around the 4-6 week mark, the novelty of living in a new country—a new culture—wears off and you begin to yearn for a car, familiar food, and a Target store. In other words, you get incredibly homesick. The twelve-hour time difference means you go all day with no phone calls or emails from a country that suddenly seems like it is on another planet and is full of old friends who now seem imaginary. I pop out of bed at 7am and immediately check my Hotmail account for even the tiniest connection to the life I left, and then I have to steel myself against the pit in my stomach and gear up my brain for another day in overdrive… because living in a new culture means you have to think through every teeny tiny aspect of your day. And when it’s moving day, there’s even more to think about than usual.

While I was transferring us from the Treetops to our new place on the coast, Brad was on business in Kuala Lampur. This is a phenomenon that has become so commonplace with us that it has actually turned into something of a joke. He’s been out of town EVERY week we’ve EVER moved! The week we moved to Minnesota, he was in Mexico. The week we moved to Ohio, he was in Atlanta. The week we moved to Charlotte, he had to be in Germany. And even as soon as we stepped off the plane in Singapore, he was almost immediately back on another one headed for Thailand. So I shouldn’t have been surprised by the news he wouldn’t be around to help, but this time it had me more stressed than the other times. More of that steeling myself against doubt and worry, and away I go…

First stop is Carrefour. It’s the closest thing to a Wal-Mart or Target here, and I have a lot of stocking up to do. I have nothing for our new place, and as I pack up my cart with really fun stuff like an iron and soap, towels and dishes, I begin to yearn for my Tacoma. How in the world am I going to get all this stuff back to my apartment?? While Dagny plays a really fun game (note: sarcasm) where she unloads everything from the cart as soon as I load it in, I assure her (and therefore myself) we can do this. And then of course comes the point in that first mega shopping trip when you finally feel you’re ready to leave, but as you head for the exit, you realize you forgot some pretty important stuff… like toilet paper and Kleenex. Unless I want to wander aimlessly back through the super store, I’ll have to resort to the bulk goods section, which I can easily see from where I am. So a few minutes later, I’m standing in the checkout line with Dagny holding a 7-pack of Kleenex for me while I try to balance a life-sized igloo of toilet paper on top of our already overflowing cart. And I can feel my face turning bright red as I wait because I’m sure the people behind me are thinking, “Wow, that woman must spend all day on the toilet blowing her nose.”

It turns out I bought WAY too much stuff to carry home in a taxi, but no worries, Carrefour delivers. Yay! (keep that “Yay” in mind for later)

Next up is confirming my moving truck and mover for the following day. I’ve already confirmed twice, but feel the need to check a third time, just to be safe. In my month here, I’ve confirmed babysitters who still didn’t show up and shuttles that never arrived. As it turns out, there is a trait I heard about Singaporeans before moving here that I’m quickly finding to be true: they hate conflict. This sounds like a wonderful trait—and in terms of national peace, it is—but it can be a real pain otherwise. Because a distaste for conflict also means none of them want to be the bearer of potentially bad news, just in case breaking that news would turn into a tense situation. Case and point: being assured a shuttle or babysitter was on the way when one was not.

Go figure, this once again turns out to be the case with my mover—three times confirming the appointment or not. The truck arrived, but the driver was half my size and about three times my age. He wasn’t going to be helping with my boxes.

Once I get my cargo loaded (thankfully with some help from a bellhop), I squeeze myself into a backward-facing jump seat, holding Dagny on my lap with one arm and propping up some boxes with the other, dripping sweat because it’s already 94-degrees by 10am. My driver is a cantankerous old man, and for half the drive he gripes about the fact that we are running late because I “was no ready.” I inform him there was supposed to be someone from the company to help me move the boxes from my room to the van, but for that particular two minutes of our conversation, he seems to have suddenly forgotten how to speak English. When he does start talking again, he takes on a more congenial attitude (probably because he realizes he hasn’t been paid yet) and asks me about Dagny.

“Is a boy or girl?”

Really? I mean, I know it can be hard to tell with a 16-month old, but I have her decked out in pink. Pink flowers. Pink flowers with rhinestones. I bite back sarcasm and inform him she’s a girl. Duh. I’m still annoyed with the tongue-lashing he gave me. And I’m dehydrated. For the remainder of the ride (since he can see I’m not up for talking about my evidently androgynous daughter) he decides to regale me with his ideas on how America can fix their economic problems. Because yes, it is. Just. That. Simple.

When we arrive at the apartment, he tells me I should owe him $120 because it took two hours instead of one, but he would only charge me $90. Now this is a shout out to my sister-in-law Kim, who gave me some much-needed lessons in growing a backbone and sticking up for myself better before leaving the States… I said no! I think it was partially based in anger, but mostly I was just too exhausted to either give into him or to argue with him. I informed him I was promised both a driver and help for $60, and that was all I was going to pay. He got in my face and said I should owe him some for the overtime, and I very calmly told him I was being generous with $60 because he wasn’t helping with my boxes.

The next thing I knew, my belongings were unceremoniously dumped in the parking lot and he was driving off with a squeal of tires. Seriously, no joke.

So I load Dagny into her Kelty baby backpack and start trekking my boxes through two lobbies and up to the 14^th floor. I didn’t bother looking at my watch to see how long it took me. I didn’t want to know. It felt like forever, and my back was in spasms when I was done. But I was done. And relieved. At last, I was in my awesome new place!

A place, I soon see when I step inside, where the AC is broken and there is an infestation of ants. Once I get Dagny down for her nap, I attack the ants with a bottle of Windex. I’m at a loss for what else to do. I’m waiting within my 5-hour window for my delivery from Carrefour, so I can’t leave the apartment, and I have nothing else to use against them. Surprisingly, the Windex works! I’m reminded of the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, where the girl’s father uses Windex as a remedy for everything. Maybe he was on to something.

And then I sit down on the marble floor (no furniture yet!) and wait. I also have no Internet yet, so I play round after round of Angry Birds on my iPad. Which, as it turns out, makes me very angry. I hate the red birds! They are completely useless!

Pretty soon, Dagny’s up from her nap and my 5-hour window has come and gone. I call Carrefour and am told someone will call me back in 5 minutes. An hour later, I call again, while bouncing a very hungry baby on my hip (I kind of figured I would be at the grocery store by now). At last I get through to a representative who tells me my delivery will arrive in an hour.

An hour. Hmmmm… I keep Dagny preoccupied by playing Flo Rida’s “Right Round” over and over again. Hey, don’t judge me… I know it’s a song about strippers, but she loves dancing and spinning in circles to it. And a desperate mom’s gotta do what a desperate mom’s gotta do.

An hour later, my shipment finally arrives… smack in the middle of a late afternoon rainstorm, which is like a hurricane without all the wind. My new wares get trucked into my apartment soaking wet. Great.

I’m as close to tears as I have ever been at this point. My last few attempts at eating local food haven’t gone well (Vietnamese is definitely not my thing), and my disposition isn’t helped at all by a visualization that keeps running through my head as I sweep up ant and roach bodies with a paper towel—an image from an email I received from my old neighbor that morning... one of a new family moving into our house in Charlotte. I suddenly miss everything back home. I want something comforting and familiar. At the very least, I want my husband back!

Just when I feel I’m about to hit rock bottom and am fearful that Dagny's first clear word—thanks to me—is going to be the f-bomb, she comes waddling out of her new bedroom with three hats stacked on her head, laughing. And then I start laughing. It’s like she’s telling me—in the infinite wisdom of a happy-go-lucky child—that everything’s going to be okay. And I’m suddenly feeling guilty for having viewed her as an extra burden all week, because she’s anything but that.

She points to her tummy and says, “Me pee.” Which may sound like she needs to go to the bathroom, but actually, in Dagny-speak, means “milk please.”

“I can do you one better than a milk,” I tell her. So I load her in her stroller and take her to Burger King. Pure Americana. While we’re eating, she starts dipping her fries in ketchup. She’s never done that before and I start laughing and clapping, because to see her do anything she hasn’t done before is kind of like watching a trained monkey do new tricks. I know that probably sounds wrong, but I can’t help but look at her and say, “Omigosh, that’s so cute! You’re acting like a little human!”

While the weekend was still rough and plagued with setbacks (I think I've probably griped enough at this point… no need for more), there were a few fun moments. We live right next to the water now, on the Marina Channel… excellent seats to watch a few of the races for the Dragon Boat Festival that was this weekend. I wish I could have gotten to the actual festival, but no such luck. And I got to take Dagny down her first waterslide in our apartment swimming pool. Definitely a highlight.

In all my dreams of adventuring around Singapore—museums, temples, zoos, gardens—this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I’m sure Brad feels similarly when it comes to his travels to the most local and unglamorous parts of Thailand, Malaysia, and this week, Indonesia. But it is still an adventure. If it were all posh and perfect, it would only be considered a vacation, right? And while dinners on the Sing River followed by clubbing with my hubs definitely make for romantic evenings, there is something to be said for the nights we sit in beach chairs in our empty, echoing new family room, sharing our last can of Tiger beer while comparing "Most Daring Meals of the Week" and laughing our heads off as we play "Name That Crappy 80s Tune"... which inevitably turns into "Who Still Knows The Moves To That Crappy 90s Dance?"

See? Even bad weeks can be good. They make for much better stories :)