Turkiye!!!

Egads! So leaving Greece ending up being a bit of a clusterf--k. We had booked an overnight train from Thessaloniki (central Greece) that was supposed to leave at 8pm...however, when we went to reconfirm our reservation at the station around 11am, a woman at the ticket office told us, "Ahh...the train has a problem. Many water! Whoosh! So no train today! Maybe no train tomorrow. Or many days. Better you live here forever and learn to speak Greek." Okay, so maybe I made up that last sentence, but that's what it felt like.

We learned that our only option (other than flying) was to take an overnight bus. Now even on my best day, I'm not thrilled about long bus rides. Especially long ones. But now that I pee about 30 times an hour, I was even less enthusiastic. So we ending up having to take a bus that left at 2:30am that morning with NO BATHROOM on it that did not arrive until nearly 3pm the next day (loooong story), but for roughly the same price as the train. :-( All that was missing were the crates of hens overhead to complete the magical experience.

So yes, please cry with me if you've EVER been pregnant (or had a really bad bladder infection) and did not have ready access to a toilet.

It should have only taken 11 hours, but thanks to our semi-crazed bus driver's fondness for unannouced, long meal breaks (his first break came only 90 min. after we left the bus station and lasted for FORTY FIVE MINUTES) and his equal fondness for avoiding freeways and instead driving on narrow, cobblestone streets through people's backyards/beneath their clotheslines (we got stuck on more than one occasion....at one point passersby tried to lift a parked car out of the way so we could squeeze by) - the trip took a lot longer than it should have. If I didn't develop coal miner's lung in Athens from the traffic, I certainly have it now after breathing in cigarette smoke for nearly FOURTEEN HOURS.

But I left out the best part. Because we pulled into Thessaloniki mid-morning and were now not leaving until 2:30am, we realized we probably needed to get a hotel room to rest until around 1:00am. Unfortunately for us, like the flooding in northern Greece, there happenned to be an international film festival in town. Which meant that even though we were practically waving our euro around, bending over and screaming "I'll pay anything! ANYTHING!" we could not find a single room anywhere. Anywhere. That is...except one place. Hotel Acropol. I only have time to say this- toxic mold on the ceilings. Needle covers under the bed. Blood stained walls.

Yes, please weep with me again.

Thankfully, we're in Istanbul now and loving it. One of my favorite cities ever! Cheers!

Athens, Greece

Before we came here, everything Roy and I read about Athens seemed unnecessarily harsh- that it was crowded, polluted and kind of a sh**hole. But as seasoned, open-minded backpacking hippies, we turned up our noses at those obviously narrow-minded, xenophobic reviews and pooh-poohed them all. And I'm glad that we did, because now that we're here, I have to say, I think Athens is....kind of a sh**thole. It's really crowded, polluted, and mother of God- SMOKY AS HELL (I was blowing out black snot for days and convinced I had coal miner's lung until I read in our Lonely Planet guidebook that Greece leads the European Union in the number of people who smoke).

Thankfully, aside from the underwhelming appearance of the city, everything else has been dynamite.

Flight(s) over? Timely, quiet and seamless (fellow hippies will be impressed to know that we fit over 2 weeks of clothes/toiletries/shoes in one single large backpack that we didn't even have to check in)!

Weather? Either overcast or cool each day. It's rained every afternoon/evening, but by then Blueberry's Mama is already snuggled in bed reading a cheesy true crime novel that keeps her up half the night in fear...prompting Roy to tell her to throw those damn books away (but that we all know she is too cheap to do).

Food? Dear lord...the absolute best, ever!!! Souvlaki! Gyros! Moussaka! Greek yogurt! I can't stop eating!!!

The sights? We have greatly enjoyed seeing Lyvatikkis Hill(sp?), all the main sites of the Acropolis/Parthenon, the backalleys of Plaka, the Olympic stadium of the first modern Olympics (marble seating for 70,000?! Cool!!!), the changing of the guards at Parliament (men in skirts with little poofy black bedroom slippers marching around with guns), etc.

The hotel? Divine. It's clean, beautiful, in the heart of town, near a million great restaurants and affordable (while it also happens to be somewhat near a few prostitutes and drug dealers... this could end up being pret-ty darn convenient should we decide to have a few 'friends' over for some 'cocktails' on our last night here). It's just how we roll, people...

Today we booked our onward tickets to a little village in Central Greece where we hope to shlep up to a montastery perched atop a beautiful cliff and spend a night there. From there we catch a train again and spend a night in Thessaloniki before taking the overnight train to Istanbul (we have our own little compartment for that segment, which thrills me because I love nothing more than overnight train travel)!!!

Toodles!

Kalimera!

We're getting up at 3:30 tomorrow morning to fly to Greece. After a week there (we hope to fly to Santorini and see the city of Oia), we'll take the overnight train to Turkey and spend a week in Istanbul (I wonder if Allah has missed me?). We'll won't be back until December, so I hope I'll be able to post a few times while we're there!

PS - I can't fit any of my pants anymore. :-)

Roy's Toy...

Last weekend Roy sold our non-blueberry friendly car. On our way to the lot to trade it in, I asked my brother to take a picture of us in it since I think I've probably only ridden in it a dozen times (I'm an easily distracted, nervous driver with really bad depth perception, hence...my rockin' 5-year old minivan). Once we had the camera out, I thought it would be more fun to sit perched up on the back like the high school homecoming princess that I never was (apparently chubby, golfing, acne-covered Asians with rice bowl bangs were not all the rage back then that they are now).

My only condition(s) for Roy when trading in the car were that it be preferably used (and therefore cheaper) and as fuel efficient as possible. So in my head, I'm thinking a used Toyota Corolla, or maybe even one of those newer Dodge minivans with the backseats that fold into the floor (are those not the coolest things ever?!!). But what our boy toy Roy ended up purchasing was this...

So let's see here. Used? Ah, that would be a 'no'. Fuel efficient? Only when compared to a big rig. Great job, Roy!!!

To be fair, I did send him off car shopping with the worst possible companion. My brother Joseph is one of those car whores with a new car every 12-months. Plus, he likes to spend money. Especially other people's money. He routinely and gleefully does things like convince dedicated, lifelong, carpooling hippies to ditch their shared hybrid Prius' for fully-loaded, matching his-and-her Hummers.

Additionally, though I'd initally asked Roy to get us a RAV4, I started to notice that what he really had his heart set on was the FJ. So I admit, in the end, I encouraged him to get what he really wanted vs. what was practical and affordable. The guy works really, really hard and is a great husband (even though I still have not forgiven him for proudly presenting me with an enema he picked up from the drugstore on the way home two weeks ago after I complained about how backed up I was). For the most part, I was stunned into complete silence...until he gently offered to ADMINISTER it to me as well (it was then that I began chasing him around the house and nearly beat him with it).

Anyway, I also figured it'd be his last hurrah before the blueberry came and sucked our bank account dry for the next 21 years and because well...I already emasculate the poor guy enough- what with forcing him to play with my hair night and day, asking him to hold my purse at the mall and calling him 'Focker' all the time.

Only one little incident marred our otherwise oddly pleasant car purchasing experience. This occured when yours truly (who was already tight-fisted and squeaking with every step once I saw the sticker price) finally climbed into the car after we'd already purchased it and discovered that while the driver side seat had an armrest, the passenger's side (mine) did not. What the...?!! Roy attempted to soothe me by explaining that the passenger side arm rest is now an 'optional add-on' (you know, just like the floor mats, back tire cover and cargo mat that we also have to purchase separately). Since when is a passenger arm rest an ADD-ON? What NEXT?! Optional fu**ing steering wheels?!!! Optional side safety mirrors?!?!!!

I realize I'm starting to hit a fever pitch here (and I normally reserve this type of homicidal rage for when we're at the movies and Roy asks me for a tiny handful of my extra large bag of buttered popcorn...I say get your own damn bag, hippie!), but this to me, is ludicrous nickle and diming. And it's not just the fine folks at Toyota who are pulling this crap. Though I loooove love love my Dodge Caravan, the first time I climbed into the passenger seat I noticed that while Roy could lower and adjust his seat mechanically, I had to adjust my side manually. When did passengers become such second class citizens? Sheesh, at this rate, by the time we buy our next car, I'll be lucky to get an overturned 5-gallon bucket to sit on! ;-)

My big, fat shrimp!!!

A month ago I ran a marathon and was full of self congratulations for continuing to stay in shape and for not gaining unnecessary weight. Unfortunately, in the four weeks since then, I have barely run. And as of this morning- I've packed on...SIX POUNDS! In one month! And no, it is NOT baby weight. Because per every baby book I have (and remember, I'm Asian, geeky AND have rice-bowl bangs...so I have A LOT), I should only have gained only 2-4 pounds the entire first trimester. Additionally, the baby (at 13 weeks) is currently only the size of a piece of shrimp. Which means that unless I am breeding a very, very greedy, piggy piece of shrimp...my weight gain is NOT because of the baby. It's probably because of the 800 tacos I've inhaled in the last four weeks.

But here's the thing- while I *absolutely* recognize the need to seriously reign things in (for my physical and mental health), I'm also not super, super fixated on or disturbed by all of this. Though one might reasonably assume this new, lackadasical attitude is because I'm pregnant, I'd also like to think it's because I've evolved a little over the last six months. I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I almost never post any tortured/painful entries about being obsessed with food/weight anymore. A year ago, gaining 6 pounds (pregnant or not) would have left me teary-eyed, terrified, smoking dope, crying to Depeche Mode songs and caking on the dark eyeliner. It also would have immediately put into motion some serious double workouts, a highly restricted, healthy diet, obsessive daily weigh-ins, weekly goal charts, and the inevitable fall off the wagon/depression.

So I've never been more grateful for this relatively unaffected, calmer, more empathetic me. Though I'm not happy about the weight gain, I'm accepting of it. In fact, I've never been more bored/disinterested in talking about weight, diets or exercise. At the risk of sounding pompous or self important- I just don't care about my weight anymore. I have so many other things to think about that mean so much more to me- selling our tiny 2-seater car, figuring out how to afford a safer one, decorating the baby's room, finding the energy to get off the sofa and over to the fridge to get more apple pie, getting through the day without puking on my coworkers, figuring out how I'm going to be able to downsize my position to part-time, what type of strollers we should buy, etc.

I would be lying if I said I didn't still have moments of panic/sadness about the recent weight gain. Of course I'm still bothered by it- this whole blog entry is all about it! But I've since come to gradually realize that what I once thought was the perfect, balls to the wall stategy for losing more weight (which was to focus on it 24-7) was actually the single most unhealthy, misguided thing I've ever done. It's hard to summarize a year of such wretched pain into one sentence, but that's basically it. So what I'm continually thankful for is being too darned tired and too darned busy to worry about how much I work out or eat each day. Ironically enough, this seemingly undesirable lethargy and exhaustion has never made me feel more normal or liberated! So while I'm really hoping I'm not the first North American woman to give birth to a 20-pounder, it just might be worth it. ;-)