Our move has been pretty smooth overall, but it has not been without its bumps. My energy crisis/ fashion intervention plan for the day was rudely interrupted by Murphy. He visits Japan, too!

First off, let me say, we have had a mostly great experience with housing here, however, our neighbors began coming by almost as soon as we moved in and offering their condolences about our yard. I heard no less than four times, “Y’all got screwed on the mowing.” The mowing contract with the lawn company states that residents are in charge of mowing 80 feet from their residence. Then, housing told me I couldn’t fence any of that area for our trampoline, but would have to make sure our fence (and trampoline) is completely behind our house, effectively filling our little back yard. So I get to mow it, but I can’t put my trampoline on it or fence it. Hmph. While the lovely woman at housing came out and agreed completely with my point of view (and common sense), she has no power to change lawn contracts. Most people have a four foot by twelve foot strip in front and a fourteen foot square patch to mow in back. Here is our side lawn- keep in mind it goes past the brick structure, nearly to the little green utility box on the far right of the picture (Why, yes! That is a huge electrical transformer in the middle! Everyone’s planting them these days!): 

SO to begin addressing our lovely common lawn, we got a great deal on a used mower. Last night, Matt took it out to mow and within two minutes, he ran over a tree root and bent the blade in half. Then, he drove off base to the Japanese “Do it Yourself” store on the corner, armed a diagram of the mower and the mangled blade to see if they had a replacement blade. He returned empty handed. While he was gone, I looked online. Amazon will not ship mower blades, deeming them “dangerous shipping material.” SO, we’ll get to hunt for a blade this week. In the meantime, it looks like we’ll pay into the neighbor boy’s college fund. (By the way, in the picture that little blue sliver on the right above the trees is the East China Sea.)

This morning, I woke up to check that the bills had come out of our checking account, and I saw a $1200.00 purchase pending from Wal-mart.com. I had already noticed a couple odd itunes purchases and a weird AT&T bill this week (all less than $100), but I was waiting to see if they were travel related or somehow linked to our new cell phone company. I knew we hadn’t ordered from Wal-mart though, so I called the bank. Thank goodness we have USAA, and I spent 20 minutes on an international phone call where I was NOT put on hold filing a fraud report and shutting down/ reissuing Tattoo Man’s debit card. This is when I take a moment to thank Dave Ramsey and Financial Peace University, because since taking his class, we have an emergency fund in place. Having $1200 missing from our account would have been a class-A crisis a few years ago. Today it was just an inconvenience.

Tonight, Matt drove into our parking spot in the cul-de-sac, and while he was sitting in the car gathering his stuff, a neighbor kid on a bike barreled into his blue two-week old Mobilio van on accident, leaving a six inch gash down to the metal on the back bumper. Welcome to Okinawa. Thankfully, the kid was okay, but that scratch will start rusting tonight in this humidity. Ugh.

AND, it looks like we’ll get to see how well our little bunker holds off water, as there is a big storm coming through Sunday/ Monday. Lord help us if we try to get to the commissary for water, toilet paper, and pop tarts (and an ax, those who remember our Hurricane Irene escapades). At least Matt’s not at sea and I’m not carrying my granny dog up and down any stairs in a hotel.

A million little stressors like these can bury me quick if I don’t keep my sense of humor and a healthy dose of perspective. I’m thankful we have a car. I’m thankful we have an income. I’m thankful we have a house, even if it has a ridiculous side yard to mow. More importantly, my family is together, which is a blessing worth more than anything money can buy.