Why “The Mac and Cheese Chronicles”

It starts off in in Korea, like so many of our stories do.

We had been living there about 6 weeks, I was pregnant with Becca, I had a 2 year old and a 4 year old to keep busy and it was monsoon season. Monsoon is an Asian word meaning “start gathering animals two by two and build yourself and ark.” Philip was gone of course, off at some Very Important Exercise of Great Global Importance. The North Koreans called it an aggressive, provocative act by the West and their puppets in South Korea, threatening the freedom loving people of the North. You and I would call it a computer simulated war game.

So there I am, far away from home, alone with my 2 children, large belly and a houseful of boxes to unpack. Not only was it monsoon season, but we were getting whipped around by a typhoon. Typhoon is an Asian word meaning, “You thought that was a lot of rain? How about some high winds, too!” Well, our lovely cement quarters started leaking. I discovered the leak after the children were asleep and I was heading off to bed myself. There was a puddle forming in our upstairs hallway. I waddled back downstairs and grabbed a pot. A metal pot. I placed the metal pot under the drip. PING! PING! PING! Hmm. That won’t do. Back down the stairs I went, this time retrieving a plastic bucket. The dripping water still made a dull thud, but I was able to sleep through it.

The next morning we woke to an almost full bucket and several leaks up and down the hallway ceiling. We had quite a lovely little lake forming on our linoleum floor. I rounded up every plastic bin I could find and lined them up to catch all the water.

Meanwhile, something crazy was going on with our phone. The phone would ring constantly, all day and night. Nobody was every there on the other end. I started just letting the answering machine pick up all the time, but then message alert beep would start annoying me. I finally just unplugged the phone at night so I wouldn’t have to go downstairs and stop the beeping.

And to top it all off, our downstairs toilet was plugged.

It was only a matter of time before our car stopped working.

During this time, I sent Philip daily (or more) emails about our disasters. I usually found the time to do this while I waited for the water for our mac and cheese to boil, so I titled the emails “The Mac and Cheese Chronicles.” Just an account of our life as it happened, much like this blog.

Epilogue: I managed to convince the maintenance men that the leaking ceiling was an emergency and it was fixed right away. So was the toilet. The phone took a little more effort and we eventually just got a new phone number. The typhoon passed, but not before destroying a good portion of the base library. The car never did break down.

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