Success again!!

I was just sitting here listening to the tiny, stead stream of cold water, when all of a sudden the water pressure went all the way up. Turned the faucet to the left, & no loss in water pressure! It started heating up. I have hot water in the kitchen again! Now if my fridge worked.....

I found my limit.

My limit is waking up to the hot water pipes frozen this morning. This is AFTER leaving the hot water running all Wednesday night & all day yesterday. They froze in about 7-8 hours. The cold water works fine!

So, that's it. I am now leaving when my contract ends in July. I can't take this 3rd world shit hole. I think there has to be a new problem in the building. NOT. ONCE. did my pipes freeze at all last winter. Twice now in a month is too much. I have the heater going on under the sink while I'm here at work. I now think it had nothing to do with the heater last time so much as the temp going up to about 40. It won't get above freezing until Wednesday at the earliest, so I'm not counting on having hot water again until then.

I had the heat on, I kept the cabinet open, kept the sink running & often at a pretty good stream, but it still fucking froze. These buildings were ALL built in the 80s & 90s, by the way. They just didn't insulate them or the pipes because they're lazy, illogical, backwards fucktards.

So more than likely, not sure how the whole plan I had is going to work since I'll almost certainly have to leave the debt repayment program, as even I can get a remote job in time (which I'm starting to work on), there's no way I'll be able to send off $410 each month there until next fall.

I'll have $2500 less from the pension too. All of this sucks far more than I can convey & I'm not sure now if I can do what I planned since getting loans to help with grad school in Europe, even the little it would require, is likely out, never mind the mind-bending loans I'd have to take out for the $25K teacher certification. So I'll likely have to give up on Europe. I hate this place far more than I can say, for making everything so impossible. But that's where we are.

I hope they reunify under Kim, they should go back to living 100% like the backward fuck show this place is.

I have a weird preoccupation

It started as recently as last night, when I was looking for an arm & ab/core workout since I didn't feel like doing my usual one. I found a video by a girl who I now have in my regular rotation (and not the one I didn't want to do last night). In the introduction, she said that everyone has those things they don't like doing and/or aren't good at, so they skip them. For her, they're push-ups-- even though she can do them, she doesn't like doing them, & never does them.

My reaction: YOU CAN DO THAT?! You can just skip the shit you hate doing because it's too hard/you're not good at it, don't like it, whatever?! That's POSSIBLE? That's doable? & this fitness instructor skips shit?!

I always remembered Tony Horton say during P90X to do the things you're bad at. I felt pretty bad at all of plyometrics, pull-ups, etc., but since I was doing the videos, I just did what they did. It never once occurred to me, even when he admonished people to do that, that people could do that. There was even a big thing on people skipping the yoga day because the (mainly men) weren't familiar with it, weren't good at it, etc. I remember thinking it was idiotic for them to skip that, especially since it was only one day of the week & I definitely find yoga to be indispensable.

I hate pull-ups because I've just never been able to do them, & to make matters possibly worse, I can't even work on them without a gym because once you leave the US, you will find far fewer doors in your home, and weirdly not one doorway will have a lintel &/or will be in a corner, so you can't use those doorway pull-up bars. But when I did P90X, I did the stupid modifications even though I barely got better & never really got close to doing one.

I despise doing one leg squats, especially because I suck at them. I've been doing them because I have pistol squats as a goal. & I've been pondering how the hell to cut leg day from the 1.5 hours it is now. Leaving out those, or any of the other extras I do were unthinkable, even though especially recently they make me angry & frustrated because progress is SOOOO slow & gradual. But if this fitness chick can skip stuff solely because she doesn't like them, why the HELL can't I??! Why did I never consider this as an option before??

So now, fuck those, I'm not doing them anymore, or not until I've built up enough leg strength that it isn't such a long, slow, upward battle that I do kicking & screaming (metaphorically, though not-infrequently literally as well). I can skip all the special shit that I hate doing & work on balance & strength & flexibility more and through other ways, & not hate everything about a particular exercise anymore. Because that is a thing. Every second of life doesn't actually have to be a battle I'm constantly fighting against myself, as I realized now that long ago on this blog that I so often do. I'm opting the fuck out of that shit, because it's a thing you can actually do! Not doing something because you don't like it & aren't good at is an option! Initially I was actually upset because she was skipping stuff she hated & I wasn't. & at first it didn't even occur to me that I could do that too. But now that I realized that doing that is absolutely an option, I'm soooo fucking doing it! I going to do the not-doing-something-anymore because I don't like it & I'm not good at it. I'm so thrilled. What other shit can I stop doing?!

OMG! IT WORKED!!

Full water coming out of the faucet! SOOOO did not expect that!! Oh I'm so happy! Would admittedly be even HAPPIER if our paychecks had cleared our accounts yet, I have 6,000 won in there ($6). Thank GOD for Xmas money (thanks again Mark-- you bought some kids some sticker books, & me some dinner!).

I've wracked my brain,

but I'm not really seeing any silver linings these days.

To start with, the trip home I was SOOOO excited for for 6 months, was anticlimactic and, at times, disastrous. From most of my nephews having the flu (good times for the parents AND kids during Christmas!) to none of my friends being around to my sister thinking I was out partying instead of spending time with my nephews when I was stuck sitting around most nights unhappy (didn't want to risk getting the flu one of the two rando weeks I have off each year, & no sick days, so if I were sick when I got back, I'd have the unmitigated pleasure of teaching with the flu) to 2 friends being too tired to come see me the ONE TIME I'm home in 2 years for a week on my last night in town, coming home was not all I had been dreaming of. It DID however make me hate Korea even MORE since Chicago's pretty, with nice architecture & clean air, as compared to Seoul's cement jungle covered in huge blazing neon signs & blasting kpop music & crowds. My skin took 2 days to clear up (minus the stress breakout I had). I cried so hard when I got back because I just hate it here so much. So that was a super fun bonus! I was depressed the whole first week back.

Lately I've been blessed with being unable to sleep before 4:30 AM, even with melatonin. Once I WAS able to sleep, I've started waking up because my nose is running like a faucet. Which is a bit ironic since that woke me up 2.5 hours before my alarm went off today, & when the alarm DID go off, I woke up to realize that last night I really DID need to leave the kitchen water running, but did not, so when I turned on the faucet today, nothing came out. Well, it WAS really fucking cold. A whopping 6 degrees last night, & we're not going above freezing til maybe Saturday or Sunday. NATURALLY, when I went downstairs to the office, that old useless fucker wasn't there. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I go down there for him: because the pipes froze today, or the whole apartment blew a fuse, or whatever, that old dick (who is the same useless guy who didn't tell me my 10 lb of chicken had arrived, so I had the unmitigated joy of throwing ALL of it out) is not there.

I texted Sue, & she called, so the building manager came up, with useless old guy in tow. Building manager points to me & says, "Hend pone?" Meaning, give me your phone. So I do. Guy puts the phone to his ear. Repeatedly. I was like, "ARE you KIDDING ME right now?" I take the phone, bring up the dialer, hand it back. He keeps pressing the green talk button without dialing, & again holding the phone to his ear. Mind you, ALL he has said or indicated at this point is that he wants my phone. Then he tells me to call me. ME. Call... myself. I can't even begin to be mystified when he FINALLY says, "Call manager." Ahhhh, Sue! I call, it won't go through, I call, he hangs it up. THIS is what I deal with day in, day out in this fuck show, btw.

He finally gets her on the phone. I'm to try to put my heating fan on under the sink tonight, but folks let's face facts, that is NOT going to work! The fuckers are frozen now, & they're staying frozen since I'm here at work 'til 10. Soooo... pretty damned pointless to try to heat them up after that much time, but I'll do what I have to, since I remembered while working out last night I needed to leave the water running, but forgot at bedtime. Stellar of me to forget on the coldest night of the year.

It's only the kitchen sink, too-- the bathroom works just fine (though I left that faucet running today, just in case).

So, I'm tired, my nose & sinuses are pissed off about the air here, my skin is falling back into not being happy here, I froze the pipes in my kitchen, I have 6,000 won ($6) in my bank account, & can only pray Sue will pay us tonight since tomorrow is pay day. & OH YEAH! In February, during the Korean New Year, we'll have a Friday & Monday off, but us expats have to take out all cash we'll need for the weekend on Thursday because the Wori bank cards may or may not work.... all weekend. Someone posted about getting a notification on this, & others confirmed they had as well. PERFECTLY REASONABLE to limit or deny people access to their bank accounts, ESPECIALLY on a holiday weekend when NO ONE will be working. WHY? No one will be working, so wtF will they be doing that will require  repeated, random inability to use our bank cards? Keep in mind as well that NO ONE here can use their cards EVERY NIGHT between like 2-6 AM, some range in there, each bank is different, because that's when the banks do maintenance on the servers or systems or something.

I live in a developed country. I live in a developed country. I live in a developed country.

Send help, send sanity, send alcohol. I get to do this for another 1.5 years.