The dentist is tell me to relax as she is poking me and asking me “does this hurt” when we both know that when she hits “the spot”, she won’t need to ask. She finally does with some kind of frozen Q-tip contraction and then for good measures verifies that it isn’t just one tooth that is causing pain, but two. It feels like a scene from Marathon Man where the Dustin Hoffman character is pursued to talk by a dentist with pliers. With the area of pain identified, I head for X-rays which are fairly painless but apparently not safe as the technician runs the triggering cord outside the office as he snaps the pictures. Then I sit and wait in the lobby while the film develops and the dentist figures out what it all means. I’m pretty sure what it will mean for me. ...

It is 6:32AM or there about and I leave the bedroom ready for a quick snack before taking Aidan to catch his shuttle bus. But Aidan is gone, having just left for the bus with Cui Ayi. I ask Yang’s mom Yihang why they left so early, that the bus won’t be there for another 10 minutes. She says “no problem, Cui Ayi can take him”. I say I know she can take him, but he will just be standing there and besides I actually like taking him. She repeats, “no problem, Cui Ayi can take him”. At which time I notice Lydia, standing on a chair, looking out her bedroom window for Aidan to pass below on his walk to the bus stop. ...

The happy couple got up in the morning and put on their loose fitting jeans and tees. They brushed their teeth and combed back their hair. Splashed a little water on their faces and left through the front door. They were of that age and of that look of love that meant they could leave the house without shower and still look put together. They walked the two blocks to their local coffee shop – starbucks had not taken occupancy yet – and ordered two cups of joe and a scone to share. He flipped through the sporting green while they talked about what to do with the rest of their day. ...

Lydia likes to draw and she works at it for hours at a time. As she’s gotten better at it, she asks for help less and less often which is good because her drawing long eclipsed anything I could do. We have drawings she’s made lying around our house and my office, her output is prolific enough and we are just lazy enough that we don’t capture them in a very formal way. Maybe someday we will regret that however I suspect not since we are such a transient tribe of five. ...

Last weekend was a three day weekend which I extended to four by taking Tuesday off. Some co-workers naturally asked where I was going but in fact there was no plan, just futz around, spend time with the kids and Yang, and decompress a bit. And the best thing about four day weekends is a three day work week the following week. So on the extra Tuesday I had off, I futzed around a bit, went to IKEA with Yang bought an unassembled chair that is actually comfortable so I can type these blog entries in style. We then planned lunch and immediately dismissed having lunch at IKEA. You might not think lunch and IKEA belong in the same sentence unless you are a termite, yet IKEA lunch is wildly popular here. In fact there were many more people in the IKEA lunch canteen when we left than the actual store. So we decided on a new place, a Belguim restaurant called Morel’s. Morel’s is not new to Beijing, we’ve noticed it since we moved her, but have never tried it. This would be the day. Yang’s friend’s Shirley met us there and for 88 RMB we got a three course meal, choice of beverage (beer, wine, cola), and coffee or tea. I ended up with two poached eggs on toast w/mushroom sauce, penne pasta, and desert. Around us were Europeans speaking French, none too skinny. It was a nice relaxed atmosphere, a fun experience, and reinforcing of why we live here. It made me glad I took the day off work. I noted as much to Yang. She said it was just a normal Tuesday. ...

The foreigner went to the foreign affairs section of the china DMV in order to take his driver’s test for the second time. The first time he took it was four years ago and he scored 92 out of a hundred with the passing score being 90. The foreigner needed to take the test again because he did a bad thing and that bad thing coincided with his having let a friend borrow points. The retest was part of the reeducation for the foreigner since he exceeded 12 points (after lending six) in one calendar year. ...

Five years ago today I checked two bags, boarded Air China flight 986 in SFO, and was on my way to Beijing. When I landed in Beijing Yang, Aidan, and Lydia met me at the airport to welcome me. I remember seeing Yang put Aidan on the ground, place a a flower in his hand, tell him to run to his father. Aidan ran straight to Jim Courier – the tennis pro – who also happened to be on my flight. Yang smiled, perhaps at Courier, and then it didn’t matter as I was reunited with them. It had been just over two months since they moved to Beijing and as you might imagine both Aidan and Lydia had changed a lot during that time. ...

She entered harvest house for her weekly shopping ritual. Grab a basket, down the aisle, pick up the lentils, pick up the tofu, pick up the vegetables, pick up the fruit, pick up the carrot juice, pick up the green tea, pick up the spice. After lingering in the vitamin aisle a bit too long she turned to see Steve, her old acquaintance from the bank. Steve was someone she knew from being in the same orientation program but they were never really close. Never really friends even though she tried. He was just too painfully shy for her to break through and he wasn’t worth the extra effort. Not when Eric was also in the class. Eric was simply a man. Confident, handsome, not always the brightest light but not dumb, and sure of his convictions. So she ended up in the same clique with Eric and eventually the other clique members drifted away and it was just him and her. And for some reason – she figured it was Eric’s father’s death – Eric became a hard ass. Hard ass as in environmental and ecological freak. He sold his car and biked everywhere. If the distance was too far, Eric would take public transportation. She was devoted to Eric and soon sold her car as well. Then Eric decided that a vegan lifestyle – mind you not diet, lifestyle – was the only socially responsible thing to do. So she ended up on the diet because, after all, she did most of the cooking. And it was this diet that caused her once bubbly personality to be subdued. More buddha like was how Eric called it. Others thought she had just lost her spirit, her life spirit. And it was true that Eric could be a bit harsh at times and that he liked it rough and that he liked her how he wanted her. And she did not like that at first but then was willing to try because she loved him so, and then once tried found relief in the submission. She then quit her job at the bank, after all the bank was some kind of evil company, and she dedicated herself to a simple life with her man. A simple life which included paying for these overpriced organic groceries. ...

Spring has been a little slow in coming to Beijing and with today’s weather around 50 degrees we just declared victory. Spring is here whether or not Spring thinks so. To celebrate, Yang played tennis outside this morning and had another winning match. Recently Yang became champion of the taitai tennis league which translates to the “wives tennis league”. It is the name a bunch of foreign woman, mostly here with their expat husbands, gave to the league. The funny thing is I don’t think they would call themselves the “wives tennis league” back home, but here it’s kind of cute. ...

I’ve been a bit worn down and not seeing enough of the kids as I would like so I decided this weekend would be a family weekend. Which is kind of hard because the kids can contribute to the worn down-ness feeling especially if you are, as I said, starting out worn down. But what is not to love about Aidan’s fascination with Pokémon Cards, Lydia’s joy with her purple horse, and Elisa’s exuberance for old fashion chocolate donuts. So Yang and I debated on where to take the kids. We considered the wild animal park out by Badaling but was worried about the traffic and (at least me) the effect on the kids of seeing small animals eaten alive by lions. Especially since Lydia really wants a rabbit and rabbits are one of the main feeds. So we instead focused on a outing closer to town, in Shunyi. After a hearty lunch, we headed over to a villa complex that was rumored to have rabbits. In the parking lot out front, Lydia demoed her new hat, which she said was a Michael Jackson hat. (MJ has been really popular here, especially after his death) ...