Almost Time to Drop My Pudgie Ass Down the Rabbit Hole!

Rogue
NOUN:

1. An unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person; a scoundrel or rascal.
2. One who is playfully mischievous; a scamp.
3. A wandering beggar; a vagrant.
4. A vicious and solitary animal, especially an elephant that has separated itself from its herd.
5. An organism, especially a plant, that shows an undesirable variation from a standard.

ADJECTIVE:

1. Vicious and solitary. Used of an animal, especially an elephant.
2. Large, destructive, and anomalous or unpredictable: a rogue wave; a rogue tornado.
3. Operating outside normal or desirable controls

I included the entire definition but the first person who makes a large mammal joke goes on my list.

First I need to give you some truth in advertising. If you went searching for the words: coed, Japanese or housewife, with porn in mind you got sent to the wrong place. I am in a sickeningly happy marriage and in three days I will be flying to Tokyo to pursue my Japanese degree, alone (thus I will not be throwing you or anyone else a bone). The good news is, the other billion sites summoned up by those keywords will almost certainly have enough naked Japanese coeds or housewives to satisfy any lonely geek with a hand free to work the mouse (it only takes one).

Now a quick rundown on me and this blog. My name is Liz. I am a wife, a mother, a college student, a source of constant confusion to most of my relatives, and a source of amusement to most of my friends... I'm pretty sure I just irritate strangers. I would like to tell you my age but my strict religious beliefs don't allow it. My strict religious beliefs also require me to nap liberally and read copious amounts of smutty fanfiction. If you have a problem with any of my religious beliefs, I suggest you start your own religion and challenge me to a holy war.

My husband Dave and I have been married for 15 years (I was a child bride, he lured me down the aisle with stuffed animals and candy), and 9 years ago we somehow managed to make our amazing son Morgan out of some spare gametes we had lying around. Dave's job title is "His Lord Highness King of all Computer Geeks" and Morgan has no title as of yet but I am leaning toward "Head of the Chaos and Mayhem Administration".

My title is a bit trickier. First it was "Housewife", then it became "Stay at Home Mom", later it evolved into "Stay at Home Mom / Student". Now if I were capable of doing things the easy way, my next title should have been "Career Mom with a Marketable Degree". I am incapable of doing things the easy way. Given two paths, one well paved and lined with flowers and one a barely visible dirt track through the underbrush, I will ignore them both jump the 8 foot fence next to me, tear myself up on the razor-wire and try to book across the landscape before the velociraptors get me. So my new title is "Stay in Tokyo Mom Who Decided Japanese was the Only Interesting Major".

I spent the last 3 years or so grinding out my Associates Degree and trying to get accepted to a college in Japan where I could perfect my speaking and finish my degree (sometime during that 3 years I also had to convince Dave that being a single parent for two years would be fun, and convince my Mom that becoming semi-retired so she could be "Stay at Home Gramma" would be fun, Dave and my Mom either love me more than I deserve or they are incredibly gullible). After all the sacrifices (health, sex, sleep, small animals...the small animal sacrifice may be a hallucination brought on by poor health and lack of sex and sleep)I was accepted to Temple University Japan. My problems were over. All I had to do then was convince the Japanese Government that I was independently wealthy and had never done anything in my entire life that could be considered vaguely interesting (I will not comment on the possible gullibility of the Japanese Government as they can pull my hard won visa at will).

Now the only thing between me and penultimate goal (getting there was hard enough, but I still actually have to go to classes and get the damn degree.) is 3 days and a fourteen-hour plane ride. I have tried to condense my journey to this point into one post. My continuing journey will be posted here for my family and friends and anyone who happens to stumble in and get stuck.

My next post will be partially based on a suggestion from my friend Tara. It will be titled "How I fit my life into two suitcases and a carry-on bag"