Uninvited House Guests

I have been putting off writing this post for over 4 years now. Largely for selfish reasons, like not wanting to deter would-be visitors. And also because for the first few years I was too traumatized to speak about it. Without weeping that is.
But as we begin our 5th and final year in Taiwan (future destination, currently unknown) I feel like it's time to stop protecting you and just have out with it: Taiwan is full of grotesque, overgrown, creepy pests. I suffer from PTSD from my countless surprise(!) encounters. Here are just a few examples of what we deal with.
Let's start off with a softball:

ANTS.
Cute little ants. Nothing too bad about those. Until you are sleeping with them, bathing with them, and casually eating them at every meal.

They come in waves throughout the year. A child drops any food on the floor and it will be covered black with ants in mere minutes. Nothing can be left in the sink, on the counters or floor or you will have an all-natural organic carpet of ants on every possible surface.
Boil noodles for dinner and a few ants will always bubble up on the top for good measure.
My favorite though is soaking in the tub. I open my eyes to see drowned ants floating all over in my bath water. I just close my eyes and pretend I'm having an exotic spa treatment involving pepper.


LIZARDS
At first I thought these little dudes were the good guys. They soundlessly scamper around the floors and ceilings feasting on, well in our house, probably the ants.

They leave a trail of little mouse-like droppings all over which is "fun" but what really gets me is that they will just up and die anywhere. You'll find a finger-sized corpse rotting in your pantry, for example.
My least favorite story happened when I opened a cupboard above my head to get a recipe book and something dropped on my upturned face, sliding down my neck and chest before I realized with horror it was a lizard in the latter stages of decomposition.
How Nathan kept me here after that incident? Two words: Dark Arts.


COCKROACHES
We're having fun now, aren't we? Cockroaches come in various sizes, but mostly large. They'll turn up anywhere, especially in places you don't seal up tight, a completely random example would be that $10 bag of chips your kid didn't bother to close properly. Cereal boxes in the States sometimes have surprises in them, well guess what? So do chip bags you leave open in Taiwan!

Fun cockroach story, I'm driving down the road one day, blessedly alone in the Odyssey. I am stopped at a stop light when I get this feeling I'm not alone anymore. I look over in the passenger seat and there is a cockroach the size of my pinky riding shotgun like it ain't no thang. I had to invite him to leave. Immediately. And by leave I mean die.

SPIDERS
And there it is. The giant dirty secret. Spiders. Arachnid-disgusting-us.
It has been well established on this very blog that in pre-Taiwan life I didn't hesitate to throw a shoebox over a spider I deemed "big" before using a life-line to phone a friend to come and do the dirty work. Well, survival can force you to face lot's of things you'd rather not.
It was a few months of living in Taiwan before we began encountering their brand of overgrown spiders. Do this exercise for me. Touch your pointer fingers together and your thumbs together and make a circle. That would be the size of an average spider. The kind we find in our house. The kind that eat the pinky sized cockroaches.

 In our last house they really liked Kohen's room. A 4yr old Kohen woke up with a big ol spider on the wall next to his head. He was thus scarred for life and too scared to go to bed in his room. Finally a genius friend of mine suggested a mosquito net over his bed and that thankfully helped. He drew a picture of his experiences in therapy KA.

A quick getting to know you guide to Taiwan spiders:
They are smart.
They are wily and faster than you want to imagine.
They are ginormous, conspicuous beasts.
They like to show up when Nathan is out of town.
Sometimes they are so big that when you take a picture? they have red-eye:

Come visit then? 
Hope to see you soon!

Take 2, Eye Surgery

This was not a relaxing summer, let's just start with that glaring fact. Being displaced for what ended up being 8 weeks was not ideal. We packed up and moved 7 times within those 8 weeks, and changed cars so many times I lost count but it was more than 10, that much I know (in 100+ degree weather as I'm sweating and cursing trying to get carseats and booster seats wrestled over and buckled in, kill.me.now.). We will be forever grateful for my sister's friend who heard of our plight and offered us their car without even knowing us. That is true Christianity people. And for Nathan's parents who took pity on us and lent us their car as well. Bless you! (A Thank You to everyone who helped us with rides, gathering our stuff from across the valley, letting us crash in your homes etc., we needed lot's of help this year.)

This was also the summer of redo's, which is fine if you are talking about an awesome massage or amazing food instead of root canals and surgeries. I had a root canal done soon after I arrived home. As a bonus I had some serious pain for weeks after. Then in an attempt to fix an old root canal the dentist spent forever trying to get into an overlooked canal but in the end had to send me on to an Endodontist, who finished the job over 2 long appointments. When I later went back to the dentist to put the crown on it didn't fit and he had to do another one. I bet I spent a solid weeks worth of summer vacay not-numb-enough with a drill squealing away in my head..

But enough about me. 

Ander's initial eye surgery left his eyes somewhere in between where it had been and where it needed to be. A few days before we were scheduled to head home we were told he needed a 2nd surgery. We extended our stay and headed back to the hospital.

 This time they got it right with the anesthesia and pain killers and the process of waking up was much better than the 1st time. The surgery was done on the outer muscles of the eye where they take out a section of muscle. It causes more swelling and usually more pain as well. This particular surgery typically takes longer to heal too.

We don't have graham crackers in Taiwan so after Ander had been resting at home post-surgery for quite a few hours, eyes still tightly closed, I asked him if he was hungry to which he nodded and said, "I want graham crackers." I was so surprised by his specific request! But Auntie Natalie came through and he devoured graham crackers and teddy grahams with his eyes closed.

 About 48 hours after the surgery he looked like he'd been beat up pretty good. Lot's of swelling, especially in his left eye. And his eyes pulled outwards a lot, and even though we'd been told to expect this, it was still distressing to see.

 As the swelling went down, sometimes his eyes looked pretty good, and sometimes one of them would wander off and do it's own thing...

And his left eye had this big bulge where the stitches were so when he turned his eye this big 'ol bulge would swing out, it was a stomach turner! But at his 2 week appointment he measured really good and we've been assured things are moving in the right direction. 

This was taken this morning while Ander experimented with blueberries in his ears as ear plugs, but his eyes look pretty darn good. When he is tired they seem to go out more often, so with jet lag factored in I'd say it's looking stellar. 

As difficult as this summer was logistically, we were so grateful to be in the States and have good care.