New York better get ready!

So I leave tomorrow for New York and I am a complete ball of anxiety. I haven't been able to sleep too well in days because I am so afraid of what will happen to me when I'm away from Dustin. We haven't been a single day apart in over 2 years and I don't know if I can function without him. I may forget how to feed or dress myself properly. It's all very pathetic.

I've come to depend on him far too much. He's my number one source of entertainment! Thank goodness I have things to do and a lot of people to see when I get there. Otherwise I'd sit in bed all day and eventually become a vegetable. I know I'll probably be distracted all day by friends, family and the single fact that I'm back in the place I grew up in. It'll probably just have trouble going to sleep at night. But what else is new?

Despite all of this I am BEYOND excited to go back to New York. Especially since this will be the longest visit there since I moved in with Dustin over 3 years ago. Plus, I don't know the next chance I'll get to visit again. It's way too dang expensive to fly from Japan to NY. Don't do it. Unless you have to be a bride or a groom in a wedding there. Then you should probably show up.

I should be packing right now but I really don't want to. I started packing yesterday but got to a point where my suitcase was stuffed and I hadn't even packed my shoes or bathroom stuffs! Then I had a mini freak out party and walked away. I'm gunna have to take some stuff out and have Dustin bring it with him when he flies over on the 22nd. I always over pack but this time that's not the case. I actually counted exactly the right amount of clothing for a 6 week trip. Dustin suggested that I pack two weeks worth of clothes and just wash them and wear them 3 times.

I think he's losing his mind.

Wedding plans are....flowing. I guess. There are way too many bumps in the road for my liking. I will seriously never plan another wedding ever again. My kids can elope for all I care. I can honestly say that I HATE planning this wedding. No fun whatsoever. And people keep asking me if I have butterflies and if I'm all excited to get married. Uh...no. I'm stressed. I'm anxious because I have stage fright and I'm gunna stutter during my vows like there's no tomorrow. I'm excited for the reception party so I can finally eat what I want and dance like a maniac.

But getting married?? We're already married. And I didn't have butterflies the first time. I had stage fright and there was only like 8 people there! This time there's gunna be about 100 and I really don't know how I'm gunna handle everyone looking at me. Stupid Dustin doesn't have to walk down the aisle. He's so lucky. And THEN there's that first dance that's gunna be just awful. I would appreciate it if nobody watched that atrocity. We slow dance like we're in middle school. Lots of spinning around and stepping on toes. You will get dizzy just watching. And your feet will hurt.

I am looking forward to:
-Seeing the little sibs!!!
-Hanging with my Nana on the set of We Own The Night (more on that later)
-Being in Queens with my best friend since I was two, Jennifer
-Having real NY pizza
-Going to a mall since they don't have any here :(
-Visiting Green Street
-Cooking for younger bro, Dustyloo
-Chilling in Long Island with the cousinsssssss

Those things I'm the most excited for. And notice that they have nothing to do with the wedding. If I think about the wedding I start to dread my trip. And then I wanna eat cake but can't because of this stupid diet of trying to be healthy so I can still fit into my dress. Lame.

So the next time I post I will be in Queens! I plan on taking a lot of pictures on the way over. I have a layover in Tokyo for a few hours that I'm pretty physched for. Hopefully I don't get too lost.

And I don't know, maybe Dustin will feel the need to post about how he terribly misses his "Sweetie" (that would be me) and how he's forgotten how take care of himself without me being there. But probably not.

An unexpected Sunday adventure

I meant to post this yesterday, I really did. But after working out for almost 2 hours straight, I fell asleep. I did NOT have the energy or focus to post another blog. I basically spent the rest of the night watching Tough Love and Daisy of Love on vh1 while Dustin made guacamole. Then I ate the guacamole and life was good once again.

So. Sunday. We drove to the airport to make sure we knew where it was because we tend to get lost 80% of the time around here. The drive was nice since the clouds decided to go away after being around for the last 3 days. We got to the airport fairly quickly and were happy to find that it was a pretty small one. Even though it's the only one on the island.

Then we were gunna go eat here:

But then we realized that we weren't really very hungry. We had eaten about 2 hours before that so it makes sense. Also, the menu was a little pricey for us. But we'll probably come back here cause it's a friggin tree house restaurant!! So, we got back in our car and Dustin suggested we go to Kokusai Street. I was all for it. Kokusai street is super tourist-y and fun. Anyone who visits has to go there. It's all cool stores and amazing restaurants and you will get a lot of exercise walking up and down it.

Here's a part of the street. It was actually closed off to cars that day for some reason. I think there may have been some festival going on that we didn't know about. There's always some sort of celebration going on on Okinawa.

We went into this one shop that sold all the purple sweet potato tasties and was also the factory. I love love love food factories. Even if I didn't like what they were making.

They're like little purple sweet potato pie dealys. I just don't like the crust. I have issues with bread type things.

Lots of free samples in places like this. Here I am tasting something purple. It was yummy. It also made me realize that I was starting to get hungry. So I grabbed some more samples and we headed out to find some food for us to eat.

But first we found this store.

It had tons of old school statues and toys. Mostly Betty Boop and Astro Boy for some reason.

Typical looking Okinawan gift store. They haven't gotten boring yet though!

Astro Boy in his manties.

Luckily, above the store was a restaurant. Hooray! And they had an English menu. Double hooray! They also had this kitty thingy. I liked it.

It was a little bitty restaurant but it was nice. That's the bar with some seaweed floating around in a tank. That's for eating. I see it everywhere too. It looks like strands of little green caviar but it's a weird type of seaweed. It's actually really good and tastes pretty salty. I like the popping effect. Dustin even tried it and didn't hate it too much! I was proud of him.

I happen to like lamps.

This is my meal. To the left I have seaweed with dipping sauce, and fried rice. In the middle there's some type of sashimi (I don't ask questions...I just eat), soy sauce and ginger. And to the right is a little cup of another kinda seaweed that looked like worms, peanut flavoured tofu (it's behind the bowl and it was icky), and my favourite dish here-Okinawan soba with pork ribs and a slice of fish cake. It was very very yummy. Dustin ordered some fried cheddar cheese in rice paper but that was it. He's weird. He ended up helping me eat my fried rice and caviar seaweed.

Here's my wormy seaweed. It was so slimy and gross looking that I had to get Dustin to take a picture.

Then I just slurped it down like noodles. It was very slimy but it tasted like vinegar so I dug it. I didn't finish it though. The sliminess got to me a tad.

Oh. My. Goodness. This dress is actually a wedding dress. It was in a store across from the restaurant and I almost started to cry. Wedding dresses here are not traditionally white so they have crazy fun with it and come up with masterpieces like this. I want this dress soooo bad! I would just wear it to the movies or something. *sigh* It's so lovely. I'm bringing the little catalog I found there to NY, if anyone would like to see some more crazy dresses.

I love this dress too even though it's white.

And Dustin likes Goya benches. Notice his pants? This is the day he wore sweat pants out in public. It was pretty awful.

Back downstairs.

Finally a sample Dustin likes. Taco rice! I love how cute and little it is!

Dustin concentrating on shoving it all into his mouth at once.

Pretty desserts that I wasn't allowed to get. But I knew I had to get my sugar somehow that day....

Hello pink bicycle car! People were riding in these all over the damn place. It was cute. And what's that in the distance??

That's right! McDonald's for Dustin. Ooooh, and a green tea and Oreo McFlurry for Tara!

Hello beautiful. It was very yum even though they only filled the cup half way. It was probably for the best. Besides, I worked extra hard at the gym that night.

McDonald's here are soooo clean and classy looking. I love these lamps too. I want them in my bedroom.

Dustin like sandwich!! Num num num.

And look! You can get sweet corn as a side instead of fries!

These small childrens put on a show for us! You can watch the video down below and I suggest that you do because they were very very good. The one to the left is giving that weird look towards Dustin because he was trying to show his appreciation by clapping for them. And staring at them. While I took their picture.

There were also some traditional Eisa dancers! You can watch them here:

Here's the lion dance with the children in the smaller costume:

And here's just some more antics that went on. Last video is of one of many buses that drove past playing happy music. I love living here. :)

Adventures with Apollo!

This last week, Apollo and I have been taking very long walks in the hopes of discovering something new. My main goal was to see how far away stores are from our house. We live in a military housing community right next to Kadena Air Base. The community has houses, 2 lame playgrounds, and a bridge that goes straight onto Kadena. The parts of Kadena we're close to basically have nothing. The daycare, kennels, and the gas station/shopette are within walking distance but we weren't interested in going to any of those places. We wanted to explore off base. The first day we walked for about an hour and got to a forest. Then we went home. The last thing I need is a snake bite that'll get me sent off the island.

But the second day we walked in a different direction and had a very nice walk indeed. But once we go to some stores we turned around. It took about an hour and we were very tired and humid. But we (meaning just Tara) took some pictures along the way.

Here's lovely Apollo pulling the crap outta my arm.

There are many many cute little gardens on Okinawa. Here's one we saw with some coconut trees.

Tiny kitten!

Dalmation duck.

Here's someone's garden. He was actually over to the far left but he didn't notice me.

You can't read it but this was just on the side of the road randomly and it told a story about this ginormous snake that would destroy crops and such unless the villagers sacrificed a young girl to it. I read it and announced to nobody, "I KNEW IT! I knew there were virgin sacrifices somewhere on the island!" Okinawa just gives off that vibe to me. *shrug*

Here's the trail that supposedly leads to the pond where the giant snake lives. Apollo and I started to go down but then I remembered that I don't like nature and I didn't wanna spend the rest of the day picking ticks off of Apollo.

One of the hundreds (maybe thousands. I have no idea) of shrine-like cemetarys they have here. I like them. I think there's something very peaceful about them.

Here's some info for you guys. And look! There's me!

Shisa! And Apollo trying to pull me away from taking pictures. He wasn't too happy with me at this point.

Can you tell I really love the gardens here?? I want one.

This is where we rested for about a minute.

Hooray! A store! I don't know what it was but we got there and we were proud.

Apollo's note: What's all this "we" stuff??