Since I don’t have classes on the weekend I spend the better part of it helping my wife and her family at the dry cleaners.  They usually give me random maintenance like tasks.  Today they gave me a new one that I never expected I would have to do.  I got to play the role of manager for the day.

Earlier this week some unruly customer brought in her fur jacket (well the tag reads polyester, but she thinks it is fur).  The coat reaked of cat urine (she says it was perfume) and looked like she wore it in the rain and threw it in a pile on the floor for a lengthy period of time.

We cleaned it and did what we could.  The coat was slightly singed in random spots when she brought it back two days later and claimed that it was our fault.  This is oddly amusing since the equipment washes 100’s of polyester fur garments every month.  We were even able to pull a polyester fur blanket off the shelf that was cleaned around the same time and show that it has no damage too it and neither has anything else been damaged.

Having been a kid with a bit of an evil streak for a while I would compare the marks to that of someone taking a lighter to the jacket and quickly putting it out.  Playing with the jacket parts of the melted polyester broke off in my hand… after it was just cleaned?  Also not one spot was burned to the base of the fabric.  It was halfway at most and only on one side.  A very unusual burn for something that happened in a dry cleaning machine.

We also don’t use much heat in the dry cleaning machine as well, its not really a dry process.  Its just not water based, but a petroleum base.  You know that flammable stuff!  So if it did get burned, it did so while being soaked in a flammable substance… on just the hood and right side of the jacket.

So we are guessing…, with quite a bit of confidence that we aren’t responsible.

Now to make everything worse, we tried to explain this theory to this woman, and the two guys that showed up with her today.

It started off with just me, then when they started screaming at me, everyone else in the store, the wife, both her parents, and an 80-year old women whom we employ.  Which was great that everyone had my back and saw I was out numbered but I thought I was handling myself just fine.

Then after a half hour of trying to get everyone on both sides of the counter to remain rational I threw my hands up and told everyone on my side to get lost and everyone on the other side to shut up and let me explain why its not our fault.  This only left to all of them ganging up on me again and us getting nowhere.

They had a computer print out that looked like it was written with Notepad, stating how much they wanted us to pay.  (on of the first red flags)  She wanted $178 for their Olympia fur jacket, which me (a self-proclaimed Google-guru) can’t find anything close to her jacket worth more than $100 online.  Plus some other info and bogus fees that didn’t make sense and then the $28 cleaning bill costs.  She didn’t want an explanation, a refund, she wanted a “big” payday.  From the looks of her wardrobe and an oily rats nest of a hairstyle, and her goon squad to match, $200 would pay her car payment for the next 6 months.

I’m not an overly fancy person.  My wardrobe consists of items from Old Navy and Hollister mostly.  But everyone of the jackets I own, even the my red leather jacket I bought in a side street shop in Korea cost more than this jacket, and she treats it like its the holy grail.

I finally played my last card.  There is a legal disclaimer on the back of the receipt that, in short, says we are only responsible for giving them what they order.  They bring in a dry clean only shirt and ask us to process it through regular laundry we’ll do that.  Even if we catch the label which has a great reason how it will be damaged that way.  We give you what you want and aren’t responsible for damage done in the cleaning process.  The customer is responsible for knowing their clothes, not us.  So even if they are right and we had a fluke incident where we burned her jacket, the disclaimer on the back of the receipt and claim ticket they are given protects us.

That didn’t work either.  I eventually just gave up and sat there for another ten minutes smiling to these 3 bums who smelled like ash trays and looked as if they hadn’t bathed all week long.  Then as my nerves reached their limit I asked them to leave…. then I asked them to leave…. they didn’t leave.  Then I asked if they wanted me to call the police.  The one guy just smiled at me and said, yes.

I had to instantiate my claim that I will in fact call them and he just wanted to further the instance by saying “are you threatening me now”?  “No, I am giving you an ultimatum, leave or I will get someone to force you to leave.”  After a long stare with the phone in my hand, I did nothing and then they left.

30 minutes later they came back.

This time only the woman came in asking names and personal phone numbers, and taking a fourth business card.  I told her we are not going to pack up the building and go into hiding, she has all the information she needs.  She must not have heard me (big shock) and asked again.  I gave my first name and said I told her to leave.

Then after seeing them sit in their car for 5 minutes I couldn’t handle knowing what else they wanted and called 911.  To my surprise, they were waiting for the police to show up cause they also called 911.

On a brighter side the 911 performance was exceptional.  After having to call over having my car broken into in Concord, my brother falling out of a tree in New York, and kids vandalizing my car in Tennessee, I am not only creating a habit of calling 911 where ever I live, but know what to expect in case of an actual emergency.  Though with the exception of the kids in Tennessee it did feel like an emergency every time in the past.

Nearly an hour later a cop shows up.  We all watch from inside and they swarmed him like wolves going in for the kill.  By the time he came inside the cop seemed please to speak to actual humans.  Even stated that “they are probably just looking for an easy way to make a fast buck”.

I explained everything to the cop and just said I want to never see them again.  Restraining order, bullshit order, I don’t care.  They showed up to complain with an Army and a printed list of how much they wanted us to play.  This wasn’t an issue with bad service this was harrasment.

The cop agreed with my but also stated his limitations as a cop, then gave me the number of a judge and explained how to get a restraining order.  I took it but doubt/hope we’ll never use it.

Once I explained that we told them to leave, they left, then came back, he gave them a warning that if they come back a third time they will be arrested for trespassing.

As of now we are all a little shooken up and a nervous wreck from going through the stress of arguing from them then watching them camp outside.

I actually hope they do take us to small claims court, as I would love to see their faces once we counter-sue for lawyer fees.  A nice thing about having a job and an education…. we can hire lawyers. =)

For the past several months I have been going back and forth over trying to reason with my wife and get another chance to try and save our marriage.  Some days I have called it quits, other days she has called it quits.  The feedback I get from everyone is torn right down the middle.  Half tell me that marriage is always difficult and we should both try harder to salvage what we have.  The other half tells me that enough is enough, and to cut my losses.

So let me ask everyone:

• How would you feel if you couldn’t tell your wife a joke you heard, because she couldn’t understand the innuendo or slang?
• How would you feel if you couldn’t go to a movie because one of you won’t understand any of it?
• How would you feel if you had to explain every piece of culture from a “jack-o-lantern” to a “thanksgiving turkey” and your wife will never be interested.
  
• How would you feel if everything you said to your wife had to be blunt and to the point?  (no slang or abbr.)

In case you didn’t know by now my wife is Korean.  She found me online looking for someone to practice her English with.  I was stationed in Korea with the Army which she saw, and knew that I had good English skills (or assumed that I did) and was in the same time zone as her.  Ironically we were only 20 minutes apart.

Talking with her at first my Army friends made fun of me because I had to talk so slow.  Dohee (pronounced “dough” as in bread, and “he” as in him), had to use those pauses in between each work to translate what I was saying.  Over time this corrected itself and I was able to talk faster.

Before meeting me, Dohee had never been to the United States, and barely knew anything about it.  Of course there is the history that everyone reads about in the text books, or the war in Iraq that we all see on TV, but that says nothing of our culture.

When they teach English in Korea, they teach proper English.  They also mix Australian, Great Britain, and American style English dictionaries.  They don’t teach slang and innuendo’s. Why is this a big deal?  Imagine having someone close to you in which you couldn’t fully share a joke, or watch a sitcom together.

A joke that takes a twist on the English language such as, “Two men walk into a bar, you would think the second one would of missed it”.  Dohee would never make the connection, because she is translating the word “bar” into the Korean word for a “drinking bar”, which is completely different than the word for a “steal bar”.  Imagine if the joke read, “Two men walk into a night club, you would think the second one would of missed it”.  If I told you that, you would think I am an idiot.

Then of course what teacher in a formal society such as Korea would teach sexual innuendo’s?  Yet, that includes half of the programming on TV.  The only thing we could really watch together was the Disney Channel cause the grammar was on a level she could understand.  Her favorite TV show is “Drake & Josh”.

Every Christmas in Korea, Dohee’s family worked in a bakery they run.  There were no presents, no tree, not a single decoration.  We would get a cake from the bakery then order some food. Every restaurant was open and still delivering.  In my family Christmas was a big deal.  My parents would max out credit cards just trying to make a bigger celebration.  Even now my parents live at home with just the two of them, all kids have moved out, and they still put up a tree.

Yet, I married someone who tells me that its wasteful and bad for the environment to cut down a tree just to throw it away in a month.  While she may be right, there is meaning in it too me.  Something that I can’t teach her and don’t even know how to begin explaining.  Regardless she will never share my enthusiasm.

Any joking, teasing, flirting, for either of us is next to impossible cause its either portrayed as one of us is an idiot, perverted, or grossly amused with something that shouldn’t be funny.  How do you keep a relationship alive without a little humor or spontaneous romance?  How do you enjoy the holidays if your wife thinks they are foolish.

You want cut down a tree, bring in the house so the needles can fall off, the baby can eat them, and I have to vacuum several times a day, just so we can throw it away, in a month?

You want to cook a huge turkey for one meal, and just the three of us?  We can’t eat all that food, its a waste of money.  Buy a chicken its smaller.

I could sit here all day and write about scenarios such as these.  We have gone to counseling, we have tried being separated, but its been 5 years.  The towel is now in shreds from getting “thrown in” so many times.  (she wouldn’t understand that pun either)

It is sad, and I think both of us wish it could work.  We can force ourselves to make it work, but for what reason?  Because of our daughter?  Because in the eyes of God divorce is wrong?  Because dating sucks?  Maybe those are good reasons, but by walking away now, we still have our heads held high and our dignity in tact (well…., some of it anyway).

Her name is on my bank account, and she has her own debit card in which she can take any money out of my account at any time.  This way is better cause she takes her child support, and I don’t pay it.  If she needs more she asks and we talk.  There is no waiting for a check in the mail or anything, she has what she needs.

I am still paying for her cell phone and I haven’t changed the passwords to my e-mail or anything else.  We still trust each other and talk like we are old friends.  We are a divorced couple that holds no hard feelings.  I trust her with my money and my daughter.  While some things have changed, a lot that normally change after a divorce has not.

It has long since been over, I just refused to believe it.  I still care for her, and will still hold her dear for some time.  The logic over everything keeps me clear, it just can’t work between us.  There was a spot of lust we mistaked for romance, and now that is all over.

Its better this way, our daughter is too young to ever be truly affected.  She will grow up with happy parents, its just we won’t live together.

Not all decisions are easy ones.  This one took some time to come to realize.  But I think we have made the best choice for everyone.

When two worlds colide, everything comes crashing down.

As I head out to class this morning my wife calls me, and wants to know why I talk badly about her parents in the last blog post.  Then threatens to take me to court and get every cent she can out of me for child support, and change the paperwork from seeing my daughter once a week to twice a week.

This is what I have to deal with every day.

Now keep in mind that my wife is Korean.  Not in the racist way, but in the way that English is not her first language.  She basically learned English from talking with me as well, so her skill is only 5 years old at best.  Each word I say aloud, or write in my blog must be translated before she can evaluate the meaning.  The bad part about this, is Korean grammer is so completely different that translating something directly can entirely change the meaning.

So to clear this up I will write what I said about her parents to be translated directly.

My wife got pregant, WE LIED!  She was 7 months pregnant when we told her parents. Any parent would be mad!

Now that all this is cleared up I want to make another thing clear.  When my wife is mad, flustered, or uspet, her mind races, just like any normal human being.  This interferes with the translating and several key words tend to be mis-translated or skipped in the process of only skimming the document.

If you are going to read my blog Dohee, calm down and read it again.  Take a break (several hours) and then read it again.  Make sure you translate it with a clear mind and read every single word.  Calling me in the middle of a class so that I have to pull my battery is childish.

Just stop and think before you act.  I’ll do most anything you ask, but only if you’re rational.  If you’re mad and yelling, I’m just going to hang up then talk again when you are rational.

Without getting overly detailed and long winded I am going to try and explain my best as to what is going on with me and my wife.  I am going to assume that you haven’t been reading posts here on the blog nor have you been keeping up with my tweets on twitter.

My wife got pregnant on accident and because of that we rushed a marriage.  Quiet, crappy, *stamp stamp*, you’re married style wedding at the US embassy in Korea.  My wife sat on a bench while I handed some lady our paperwork, then turned around and we were done.  Not really a wedding, but it was legal.

My wife didn’t tell her parents about the marriage for several months, then when she did, it was more of  “we finished all the paperwork” and nothing more.  Then about 6-7 months pregnant, she finally told them about the baby.  She gave birth to a healthy baby girl, and less than a year later we moved back to the states.  (Well, I moved back the wife and baby moved)

After several months the brother-in-law moved in with us so that he could study English here and save money living with us.  I agreed one night I was spending apart from my wife and was half-asleep.  I called the next morning to ask if we could talk about it more, and it was too late.  Her brother was with her and she had already told them.  These little events became quite common.

After about a year in Tennessee, we moved to New York where he parents came to visit.  We were living in a crappy apartment, I was earning most of our income from the internet so was at home all the time.  The parents saw this and put pressure on me and started treating me like crap, more than usual.  I said in Korea, while in their house I will take it, but I am doing my best and in my house I expect my guests to show me some respect, regardless of what they think.  That just pissed them off more, so I told them they are welcome to leave.  Well, I might not of been that polite and some language that would make a nun faint may of been used.

They left and went to their brother’s home in California.  The wife, brother, and my daughter stayed.  After several weeks we got things patched up and it felt like we were getting our lives back on track.  My mother-in-law asked my wife to come to California to be a translator for her and help invest into some business as they intended to re-locate to the states.

What I didn’t know was that just before the in-laws left, actually the same day, they had taken my wife to a lawyer and had divorce papers and everything filed.  She held them until she was in California for several weeks.  I had heard promises that she was coming back but also running into a border control employee at the airport in NY, I played the Army card and he warned that he should probably arrest her since her immigration paperwork isn’t complete.  (The lawyer she hired for that is the most incompetent lawyer I have ever known)

All alone in New York, I surprisingly got the letter in the mail for divorce.

Having my wife tell me she loves me the night before, I was beyond confused and called her immediately to explain.  I never got a straight answer.  More about how I am not how she imagined marriage would be, and how I am not prince charming.

After getting drunk for a week straight I looked around the empty, trashed, foul-smelling apartment and decided that I wasn’t going to quit.  I cleaned the house, and sorted everything that I no longer needed.  All my Army crap, and old electronics all got posted on eBay.  I pulled a state-of-the-art radar detector out of my car and sold it for $450.  Haven’t got a speeding ticket since, yet I got around 4 or 5 after I bought it.

With as much money as I could save, I packed my little 4-door Chevy sedan with a list of stuff she meantioned she wanted, which included a toddler bed, and then took as little as possible of my own stuff, then left.

I drove from New York to San Francisco, sleeping in my car the whole way to save money.

Once here I setup a tent on Mount Diablo at $20 per night.  Then found a gym where I could shower.  After a couple days I packed up and went back to sleeping in my car.  One night the car was broken into and my GPS was stolen, I attempted to fight the guy and stop him but was so focused on trying to kick him I couldn’t situate myself and properly aim.  He got away and I had to resort to driving around without a GPS in a new area.

I looked high and low trying to find a “real job”, or whatever my wife’s family thought one was.  I had no luck.  One day while looking I got lost and stumbled into a college campus.  I pulled over and explored it a little more.  They were still accepting registrations.  I remembered that my GI bill pays me a flat rate just for going to school and that as well as my internet income may be enough to live here.

I signed up, and started will all late start classes.  I picked whatever I thought was interesting.  Now I realize that not a single class can be used towards the degree I want.  The GI bill only covered half the classes as well.

At this point I was seeing my wife every couple days or so, sleeping in my car about a mile or two down the road in a safeway parking lot.  I accidentally found a cop here on the night my car was broken into and felt it better to sleep where the cops hang out.  I had the occasional 3am wake-up and ID check, but after a while all was good.  Until someone called and complained.

I had met an older guy who lived alone on the other side of the fence and had offered me to park in his driveway if it ever became a problem for me to park at safeway.  Eventually he offered me room and board and after several months I finally accepted.

At this point my wife was convinced that the divorce was best, and would always come back with “look at you”.  Implying that I am living out of my car.  I got her to agree that she would give me a fresh start, and we would try again at our relationship, but I had to give her the divorce.  My condition was that I don’t hear about the divorce and as my wife I would trust whatever she told me to sign.

She didn’t live up to that last part of the deal.

Her mother is now looking to go back to Korea for several months, but my wife has to stay here, since she doesn’t have the proper papers to leave and come back.  Living with her mother means that mom pays for everything.  So to save money they have all moved to Sacramento where the housing is cheaper than the San Francisco bay area, where we have been living.

Two weeks ago I drive all the way to Sacramento, unknowingly about her intentions for the day.  She gets in the car without my daughter anywhere in sight and hands me a manila envelope.  I look at the first page and know instantly that they are divorce papers.  She gives me a hug for nearly 2-3 minutes, which she has always been terrible at showing affection like that.  I almost think she was crying.

We found a nearby park to get some privacy versus the parking lot to the large apartment complex and talked everything over.  After an hour I said I want to read everything carefully first but now I want to see my daughter and enjoy the time there.  We went and got her first haircut, which I hate.  Then got something to eat and had a fairly decent night.

Then yesterday happened…. before I left she told me to make sure I brought the papers, she read over my notes.  Then we went to a Kinko’s and she edited everything to suit our needs.  I will get my daughter 54 days a year, and pay $200 per month in child support directly to my wife.  There is no third party involved at all for anything.  Educational decisions are made by my wife only, everything else is joint.  (I still don’t understand why I couldn’t be trusted with educational decisions)

We got everything notarized, and now she just has to mail everything to her lawyer and do that part of it.

From here I don’t quite know how to handle what I am suppose to do with my wife.  Part of me is ready to move on, another part wants a happy family and I think that’s still possible.  My wife, or the ex-wife/girlfriend, isn’t the same person I married.  But, neither am I.  I am still going to try to work this out, just not as hard as I have in the past.  Her parents won’t even let me in the house or so much as look at me so I know they are placing an influence on her as well.  I just can’t believe that even though I have don’t everything to try and save this marriage she is still ready to throw it away so easily.

If you want to know more then all I can tell you is to stick around and follow me.  Subscribe to the feed for my blog, which is where I post my long stories like this one, or follow me on twitter and get the news faster, but in smaller pieces.

Leave your comments or questions below!

It’s coming up on finals week so I have been really bad at blogging, but what else is new.  I feel this is noteworthy so I thought I would write a quick note about it.

At the moment my wife and daughter are living with my mother-in-law.  Who is also in the process of trying to find a business in the states, and get established.  She will be given a visa if she buys a business from the US government since she will be bringing an amount of money large enough to buy such a place.  However, she can’t seem to find a place she likes or that isn’t trying to cheat her.

Due to the long delay in getting everything here settled, she is going back to Korea for a while and getting some business there taken care of.  Her visa is also running short as INS will only give her blocks of 6 months at a time.  Because she is going back to Korea, my wife and daughter will stay here alone, with me, and mom will pick up the tab.

I am not necessarily thrilled about this idea, but my list of options would fit on a gum wrapper.  Mom also knows this, and because everything right now is being paid with money in savings, she is trying to find the most practical solution for everything.

Rent?  It’s much cheaper in Sacramento…., all one and a half hours, plus bridge tolls, north east of where we are currently living.  My wife has no license so the driving will be all me.

I have since gone over my upcoming spring semester schedule with my wife and she has had me re-schedule me classes so I can come visit an entire day earlier.  I had a class on Friday nights from 4pm until 10pm.  That’s not a typo, it is a 6 hour class on the last day of the week at the latest time possible.  I wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but its a Java programming class and it is the only time it is offered this semester.  One time!  Friday night!  I changed my major to C++.

The nice thing is being a vet I have priority registration, so everything is already scheduled and locked in.  I start my days from 9:30am and I am done by 2pm everyday.  The longest class is about an hour and a half so no sitting in a boring class itching to get up and stretch or take a bathroom break without missing something.  The downside, I only have 14 credits and I was wanting that Java class to take me to 18 so I could max out and draw my graduation date closer.  This is my fifth school and I am 30 years old.  I am done transfereing and I want to start earning an income for my family again.

The move to Sacramento is only for about 6 months, just long enough for mom to get things in order in Korea, then come back here and live in the bay again.  Hopefully they don’t decide they like Sacramento and stay up there.