the face of Scabies

Can i just say that i think it's pretty cruel to have this poor guy's face up there as the face of Scabies..i bet he never new that that photo would be used for that! it reminds me of the friends episode when Joe is the face of some V.D.
This is what the scabies bites looked like three weeks ago when i first took her to the doctors...now they are almost all gone, just some scares left. my poor baby.
So if your kid has bumps like these that are in strange places (where a mosquito can't get too) then be aware that we may have given it to you....sorry!

A new place & dumb adoption questions...

So i have found a house (well not a house of course but a flat/apartment). I am so pleased. its really nice and clean and contains plain walls, no frills, no grease and not kitchen in a box.
It's a 2 bedroom place with a little bath room (no bath, is it still called a bathroom??) and i small kitchen, but it is a kitchen...ok the fridge can't fit in the kitchen but still it is a kitchen. The walls have been freshly painted (a nice simple hue), the fridge freezer in brand new (with tags and everything. The air con in the bed room (the only one) is also new. It has a biggish balcony that is undercover that i can have a washing machine in and a CLOTHES line...which is really nice. Its all undercover so i don't have to worry about the rain. The down side is that it's the 5 floor...no lift so lots of stairs..not the best. however it's worth it.
So i took a friend of mine, Steve, (who is Taiwanese and married to my mate Anna), i basically wanted someone else other than me to think it's ok to live there. So we went today with Sarah, and of course they say to Steve...huh that kid doesn't look like a foreigner?? ...no shit Sherlock!
So he says that she's adopted (which is so obvious to the rest of the world but to Taiwanese...they don't think of that first!). The first thing that came out of the daughters mouth (who's about the same age as me with an 8 year old son) was , why would you do that? i mean you aren't even married!
She spoke a little English, but mostly spoke in Chinese to Steve. Her mother (my landlady) was not nearly as out spoken as her.
So this woman continued asking question after question about Sarah... (i have italic her speaking, so you can follow it a bit ..i hope!)
"Well how will we know that she won't just go back to England and leave the kid here, i mean my mother can;t take care of it you know".
SERIOUSLY now what kind of a person does that?
"Do you know her parents, her real parent?"
not really her mother is in Jail...
"so her mother will come looking for her and take her back right?"
...err...no. that would be illegal my dear and her mother wanted me to have her as she is not capable of caring for her!
"And what about her father?"
We don't know who the father is. The look on her face was as if i told her that Sarah's birth father was an alien...like she's never heard that people get pregnant without being married...
"So you don't want to get married then? or will you give the kid back when you find a husband?"
err...first it's none of your bees wax, and second if a guy wanted to marry me and didn't want Sarah, you really think i would want to marry him???? err...no.
"So your family in England, do they even know you have a new daughter?"
err..no i though i wouldn't mention it...??!! what the, of course they know.
"what do they think, they can't be happy about that can they?"
In fact they are over the blimming moon, as it makes me SO happy to have a baby, they already love her even if they have never met her.
She asked tons more stupid arse things but these are the ones that are most out there. i have to say that i have heard most of these before, all bar the one about leaving Sarah in an apartment when i go back to England.
It never ceases to amaze me at the ignorance level of people here. It is a lot to do with the culture, i know that but i find it so hard to hear and remain calm...
Anyway i will take the house its nice, and maybe i will educate them a little about adoption along the way!
oh just one other thing she also told Steve that she hopes that i don't have loud late night parties as lots of foreigners do and it won't be nice for her mother ...(she live downstairs)...what is she like does she have a clue what being a mother is about? i am way to shattered to have late night parties..crazy woman, and she had a son too.

Seriously, scabies!

Seriously, SERIOUSLY...scabies...
i never thought that i would get scabies...you rarely ever hear about it in the uk.
I had nightmares last night, all involving things living under my or Sarah's skin. In the nightmare they were big things the size of a shrimp but with sharp spins and they were all under the surface of the skin but you could see them as the skin had blistered up and there they were in the bubble..., when it burst they would start to crawl out...
YUCK!
I am so glad that we don't live in the commune that Lisa talked about, i'd love it but this would mean all your darlings may have been infected. gross. i am so embarrassed, i feel like a woman that has VD and i have to go and tell everyone that I've slept with...but this is somehow worst as i have to tell everyone that Sarah has touched...well maybe not but certainly all my close friends, and nanny...I feel horrible about it. I pray that no one gets it from us or i'd feel even worst.
Sarah and i have spend the last few weekends at Heathers house, Sarah has slept in her kids bed and bathed with her kids...now i might have infected her kids. grim! I am sure that she will be more cautious about who she is friends with! To be honest she's been lovely about the whole thing, but still it can't be nice to hear that your kids might be infected with Scabies...gross.
I am just glad that i don't have any really close friends that are Taiwanese, i mean that i spend time at their house playing with their kids...as i have a feeling they'd be more freaked out about it...as they freak out about lots of things like that.
As for treatment...i am sat here, (smelling of scabies lotion) waiting for a ton of laundry to wash..and then tumble dry...but being Taiwan, the Internet savvy place it is, i have Internet right here...and for free cool right?! The treatment is a cream for Sarah a lotion for me. For Sarah i have to cover her head to toe in it every night for 7 days...i got two tubes and have finished one already...do you think i went a bit over board on the first application?? maybe. i guess i need to get some more and use less tonight. i have to cover myself in the lotion stuff that is really meant for head lice. (but i don't get to wash it out after 6 mins). i have to apply it to all my body bar my head and face (they told me it is too strong to use on your head and face??(but it's meant for lice i don't understand that one). I also don't get it surely they (the little bugs) will just go to the top of my head where there is no bug killer??no? who knows i just hope they all die soon..(coming from a vegan this isn't very nice but come on even the best vegan would want the dead no??)
So Sarah's gone to the nannies stinking of cream with funny sticky looking hair (the cream has to go in the hair), and is still itching...gross.
The good thing is that now we know what it is...and maybe she will start to sleep better at night, the doctor told me that they like to come out at night and move around (ie bite more at night) which maybe why she is always so itchy at night and thus not being able to sleep. poor thing ,i feel bad for her it can't be nice..i have it but i guess just one as i only have a few bites and i can tell you it's darn itchy! They did say that it looks like she only has a few bugs on her as she doesn't have tons of bites so that's a good thing...maybe easier to kill them all...maybe not.
oh i'll take a photo of the diagram they showed me...so lovely.

The gift that keeps giving....

So Sarah has had some strange bites of late, and i have been a tad perplexed as to what was biting her. i took her to a pediatric dermatologist, two weeks ago, who looked at them and said she wasn't sure what they are maybe bites from an insect, have some anti histamine and come back if you get new bites.
So i left it a week there were new bites but by Thursday (the day of the clinic) there were no new new ones (if you know what i mean.) i didn't want to be the paranoid parent that thinks her kid is sick when she just had mosquito bites....
Then last Saturday i noticed a new bite/or two that where under her arm....humm how on earth does a mosquito get under there....
She had lots of them around her nappy, but she's always been a tad allergic to things so i thought it was just the washing poweder or the new type of disposible i was using. But these under her arm made me worry a little. So i thought i'd take her this Thursaday. Then this morning...which happens to be my birthday, i found a row of bites on my shoulders...right where my darling had been sleeping....
This made me think of the dreaded S word (Essie at The accidental mommy) just posted (yesterday) about the dreaded L word...LICE...
Well the S word tops it and then sum!
What S word could be worst then lice, i mean thats gross right...well SCABIES IS WORST!!!
They are little bugs that craw under your skin...really under your skin, and itch like the worst itchy itch you've had..
So i take her, the dr looks again and asked does any one else have any bite, i show my shoulder she says ...oh its Scabies! nice huh. here have some stuff and a print out all about it (in chinese!!) can a friend translate that for you??? like yes just pop over to my mates and say, here can you look at this and tell me what it says (oh its not about me or anything don't be scared, stop don't run away!!!)
Need less to say this isn't the best birthday gift i have ever recieved! but you know i've had worst birthdays!

Trolls and Torina

So i am sure that most of you know but i just want to make sure that if you read it that you can carry on...she has a lot of wisdom does that Torina

A troll nearly ate Torina and she is now hiding under the bridge at a Busy Intersection. Her blog, as a result, is now private and you will need a password to get in. If you are a reader, you can email her at torina.busyintersection at yahoo dot com for access.


I just want to ask, why do people do that? i mean why do people say horrible things that make other people feel so terrible. This guy obviously wanted to get people riled up about something so that people would visit his site i guess...i didn't go there don't want to give him that pleasure. It happened to someone else that i read too she was told that, basically, that she was a terrible ungrateful mother because....she let her kid watch TV! ...yer right. It's so sad, she end up feeling terrible and they guy carried on telling her why he thinks this...i again gave him no traffic, and in the end she won as she got so much more traffic on her blog as a result of this guy and the outrage he caused.

I hope that these trolls (bullies) never come here...if they do i guess i will also be upset by them, it's hard not to be even if you know they are doing it just to get to you. its like being a school, again...its like what lisa said...i think it was lisa, about being in the in crowd at school. I don't care too much about that aspect...the people that do read my blog and comment make me feel really good as i didn't think anyone would read this when i started out, i just wanted to write it for a way to vent and for Sarah when she gets older to have a record of what she/we did. But you know what i was so happy the other day as i found out that Dawn Davenport, yes from Creating a family, looked at my blog and commented!! when i saw that i was a little like wow, that is so cool. I was a little star struck, i don't think i have ever commented on her blog as i was always intimidated by it, but now i will comment away!

Hideous house huntting....

So i went to look at four more places today, they are all rather dismal.
One of them is basically for a student to live in...its has a loo, a bed and a "living room". no kitchen which is a common theme in Taiwan..(you eat out not in!). The landlord told us he had another place for us to look at that was a lot better and it had a kitchen, one bedroom, two bathrooms, and living room...yeah. i thought ok but was a tad skeptical after seeing this room. I wasn't far just 2 mins up the road, as he led us in i knew that i was right to be skeptical!
Frst he said come look, as he opened what can only be described as a walk in cupboard (ie a tiny space not big enough for even half my clothes) and i see a loo in the back with a slidey door/plastic thing, so i figure this is one of the "bathrooms" (no sink mind just a loo). Then (still in the cupboard) he starts opening a box (a little larger than the side of a cereal packet)...and then i realise that "THIS" is the kitchen! yes, i'm serious... inside the box was a small single stove thing which was a bit smaller than the one we took camping every year as a child. He was so proud of this and tells me this is the kitchen, and there are the windows (the last place had none so i asked before i came here, "does it have windows?" the answer was "of course!"). Well he was right there are windows...in a cupboard/kitchen.... Seriously...seriously!? Needless to say the rest of the "house" was just as crappy.
The next flat, i thought would be it, Grace (my boss/co-worker/friend/helper to help me find a house and nanny) told me that it was really a very beautiful place that the landlord loved, and it was all nicely decorated with three bedrooms,fully furnished, large kitchen, living room dinning room and with in walking distance to the school. Sounded great right, the landlord told Grace that normally she rents for 20,000 but after Grace negotiated got it for 15,000. So we go look...
I walk in and as soon as she opens the door, i smell cigarette smoke. great. how lovely. (i smoked when i was younger and as an ex smoker i hate it even more i think than a non non smoker...plus i have a hyper sensitive nose ..not so good to have if you live in Taiwan, trust me.) So the last tenant was smoker..no doubt there. She was also not very clean...the house was neatish but dirty, really dirty. like oh my this will take me a long time to get clean dirty. Then there is the decor...my Goodness me....where do i start! The 5 wooden peach shapes hanging from the ceiling is a good starting place (kind of like you get at the end of a stair case but hanging from the ceiling...) the ceiling its self was pretty err... "special" . It was a hatched pattern that was made with wood with inlets of greenish plastic. Then as you walk in the living room on your right is a massive glass window, which is too the master bedroom...the window has frosted ugly as flower patterns along the bottom and sides (really classy like...!). The bedroom itself was alright, bar the massive window to the living room...oh but there are curtains...hideous orange/gold curtains, but they match these little/very short curtains that are attached to the top of the door way on every room...they have them here a lot...i can't work out why or what they would be called in English, but i think they are gross (more so as they stank and were dirty..not nice to brush in and out of). Ok so it's three bed rooms, i look next door which is the only door leading off the living room, and in there there is a very strange looking kid bed thing...even though its strange its kind of cool. Its a corner bed that, the landlord tells me two kids (small /short kids) can sleep on. Its a waist high dark wooden structure that i am 100% sure Sarah would fall out off at some point, and the mattress on it was just on one of the sides, and was like a crib mattress, but on a hard wood surface (and was dirty and scabby looking of course!). Behind this bed was a wall with a window...and that was the third bedroom..which really was just a bed in a cupboard, however i really liked that. it was a single bed and that was all, it had a window to the other bedroom but it seemed some how cosy, i could see myself loving that as a bedroom/bed. This almost sold me the place, it was cute. however i can't get past the fact that this lady (the landlord) loves this place and if i was to take down all the hideous things (of which there where too many to mention, including light fittings the look a bit like a candle but not really and were plasticity and hideous) she'd be gutted! she told Grace that if i really love the place as much as her that would be wonderful...she was wearing a gold knitted shimmery top, with dyed permed hair, with lots of make up lots of perfume, and a short (too short for her age) skirt... I think that maybe just have different taste...!
As for the 4 place, it had no windows downstairs, and upstairs was a strange arrangement of bedrooms, and it smelt damp, oh and on the11th floor..(with a lift but still).
So i will carry on looking...not much fun. i wish i could just find a place like my old house in Nottingham, my mate Sarah Zadik owns it and its SO lovely...its a student house (ie shared) but so nice! i miss England.
took this photo of Sarah today as we waited for the bus...very cute.

Headaches

Went to bed with a headache woke up with one, not the best.
Need to be all smiles and cheer at work as the name of the school is Happy Marian, go figure. Also the last teacher (that was fired, i might add) was very into playing games and jumping around with the kids...they didn't learn much but had fun. now i have been told that some of the kids are board in my class as i make them work too much. great right, they want it to be like it was before....where they learnt nothing but had a laugh. i guess i would too if i was them, so this week i will try to play more games and smile smile smile....