GHOST BABY

I get up in the middle of the night and there's a ruffled empty spot in bed where Amy should be.

Peeking inside baby's room, I spy Amy rocking Ooseung back to sleep in a dreamlike stupor.

"I thought you weren't going to pick up the baby after midnight anymore?" I ask the next morning.

"It's weird," Amy says half dazed, "I wake up sometimes and I'm feeding the baby, or I'm sleeping in her room, and I don't remember how I got there."

Baby Ooseung-ee is quite the drama queen now. She fake-cries. She'll throw herself down to the ground like a Corean actress in a melodrama, as long as she has an audience. For a while, whenever Amy would get upset at her, she'd run to Amy and kiss her so she wouldn't be mad anymore.

"You're just babying her. Even Sun Su was more independent at this age (14 months)," I say.

"I know. But she's my last baby."

LIFE TERMS

"I talked to Mary Pennymoney to set up life insurance today," Amy tells me.

"Good, it's about time."

Amy's been avoiding the whole life insurance thing, despite me nagging her about it. We're too young to worry about that, she says. That's what I hear every week in the hospital from the mortally disillusioned and  diseased.

"She said we should get life insurance for both of us, not just you," Amy adds.

"That doesn't make sense. Why should I get life insurance on you? There isn't any financial loss if you die, just if I do," I say with Machiavellian perplexity.

"She says you would need the money to pay for babysitters and daycare."

"What? Forget it. That's a waste. I'd just scale down. We don't need insurance for you," even as I say it I think of having to take care of the kids without Amy. That would be the end of everything except for the kids.

"That's like getting life insurance on the kids," I say flippantly.

"She mentioned that too."

"What?! No way."

Single parents, how do they do it? I'd ask my mom, but I think it eroded her sanity. I remember once when my brother and I sent our mom into a screaming tirade, she exploded,

"You damn kids!  Do you know what I could have been if it wasn't for you?!  I could have been somebody!!  I could have been happy!!"

Come to think of it, she might have said that twice.

I think every single parent should be allowed to say that at some point; moms too, single or not. Moms make the real sacrifices. They're the real heroes. There just aren't enough medals for them all, plus it won't help take care of the kids anyways.

Anyways,

"No life insurance for you. That's it."

Baby's mothers and beloved wives aren't supposed to leave.

At least not until someone makes strip clubs with daycare.

I finally saw the highly-acclaimed Corean movie TAEGUKKI (available at Blockbuster Movies). It's a movie about the Korean War (K-spelling is intentional here), from the Corean perspective. I was expecting a Corean-lite version of Saving Private Ryan to be honest. The first half hour was awfully boring to me, but bear with it (or fast-forward). The next 90 minutes built on some interesting brother vs. brother themes. The action was good but not as intense as Saving Private Ryan (mianhamnida/sorry); and the infamous Corean-shakey-camera technique was not my favorite; but the story was far more moving, and really captured the themes in a visceral, surprising, and literal sense in the end. This is a great movie, once you get past the first half hour (which I did appreciate more after watching the rest of it).

I give it FIVE COREAN TIGER STRIPES  !!!!!

And just to prove I don't think all critically-acclaimed Corean movies are awesome, I'll also mention A TALE OF TWO SISTERS (also at Blockbuster). Some say it's one of the best Asian horror films of 2003. It's more of a disturbingly dysfunctional family film where almost nothing happens until the last fifteen minutes of the film. Or maybe even the very last MINUTE, in fact. We've seen all the twists in movies these days that one could possibly imagine, but this movie actually takes it further and probably makes it worth watching again. I just didn't appreciate the "artistic subtlety and disorientation" the first time through as much as other people. I think more estrogen-friendly viewers will be scared by it. But I haven't been this bored by a Corean movie since Il Mare (another "artistic" movie requiring higher estrogen chemistry). There's just so many scarier Corean horror movies that should be on Blockbuster's shelves. I suspect it will be fun to watch again knowing the "secret" and appreciating the build-up but it should have been that way before you got to the end. 

ONE COREAN TIGER STRIPE !

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PEEPS

Faulty Vision - New read. No pictures, but the words make really funny pictures. Really funny.

Fredlet - Thank you. I noticed.

Steve - Young COREAN with a Japanese twist. Please don't throw chairs at his head.

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AMY'S UMMA ESSENTIALS

Shower?  No.

Makeup?  No.

Sangria?  YES.