My daughter came back home feeling sick.

According to her, her head started hurting after the math test at school. The test was performed on the computer screen, and the students had to stare at the screen for close to two hours.

My daughter also said that after the test, it was not only her but also some other students mentioned about headache.

***

In the night, she went to bed earlier than usual.

She said she could not sleep due to the strong headache. But after received some minutes of Reiki from my husband and me, she instantly fall to a sound asleep.

I appreciate Reiki energy for helping her to sleep.

My husband received a letter from the VA office. It announces the new regulations effective from January 1st 2020. He will be qualified for receiving some benefits of Military. One of them is to shop at the grocery store on post.

I had a bad memory about this store.

At the time right after we married, my husband was serving as an active duty military. As a military spouse, I was qualified to shop at the grocery store on post. We lived in the government housing on post. From our house to the store, it was just a 10 minutes’ walk. Those days I didn’t have my own car, so it was convenient for me to shop at the store.

I appreciated for the nearby location of the store, but I had one concern about the store. It was about the baggers.

The baggers in this store does not get paid from the store. Since they are fully depend on customers’ tip only, the customers were supposed to give them a tip for their service of bagging.

At that time we were a young couple who strove for every penny. Even a small amount of tip of $3 to $5 was hard for us to spare. I asked the baggers politely and gently to let me bag my shopped items. They yelled back at me that it was their job. (I guess it was their way to say No.) After bagged, some of them started pushing my shopping cart heading to the parking lot. Sometimes they bagged my shopped items in a pretty bad way. The eggs were broken or some vegetables were pushed by other heavy items. There were times that I noticed some missing items after I arrived at home. They forgot to put the bag in my cart.

There were no other options to avoid the baggers in the store. There were no self-checkout cashiers available at that time.

I wanted to shop at the other grocery stores to avoid the baggers of this store. But I could not do so, because I didn’t have my car.

Because of the uncomfortable experiences, when my husband mentioned about his new benefit to shop at the store, I was not excited that much.

***

Today my friend told me a good news about the store.

The store now has self-service bagging lanes for the customers who want to bag their shopped items by themselves. Now I am willing to go back to the grocery store.

***

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not intending to offend the baggers. Firstly, I understand the tipping is Americans’ traditional custom. Secondly, I know some customers appreciate the baggers’ service to bag the shopped items, to carry the shopping cart to their vehicle, and to load the items into their vehicle.

I just wrote my personal experience. There are people who strives for their every penny or wants to bag their shopped items by themselves in their preferable way.

Therefore, it is good to offer both options for everybody to match their preference.

Yesterday I wrote about my adolescence days without my mom’ support. I thought about that and realized it was not my mom’s fault.

The first reason is, as I mentioned yesterday, the society at that time was like that. Adults were not willing to talk about the physical change openly with their children.

The second reason is that my mom grew up without her mom. My mom’s mom passed away when my mom was still a baby.

In my younger days, I always blamed my mom for her not supported me in my adolescence days.

Now that I am much older than those days, I know the reason why my mom did not support me. It was not that she did not support me on purpose, but that she could not. Because she grew up without her mom’s support. My mom didn’t have the proper relationship of a mom and daughter.

If I could go back to my younger days in spirit, I would tell “younger-days-me” not to always blame my mom. Be nice to my mom because she grew up without her mom. She doesn’t know what to do… I could have made our relationship a better one by not giving up in communicating with my mom. I gave up in communicating with my mom and kept everything to myself.

That being said, I cannot change my past. All I can do is learn from my younger days’ mistake.

Luckily my daughter provides me the opportunity to act wisely and differently this time. I am willing to openly talk with my daughter and learn from her wise spirit.

My daughter has her favorite teacher in the library. She offers the coding club, the electric club, and the craft club at the library.

While I was chatting with her today, she shared her personal information with us. She and my daughter share the birthday day just one day apart. Now we know why they like each other very much. Regardless of the huge age gap, the teacher and my daughter are good friends. They share the similar personality.

Recently my daughter turned to 10 years old. I thought she has become a teenager.

The teacher corrected me. She said here in America, a teenager is considered as a person whose age literally containing “teen”. So the age range is within thirteen to nineteen. She also said my daughter is within the age range of preteenager. It is the age range of nine to twelve.

***

After I came back home, I did some more research.

According to the definition of The World Health Organization (WHO), an adolescent falls within the age range of 10 and 19. So my daughter is an adolescence. Adolescence is the transition term between child and adult.

In my adolescence days, I went through lots of challenges and changes. I needed my mom’s advice and support. I wished I could have talked with my mom. At that time, not many parents were willing to openly talk about the topic related to sex with their children. The society was like that. I could not talk with my mom openly. I sometimes felt lonely in the transition.

Now I am a parent in a different era from my parents’ era. I want to be always there for my daughter whenever she needs my advice and support.

My husband and I had a good talk about our residence.

The recent sudden rent increase was very shocking to us. Now that they increased it, it means they can increase the rent any time as they want. It is just scary. The rent increase has made us seriously think about our residence.

My husband and daughter really like this current house. They want to buy this house if the owner offers a reasonable price. I like this house too. I agree with my family. If the price is reasonable, I don’t mind to buy it.

To be honest, my mind goes back and forth. Every time I was thinking about buying this house, my eyes caught some drawbacks. This house has lots of aspects that makes its value low. The owner made a whole bunch of nail holes in a clumsy way. There were no remodeling or upgrades in this house, except for the new gas stove. I really hope the owner considers all the aspects to reflect their sale price, if we buy it.

However, there is something in my mind. Deep inside.

During the conversation with my husband, I found out my husband feels the same way as I do. He wants to buy a house and settle down, but deep inside, there is something making us rethink about buying a house on this area.

My husband’s current employer is a huge organization. It has its branches not only throughout America but also internationally. There is some possibility to work in Japan, so he submitted the request to work in Japan. Recently he has been working on two more certificates related to his current job. Once he gets all the certificates, it will make him look good at the company. The opportunity for moving to a new job position will be open for him.

In case the company offers some new opportunity in other area or even in Japan, if we are still renting, we will be able to easily move out. He wants to keep ourselves as flexible and obligation-free. That is why he feels safe in renting a house at this moment.

I agree with him. I like being flexible.

If our right land calls us next year, I want to move smoothly.   

My husband and I agreed to keep having our hope. We will trust our family spirits to guide us naturally to our right decision. It might either buying the current house with the reasonable price, buying a new house in our current area, or as a new option, moving to a new area through my husband’s job.

During my morning walk, my family spirits sent me a brock of messages.

It was to contact the realtor of this current house and let her know of our house hunting.

Before I did so, I talked with my husband. He agreed with the idea. I also asked my family spirits for their support. My desire is to maintain the good relationship with the realtor. When it comes to a house issue, I need to be extra cautious. Changing a residence is a big deal.

After my prayer, I sent her a text message. I mentioned we have decided to do a house hunting in this area. I asked her to put our name in her mailing list as a house buyer.

She quickly replied back with her kind words. It was obvious that she was happy to hear that.

I believe this will turn good for us. At least it implied her that we didn’t like the rent increase and we are willing to leave this house as soon as we buy our house.

This morning I went to the local gas station store. The entrance glass doors were broken. The area was protected by the yellow keep-out tapes.

In my Facebook top page, I saw the news of the store posted by the local Fire Department.

It posted some pictures with the comment of “a minor accident.”

Later in the evening I found out the minor accident happened this morning. A white pickup truck collided to the glass doors. The driver was a man, but the police didn’t announce any further information.

We don’t know the detailed information why the driver collided the doors.

It was at least good to know nobody injured from this accident.  

Today was my daughter’s 10th birthday. However, this morning my daughter woke up and cried.

She said she was sad because she had to go to school on her birthday.

I knew her real reason why she was sad. The previous week her school was closed for three days to celebrate Thanksgiving week. She enjoyed her five days off including weekend.

Anyways, I talked her into going to school. I promised her she would have a great day.

***

As I expected, and as my prayer was heard, she came back from school all happy.

She had a great day at school. Her classmates gave her a hug and a birthday wish. She enjoyed eating the birthday cupcakes with her classmates.

***

From today, her class had a new teacher. She was not new to school. She has been as a substitute teacher for years. She was assigned as a temporary teacher for my daughter’s class for a while. Nobody knows exactly how long she will stay. I personally like this teacher. I have talked with the teacher many times. From the conversation, I can tell she is good at teaching. I hope she will stay being my daughter’s teacher until the end of school year.

I went for a long distance walk with my friend this evening. Now the Sunday evening walk becomes our routine. We walked 6.0 miles today. I always enjoy walking with her.

Right after my friend saw me, she started updating the information of the house across her house.

Last Sunday she gave me a ray of light in our house hunting. She mentioned her neighbor was planning to sell their house. It was a nice house. I was waiting for further update.

My friend contacted the house owner and found out their new decision.

The owner couple were planning to sell the house, but the husband changed his mind. He decided to sell his house in East coast and move to the house of our area as his permanent home for the rest of his life.

I was disappointed that we have lost the opportunity to buy their house.

Oh well. I am back to the start point.

That being said, I know I will be fine.

I should still keep trusting my family spirits. I always believe I am well-protected. They will guide me to our right one soon.

I purchased an earthing mat online. It had been in my wish list since this summer. My friends suggested me to wait until holiday season because many companies offer discount in this season. They were right. The earthing mat company offered a discount of “buy one and get one free.” That was why I bought the earthing mat this time. I am satisfied with the price.

It arrived on November 26th, so we have slept with the earthing mat for four nights so far.

The very first time I touched the earthing mat, I felt tingling sensation all over my body. It was subtle but I could feel it. My husband didn’t feel the same way as I did. He didn’t feel tingling sensation but he did feel calm.

After all of my family slept with the earthing mat, we still don’t feel any changes in health condition. But all of us definitely could confirm we had a high quality sleep. I hope this earthing mat will be beneficial for us in a long term.