DIRECTV Disconsolations

I was raised badly by parents who before me were raised badly, and then sent off in 1968 to fight in the Viet Nam war.  This experience debilitated me for almost 30 years, but I bounced back somewhat admirably after going back to Viet Nam and spending 10 winters there between the years 1994 and 2004.  In 2000 I met Lu Thu who said I owed her a trip to America because I killed her uncle during the war.  Feeling the emotional (if not literal) truth of this, I brought her over in September of 2004 on a Fiance Immigration Visa, we married a month later in October, and 8 months ago, on December 19, 2006, she gave home-birth to a reasonably cute and cuddly little girl who she gave the first name Minh Tue and I gave the middle name Ellie for going to school purposes if needed.

Though debilitated by the war experience for many years, I wasn’t totally stupid.  I parlayed my meager productive energy (along with a small inheritance on the death of my mother) into outright ownership of a 1.5 acre piece of property here in Sequim, Washington, on which exists a modest 750 square foot house built for the camel smoking spinster Ethel Curtis by her brother in 1952.  I lived in this house for a year between 1985-86 before my first wife, Teia, divorced me for drunkenness and mental cruelty (who, me?). 

During the year with Teia, I added to the back half acre of this property a very nice shop with a 200 square foot second story apartment that I lived in for about 18 years after my divorce, renting out the front house to help make ends meet.  Somewhat later I built a small 200 square foot, but well apportioned, shack that I kept empty as a guest house for relatives and friends.  I mention these things for the reader to note that the whole living area on this property which I consider my autonomous home is about 1150 square feet, with 4 bedrooms.

One of the things I never recovered from the war was my belief in the pursuit of the American dream - the acquisition of always more, ever bigger, better, and fancier things.  In fact, since the war, I have built a fairly strong case to myself that it is corporate greed (fed by the greed/fear/weakness of the individual) which causes war.  So, with this mind-set, and the luck to have a wife who is used to the minimal, we three all now live in the 200 square foot guest house, while continuing to rent out the front house to make ends meet.  Now it is the upstairs apartment we keep vacant for visiting relatives and friends.

I work at Peninsula College in the computer lab half time (beneath the benefit threshhold) as an Instructional Tech.  Lu Thu is completing the second and last year for her AAS degree in the Multimedia (computer art and graphics) program.  Minh Tue gracelessly, but smilingly, quadrambulates around the house shedding a tear or two when she thunks into something especially hard.

A couple of walks per week at Carrie Blake park, an occasional shopping spree at Big Lots, GoodWill, or the Dollar Store, and dining out a couple of times a year at the ‘all you can eat’ Chinese restaraunt in Port Angeles provides us a happy, minimalist life.