It was all smiles and giggles today, celebrating Snickers' birthday and perhaps even more so because I knew it'd mean he could no longer tease me about being in my 30's and him and his 20's. We're now both in the same age group, cool... good.
He didn't want anything special for his birthday and didn't want it even acknowledged but I love holidays, any and all holidays, so I arranged for a cake to be delivered. I wasn't the only one who had a cake for him though, two others brought one, so we did a little surprise cake event for him and then Hulkies chatted and nibbled on cake.
Waking up to a Hulkie right outside my bedroom door was quite the way to wake up, let me tell you that. We had forgotten to lock the door and had woken up late. So that's how Snickers' birthday started, being woken up by one of our members and that same member taking us both out for a special lunch in the countryside.
Snickers' birthday ended on a rather heartbreaking note however and it all went down at exactly 11:21pm when our Inbody machine suddenly turned off and then wouldn't turn off. It's a machine that calculates your body weight, muscle mass, body fat mass, and skeleton mass, and it's a very used machine at Hulk's. With new members weighing in and regular members weighing in every month, it dying definitely delays business as well as it discourages it. We depend on that machine a lot and so we should, members want to know if all their hard efforts are paying off, totally understandable, so weigh-in numbers are highly anticipated and much needed. Our Inbody machine is an older one and it's been having issues as it is lately so we were anticipating having to buy a newer model but with all this talk about us visiting Canada at Christmas, we thought we could put it off until the new year... apparently not.
It basically came down to either Snickers and I visiting my family and friends in Canada or buying a new Inbody machine.
The Inbody machine one.
"But you make a lot of money" replayed in my head to which I'd love to go back to that moment and personally round robin head kick this person... repetitively. A big club comes with even bigger expenses plus it takes money to make money. The money in this case being my plane ticket to Canada and it being replaced with a new Inbody machine so that I can continue business as usual at Hulk's. Sure we no longer have an apartment to pay for but now we're investing that chunk of money monthly to a savings account we're not able to touch for another 19 months so it's not like we have that extra chunk of change. Renovations continue as does some design work for additional pieces we want to add to the club, most of which isn't exactly stoppable because arrangements have been made and materials have been bought. Business is good though, real good. We're not struggling by any means but we're also not at the point where we can drop possibly six grand for an Inbody machine just like that, on one days notice or without tightening things up so the rippling it causes doesn't drown out our other plans, bills and renovations.
I was heartbroken, needless to say.
I tried to be cool about it though. I pushed myself through the late night dinner and then even through our coffee date but upon arriving back at Hulk's I totally broke down.
My tolerance for being able to continue with not visiting Canada used to be a year and a half but my last visit was three years ago and it's weighing so heavily on me. I'm now officially at the point where seeing Snickers' family makes me feel bitter and act sour. It's like such a tease -- he gets to see his family but I don't. It's almost as if every time I see them I am reminded of one more memory I'm not able to make with my family.
People think that because I've been here for 10 years that I must not get homesick for my home country, friends and family but it's actually quite the opposite. I don't know when I'll be visiting next unlike so many others who know they'll be heading back after a year of teaching or during the Christmas break. There is no due date on my stay here and now I don't have the luxery of even having a set vacation time. Taking time off for any kind of vacation means not making money but the bills keep coming so the work continues. And I'm not complaining about the work, don't get me wrong I love my job, but I can't exactly just ask for time off or take time off.
The other day Snickers and I had decided that because a trip to Canada is quite the journey, perhaps a month visit or at least 3 weeks would justify spending all that money and not have been able to go now for 3 years. We also decided that perhaps I should go alone because someone has to stay at Hulk's. We don't have any assistant coach that could manage the entire club alone, we only have a part timer and he's way too young and too inexperienced for us to risk leaning on him. No offence but it's true.
Snickers tried to reassure me that I can still go, that he'll find some way to make it happen, but a part of me thinks he just said that because he saw just how upset I was. I was just so completely disappointed in the whole situation. Add the fact that today was Snickers' birthday and there I was, sitting on the bathroom floor crying, and ya that only made me feel all that more worse.
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