Kate's (858)

Homeowners R Us

2012-02-10T08:56:00.000-08:00

Here's the proof! Two shiny keys to our new house. Zac will be home in 10 hours and then we'll have a long, tiring weekend of moving in. But we'll be together, making our house "home" so it's all good. :)

Highs, lows, it's all part of the ride

2012-02-07T22:24:00.000-08:00

I spent part of my afternoon today in an escrow office, signing a stack of papers that will finalize our purchase of a house. YAY! The only downside of the experience was the hand cramp than started about 20 minutes into the signing process. Since Zac is still in Indiana, I got to experience the joy of not only signing my name 20,000 times but "Zachary L. Doe by Katherine L. Doe as his attorney-in-fact" 20,000 times as well. Apparently I am the first person in the history of mankind to sign documents using a Power of Attorney, since almost every form given to me left little to no space to write the POA signature. By the time I was done signing everything my handwriting had devolved from borderline acceptable to barely legible.

In California once you're done signing the papers, it's takes a couple of days for them to be recorded. Only then do you receive the keys to your house. Right now it looks like we'll be getting the keys on Thursday. I've already scheduled our household goods (HHG) to be delivered on Monday. Plus I have to set up water, gas, electric, cable, etc. It's an exciting thing, buying a house, and as of last week I wasn't sure it was going to happen (issues with a road maintenance agreement) but now it looks like we're 99.9% done with the process and I can't wait to move in. A real bed . . . heavenly.

When I got home from signing documents, I got a call from Zac saying that someone from the fertility clinic called him to schedule an appointment. Color me surprised. *sigh* I suppose I need to rewind a couple months . . .

When Zac and I got to San Diego we decided that we would try a few IUI treatments to see if we could get pregnant. Unlike in Hawaii, in San Diego I can go to a military health care facility for fertility treatments. I got the referral from my primary care doctor a few weeks after we arrived and we had our first IUI procedure in December. Clearly it didn't work, or I'd probably be blogging about how we're turning one of the bedrooms in the new house into a nursery. We didn't tell anyone we were going do the IUI. In fact, we kind of mislead people close to us into thinking that we weren't going to try any fertility treatments until Zac got back from Indiana. It was just easier that way. The whole IUI thing was kind of sprung on us anyway. I just happened to go to the fertility clinic at just the right time in my cycle and the doctor asked, "Do you want to give this a shot this month?" and we figured, why not? We're here. Might as well.

We didn't tell anyone because it's tough having people constantly wondering, wanting to know, not asking and then finally breaking down and asking. It kind of reminded me of when you're first married and people ask you, "When are you going to have kids?" If you say, "Oh, we're not sure. At some point, though." people will continue to ask follow-up questions and continue to pry. If you answer, "In two years," people stop asking because they're comfortable knowing that you have a plan. You can continue to answer, "In two years" for as long as you want, because as long as people hear something concrete they're placated. That's kind of how we feel about the fertility stuff. If we told people, "When Zac gets back from Indiana," that would buy us a couple of months of peace and quiet. We figured that people would forgive us for the deception if we successfully produced offspring.

So, like I said above, we had our first IUI in December. Christmas Eve morning found me in an exam room, having an ultrasound to see if the fertility drugs had done their job of getting a handful of eggs ready. The doctor said things looked good, so a few days later I had the IUI done. Zac left for Indiana and a few days after he left I got my period. I suppose I should say that I was disappointed, but at this point in the process I don't really feel pangs of disappointment anymore. I suppose the disappointment is there, but it's become like white noise. It's present, but I don't really notice it. We've been trying to get pregnant for more than two years. That's more than 24 months in a row that I've woken up one morning to find that my cycle has started and I'm not pregnant. You get used to that after awhile.

Since I wasn't pregnant, I called the fertility clinic to ask what the next steps would be in the treatment, since Zac wouldn't be coming home until my February cycle.

Time out. Okay, if you're uncomfortable with all this intimate knowledge of my "lady cycle" then I'm sorry, but it's hard to tell the story without fleshing out the details. Fertility treatments are completely dependent on timing. If you miss your timing it can mean you're out of luck until next month. It means that your refrigerator calendar is marked up with numbered days of when to take which drugs, what days you need to go to the doctor, which days you need to have sex, and what days should be the end of your cycle so you can start wondering/stressing if this is the month that it will work. Frankly, I'm excited when I look at the calendar and see something like "Hair appointment 10:00" instead of something related to fertility. Anyhow, back to the IUI narrative.

When I called the fertility clinic I got their voice mail and left a message. You always get the voice mail when you call the clinic. No one ever actually answers the phone. The message states that you are to leave a detailed message and that someone would return your call within one business day. The message also expressly states that you are not to call back and leave multiple messages, that you should be patient and the clinic will return your call. A couple of days after my phone call (not exactly one business day, but whatever) I got a call back. I explained to the clinic staffer the situation, that my husband was going to be gone for the month, but that we'd like to try an IUI once again when he got back in February. She said that someone would call me back in a couple of weeks to schedule the appointments I would need to get prepped for a February IUI cycle. I took her at her word. Turns out that wasn't a great idea.

Being busy with going to Hawaii, the house purchase and working I didn't even realize that the clinic hadn't called me back until I woke up yesterday and realized that another cycle had started. I called the clinic back, left a message asking what steps we needed to take, and waited to hear back from them. I got a call from my doctor(!) a few hours later. I could tell from the tone of his voice that he was uncomfortable. He apologized to me, but told me that I wouldn't be able to have a IUI procedure this month because they were already booked with patients. He said that someone would call me back in a few days to schedule the appointments that I would need to set up an IUI for March. I was so stunned and, yes, disappointed, that I didn't have much to say except a mumbled, "Ok, thanks." Once I got off the phone, my initial shock wore off and I got mad. Really, really mad. I was mad at the clinic staff for not calling me back and I was mad at myself for not thinking to follow up with their non-call-back sooner. I was also mad at myself for not being able to think on my feet fast enough to tell the Doctor about the lack of a phone call last time.

I sat down at the computer and found the website for Naval Medical Center San Diego. I located the customer feedback link and typed out an e-mail, expressing my frustration and disappointment. I saved it, walked away for an hour, came back, edited it and sent it off. I knew there wasn't anything that they would be able to do for me this month, but I needed to let someone know that what happened wasn't acceptable. The fertility clinic is, frankly, overbooked. There are too many patients and not enough staff. It's not their fault that there are so many of us that need their services but every time I have been to the clinic I am struck by how busy it is and how rushed it feels. There have even been times where I've been there and there haven't been enough rooms for the patients and the staff has had to play musical chairs moving patients from one room to the next to make sure that the right patients are with the right equipment at any given time. I appreciate that they work hard and are trying the best that they can, but they needed the feedback. I didn't do a good job advocating for my healthcare by failing to follow-up on the non-phone-call so I decided that the e-mail would have to do. I sent the e-mail yesterday afternoon.

That brings us back to today, and the clinic calling Zac. Zac relayed the message to me, which included a direct number to one of the staffers, not the main line. I called her and got her personal voice mail. I left her a message explaining that I was returning her phone call about scheduling my next fertility appointments. She called me back within the hour and began the conversation by apologizing. She said that she had been informed that I was upset with the service that I had received from the clinic. I didn't ask, but the only way she would have known that is if she had received the e-mail from yesterday. I was pleased that the e-mail was actually read and responded to.

She explained a number of things about the clinic and the fertility treatment process to me that I didn't know. She also stated that two of their three schedulers had left within the last three weeks and that the under staffing and training of new staff was probably why my message fell through the cracks. She said that she wasn't excusing the lapse, but she wanted to let me know that that is not how their clinic usually conducts themselves. She admitted that the clinic was awfully busy, and that she appreciated my patience. She also explained how the fertility treatment cycles worked, which no one had done before. That provided me with a better understanding of how and when procedures would happen. She ordered me some drugs that I needed to pick up at the pharmacy this afternoon and she again thanked me for my feedback. I headed over to the pharmacy to get my prescription.

When I got to the pharmacy, my prescription wasn't in the computer. I sighed and headed upstairs to the fertility clinic to find out what happened. There was a couple in front of me at the check-in and I recognized the papers in her hand as the ones that were given to Zac and I at our consultation for our first IUI. The couple left and I asked about my missing prescription order. It turns out that the order was in the system, but that the doctor hadn't signed off on it, and so on. They had the doctor sign off on it and I returned to the pharmacy to fill the prescription.

When I sat down in the waiting room I notice two things. 1.) Someone was wearing waaaaaaaaaaaaay to much Old Spice, and 2.) the couple I had just seen upstairs was sitting next to me. I played cribbage on my phone while I waited, but I couldn't help but hear the conversation between the husband and wife. I would guess that they were in their mid to late 20s. Younger than me anyhow. What caught my attention was the crack in her voice as she struggled not to cry. I heard her tell him how frustrated she felt, how she used to be so optimistic that things would work out, but that now she felt like she'd never feel that optimistic again. I heard her tell him how guilty she felt. How she felt like the infertility was her "fault". Her husband was amazing. He held her hand and was incredulous. "How can you feel guilty? This isn't your 'fault'. You've done nothing wrong." She sniffled. "But it's not you," she replied, "so it's me, right? The doctor said you're fine. How would you feel if we were sitting in this waiting room waiting for drugs that would increase your sperm count? Wouldn't that make you feel like that maybe it was your 'fault'?" The husband said all the right things as big tears rolled down her face, but I knew that nothing he would say would make her hurt less.

I wanted to say something to her, but at the same time I didn't. I recognized all that she was saying. I have had almost the exact same conversation with Zac on more than a few occasions. Hearing the words out spoken out loud by someone else was difficult though. The rational part of my brain wanted to scold the young woman for thinking like that. I wanted to let her know how ridiculous she sounded, and wanted to say that feeling sorry for yourself wasn't going to help with anything. But as I sat there, listening to her fight back her tears, I softened and started to feel sympathy for her. I've had those same thoughts. Hell, I still sometimes have those thoughts. I reached across the empty chair between her and I and touched her arm.

"I wasn't trying to listen in on your conversation, but I'm going through exactly the same thing that you are. My husband and I have been trying for more than two years. I've said exactly the same things to my husband that you're saying to yours. There isn't anything I can say to you to make you feel better, because there isn't anything that will. But what you're feeling? It's normal. And it sucks. It sucks so much." She blinked through some tears and gave me a half-smile. I realized that I was about to cry too, so I bit my lip and forced a smile back. Her number was called at the pharmacy window and she got her prescription. As she passed me on the way out she stopped, smiled, and said softly, "Good luck to you." I smiled back and her and said, "Good luck to you too."

That's the most I've ever talked to another woman going through infertility treatments, at least since I've been going through them myself. I don't particularly want to talk to other women going through this. But I felt like I had to say something to her, just because she seemed so defeated. I've come to terms that I might not ever be a mother, and I've started to embrace the idea of the adventures that a life without children will afford me. I'm still hoping that we have kids, but it's not going to break me if we don't. But she seemed so crestfallen, so heartbroken. I just wanted to let her know that it's okay to feel that way and that yes, it does suck. It sucks so much.

So for those who want to know when we're going to have kids? Two years.

I'm not really the job fair type

2012-01-28T14:42:00.000-08:00

On Thursday I attended a symposium/job fair for military spouses. Anyone who knows me knows that I can have a really piss poor attitude when it comes to attending job fairs. Actually, piss poor might be a bit of an understatement. I'm more along the lines of down-right hostile with negativity oozing out of my pores. I hate job fairs. I know that I'm not great at selling myself to prospective employers, especially when I have no idea what jobs they may have that would be of interest to me. I can hardly figure out if I'm qualified when they post a job opening - I can't begin to figure out what to say when I'm walking up to random booths not knowing what they have available. Job fairs are demoralizing, soul-sucking, drink-inducing affairs that usually put me into a tailspin of self-doubt and self-pity for at least a couple of days before and after. Yes, I'm aware I have issues.

I'm glad to report that this one wasn't as bad. That's probably because I (mostly) skipped the job fair part. [I can almost hear my mom yelling at me through the computer.] The first half of the day was a symposium to help military spouses with issues that many of us face: frequent job changes, gaps in employment, employers being reluctant to hire people that may be moving soon, etc. I was surprised to hear that the national unemployment rate is around 8.5% but that for military spouses it's closer to 26%. I count myself lucky that I have a job, as many of the spouses that I talked to that morning were in the unemployed group. I was also surprised at the number of spouses in attendance that had four-year degrees and beyond. A fair number of them had masters degrees and I overheard a couple of attorneys talking a few tables over. Regardless of the education level, the one thing that I saw that every spouse had in common was a look of overwhelmed frustration on their faces. And I'd say a good half of them just look defeated. The presenters tried to be bright and perky and bring up every one's spirits, but I think even they realized that it was going to be a tough crowd.

The first panel of the morning was comprised of four human resources specialists. They gave a lot of advice on interviewing and how to answer those awkward questions about being a military spouse. A lot of what they shared was common sense: be honest, be upfront. But they did say a few things that stuck with me. One of the panelists said that interviewing is sort of like a being a political candidate at a debate - you need to know your message (i.e. why you're the best candidate) and keep bringing the interview back to your message, even if the interviewer throws a couple of tough questions at you. I hate when politicians do that at debates, but it's true that it's an effective way of controlling the interview and making sure that you get out the information that you want to get out. I was also surprised that all of the panelists said that they didn't care if it was paid experience or volunteer experience - if it makes you look good as a candidate just put it down under the general label "experience".

The panelists also emphasized that if you're not using social media to try and find a job, then you're really not trying at all. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. They said you need to be on these and know how to use them. I was surprised at how much they kept coming back to that. In closing they also reinforced the "one-page resume" and "hand written thank you note" doctrines, which I'm sure would please my mother.

The second half of the morning session was an abbreviated version of a longer training that addresses building your brand. One of the key components of the training is getting you to think of good experiences you've had in life, professional or personal. Not things like, "getting married" or "graduating from college", but things like "The presentation that I made in front of the Board last week" or "putting together the senior class party for my daughter." We were all instructed to jot down some good experiences on a piece of paper and then get into groups of three to share them. I sat there and stared at my paper. I couldn't think of a damn thing, at least not anything related to my job. I do a lot of little things really well at my job - I'm particularly good at finding errors that some people would over-look - but in terms of the good experiences that they were looking for I was drawing a blank.

Then I thought, "Well, I did have a good experience presenting at COMPASS," so I jotted that down. And then I thought about putting together the family communications survey when I was the ombudsman at Zac's last command. That was a pretty good experience too. When we broke into groups each member shared their good experiences while the other members jotted down what skills they heard when you talked about your experience. The other two women in my group were younger Navy wives, I'd guess in their mid 20s. One of the women had a couple of experiences to share, but the other young woman just shook her head. She hadn't been able to think of anything. She look particularly sad about that. I told her that I had a heckuva time thinking of things at first, too, to try to make her feel better. I told her that I bet if she looked at other parts of her life, being a spouse, a parent, a daughter, a volunteer, etc., that she'd find some good experiences she could use.

Besides exposing what skills we have, sharing our good experiences also was supposed to help us figure out what we enjoy doing. It wasn't until we did this exercise that I realized how unhappy I've become with my job and how it lacks attributes that make me feel fulfilled - interacting with people, working as part of a group, sharing information with others. While I enjoy project-based work, performing research and looking for errors, I'm too isolated in my current role. I need to find a job that it outside of my living room. I need to have co-workers again.

One of the other cool things about writing down and talking about your good experiences is that it makes you happy. You feel pride, and excitement, and satisfied. After the good experiences exercise the vibe in the symposium was decidedly more upbeat and cheerful. Attendees were actually smiling and laughing, and more than one spouse seemed ready to storm the job fair with a reinforced sense of self. (No, not me, silly.)

After lunch I did walk through the job fair, just to see what companies turned out. I saw a lot of IT companies, some banks, the Navy Exchange and the Army Exchange folks, Walgreens, Lowes, 24 Hour Fitness and others. All of these companies already post as part of the Military Spouse Employment Program so if I'm interested in seeing what they have available I can always check that website out. While I didn't use the job fair part of the day, I'm glad I attended the morning session. It gave me some valuable ideas on what I need to put on my resume and how I can start figuring out how to articulate orally and in writing what my job skills actually are. Now I just need to keep this good-feeling-train rolling and translate it into a new job.

Back from vacation

2012-01-25T14:18:00.000-08:00

I got home yesterday from spending a few days in Hawaii with Bernadette, Claudia and a couple of other friends. I hadn't planned on returning to Hawaii so soon after we left, but Bernadette told me that she was going to run the Maui marathon on January 22nd and she suggested that we meet up a few days before that on Oahu. I hadn't seen Bernadette since she and Ken left Oahu almost two years ago. The thought of her, Claudia and me lounging on the beach, laughing and catching up was too good to pass up. Zac is also gone for the month, going to a school in Indiana, so I was alone in the house anyhow. I found someone to watch the dogs and I headed to paradise for some rest and relaxation. It was kind of fun being a tourist in Hawaii, rather than a resident. Hopefully I won't have to wait another two years to see the two of them - Claudia's family will be moving to San Diego in April and Bernadette & Ken might be heading this way too. That would be fine by me. It's great to be surrounded by good friends.

It's about to be Kate's (619)

2012-01-08T06:39:00.000-08:00

I'm going to have to change the name of my blog in about a month. Why? We bought a house. HOORAY! We finally found the one! It's located in the eastern part of the metro area and it's about a 25 minute drive from Zac's work. It's got three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a two-car garage and an awesome back (and front) yard. We're in the middle of the process right now and we should be closing in about four weeks. I suppose something unforeseen could pop up and derail the purchase, but I'm cautiously optimistic that any hiccups would have been unearthed by now. After looking at houses for a couple of months, Zac and I were starting to wonder when we'd find one that fit us. Finally, the week before Christmas, we found this one. We put in an offer right away and they accepted it on Christmas Eve. (Which we didn't learn about until the 26th - so it was an early/belated Christmas present for us.) I'm looking forward to moving in and getting our household goods delivered. I'm ready to get settled in and start putting our home together.

It's much, much to early to be blogging this morning. 6am on a Sunday? I should be sound asleep. But instead I was up at 4:15 this morning, getting ready to take Zac to the airport. Zac is going to an advanced armory school and he left today. It's only for a month, so I'm not complaining, but I will miss him. This will be our longest stretch apart since he was in El Salvador. I'm really lucky because not only do I love Zac, but I like Zac too. He's my partner in every sense of the word and life is a lot more fun when he's around. Kissing him goodbye is always tough - I always want just one more. Or one more hug. Or another kiss. But at some point the airport curb enforcement patrol gives us the evil eye for making out for too long and I have to let him go. *sigh* I know he's excited for this school so I'm glad he's getting the opportunity to go. I guess this means that I'm in charge of putting out the recycling for the next four weeks. Arg! I miss him already.

I was hoping that when I got home I'd be able to fall back asleep easily. I was up early and didn't sleep very well last night, in fear that we'd miss our alarm. Unfortunately as soon as I walked back in to the house I knew that while I'm pretty exhausted, I'm not sleepy right now. I was secretly hoping that if I started typing that maybe the click-clack of the keys would lull me to sleep, but that hasn't happened yet. I'd read a book or catch up on some magazines, but we don't have any lamps in the house and the ceiling-light doesn't give of nearly enough light to make reading easy or enjoyable. I miss our lamps. And our bed. And my cookie sheets. And our shelving. And our legal-sized envelopes. (While inexpensive, I refuse to buy another box of them because I have two boxes in storage.) It's so nice to know that soon we'll have those things back and we'll able to sleep on a real mattress and bake cookies and mail things in appropriately-sized envelopes. 2012 is going to be a great year.

Happy New Year! (2012 edition)

2012-01-01T17:33:00.000-08:00

Glad new year tidings to everyone! I'm feeling pretty good about 2012, even though it's only 16 hours old. I'm feeling optimistic and hopeful that it's going to be a good 12 months.

Going back to last week, Zac and I ended up having a pretty fun Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. As of Christmas Eve morning we had no plans for the weekend. I was feeling a little blue, more out of boredom than anything. Groupon to the rescue! Zac was checking online for Groupon deals and noticed that there was one for a comedy show in La Jolla that night. He had also previously bought a Groupon for a seafood restaurant, also located in La Jolla. We called up the restaurant and sure enough, they were open for dinner. So we made dinner reservations and bought the vouchers for the comedy show.

We got to the restaurant, had a drink to toast Christmas and then got an amazing lobster/crab/prawns dinner for two. Pricey? Yes. Delicious? YES. Hey, if you can't splurge every now and again, what's the fun of eating out? After we filled our bellies with yummy food, we headed over to the comedy show which started at 9pm. I wasn't sure how many people would be there, honestly. I mean, who else besides us would be at a comedy show on Christmas Eve? A lot of people are either at church or spending time with family and friends. Although, now that I think about it, I suppose they could have had a full audience comprised of non-Christians, atheists and anti-social types.

It turns out there are about 25-30 other people that go to comedy shows on Christmas Eve. Sure, the place was only a quarter full, but we were all there ready to have a good laugh and enjoy our night. The size of the audience made for great fodder for the comedians, and we all laughed loudly and often with a strange sort of camaraderie. I think we were all grateful for each other's attendance. Certainly the staff and performers were gracious and thankful. I mean, it was a Saturday night - what I would assume to be a usually big revenue night. But because of how the holiday fell this year, the place was a ghost town. So I'm glad that we were there to contribute to their coffers. The comedians were hilarious and my cheeks hurt by the time we left. I'm really glad Zac saw that Groupon.

Christmas Day we went to see the new Mission Impossible movie and then went out to Buca di Beppo for supper. Yes, we ate out two days in a row. I'm okay with that, but my hips aren't.

We went out for New Year's Eve last night with Zac's friend from A School and his wife. (The couple that had us over for Thanksgiving.) We went out for sushi at their favorite sushi place, which was awesome! We will be going back there for sure. I'm salivating as I type about it. So, so good. After dinner we went to their friend's house for a party. Earlier in the day when we were making plans for the evening with them, they told us that their friends were having a trailer-park, white-trash murder mystery party. Eh? Zac and I had no idea what the heck that would entail. Our friends seemed a little worried about how this party would go, so they assured us that if things were too strange that we'd head over to a nearby bar.

When we walked into the party, it was like walking into a Twilight Zone episode. The other eight guests were dressed up in costumes. Most of the women were dressed in things like white tank tops with black bra straps showing, tacky make-up, fake tattoos, beer-can curlers in their hair. The guys were dressed up too, in assorted outfits for their specific characters. They had strung up Christmas lights with blue painters tape, there was laundry hanging from clotheslines in the house, pictures of scantily-clad women leaning against cars and trucks hung on the walls, and a few lovely strings of Budweiser cans, hung by the chimney with care, completed the look. (Yes, I understand how incredibly un-PC this was.)

So the party was a murder-mystery party. If you aren't familiar with the premise, it's a game where everyone is assigned a character and is given a biography of who that person is and how they relate to the other characters. A member of the party is "killed" and as the party/game progresses you are handed different pieces of information that you're supposed to share with the group (all in character). At the end of the night everyone tries to figure out which of the party guests is the murderer. The other party-goers had been given their characters in advance, hence their costumes and fully developed personas. We, on the other hand, had just jumped into the deep end of the pool. I played Zac's overbearing mom, which was mildly awkward but HILARIOUS. I constantly ran interference between his character and the "hussy" that was trying to corrupt my sweet boy. (Again, I don't usually call someone a hussy when I've only known them for three minutes, but that's where I found myself last night.) Zac's character was the sweet, local mechanic that everyone loved. He played it as a sort of Bobby Boucher-type. (From the movie "Waterboy".) He used, "My momma said . . ." regularly which always cracked everyone up. He was awesome.

The four of us were handed biographies of our characters. I thought to myself, "This is really weird, but I can play along." I was worried about Zacfaux-southern accent and interacting with people he had never met. Turns out he had a great time and played his character really well. I was really happy that he had a sense of humor about the whole thing. Once our friends saw that we were on board with the party, everyone relaxed and the murder-mystery party kicked into gear. It was strange because my character was supposed to be very judgmental and downright nasty to some of the other guests. It's uncomfortable being rude to someone you've never met, and I found myself breaking character to apologize quite a few times at first. (I apologized again at the end of the night, just to make sure.)

The hosts cooked up tater tots as a late-evening snack, with the "fancy" Heinz ketchup which caused everyone to laugh. We finally figured out who the murderer was just before midnight struck. The night had flown by. We had a blast. It was strange, yes. But it was unexpected fun, which is cool. We stayed a little longer to watch some of the New Year's tv programming and then headed home. As we left, the hosts and other guests told us how happy they were that we came and were willing to play. It was an interesting, and enjoyable, way to ring in the New Year.

Mele Kalikimaka!

2011-12-24T11:09:00.000-08:00

The calendar says it's Christmas Eve today, but I'm not totally feeling it this year. The move, the house hunting, the lack of holiday decor at our house, the weather, the absence of family and friends, it all adds up to it kind of a "meh" Christmas. We do have a pile of brightly wrapped presents that came from various family members. It will be fun to open those up tonight or tomorrow. I'm sure there will be some phone calls and Skyping, but that's not much different than any other weekend. Really, it's just another weekend around here. I did manage to whip up some Christmas cookies earlier this week, which was kind of fun. I have no cookie sheets so I used the bottom part of our broiler pan, which worked pretty well. (The lack of cookie sheets has also delayed my ability to make peanut brittle. Luckily Mom sent some for us in the Christmas box.)

I hope everyone is having a merry holiday season, whatever holiday you may observe. I also hope that everyone has someone to enjoy the season with. Whether you're celebrating with friends or family, I hope you are surrounded by love, laughter and joy. Mele Kalikimaka!

Marine etiquette

2011-12-14T20:20:00.000-08:00

I was up at Marine Air Corps Station (MCAS) Miramar today and stopped at one of the convenience stores. As I was coming down an aisle, a Marine was coming down the same aisle towards me. He didn't see me at first so we ended up doing that "dance" that people sometimes do - you both step to the left, oops, both to the right, back to the left again. I said, "'Excuse me," as we finally passed each other. He nodded and said simply, "Oorah." I was glad we continued walking away from one another, because I didn't want the Marine to see me giggling to myself. Really? Oorah? Not, "Excuse me" or "sorry" or just a smile of resignation, but the famous battle cry of the Corps?

When I told Zac about the encounter, he laughed and noted that for most Marines oorah is probably the first word they think of in any given situation. One of Zac's friends worked extensively with Marines and he said Marines use oorah it in many contexts, not just when they're being given instructions on how to storm a beach. But even Zac couldn't help but chuckle that this Marine used oorah as his means of conveying "excuse me" to a 5'2" female in civilian clothes and pigtails. (It was a bad hair day.) Even now, a couple of hours later, I can't help but laugh, thinking about the possible contexts in which that Marine has used oorah. I'm picturing some awkward flirting in bars.

Undermined

2011-12-11T19:53:00.000-08:00

I was looking at the calendar for this upcoming week and mentioned to Zac, "I don't have yoga classes the next couple of weeks because they're redoing the floors at the gym. I guess I'm going to have to figure out a couple other workouts to do in place of it for awhile."

30 minutes later he brings me a dish of ice cream. Chocolate. *sigh*

Slabs, Christmas shopping and units of measurement

2011-12-07T22:27:00.000-08:00

Because most of our household goods are still in storage, I am without most of my kitchen appliances and cookware. I will never take my toaster for granted again. I've gotten pretty good at using the broiler to make toast but the time and attention it takes makes me marvel at just how wonderful toasters are. I also miss the Kitchen Aid mixer, blender, food processor and crockpots. (I miss just about all of my kitchen implements.) The other day I found a recipe that I wanted to try that involved some butternut squash and a pork loin. It was designed for a crockpot, but I figured I could just roast it at a low heat in a covered pot in the oven to the same effect. I followed all the instructions and after about two hours at about 250 degrees I grabbed the instant-read thermometer and stuck the 2.5 lb loin, just to get a sense of where it was at. I glanced at the reading: 48. "Huh," I thought to myself, "the oven must run really cold." (We haven't used the oven much since we moved in.) I turned the temperature dial up another 25 degrees, replaced the lid, and tossed it back into the oven.

[In my, albeit weak, defense I was working this afternoon and was more focused on getting my project done than spending time in the kitchen.]

About an hour and a half later I checked the meat again. As I turned the thermometer I just happened to notice the "C" to the far right of the display. Oh crap. The thermometer was set to Celsius, not Fahrenheit. I toggled over to Fahrenheit and stuck the meat again. I pulled out the thermometer in disgust as it soared past 160. Apparently 48 Celsius is about 118 Fahrenheit. My meat was actually pretty close to done when I had checked it the first time. (Were you aware that the USDA revised it's cooking temperatures back in May and now solid cuts of pork only have to be cooked to an internal temp of 145?) Luckily for me the pork was halfway submerged in a broth of onion soup and it was still surprisingly tender when I sliced it up. I guess the moisture and the low heat kept if from drying out too much. Why does the thermometer even HAVE a Celsius setting? I am not a scientist. I don't like units of measurement based on 100. Get out of my kitchen, Celsius!

I've done very little Christmas shopping yet this season. I chalk this up to three major reasons:

After three Decembers in Hawaii, I am once again in a warm(ish) climate and it's hard to remember that it's winter.
My Christmas decorations are all in storage so there is no festivity around the house.
We've been house hunting every weekend for hours at a time.

I finally ordered my Christmas cards the other day, only to realize afterwards that my Christmas card address book is in storage. (This is a recurring theme in my daily life.) I think I remembered everyone we wanted to send a card to, but I'm sure I'm missing people. One of these nights I'm going to have to sit down and do some serious online shopping so gifts can arrive to our families on time. I'm terrible at giving gifts. I have one friend in particular who is amazing at giving gifts. She remembers off-hand things you said six months ago and gets you that item for your birthday, or she gives you something saying, "I thought you might like this" and she's totally right - you absolutely love it, even if you never knew you did. I don't have that ability. I need lists. I'm not a creative or skilled gift-giver, but if you want those Isotoner slippers from Kohl's, I will get you those Isotoner slippers from Kohl's.

Like I mentioned above, we've been house hunting like crazy. We found THE house on Sunday, complete with a glowing aura and a chorus of angels singing in the background. (Ok, maybe a bit of an exaggeration.) Zac and I looked at each other and we just knew. This house was it. The house was awesome, the yard was fantastic, it had recently been renovated and required no upgrading on our part - it was perfect. It had been on the market for about four days and our real estate agent told us that she had heard from the seller that they already had a couple of offers in on it. We weren't surprised - we're finding that houses are either on the market for a week or two out here, or they've been on the market for months. There isn't much in between. If you see a house you want, you had better get your offer in quick. Zac and I filled out the paperwork to put in an offer that afternoon.

The next day we got a call from our real estate agent. She said that when she was going over some of the information about the renovations to the house, she noticed that there had been a crack in the slab that had been repaired. Houses out here don't have basements, and many of them are built on concrete slabs. Apparently prior to 1970 slabs were not reinforced with rebar making them more vulnerable to cracking when the soil is disrupted below it. In this case, a broken underground water pipe caused the slab to crack in a couple of places and the cracks were pretty substantial. The seller had hired a engineer and contractor to repair the cracks. The engineer devised the repair plan and oversaw the contractor's work. At the end of the work, the engineer issued a report that the contractor had indeed performed the work correctly. (The repaired parts of the slab are now reinforced with rebar.)

Zac talked to his cousin (an engineer) and some of the Seabees that he works with (the construction guys in the Navy) and all of them gave a thumbs up to the work, but a thumbs down to the idea of buying it. That reinforced what Zac and I were already thinking: If Zac and I were going to be living in this house for the next 10-30 years, we'd have no qualms about buying it. But we will be selling our house in San Diego in (possibly) as little as three years. Cracked slabs are not attractive to buyers, and we might end up taking a loss on the house. It's just too much of a financial risk for us to take right now.

Our realtor called us to let us know that the seller counter-offered all of the offers on the house. That sealed the deal as far as we were concerned. Zac and I have decided to pull out of the race. Our realtor has a suspicion that more of the prospective buyers will also back out once they find out about the slab issue. If it ends up that the house has no interested buyers, and the seller is willing to drop the price enough, we might consider re-submitting an offer but for now we're moving on to looking at more houses tomorrow.

*sigh* Oh well. At least now Zac and I are optimistic that there are, indeed, houses that we both like and that we'll find something that makes both of us happy. I just hope that it happens sooner rather than later. I miss my crockpot.

Thanksgiving, house hunting and bespectacled again

2011-11-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

We were lucky enough to celebrate two Thanksgivings this year. And by "lucky" I mean, "Holy moly, I need to live at the gym next week." So. Much. Food.

On Thursday we celebrated with a Navy friend of Zac's. Zac and this guy went to "A" school together back in the day. ("A" school is where most sailors go after boot camp.) They are both originally from rural Nebraska and they're both gunner's mates. While they've spoken to each other a couple of times, they haven't actually seen each other in more than 10 years. They seemed to pick up right where they left off, however, chatting and laughing like they'd been close buddies for years. Zac's friend is married and I really enjoyed getting to know her. They're similarly situated to us - mid 30s, no kids, she works. I'm hoping that we'll get the chance to hang out with them again in the future. They've been here for a few years and really enjoy it, so hopefully they'll be able to impart some of their San Diego knowledge to us.

On Saturday night we had our second Thanksgiving at the house of some of our Navy friends from Hawaii. The sailor and his wife PCSed to San Diego a little more than a year ago. We weren't really that close in Hawaii (our relationship was "friends of friends") but we were happy to get an invitation from them. We spent the night catching up and talking about what all has been happening in the last year or so. We were glad to spend some time with them and I think we'll hang out with them in the future. The only low spot of the evening was when, for the second time in three nights, I waddled back to the car wondering if the buttons on my jeans were going to pop off.

The house hunting is still ongoing. We spent four hours today checking out about 12 homes. It's nice that Zac and I are finally getting in to a grove with each other, and our realtor. If we're not feeling good vibes from a house (or neighborhood) we've gotten pretty good at telling each other within the first few minutes of walking through the place. I'm trying to not let the stress of house hunting get to me, but I know it is. I told our realtor that I was getting stressed out with the process as we were leaving one of the first houses this morning. We drove separately to the next listing and when we got out she walked with me up the sidewalk and said, "You said you were stressing out. Why? Is there something that I can do to make it better?" She asked with genuine concern which caught me off guard. (I'm not sure why, but I was surprised at her concern.) I explained that I was worried that maybe we were looking at too many houses and asking her to go to too many different neighborhoods. She laughed and assured me that, no, we weren't looking at too many houses and that she was perfectly happy showing us different places in San Diego. She said that it's perfectly normal that home buyers that are new to an area take a while to find the neighborhoods that they like best. *exhale* Ok. Needless to say, while I'm still a little stressed about finding the right house, I'm not stressed about my relationship with my realtor/therapist.

The only other major development around here lately is . . . deep breath . . . I got glasses. I'm beyond devastated. I hate that I need them again. Quick eyesight recap:

-Got glasses for the first time when I was in first grade.
-Endured a decade of worsening eyesight, thickening lenses and terrible 1980s frames (some frames from the early 90s weren't too hot either).
-Got gas-permeable, hard contacts in college (prescription didn't allow for soft contacts) which were impossibly uncomfortable.
-Underwent Lasik surgery about six years ago, causing me to no longer need corrective lenses of any type.
-Six years of sheer happiness being able to read the shampoo bottle in the shower and reading the clock on the nightstand if I woke up in the middle of the night.

I'm not exactly when I noticed that my sight wasn't as sharp as it used to be, but I'm guessing it was probably about a year ago. I noticed it mainly at night, when I was tired, and tried to read things like street signs or license plates as I drove. During the day, I had no issues. But then a few months ago Zac pointed out that I was starting to squint at street signs during the day as well. I finally broke down and went to the optometrist who gave me my first eye exam since I had the Lasik performed. She noted that yes, indeed, my sight wasn't as good as it used to be. She said I was still find to drive without corrective lenses, but that I should probably have them at night. She wrote me out a prescription and I decided that I'd wait until I got back to the mainland to get a pair.

As Zac and I drove around San Diego, looking for houses and getting to know the area, we both noted that it was time for me to get a pair of glasses. A couple of weeks ago we were up at the Marine Corps Exchange and I walked into the optical shop. I tried on probably 40 pairs of glasses, making cranky faces in the mirror with each pair. I was heartbroken that I needed to do this. I figured that once I got older that I would need reading glasses, but six years after Lasik and 34 years old is not "older". It didn't help that I found most of the current, hip styles to be ghastly. I finally settled on a pair, and while I was sad that I had to buy them at least the frames and lenses were discounted. Paying full price would have been an indignity to much to bear.

The optical shop called me yesterday morning to let me know that my glasses were in. I went to pick them up and sat down in the chair across from the glasses-fitting-person. (Clerk? I'm not sure what their official title would be.) I was still fairly arrogant as I sat there. I was confident that even when I put the glasses on, that I wouldn't be able to see any better than I could without them. How much of a difference could it make, really? Before she handed me the glasses, the clerk asked me to look across the room at the exit sign above the door. Ok. I can read that, no problem. See? I don't need glasses. Then she handed me the glasses and I slid them on. "Let me know if it's more clear," she said.

Crap.

It was like looking at an exit sign in High Definition. Everything was sharp, clear. A surprised, and disappointed, "Wow!" slipped out of my mouth. The clerk was pleased, we tweaked the fit of the frames a little, and I was on my way out the door. Once outside I folded the glasses up and put them in their protective case and tossed them in my purse. I was heartbroken. I did need glasses. Seeing was better with them. I didn't wear them that day, but I did wear them that night and it really was amazing. High Def is really the best way to describe it. When you're watching a regular tv with a regular signal, it looks fine. You don't notice that anything is off. But when you put that tv along side a HD tv with an HD signal you're dumbfounded at how much clearer the HD picture is, and how much detail was lost watching the regular tv.

I don't want to wear glasses again. I'm not sure why it is such a crushing blow to my self esteem, but it is. I suppose I could see if I can get contacts or if maybe I could get Lasik again. I was just so happy to not have to deal with my eyes anymore, to not have to spend money every month or year on new glasses, contacts, cleaning and soaking solutions. And while some people look great in glasses, I am not feeling like a sexy librarian right now. I am feeling like an awkward 12 year old.

Dumb, stupid glasses.

Rain, prime time football and Thanksgiving

2011-11-21T19:43:00.000-08:00

It's 55 degrees and raining right now. A far cry from 85 and sunny in Pearl City. Oh well. I am comfortably cuddled up on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate watching football, so I'm not complaining too much. We've had a couple of rainy days since we've been here and I've forgotten how much the grayness of those days sucks the vitality out of you. I guess I'll have to get back into the habit of paying attention to weather forecasts now that I'm experiencing weather again. (Hawaii has very little weather - it is 85 and mostly sunny 99% of the time.)

Another big difference between Hawaii and California is driving. Hawaii drivers (for the most part) are slow as molasses. They're in no hurry to get anywhere. Side streets, the highway, it doesn't matter. They're on island time and are in no rush. I think the highest speed limit I saw on Oahu was 55, maybe 60 for a small stretch of H-1. Yesterday I was driving on a road near my house where the posted speed limit was 65. I was in the right-most lane, going 72 and getting passed by everyone. Just getting blown off the road. It's definitely a different pace out here. As a matter of fact, our gas mileage in our Ford Escape Hybrid has decreased by almost 2.5 gallons/mile due to the increased need to accelerate quickly. Despite the warp speeds people drive at, I'm enjoying having multiple interstates, highways and freeways to get around town. If there's an accident on one, there's always two or three other ways to get to the same location. On Oahu, if H-1 is backed up, you're just out of luck.

We went and looked at houses for a few hours yesterday. We saw a couple that we liked, but I think we're going to keep on looking for awhile. I'm still feeling a little overwhelmed by the process and the concept of purchasing a house. I thought my student loans were a lot of money - we're looking at houses that are four times as much as those! I'm a little surprised at how much location really does matter when it comes to what your dollars will buy you. $300K in one neighborhood gets you a run-down home in need of major repairs but in another neighborhood (less than five miles away) you can get a beautifully renovated home that has more square feet. It's all a learning process for me. I know Zac would like to get into a house before he has to leave for six weeks in January, so there is a little bit of pressure to find something, but I'm not freaking out quite yet.

We're going to be going to be celebrating Thanksgiving with one of Zac's friends this year. This guy and Zac went to gunnersmate school together when they both first joined the Navy. Now, 12 years later, they're stationed in the same metropolitan area and they've decided to catch up. When I asked Zac what we were supposed to bring to dinner, he said that his friend asked us to bring some wine. Hooray for easy contributions! Zac has been coming home talking about old and new friends that he's encountering each day, and it's a little confusing keeping it all straight right now. It doesn't help that 75% of the guys he knows are named 'Chris'. It also doesn't help that almost all of them are gunnersmates as well. (That's Zac's role/job in the Navy - gunnersmate, or GM.) As long as I've been with Zac he's worked with all sorts of sailors, but rarely other GMs. Now I can swing a stick and hit a half dozen of them. They're an odd bunch, but they're hard not to like. Hopefully while we're here we'll be able to expand our circle of friends, and maintain the awesome friendships we've already established.

Southern California living

2011-11-14T16:07:00.000-08:00

Well, we made it. We've set up shop in military housing in the San Diego metro area. I'm not sure if I'm living in the (619) or (858) area code at the moment, so I'm not sure what to title my blog. I think I'm in the (858), which is very close to our former Hawaii area code of (808). I would kind of like the symmetry of that if it's true. But then I'd have developed a pattern and I'd only want the Navy to move us to places where the area code is (8x8). So then I'd be stuck living near Los Angeles (818), Asheville, NC (828), someplace in New Jersey (848), Trinidad/Tobago (868), or someplace in Pennsylvania (878). And then there's the fact that we're still going to buy a house, so our area code may end up changing again in a matter of months. So stay tuned - I'm sure you're all clamoring to know what the title will be for the next three years. Riveting stuff, I tell ya.

Over twenty days we flew about 4,400 miles and drove about 2,200 miles more. We visited family in Minnesota, Nebraska, Colorado and got stop for a night in Albuquerque, NM and Yuma, AZ. It was an amazingly stress free trip with no complications. Maybe it was great planning on our part, maybe it was dumb luck - probably both - but it is certainly nice to be with your spouse for 24 hours a day for 20 days and come out of it still liking each other. The southwestern United States has some amazing geography and this road trip was my first time experiencing it. I'm hoping we get the opportunity to do some adventuring in the southwest at some point in the future when we have more time to explore.

We got to San Diego on Tuesday morning last week and were into our military housing by 1:00pm. So far I have to say I am much more impressed with Lincoln Military Housing, the company that runs military housing out here, than I was with the housing company in Hawaii. I'm sure hiccups could develop down the line but the application process was a lot more straightforward here and I felt like we were getting consistent, accurate information from the staff here. (That didn't happen when we moved to Hawaii.) Also, I called maintenance today to schedule some appointments to fix a few things around the house. They'll be here in 24-48 hours. Wha???? In Hawaii you'd be lucky to get an appointment a week later, even if it was something semi-serious like your hot water heater was leaking through a wall into your laundry room. (That happened to us and the HI maintenance people weren't nearly as alarmed as we were. Moist walls? Tropical temperatures? Mold anyone?) So far I'm giving Lincoln a gold star for their service. We'll see if that keeps up.

Our house is very nice. It's a three bedroom, more than enough space for us. I have no idea on the square footage - I'm terrible at estimating that stuff. The yard is easily five times larger than our yard in Hawaii and the dogs love it. (Yes, they're here too. More on that in a second.) The house feels even larger than it is since we have practically nothing in it. We had our Unaccompanied Baggage shipment delivered the day after we moved in so we've got some clothes, an air mattress, a bean bag chair and some kitchen utensils. It's amazing how much stuff you don't need when it's not around.

We dropped $500 restocking the pantry the day after we moved in. That was two shopping carts full of stuff. I don't think I've ever spent that much money at a grocery store before in one outing. But we had to buy just about all of our food anew, plus we had to get things like cleaning supplies, dog food, aluminum foil, etc. It adds up. We also did some major shopping this weekend and purchased a couch and washer and dryer set. I didn't realize that housing didn't supply a washer and dryer, and we decided to get a set instead of using a laundromat until we potentially buy a house. Of course the new house might come with a washer and dryer, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We picked up the couch yesterday and it has been a welcome addition to the living room. Two people sitting on the floor or sharing a bean bag chair was getting old. We actually bought a matching chair and ottoman but that won't be in stock for a few weeks.

The dogs arrived with no problem, thanks to the coordinated effort of our friends back in Hawaii. I was a little nervous that the airline wouldn't let Toivo on the flight because his crate is just an itsy-bitsy bit smaller than it should be per their guidelines. Luckily they let him on the plane and we picked them up on Wednesday night. They're loving SD so far, especially Toivo. The weather has been in the low to mid 60s so he's been content to spend most of the day outside. In Hawaii he would get too hot, especially in the afternoons when the sun would back our backyard. He's loving life right now. Zoe is just happy to see us again. I was worried that she'd think we abandoned her. She's flown half-way across the Pacific twice in less than two years. She's a tough cookie.

Zac checked into his new job last week, but due to the Veteran's Day holiday weekend, he didn't have to go to work for real until today. As a matter of fact, he just got home and I want to hear how his day went. I'll try to put together my initial impressions of California for next time. There are more than a few . . .

Aloha 'Oe

2011-10-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

We had a layover at San Francisco this afternoon on our way from Honolulu to San Diego. It was about 3pm Pacific time and I turned to Zac and said, "It's no wonder I'm hungry, it's noon back home." Zac looked at me for a moment and then I realized that Hawaii isn't our "home" anymore. It gave me a lump in my throat, but I kept it together.

Tonight we're crashed out in a Days Inn near the San Diego airport. We're getting up tomorrow morning to meet with our realtor to go look at houses for a few hours in the morning and then tomorrow afternoon we're on a plane, heading to Minneapolis. We'll spend the weekend there and then my father, Lincoln, Zac and I will drive down to Nebraska. It will be good to see our families. Zac and I were talking about it and we think the last time we saw our families was last November/December. It doesn't seem like it has been a year, but it very well could be. Time seems to fly by.

I'm pretty much running on fumes at this point. It has been a week filled with restless sleep and poor eating habits. I've got a nagging headache, knots in my neck and shoulders, recurrent nausea and an over-all sense of being stressed to the max. (No, I'm not pregnant.) Tonight is the first night that I'm thinking that I might be able to get a decent night's sleep. The sleep deprivation really started on Sunday night, knowing that in the morning the moving company would be there to pack us out.

Monday morning the movers arrived around 8:30. There were four of them and the lead mover, "T", did a quick walk-through with us to see what he and his guys were working with. He was a little stunned to see that we didn't have a dining room set or a couch. Our dining room set had been deteriorating over the years to the point where there were only three remaining chairs and the legs were barely keeping the thing up. We decided that it was okay to get rid of it. We sold our couch to some friends of ours. We liked our couch, but in hindsight we would have picked something different. We got a few good years out of it and we know the new owners will enjoy falling asleep on it as much as we did.

After T did his walk-through he told that even though we were scheduled for a two-day pack out that his crew could easily pack us up in one day. We told him that we would like that as it would give us a little more time to clean the house and give our remaining food away. During the packing , there were a few closets in the house that I affixed "Please do not pack" signs to. Movers are notorious for packing everything they find. Everything. I have heard more than one story where they've packed up garbage cans - with the garbage still in them. That must have smelled terrific two months down the road when the families opened them up. I heard from another family that the movers started wrapping up a small dog kennel before they realized that the dog was actually inside of it. So in the interest of good communication, I made signs to protect our stuff. We had our packed luggage that needed to stay with us, plus some food in the pantry. Apparently my signs did the job as everything that I marked stayed put.

They started at 8:30 and they were done by 3:30, which was really quite remarkable. Then it was just Zac, me and the dogs left in a very naked house. We spent a couple of hours cleaning the upstairs and then borrowed an air mattress from a friend to sleep on. The Navy will actually pay for part of a hotel so those last few nights you have a place to stay, but almost all the hotels on Oahu are down in Waikiki and we didn't want to be driving back and forth getting the house cleaned out. Looking back, we would have checked out of housing a couple of days earlier and stayed in the hotel for a night or two before leaving. That would have meant our last couple of days in Hawaii would have been relaxing and enjoying paradise instead of vacuuming, mopping and running errands. Eh, live and learn. Monday night I was relieved that the pack out was done, but I knew we still had a lot to do.

Tuesday Zac and I cleaned the house some more and ran a few moving-out errands like turning in the cable box. We decided that we were going to do a walk-away, where we just pay the flat fee to the housing company to clean the place when we leave, but there were still some things that needed to be done to get it up to a walk-away standard. We also spent Tuesday distributing food from the pantry and fridge to our friends. Food is so expensive in Hawaii that you really don't want to waste anything. A pound of butter cost almost $3.50 at the commissary and it can be more than $5 at regular grocers. You don't waste $5 butter. We also had to pack all of the bags we were going to be taking with us on the plane. We were allowed four free bags per person since we were traveling on active duty PCS orders. Since we may be living out of these bags for a couple of months, we wanted to make sure we had plenty of stuff with us. A tired Zac

Wednesday morning we had to take the dogs over to our friend's house so we could have the house empty for the final inspection with the housing company. They said that they would be there at some point between 8-noon. It's really, really, really boring sitting in an empty house waiting for someone. Finally the inspector arrived at 9:45. We passed, headed over to the office to pay our final bill, and ran to the post office to mail some last packages back to the mainland. Then we headed up to a different friend's house to drop off all of our luggage. We were going to spend the night at her house so she could drive us to the airport the next morning. Next we went to the harbor to drop off the car for shipment. Then back to our friend's. *sigh* So much running around. We took showers and hung out at her house for a couple of hours, trying to unwind. We went to dinner with a group of friends one last time and crawled into bed, knowing that we'd have to be up at 4:15 the next morning to get to the airport on time.

Another was another restless, sleepless night but Thursday morning found us watching the sun rise as we took off from Honolulu International airport. I couldn't help it - tears spilled out as I watched the island get smaller. I loved my time on the island. Four years ago, I never would have thought I would live in a place like Hawaii. I never would have thought that I would have become a scuba diver and swim with manta rays and sea turtles. I never would have thought I'd look at the stars from the top of a volcano. I never would have thought I'd live close enough to Australia to make it a reasonable vacation destination. I never would have thought I'd eat sushi and like it. (Well, some of it.) I never would have thought I would love the beach as much as I do. As excited as I am about our new adventures, I was sad to be leaving.

I slept on and off on the flight to San Francisco, and then San Diego, but I'm still pretty wiped out. I'm relieved that most of the heavy lifting is done at this point. The purpose of the next three weeks is to relax and enjoy the company of our families. I'm going to try and take this opportunity to de-stress. Yes, I still have to get our dogs from Honolulu to San Diego, but I'm lucky that I've got great friends back on Oahu that are able to help me out with that. It was sad to say goodbye to the pooches yesterday, but I know that I'll get to deal with all their dog hair soon enough.

And now, even though it's only 7:40pm back "home", it's time for bed. Here's hoping for a restful night.

Biggest Loser induced anxiety

2011-10-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

Zac and I were watching the Biggest Loser on tv the other night. As I was watching the contestants working out and talking about nutrition, I could actually feel my stress level rise. The next five weeks are going to be filled with socializing, eating out, alcohol, big meals with family and traveling. Plus we're going to rarely be near a gym, not that we'd really have any time to go to one even if we were. I hate this feeling of dread that's welling up inside me.

Zac and I try to be healthy. I like to think we succeed more than we fail. We try to eat balanced meals, we like to cook at home, we don't eat out too often, we try to exercise regularly and we have spent time learning about exercise and nutrition to help us make good choices. Of course we're not militant about things - cheesecake is still Zac's birthday desert of choice and I'm never, ever going to turn down a glass of wine - but we're finding that as each year passes keeping those extra couple of pounds off is a little more work.

Part of Zac's job is to be physically fit. Physical training (PT) is incorporated into part of his work day. But even without command-led PT, Zac would be more dedicated to working out than I am. He's plenty happy to go for a run or hit the gym. Me? I need someone to push me. For awhile I had a workout buddy in Bernadette. Bernadette is a personal trainer so she had plenty of knowledge of what we should do each day and her personality made it fun to be at the gym, despite being sweaty and stinky and gross. She'd tell me what to do and I'd do it. When Bernadette and Ken moved I was lost as to what I should do at the gym. I felt self-conscious going by myself. I took a long break from the gym and just resigned myself to running as my primary (i.e. sole) form of exercise. (I still hate running. But that's for another time.)

I was in a rut and finally decided to call up one of Bernadette's personal trainer friends up at the gym where Bernadette used to work. (Schofield - the Army base up the hill from where we live.) I signed up for 11 sessions. And then 11 more. And then 11 more. I would go once a week, so that's almost nine months of having a trainer. And honestly? I loved it. I love the strength training. I love how she'd mix in weights, TRX, Crossfit and other sorts of functional exercise. I love not having to think about creating a workout and just following orders. I love being challenged, knowing that I would have picked up a 15lb weight when she hands me a 20lb. I love pushing out those last few reps, knowing that I would have stopped at 15 but I don't want to fail in front of my trainer so I push out the last five to get to 20. That's just my mental make up - I won't (can't?) push myself when it comes to exercise.

My personal trainer up at Schofield gave me an awesome rate for our sessions and I highly doubt I'll find anything even close to that in San Diego. I also don't know what gym I'll be going to. Military gyms are free for me, but if we end up living 15-20 miles from one I'm not sure I'm going to get off my butt and go. Paying for a gym membership might end up being the way I go, if it means that the gym just down the street. But then again, I don't want to pay for a gym membership and then end up standing there in the middle of things, trying to figure out what the heck I need to be doing, getting frustrated and eventually giving up to go home. You would think after months and months of working out with someone that I'd have a good idea of what to do. You would be wrong. I get that you're supposed to do legs, core, back (upper and lower), shoulders, biceps and triceps. But so many of the exercises we did incorporated multiple muscle groups that I never really was sure if exercise X was an arm exercise or a core exercise. And exercise Y? Yeah, that could have been legs, but it could have been arms too. With my luck I'd end up accidentally doing 10 arm exercises and only two legs.

I don't know why this is so hard for me, or why it causes me so much stress. I guess I'll just always be one of those people that has to dish out money to have someone tell me what to do. And frankly, if it keeps me going to the gym and keeps me in shape, it's money well spent. But these next few weeks are going to be tough. There's no doubt about that. I'm just hoping that I'll still fit into my jeans when we pull into San Diego.

T-minus two weeks

2011-10-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

I just looked at the calendar and we leave in two weeks.

Two weeks. Yikes.

The last four weeks has flown by in a blur. Every day a new item is added to the moving to-do list while another item is crossed off. We're making progress, but there's always something else that we discover needs to be done. Mix that with my sine wave-like emotional state and it's been exhausting. I never seem to have the time I need to complete tasks but then I find myself occasionally paralyzed, trying to figure out why I have nothing to do in that moment. So forgive the disjointed ramblings. My brain is scattered.

Here are some things that have happened in the last four weeks.

--We sold the truck. When we moved out to Hawaii the Navy would only ship over one vehicle. Zac owns a F150 pickup (the true love of his life - which I'm ok with) and we also owned a Ford Escape hybrid. We decided that the Escape was the better choice for getting around the island. Of course we had been on the island for only a few months when both of us realized that we were going crazy only having one car. Me? I hated being stuck at home while Zac drove to and from work. True, I work from home so I didn't really need to leave but the idea that I couldn't go places whenever I wanted to irritated me. And Zac? He missed his truck. He went from driving a big, bad beast of a vehicle to a SUV that turns off while you drive around parking lots. He was a man without a country, er, truck. So he went out and bought another F150, which he promptly drove very little because he had gotten used to the fabulous gas mileage that the Escape gets. (Although we did drive the truck a lot when we went diving - it was nice to toss all that salty, sandy gear into the bed instead of inside the Escape.)

Like coming to Oahu, the Navy will only ship one vehicle leaving Oahu as well. It took a while and a couple of price drops, but we finally sold the truck about a month ago. We've been very lucky that a few of our friends have been off island for the last three weeks and have let us use/watch their cars so we've been able to maintain a two-car status for awhile. When we leave Oahu we'll ship our car to San Diego. Our moving travels will take us from Honolulu to Minneapolis to Nebraska where we'll pick up Zac's beloved truck and drive her back to San Diego. By that point, hopefully, the Escape will have arrived and we'll both be able to come and go as we need to.

--We've continued looking for a house but haven't put in any offers. We've resigned ourselves to the fact that we really want to see the neighborhoods and houses in person before we start making any decisions. To ensure that we weren't homeless upon our arrival in San Diego we signed up for military housing. We've been assigned a house already so we'll be able to move in as soon as we get there. Added bonus: there is no penalty for terminating the lease early if we buy a house. SD is a large, urban area and there seem to be houses popping up all the time that are in our price range and desired locations. The trick is trying to get to them quickly. It seems that a lot of houses are only on the market for a few days or a couple of weeks and they're gone. We're going to have to be fairly aggressive when we get there to purchase something.

--The movers came today to pack out our first shipment of goods. The Navy provides two shipments - a small shipment of about 600 lbs and a larger shipment of everything else. (Up to a certain weight limit based on rank and the number of dependents.) The idea is that the small shipment gets packed out first and is delivered "quickly" to your next duty station so you're not living in a vacant apartment/house for any length of time. You're supposed to send things like some pots and pans, dishes, linens and clothing in that first shipment. The larger household goods (HHG) shipment follows and sometimes takes a little longer to transit to the new duty station.

The Navy will allow one delivery of each type of shipment and will hold your goods for you for about 90 days before they start charging you for storage. For us that means that we will have our smaller shipment delivered when we get to our military housing assignment, but we're going to wait to have our larger HHG delivered when we buy a house. (Otherwise we'd be responsible for moving that smaller shipment and the larger shipment into the new house on our time and our dime. I don't want to un-pack and re-pack everything we own within a couple of months and frankly, with Zac being on sea duty, who knows if he'd be around to help.) The end result is Zac and I will have to live up to three months on the stuff we shipped out today. It's really quite amazing how much 600lbs is, but I'm sure it won't look like much when we move into military housing. I'm guessing that's going to be a pretty empty house while we're there.

--Zac re-enlisted in the Navy for three more years. I was excited that I was able to be there for it. Zac has re-enlisted once while we've been together, but that was while he was in El Salvador so I wasn't able to be there for it. Usually when a sailor re-enlists he picks where he wants the ceremony to take place. Sometimes sailors can be pretty creative. A lot of sailors out here re-enlist on the USS Missouri, which is always cool. Zac was debating where he wanted to do his and he finally settled on doing it out in Pearl Harbor, on a rigid hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) in front of the sunken USS Utah memorial. (On the opposite side of Ford Island from the USS Arizona memorial.)
When Zac first mentioned it to me I thought, "That's awesome! What a cool place to do it!" But then it dawned on me that I probably wouldn't be able to go out with him on the RHIB due to safety issues or Navy regulations or some sort of protocol that would prohibit civilians such as myself from going with them. Luckily for me, Zac's Commanding Officer was more than generous and let me accompany them on the RHIB for the ceremony. I even got a certificate thanking me for being a supportive wife. That was really neat. I'm really grateful for the chance to be there. It's a short ceremony. Zac leaves the Navy, he's awarded a letter thanking him for his service, a couple of seconds pass and then they swear him back in. Lots of photos and handshakes. Once of Zac's favorite parts of his job is tooling around out there on the RHIBs, so it was only fitting that that's what chose for his location. And doing it in front of the USS Utah just added to the day.

--I resigned as Zac's command ombudsman earlier this week. While I was relieved to be taking that task off my plate, as I handed over the information and passwords to the newly appointed ombudsman I found myself sad to no longer be involved in Zac's command. I know some spouses like to be involved and some don't - everyone needs to do what's right for them and their family - but I enjoyed helping out. I like knowing what's going on and sharing that information with others. I understand that at Zac's command here in Hawaii that the ombudsman wasn't called upon to do much but I felt like I tried to be available to people so I'm chalking it up as a successful experience. Maybe I'll do it again someday.

--I also tried to volunteer with COMPASS in August and September. I say "tried" because while the volunteers showed for the class none of the participants did (save one lovely woman who showed up for the September session). The August session fell victim to some internet registration technical glitches and the September session was just a bust. I wish I could come up with another way of putting it, but it really was just a bust. We had something like nine people sign up and on the first day of class only one person showed, despite reminders the day before. Two people had people in their family fall ill so they couldn't attend, some people had other things come up, a few we couldn't get a hold of and two of them just plumb forgot. It was really frustrating for a number of us volunteers that had tried two months in a row to get the classes together only to have them fall apart the day of. I'll hopefully be able to volunteer with COMPASS in San Diego so I'll have other opportunities to contribute and meet people, but I really like the people I volunteered with out here and I was really quite sad that I didn't get do the class one more time with them.

I've been pretty good so far at keeping my stress level in check, but I think it's going to be increasingly difficult as more and more things become the "last" time I do things out here. The last time I drive over to the North Shore, the last time I go to the beach, the last time I go to our favorite Thai restaurant, the last time I see my friends. Only two weeks left. Eek.

The calendar is filling up fast

2011-09-15T18:45:00.000-07:00

I'm looking at the calendar for the remainder of September and October. Pretty soon every single day is going to have something scheduled on it. Time seems to be moving more quickly as we approach the move. Today the moving company sent someone over to do a walk-though of our house so he could get an idea of how much stuff we had. The scheduling system originally had us scheduled for two days of packing at a third day for the pick up. I had guessed that our stripped-down existence would only warrant one day of packing, and it turns out I was right. So now it looks like we'll be packing on a Monday and vacating the house on a Tuesday and flying off the island very early Thursday morning. Now that we know when we're moving, we also have to go over to the housing office and give them our notice. After we give them notice, they'll schedule a walk-through as well and let us know what we'll need to do to get the house ready for the final check-out inspection.

We're still house-hunting in San Diego. We're working with a realtor and we've been pre-approved on a loan. We spend at least a couple hours per day looking online at houses. We just sent a list of houses we like to the realtor so she can get a better understanding of what we're looking for. Zac purchased a house in Oklahoma so he has some familiarity with the process. It's all new to me, however, and it's a bit overwhelming. I think it would be less stressful if we were there and do more of the research in person. We have a few good friends in San Diego that are willing to go out with our realtor and take a look at the houses we like. We trust them to ask the right questions (they're homeowners) and give us their honest opinion about the places. I'm nervous about putting in an offer on a house when I haven't seen it in person, but I like the idea of getting the paperwork moving so we have a place to live sooner, rather than later.

A note to all of my Minnesota peeps - we're only going to be in MN for about 54 hours this time around. We probably won't catch most people, aside from family. I'm hoping for a return visit to MN, hopefully in the winter, when we can spend some more time socializing.

On the job front, I applied for a job in San Diego a couple of weeks ago. What was odd about this position is that they didn't accept any electronic submissions. No e-mailing or faxing your resume/application. They specifically stated paper only submissions. Wha??? Paper? What is this, 1987? Plus, the job was only posted for about a week (encompassing Labor Day weekend) so they suggested you use FedEx to make sure it got there on time. So I coughed up $30 to FedEx to get five pieces of paper out to the hiring manager out in Washington DC. Great. Now I'm paying for (probable) employment rejections. Terrific. At least I'm providing jobs to FedEx employees.

We've got the 2011 Khaki Ball on Saturday. This will be our fourth one here in Hawaii. I've got the dress, but still no shoes. I'm not really that excited for it, to be honest. None of the couples from our social group are going. Zac and I invited a friend of ours whose husband is currently stationed overseas, however, so Zac will be the man with two hot dates that night. It really doesn't seem like that long ago that we went to our first Khaki Ball here and I was meeting people, having a hard time keeping names straight. And now some of those people have become my closest Navy friends and have moved on to new duty stations. What a strange last three years.

It's not all doom and gloom around here. Zac and I have been taking a digital photography class for a couple of weeks. It's been well worth it. There's really no point in having a DSLR if you don't know how to use all the bells and whistles. You're paying for those features, you should use them. I'm going to try to take some time on a couple of days to go take photos around island before we leave. Actually, speaking of photos, Zac and I booked a portrait session in a couple of weeks. They take photos at the beach at sunset. I've been wanting a Hawaiian photo of Zac and I like that since we've got here. I'm excited that we found the time (and will) to finally schedule one. It will be a nice way to wrap up our time here, on the North Shore with the setting sun. How very Hawaiian.

PCS calculations

2011-08-28T18:09:00.001-07:00

Moving requires all sort of numbers and computations for various units of measurements - days, weeks, months, dollars, pounds, etc. Here is how basic math reared its ugly head today:

Zac: "Dog food is on sale next week. It's a 40lb bag. Is that going to be too much?"
Me: [blink blink] [pause] "Yes?"
Zac: "Too little?"
Me: "I have no idea."

Zac and I head back to the mainland the third week of October, but Toivo and Zoe are going to stay back on Oahu a friend until we settle in San Diego. Once we get situated, she will take the dogs to the vet for their health certificates and then send them on their way to us. Based on our plans, this might not be until the second or third week in November. We want to make sure that we have enough food (and in Toivo's case, medications) to get them through their prolonged stay in Hawaii, but we also don't want to have so much food that it goes to waste.

Zac and I decided to figure out how much food the dogs were going to need. This meant we needed to know how much they consume in a day, how much we have remaining and how much we'll need to get us til the middle of November. We pulled out the kitchen scale and weighed out how much the dogs get in a day. Two dogs, fed twice daily = about 10oz. Ok. How much food is left? By scooping it all out we figured we have about 10 days right now. Let's look at the calendar. How many weeks will we need after the 10 day's worth of food we have now? About seven weeks. Ok, so 10 oz of food a day for seven days is 70oz per week. Ten weeks of 70oz is 700oz. 700oz is a little less than 44lbs. So it looks like we're going to be getting the 40lb bag, but we will probably have to get a smaller bag right before we leave to make sure we've got enough. Yay math!

If you're wanting me to show my work, let me assure you we did, indeed, pull out a pencil and a piece of scrap paper and did the math manually with appropriate units of measurements labeled. It's at moments like this that I realize that for most of the general population, math beyond basic algebra is unnecessary. Understanding how to solve real-life problems is important. Calculus? Less so.

Harsh realities and missing pieces

2011-08-13T14:38:00.001-07:00

By this point I'm sure most everyone has heard about the American Chinook helicopter that was shot down last Saturday and the military members (both American and Afghan) that lost their lives. I've debated what to say, if anything. There are about 330,000 active duty members of the Navy. Some days the Navy seems big and faceless, and then there are days that it's unbearably small. Like when 22 sailors lose their lives and everyone seems to have known one of them. I subscribe to the Navy Times, and every week they publish the photos of service members (all branches) that have died since the last issue. There's never a week where there isn't at least one. Usually it's four or five, maybe six or seven. Each one of them is a tragic loss to their families and friends. Each one leaves behind a space, a gap. A missing piece.

Zac and Paul served on the Port Royal with one of the SEALs that died. They weren't great friends or anything, but it was one of those, "Hey, I know that guy" moments when his name came up. Zac will be going to work with some SEALs for the next three years. As I thought about how an entire team of SEALs had vanished, I asked him, "How would you feel if the guys you worked with were killed? And not just one of them, but all of them?" Of course it's an impossible question and there is no answer. As much as I feel for the families of the SEALs that died, I have a great deal of empathy for all of the support personnel that worked with those guys who have to face losing so many of their comrades. Their job is to keep the SEALs equipped, informed and prepared. But sometimes even that's not enough. I hope Zac never has to know what it's like to lose one of his guys on a mission.

One of the other SEALs that died was from Minneapolis. Turns out Megan and Paul were acquainted with him back in high school. One of Megan's friends even went on a couple of dates with him, back in the day. I know that they were both shocked to hear his name as one of the casualties. They remember him as a 17 or 18 year old kid and probably would have never really thought of him again after high school if he hadn't been killed. It's a strange little world we live in.

In the midst of this sadness, the Monday after news broke of the chopper crash, there was a knock on our door. One of our neighbors was going around the cul-de-sac getting signatures on a condolence card for the family two doors down for us. The husband was Army and had been killed a few days earlier while on deployment by an IED. We signed the card, but knew that nothing we could write would be adequate. I found myself doing what Zac did when he heard about the SEAL from the Port Royal - I racked my brain, trying to remember more, but I could hardly remember what he looked like.

Zac and I don't really know most of our neighbors. The housing community we live in is reserved for people with multiple dependents (i.e. a spouse and at least one child). We got placed here because there was shortage of housing for what we were entitled to. So while most of the neighbors' children run around the cul-de-sac and the parents get to know each other, Zac and I mainly keep to ourselves. All I can remember about the soldier that died a few doors down is him coming and going to work on a few days when I happened to be outside at the same time. I'm not sure that I ever even waved. They moved in about six months ago. They have two little girls. Maybe four and two years old. The thing that is most distinct about their family is that the maternal grandparents live with them - I'm guessing they moved in to assist their daughter with childcare since her husband had a, then, upcoming deployment. Now they're not just helping with childcare, but helping their daughter through the process of grieving for and burying her husband. What an entirely absurd situation.

I'm not sure that there's any point to this post. It's all too sad and frustrating and draining. People can argue policy and strategy all day. And, truthfully, it's not like service members are the only people that face danger at work or who die before their time (whatever that means) and leave broken families and friends behind. But they are good, honorable people that are doing what they are told and just want to come home safely. And amazingly even though they know they might not make it back, they go anyway. I'm humbled by that. All I can do is hope that my appreciation for what they do brings at least a sliver of consolation to those who have suffered the loss.

Pretty much all set

2011-08-06T17:34:00.002-07:00

Our Permanent Change of Station (PCS) plans are pretty much solidified now. (PCS is fancy Navy-speak for moving.) We are going to be leaving Oahu towards the end of October. We've set up the day for the movers to pack up our belongings and we've received our travel orders to San Diego for a couple days after that. It's a strange process. Lots of hurry-up-and-wait. After we got our orders in hand we had a flurry of activity filling out paperwork and pouring over our calendar, picking dates for the various stages of the move. It felt a little rushed and overwhelming, trying to make sure that everything was filled out correctly knowing that an error on our part could delay or throw the whole move off track. And then you submit the paperwork and ... nothing. You wait. Then, when the time comes to pack up and fly to the mainland, there will be another mad rush of activity and stress. I'm trying not to think about the end of October and November because I think it might prematurely exhaust me.

I've probably already mentioned this, but I'm in the throws of various emotions about leaving. I'm going to try and keep most of at a simmer, but I know they'll boil over every now and again. Even as I was going to the gym yesterday I was thinking, "I'm going to miss the drive to the gym. I love the smell of those eucalyptus trees. I'm going to miss my gym. I'm going to miss my trainer. What gym am I going to go to in SD? I'm sure we won't live anywhere near base. Even if we did live near base, I don't know where anything is. And where am I going to find a cool trainer like her that I can afford in SD?" Pretty much the entire 20 minute drive went that way. Of course I know I'll find a gym, and I'll probably find a trainer. It's just a weirdly over-sensitive state to be in. Everything is a trigger at this point. Even rainbows make my mind race.

Many of our friends moved on from Oahu previously, but we will be leaving few good friends behind upon our departure. It will be sad to say goodbye to them. I remember when I was in junior high we had an Ojibwe elder come in and teach us about Ojibwe culture, including a few words. Of course I can't remember hardly any of the words at this point. I do remember a couple of things distinctly, though. 1.) The word for blueberry pie was extraordinarily long, and, 2.) He said that they didn't have a word for "good bye" in a permanent sense, they only had a word meaning something similar to "see you later." I like to think about that whenever I'm faced with separating from friends and family. It doesn't take away all the sting, but it does incorporate a sense of hope into an otherwise sad encounter. It's not goodbye - it's see you later.

Really? A month? Yeesh.

2011-07-22T21:01:00.002-07:00

Sorry about the lengthy wait for a new entry. Time seems to be accelerating as we get closer to the end of our stay in Hawaii.

Speaking of the "the end of our stay in Hawaii", we finally got orders in hand and we know when we'll be leaving Hawaii - the end of October. The receipt of the orders has meant a great deal of time pouring over paperwork and dates, trying to coordinate the move. Navy forms are often poorly designed, to be generous. I've attended a moving class and a transfer brief in hopes of picking up tips and tricks to making the process as painless as possible. Of course, there will always be hiccups, but anticipating them and being able to deal with them is the key.

I'm also trying to make sure we have the right budgeting in place to pay for the move. The Navy pays for most of the move, but it doesn't pay for certain things. For example, they do not pay for the transportation of pets. (That alone will run us about $750-1,000 for our two dogs.) It's an expense that I gladly accept, however. We also would like to do some traveling to see family between duty stations which will involve some additional plane tickets. Then there will also be the driving of Zac's pickup truck from Nebraska to San Diego - money will be needed for gas, lodging and meals. Fear not - your tax dollars are not paying the military to reunite my husband with his beloved F150. :)

Our move in October put our fertility treatment plans on hold. As we got closer and closer to the day in my cycle where we would have to go into the doctor's office to learn how to inject the FSH hormone, the more and more our stress levels rose. Finally, about 12 hours before we were supposed to have the appointment, we decided to wait. I didn't want to spend the last four months on Oahu monitoring hormone levels and constantly thinking about fertility. I want to enjoy my time. Planning the move is stressful enough, I didn't need anymore in my life. It was just too overwhelming. When we get to San Diego we'll probably ask for a referral to a fertility doctor there and start some treatments. For now, I'm thrilled to not be thinking about it for the first time in two years.

Zac and I spent a weekend recently over on Kaua'i. It is an incredible island. I can see why the rich and famous like to hide out there. It's so much more low-key and relaxed than Oahu. I wish we would have visited the island earlier in our Hawaii tour so we could have taken a second trip over there. There are some beaches and hikes that we didn't get to on this trip. Oh well - we'll just have to hope we get back here on vacation someday. We spent the first morning horseback riding for a few hours, taking in the views and stopping for lunch near a freshwater swimming hole. We took a quick dip in the water to cool off from the heat and my body nearly went into shock from the temperature of the water (chilly!) to the fact that I almost sank like a rock (freshwater!). Clearly I have been spoiled by the warm ocean waters of Hawaii.

On our second morning in Kaua'i we took an hour-long helicopter tour around the island. I was really nervous about it. I'm know for getting motion sick fairly easily and I was mildly terrified of all the jostling and lurching that I anticipated went with a helicopter ride. I took some Dramamine the night before and the morning of, and I crossed my fingers hoping that it would do the trick. But even with the drugs, my anxiety levels were inching upwards as we checked in with the company, viewed the safety brief, took the shuttle to the helicopter pads at the airport and waited for our chopper to arrive. When the helicopter came in for its landing (it was concluding an earlier tour) I had to note how fast it looked like it was moving. All I could think of was all of those times I went to the Omni Theater at the old Science Museum in St. Paul and wanted to vomit.

Once all the passengers had exited the helicopter, they had our group of six pile into the craft. We had assigned seating, as they need to make sure that the weight is distributed as evenly as possible. I got the rear window seat on the right-side with Zac seated to my left. They strapped us in and gave us the obligatory thumbs-up sign. I tried to smile at Zac and squeezed his knee in dread. They closed the doors, and off we went. There was a split second as we rose into the air and started moving forward that I looked down at the ground and thought, "Oooooh, this is moving too fast," but that was quickly drown out by the calming, soothing tones of Enya pumping through our headphones. The pilot/tour guide talked to us through our head sets to let us know what we were looking at. Pretty soon I was having the time of my life.

The most amazing moment happened when we came around the corner to see the Na Pali Coast, located on the west side of the island. It actually made me tear up for a second. It was so beautiful. There is no development on this side of the island. The only way to see it is by boat or by helicopter. It's stunning. The water, the cliffs. It looks like nothing I've ever seen. There are times you see things in nature and you think, "How is this even possible? How can something this beautiful even exist?" This was one of those moments. For a brief second before we boarded the helicopter, I almost chickened out. But then I would have missed the Na Pali coast, and it reminded me that sometimes you have to go outside of your comfort zone to experience sometime memorable.

In the last month we've also gone to a Dining Out and celebrated Zac's birthday, which involved me making his birthday cheesecake. It's been a fun few weeks, which is exactly how I want to spend our remaining time here in Hawai'i. I know the next three months are going to fly by, so I'm going to soak up as much aloha as I can before we leave.

My first San Diego job rejection

2011-06-21T13:50:00.004-07:00

I applied for my first job in San Diego a few weeks ago. It was a Federal job, doing something with processing medical claims for some Navy legal outfit. I figured I might be a decent fit as I, 1.) have a legal background, and 2.) I've worked in a hospital laboratory entering billing information for tests, so I have a least some familiarity with insurances and medical terminology. There aren't many jobs that I think I qualify for, so I was rather excited to see this one posted.

The joy of applying for jobs in the 21st century, especially through usajobs.com, is that you almost always have to apply electronically, meaning that your application goes off into the ether, perhaps never knowing if anyone received it or looked at it. I've applied for at least six or seven Federal jobs out here in Hawaii and aside from the "we received your application" e-mail, which is at least some sort of welcome communication, I haven't heard anything back from any of them. Not even rejections. I know the great machine of bureaucracy moves slowly, but I'm assuming that I didn't get those jobs.

So it was much to my frustration, and bizarre pleasure, that I got a rejection e-mail this morning. I didn't get the job, but at least I heard back from them within a month(!!!) and don't have to sit around wondering what became of the application.

With the economy and job market as they are right now, I know I'm going to face an uphill battle finding employment in San Diego. With the number of people that apply for any given vacancy, I have to believe that employers are probably able to pick people who have exactly the job experience and skill set needed for a particular opening. For example, the job I just applied for: I'm guessing there were at least a few people that applied for that job who have specifically processed medical claims before. Employers are going to go with a known product that is almost a sure bet of a fit -- they're not going to take the time to pour over resumes, evaluating them, looking for people that they think might be able to do the job based on other job experience.

I'm still working as a contractor for a legal publisher, so I'm not too freaked out about employment until maybe the end of the year, but it would be nice to get back into an office-type setting working 40hrs/week. I miss having coworkers and it's been three years since I've worn some of the items in my closet since working from my living room doesn't require "work casual".

Getting the band back together

2011-06-18T16:21:00.006-07:00

I'm tired from cleaning the house and chasing Zoe through the neighborhood, so I think I'll take a few moments to churn out a post.

On the baby front - no, not pregnant. Truthfully, I can't remember when I last mentioned the whole infertility-thing, so forgive me if I end up repeating myself. After doing six or seven months of fertility drugs with no success, my doctor gave me a referral to a fertility specialist out in town. ("Out in town" means a non-military provider.) We met with him a few months back and, after reviewing my medical record, he had Zac and me submit to a few more tests. Of course, all of the tests that I have to take require specific timing, so it took us a couple of months to get the tests run. Of course, everything came back normal.

The fertility doctor prescribed me a drug called Follistim. Short version: another fertility drug. We would use it in conjunction with IUI, which most people refer to as "artificial insemination". The process is I have to wait for the right time in a cycle, notify the doctor, go to his office, and learn how to inject myself with the drug. Then, when the stars align, Zac and I would go back to the clinic, he'd give his sample, they'd put it in me and we'd cross our fingers. Sounds like a grand ol' time.

Honestly, we still haven't decided if we're going to go through with this or not. It's pretty taxing emotionally. Not just the strain of not getting pregnant, but the strain of, "Is this really what we want? Why are we putting ourselves through all this when we're not even sure if we want to be parents? Are we questioning whether to be parents because we really don't want kids, or is it just the stress talking? How can we be sure?" We've got a few weeks until we'd need to decide whether or not we want to proceed. After talking in circles for a couple of weeks, Zac and I have decided to just let the situation be for awhile. When the time comes, we'll see where we're at.

Since I've started going through all this infertility stuff I've become much more aware of other people's struggles with it. Facebook, in particular, has been valuable in giving me some insight to what friends of mine, both male and female, are going through/have gone through. Some friends have adopted (both locally and abroad), some friends were successful with their treatments. I'm sure others are still struggling with it and choose not to share. I can't say I blame them. There's hardly any middle ground when it comes to disclosing your reproductive life to family, friends and strangers. Either you don't share anything with anyone - e.g. that you're trying, that you're not trying, that you do/don't want kids - or you have to share everything. Because once you disclose the fact that you're even considering having kids, people ask and ask and ask and ask and ask and ask and ask and ask . . . . People are genuinely curious and supportive, I get that, but still, it gets a little tiresome explaining intimate details of my health, my husband's health, and our sex life. (Really, how would you feel if people asked you about what you and your spouse do in the bedroom?)

Wow, that's starting to sound a little rant-like. It's not meant to be venomous, just exasperated. I guess I would just this advice to people out there: Even though you're curious, try to refrain from asking and wait until information is shared. If people want to tell you, they will. Also, as a pseudo-Public Service Announcement, please refrain from using the statements, "It will happen when you least expect it," "It will happen if you just relax/don't think about it," "As soon as you stop trying, it will happen," or any variation thereof. It gets old and, honestly, those statements are not necessarily true. Instead, try something like, "That must be incredibly frustrating. I hope everything works out for you."

So while the above paragraphs make it sound like I'm upset, I'm actually not. June has been an awesome month so far. Two of Zac's former ATG co-workers are back in town and it's been a lot of fun spending time with them. One of the guys is here on leave because his wife, a good friend of mine, is expecting their first child any day now. (Actually, she's a couple of days overdue, much to her frustration.) The other guy is here because his ship is in port for a few weeks. It's been great having them back around. Zac's office hasn't been the same since they left. We've spent a lot time the last couple of weeks, sitting around, having a few beers, talking, laughing, eating and having a great time. We're excited that both of these guys and their wives are going to be in San Diego with us come fall and winter.

Today we're having a BBQ at our house. We weren't sure if we were going to have it or not, since my friend hasn't had her baby yet, but since she's not in labor we're having a party. It should be a good-sized group. Maybe a dozen people. That meant Zac and I spent most of the morning cleaning the house. Zac was outside, cleaning off the lanai when he popped his head in to ask for the car keys. Apparently he had left the gate open while he was working back there and Zoe slipped out. Usually she sticks around, too chicken to get very far from Toivo, but this time she was AWOL.

I let Zac drive around looking for her and when I finished mopping I joined in the search. I found her not too far away, but across the main street in our neighborhood. I managed to get her to follow me home, so no harm, no foul. I think Zac was relieved, knowing that I would have been pretty pissed off at him if we hadn't found her. (He claims that he wouldn't have missed her. I think he's lying. This is the guy who lets her curl up in his lap on the couch.)

Anyhow, time to start prepping some food. Zac's got the smoker going and some racks of ribs are going on in a few minutes. Just another beautiful afternoon in paradise with friends!

Special Olympics

2011-05-28T20:47:00.006-07:00

Special Olympics Mission Statement:

The mission of Special Olympics is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills, and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community.

Zac and I spent part of our long holiday weekend on Friday at Central Oahu Regional Park volunteering with Special Olympics of Hawaii (SOHI). We spent Friday helping out with the softball tournament with a group of people from Zac's office. This is the second time Zac and I have helped out with SOHI softball, but this was our first time helping with the tee-ball tournament. I was put in charge of keeping the official score book, as I was the only one who knew how. (I'd like to point out that I was the only female in our group. Moral of the story: Dads who teach their daughters to keep book rule.) We also had a PA system set up so we could announce the players as they came up to bat. It was quite the production, and you could tell that the Olympians loved the big stage.

The weather was just perfect to spend a whole day outside. Fortunately SOHI had tents set up at each field so I didn't get fried by the sun. It was Lahaina Noon on Friday too, so the sun was pretty intense at mid-day. I have to say that all of the coaches were really well behaved. Last time we volunteered we had a couple of coaches that were much too competitive and belligerent. This year's teams and coaches were much more fun to work with. You could tell that while they all wanted to win, sportsmanship and trying their best was much more important to everyone. That, in and of itself, made it a great way to spend a day.

There were four teams in the tee-ball tournament, one from Oahu, one from Maui and two from the Big Island, so we had four games. All of the Olympians received medals for their participation. The medal ceremony is always a pretty big deal for the everyone involved. There is a CD of the Olympic Fanfare on a loop that we play while we call out each athlete and present them with their medals. As another long-time SOHI volunteer and I waited to present medals to the champions, she smiled at me and said, "Isn't this just great? Isn't this the best?" I looked out at the smiling and laughing Olympians, lined up on the field, waiting to hear their names called over the PA system. I couldn't help but get a lump in my throat. It was great. Mission (Statement) accomplished.

One of the reasons I don't like basketball . . .

2011-05-15T18:46:00.005-07:00

. . . is the constant noise from the PA system. One of the things I enjoy about baseball, hockey and football is that once the play starts, the PA system is silenced. Yes, they play the same crud in between plays for those sports but I don't need a blend of techno/70s/hip-hop hits pumped through speakers to let me know that I should be excited or interested during the actual game. I'm pretty sure basketball fans can come up with a "De-fense" chant or cheer at appropriate times when left to their own devices. And heaven knows there are plenty of game stoppages during a basketball game to let the PA gods squeeze in their Harry Belafonte and Black Eyed Peas. During the last two minutes alone you average about 47 stoppages.

If the game is interesting enough, there shouldn't have to be a continuous soundtrack to it. Basketball is painful enough to watch - the music makes it that much more grating.

San Diego preview

2011-05-06T18:10:00.004-07:00

We recently spent about a week in San Diego, getting a head-start on our (hopeful? probable?) PCS in October. We stayed with one set of friends the first two nights in the Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego. The last three nights we spent out in Santee, CA, with a different friend. I'm glad we got to see two very different places to live.

It was a pretty valuable trip. We were able to go over to Zac's new command, get a short tour of the place and meet some of his new co-workers. It sure is a different atmosphere than his current command. I may go into more details about what the new job will entail as we go along, but I'm debating about how much I want to go into what Zac does. I went to a briefing the other day about safety related to social media and it reminded me that I am posting all this stuff publicly and anyone can read it. I'm not looking to compromise Zac's, or my, security by talking too much about his job. Not that he's got some sort of super-secret job coming up - he's not Captain America or something. It's just a normal Navy job. Maybe I'll talk about that issue later on - military life and social media - but for now I'll stick to our SD trip.

We spent a good chunk of time driving around neighborhoods in the San Diego area, trying to get a feel of where we may want to live. Many of our Navy friends have lived in San Diego before so everyone had an opinion of where we should live. Of course it seemed like if we asked nine people we got nine different answers. As we drove around I noticed that SD is a lot like most metropolitan areas - it has lots of fun, distinct neighbor hoods and in some places it only takes a matter of a few blocks to go from a nice neighborhood to a not-so-nice neighborhood.

We were pleasantly surprised at the traffic situation, or lack thereof. I know Zac was dreading the idea of having to drive in rush hour traffic every day to get to work, but we spent a couple of days driving in "traffic" during rush hour to see how bad it really was. And really, it wasn't bad at all. Lots of cars on the road, yes, but everything kept moving. And since traffic doesn't seem to be the nightmare we had anticipated we may end up living out a little further from the Naval Base than we had originally planned.

We did some preliminary house shopping, but couldn't put too much of our hearts into it since we can't be sure that we're actually going there yet. We're happy to see that we can probably get a house for a reasonable dollar amount in a neighborhood that we'll both like. (Of course Zac and I are the quintessential Country Mouse and City Mouse.) The San Diego area is certainly different than Hawaii in terms of climate. Here in Hawaii I'm used to it being warm down by the ocean and cooler up in the mountains. And it's pretty tropical. In San Diego it is colder by the ocean and warmer inland, where it is desert-like.

One thing I noticed as we drove around Pacific Beach and Mission Beach is that it gives off the vibe of a surfing community, kind of like Oahu's North Shore, but it was FREEZING outside. I saw people in their board shorts, no shirt, standing out by the grill and it was something like 68 degrees! Brah, this isn't surfing weather! I have no inclination to go anywhere near the beach or the water when it's this cold! Put on a sweater! Hawaii has officially wrecked me for all future ocean-side living. What is the point of living by the ocean when the water temps are frigid and the most useful aspect of the grill on your patio is warming your hands? I just cannot think of San Diego as a surfing community. Sorry SD surfer dudes.

I am sad that we won't be in San Diego in time to watch the Vikings kick off the season against the Chargers (assuming there's an NFL season) or see the Twins play the Padres in mid-June. The planets align for some MN/SD professional sports match ups and I'm going to be a couple of months too late. Oh well. Instead I'll focus my attention on trying to be settled somewhere for the first annual Big Ten Minnesota/Nebraska football game. Zac and I have already decided that we'll have to have a standing bet where the losing team's supporter has to wear the opponent's colors during the head-to-head game the following year. I guess this means I'll be wearing a lot of Husker red for our football games going forward. At least this first year I can sport my maroon and gold.

In the end, as much as I'm going to miss Hawaii I am glad to be moving back to the mainland and moving five hour closer to our "homes". I'm also happy to note that Southwest Airlines flies to Minneapolis, Denver and Omaha, meaning that we may even be able to afford a few more trips home here and there.

Change of Command, managing meds

2011-04-29T16:52:00.004-07:00

Zac's command had a Change of Command (COC) ceremony earlier this week. I went to my first COC not too long after we got to Hawaii. I was pretty much clueless about things at that COC, but I still enjoyed the ceremony. This time around I enjoyed myself quite a bit more, as I knew many more people at Zac's command. I've also been serving as an ombudsman for the outgoing commanding officer (CO) and volunteering with the outgoing CO's wife, so I enjoyed being able to see them being sent off with all the warranted pomp and circumstance. And part of the Pacific Fleet Band was there too, which is always a good time in my book.

Ombudsman protocol dictates that I respectfully submit my resignation to the incoming CO. After all, the ombudsman serves at the pleasure of the CO. When a new CO arrives they are not bound to keep an ombudsman on, but often times they'll keep them around for a little while. I was able to to meet the new CO at a meeting before the COC and assured him that I would be glad to continue on, if he'd like. It appears that the incoming CO does wants to keep me on as an ombudsman, so I am looking forward to working with him over the next six months or so until we head out to our next duty station. I've enjoyed being an ombudsman and I'm happy I'll get to continue doing the job. Even though I'm sticking around, I still have to resign. Then the new CO will turn around and appoint me. It's a protocol that has be followed, though it might seem unnecessary.

My current co-ombudsman is going to be stepping down so I'll probably have a new co- sometime in the near future. Many times commands only have one ombudsman, but we are lucky to have two. It makes it a lot easier when one of us needs to travel back to the mainland or take a vacation off-island. With two, there is always someone available. I'm not sure what exactly would happen if it was just me and I was back in MN visiting and something serious happened out here and I needed to perform my ombudsman duties. It's just nice having another person to lean on. Hopefully someone else at the command will want to step into the role.

In other news, Toivo has been having a rough stretch. I mentioned before that the vet put him on potassium bromide to try and prevent the increasing frequency of seizures. After a few weeks at the initial dosage he had a seizure, so we upped the dosage and he was fine for a few more weeks. Then he had another seizure, so we upped the dosage one more time. (We're now at the high end of the therapeutic levels that he can handle.) Sure enough, two weeks later he had another seizure but this time was different because he had another seizure less than 12 hours later. (The first one was at 7pm, the next one at 3am the next day.) Toivo has never had seizures that close together. I was pretty freaked out. I scheduled another vet appointment to figure out what to do.

The vet decided to put Toivo on a second medication - phenobarbital. That started last week and from the initial doses we notice that he seemed a little wobbly. Then last night Toivo really started having a hard time. He wasn't able to control his back legs and hips very well. He collapsed a little when he tried to go out to pee. He had a hard time gracefully standing up and also laying down. He would trip over himself. He tried to go upstairs and his hind end gave out but he was able to pretty much pull himself up the last few. I was pretty shaken up and spent a good part of the night tearing up every time I looked at him. Is is the meds? If it's not the meds, is this it? Is he getting closer to being . . . gone? I didn't sleep well last night and I was relieved when I heard Toivo bark at me this morning to let him outside.

Luckily I had scheduled an appointment for Zoe at the vet for today. I called the vet this morning and asked if I could keep the appointment but bring in the other dog. They said sure, so Zac, Toivo and I headed back to the vet for the umpteenth time today. The vet agreed that it was probably the phenobarbital that was causing the issues as one of the main side effects is ataxia (loss of coordination or hind end weakness). The vet decided that we should check his blood work to see what levels he was at with his meds and halve his phenobarbital dosage. I know that it took Toivo almost two weeks to get used to the potassium bromide, so I'm hoping that this is the same thing and he'll adjust in a little while. It's just hard to watch in the meantime.

It's also an inopportune time for Toivo to be not 100%. We're supposed to be heading over to San Diego here in the near future and I hate to be that inaccessible when things are a little up in the air. I know our friends will take great care of him, but I'm sure I'll still worry some.

As I mentioned, we're heading over to SD for a few days to get a lay of the land. We're hoping to get a better sense of where we might want to live and hopefully Zac will be able to meet up with his new command to get a sense of what his new job will be. I'm looking forward to it. There's only so much house-hunting you can do online. And while I appreciate all of the great input our friends have given us about what neighborhoods are best, nothing compares to being there in person. We'll probably even spend some time purposefully driving in rush-hour traffic to see how much time it takes to go places. Doesn't that sound like fun? All I know is I don't want a crabby husband coming home from work every day because he had to sit in 60 minutes of traffic. If this trip can help us figure out where to live that would avoid that, it will most certainly be worth it.

Working, painting and planning and WHALES!

2011-04-19T17:20:00.005-07:00

Remind me not to leave a pessimistic/crabby/whiny post as the last thing posted for two weeks. People start to worry, unnecessarily. But thank you to everyone who has expressed empathy and sympathy over the work/fertility stuff. Your kind words are always appreciated. I'm always surprised (pleasantly) when someone contacts me out of blue. Especially people I've never met. I sometimes forget that anyone reads this outside of some family members and Pat. Hi, Pat. :)

It's been busy around here. Par for the course. I was given an extra layer of work from my employer which took up more time than usual. It was welcomed though - it reignited a number of neurons that had gone dormant for awhile. Much of my work boredom is born out of repetition. It's nice to mix stuff up every once and awhile. Last week, after putting in the work during the day, Zac and I spent almost every night over at our friends' new condo, helping them get it ready for their move. These friends don't have code names yet . . . hmmm. How about, Max and Julia? Sounds good.

Max and Julia purchased a condo about 10-15 minutes away from our house. They've been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting to move into it. They were staying with us for awhile in December but politely moved in with a different friend when our onslaught of visitors started arriving in January. Finally they got word that they could start moving into the place. Great! Except that Max was set to deploy in a week. That gave them a week to get the place cleaned, painted and moved into. No small task.

So after Julia did a boatload of cleaning, Zac and I joined her and Max in spackling, sanding, taping, priming and painting most of the condo. Of course all of us have day jobs, meaning we could only work from 7pm-11pm each weekday night. We also spent more than 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday this weekend. Saturday was the last day of painting. Sunday was the moving-household-goods-extravaganza. Everyone was exhausted, but at least their condo is painted and their stuff is there. It will take awhile longer to do laundry and organize the place, but at least the major stuff is done. So Max deployed today feeling a little more at ease with the situation.

Of course Max and Julia repeatedly and emphatically thanked us for our help, which was appreciated but unnecessary. We're friends. This is what friends do for each other, you help one another out. And honestly, Zac and I had fun. We both really enjoy working on the house with all those DIY projects. Zac would prefer not to paint, but he's a spackling/sanding fool and got to spend at least a little while on their lanai cleaning up some of the vegetation overgrowth around the lanai. (The condo had been vacant for a year.) So not only did we get to help out some good friends, we got to do something we enjoy too. The Coronas that Max and Julia supplied were just icing on the cake.

As I've mentioned, we're probably PCSing off island in October. (Notice I'm still qualifying it. Don't want to jinx it by getting arrogant.) It looks like we're going to try to take a trip to San Diego at some point in the next month to check the area out. You can ask as many people as you want for their opinions and you can do as much research online as you can, but nothing will substitute for driving around and actually being there when you're trying to figure out where to live. As we've helped Max and Julia with their move, I've become increasingly excited about the move. Yes, moving can be a serious time-consuming pain in the butt, but it's also a great excuse to cull through your belongings every three years and reorganize. I'm looking forward to it. (For now. Ask me again once we're in the throws of the process.)

Also because of our impending PCS, Zac and I decided that we needed to make trips over to Maui and Kauai before we leave. Neither one of us have been to Kauai yet, but we have both been over to Maui once before, separately, many years ago. Zac didn't particularly like his trip there back in the day, and I was anxious to go back. We decided on a Wednesday to leave for the weekend. Talk about short notice. Keep in mind that for us to go to Maui takes less time than it does for you Minneapolis folks to drive to St. Cloud or Rochester - it's only a 35 minute flight - so it's not like it's a huge undertaking. I'm glad we went we did though because it was getting to the end of whale watching season. and this is what we got to see:

WHALES! One of the few regrets I will leave Hawaii with is the fact that we didn't go to Maui to do this every year at the height of the season. It was amazing! I don't even know how to explain how crazy/spectacular it is to have two humpback whales playing around right in front of you. It has got to be one of the highlights of my Hawaii Life. Just incredible. I highly recommend Maui in the early spring to everyone. If you ever get the chance - go. It is worth every penny.

Disappointing realization

2011-04-03T21:23:00.004-07:00

Zac and I have been talking a lot the last couple of days about "big" stuff. Moving, kids, my career. It's always a little emotionally taxing discussing all of these things, especially when there are no clear answers.

Zac heard about orders last week. I'm reluctant to even talk about where we're going because until we have orders "in hand", i.e. literally a paper copy of orders to his new duty station, they could pull the rug out from under us and send us elsewhere. We probably won't have orders in hand until August for a probable(?) departure in October, so that leaves a lot of time for things to change. For now it appears that we're heading to the San Diego area. While it's fun to house-shop online in the evenings, I'm cautiously un-invested in the activity. It's all still too tenuous.

Zac and I have also been talking about our lack-of-kid and my lack-of-career. The lack-of-kid thing? Pretty much that's on hold for now. I've got a referral to go see a fertility specialist that's good until July. Maybe we'll go and kick up the efforts a notch, maybe we won't. It's hard to say.

The lack-of-kid thing is also (sort of) tied into my lack-of-career thing. I have always had this vision in my head of me working for a few years, getting established in a career, taking a little time off to pop out some offspring and then going back to work. Well, what happens when I never established a career and I have nothing to go "back to"? What happens when every day that passes is another day that I haven't been using my law license and continue to have zero experience practicing law? I've applied for a number of attorney positions out here since I arrived and haven't heard back on any of them.

[sarcasm follows] I can't imagine why I'm un-hirable - I've had a license for seven and a half years and have never practiced, save one divorce that was already drawn up and all I had to do was sign some papers. My writing samples are from 10 years ago when I was a 1L (2001) and I have no one that can write a letter of recommendation about me that can say anything about my quality as an attorney. If I take some time "off" to have a baby, that's just more distance from my legal education and the few ties to the legal profession that I currently have.

Perhaps the most startling and disappointing realization this weekend is that Zac has never seen me have a "real" job. He has never seen me wake up in the morning, put on work clothes, make coffee and head to work. He has never seen me hang out with some co-workers, he has never met a boss. And most perhaps most disheartening, he's never seen me enjoy a job. It hadn't occurred to me until just the other day that Zac has never met the hard-working, enthusiastic Kate. That's kind of crushing because I have always prided myself on being that person, and my husband has never met her.

When Zac and I started dating I was working as a Reference Attorney for Thomson, but he was in Oklahoma and I was in Minnesota. I talked about work, but he wasn't around to see it. Then I went to live with him for four months in Oklahoma before he left for El Salvador. I didn't work for those four months. When he left, I returned to Minnesota where I got a temp job back at Thomson doing editor-type stuff. Again, I talked about work but we were apart. He's never seen me wear any of my "work" clothes. They've been sitting in my closet for almost three years now.

This is how Zac sees my life right now: I sleep in, crawl out of bed, change out of pajamas into sweat pants and a t-shirt, hop on the computer, turn on ESPN, and putz around on the computer all day. And honestly, he's right. That's how it looks from the outside. On the one hand it has been great to have a job that is so flexible that I can host visitors for weeks (cumulatively months) out of the year. But on the other, I miss working with other people and having a requirement of 40 hours a week in an office.

In a nutshell my job consists of making sure there are two spaces after a period, not one, and updating an occasional paragraph with new language. That's what I do right now. I copy and paste. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. Over and over again. I spent three years in law school and $80K to copy and paste for a living. I'd love to sit over my computer and put in 40 hours a week, because while the work is mind-numbingly boring, it still pays well. But I can't. I just can't. It's like the career part of my mind is dissolving. I'm to the point that I'm thinking of just abandoning the idea of a career for a while and staying home to be a mom. Oh wait, that's right - we haven't been able to have kids. Hilarious.

Zac is concerned that the military life is holding me back from being success in my field of choice, law. He's concerned with how unhappy I am with my lack-of-career. Of course I point out to him that many of law friends are not working as attorneys and aren't necessarily happy with their jobs either. If Zac and I were both civilians there is no guarantee that things would be any different for me. Zac has seen me in action when it comes to volunteering - he knows how much time and effort I put into being an ombudsman and COMPASS. He knows I'm capable of dedication and hard work, he just hasn't seen it in any way that adds dollars to the checking account or in a way that is connected to all that highfalutin schooling I got.

I have a job. I'm grateful to have something that provides income. But I'm frustrated. I am hoping that when we move it will provide the impetus that I need to try and get into some sort of new job, but that's still possibly six months in the future. So I guess I'll continue to tread water for awhile, not moving backwards but also not moving towards anything better. I'm hoping that some day Zac gets to see me a successful working woman because it's really crummy that he hasn't seen it yet.

Hopefully 'normal' starts back up tomorrow

2011-03-26T21:20:00.004-07:00

Chateau d' Kotschwar is closed for the season.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . :)

Don't get my grateful sigh wrong, we loved hosting and spending time with all of our visitors. Zac and I are just ready to go back to normal. We'd like to get back onto a grocery shopping schedule and eating at home more than out. We'd like to have a normal sleep schedule back and have only a few days that are planned from sun up to sun down. I'm mostly looking forward to getting back to work. March was a woefully unproductive month for me. My checking account is not going to be pleased.

Tsunami watch, vol. 5

2011-03-11T05:51:00.002-08:00

3:51 HST

*phew*

I am happy to report that the tsunami has arrived and it only raised our water levels a couple of feet at most. It appears that we all are safe and sound. Once again I am very happy to say that we prepared for the worst and got the best. This means that I can finally go to bed.

But keep in mind that while Hawaii didn't feel the effects of a devastating tsunami, Japan did. My heart breaks for the families that lost someone in the water that went pouring over those fields and through those cities.

I am not unaware of how very fortunate I am today.

Tsunami watch, vol. 4

2011-03-11T04:51:00.002-08:00

2:51 HST

I should add, the local news people have been working non-stop since nine o'clock last night. That's going on six hours now. No commercial breaks. They're doing a bang up job.

Tsunami watch, vol. 3

2011-03-11T04:36:00.002-08:00

2:40 HST

About 30 minutes until the tsunami hits the western-most of the Hawaiian islands, including Kaua'i. The latest estimates say that the tsunami is about three feet high out there in the open ocean, but it could be about six feet high when it hits the coast. According to Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam we're safe here in our housing and don't need to evacuate. Maybe I'm naive, but in this case I believe that the Navy has our best interest at heart and wouldn't put us at risk. They didn't move the ships out of Pearl Harbor so they must feel fairly confident that we should all be able to ride this out. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was a little nervous, but I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

Megan is still asleep upstairs. I'm glad she's managed to sleep through the warning sirens. (The windows are closed and the air conditioning on.) Zac has been asleep for a few hours as well, seeing as this will all probably pass with no complications and he'll be expected at work as usual tomorrow morning. His parents did call from Nebraska a couple of hours ago, just to check on us. We're fine. I think we'll all heave a big sigh of relief once this is all over with, however.

And I am soooooooooooooo looking forward to going to sleep too. This standing-watch-at-high-alert-thing is brutal.

Tsunami watch, vol. 2

2011-03-11T01:30:00.005-08:00

Mother Earth decided to welcome my sister's arrival to Hawaii today with? A tsunami.

It's about 11:30pm HST right now. I've been watching the news for 2.5 hours at this point, flipping between the local news and CNN. Zac, Megan and I had been watching DVRed shows tonight so we weren't watching tv live. I had been taping tonight's CSI and decided to start watching it at 8:30. About half-way into the show the local news cut in alerting us to a large earthquake that had occurred in Japan about an hour earlier. It was unknown (at that point) whether a tsunami had been generated or not.

We finished our CSI and then turned to the news. A tsunami watch had been issued at that point. There was possibly a wave out there with an arrival time around 3:00am, Hawaii time. I think Megan was a little freaked out. I wouldn't have been freaked out, save that my sister was visiting. I convinced her that we were in a safe area and that we had no reason to worry. I then promptly logged on to the Hawaii Civil Defense website to make sure I wasn't lying.

Turns out that the revised maps (new and improved for 2011!) have our house about three blocks inland from edge of the evacuation zone. I've been pondering whether or not we need to leave for 2.5 hours now, especially since there is a rough estimate out there that a six-foot wave might be heading towards us. I even e-mailed our local tv station to ask about the evacuation zone maps and what sized wave they were designed to protect against. I'd like to take this opportunity to give a big shout out to the folks over at KHON2 news -- not only did they reply to my e-mail within about five minutes, they aired my question (and answered it) within 10 minutes. Kudos to the folks over there. They're in the business of disseminating information and they're doing a helluva job tonight.

They upgraded(?) the tsunami watch to a tsunami warning, so Zac and I talked about the possibilities of leaving for higher ground or not. (I'm really hoping that Megan is so exhausted that she's sleeping through most of this.) We're waiting to hear what the waves are like that are hitting Wake Island. It's another 2300 miles from Wake Island to us, though the wave is traveling over 600 miles an hour. [note: Doesn't that just blow your mind??? A tsunami travels across the ocean at over 600 miles an hour.] There are buoys that measure tsunamis off the coast of Japan, off the West coast of the US mainland, and there are a couple around Hawaii, but there are none in the vast Pacific ocean between Japan and Hawaii. This means that the scientists are sort of flying blind in trying to determine how large of a wave is heading towards us. They're going to have to rely on other types of measurements to get an estimate, and even then . . . who knows. Waves do funny things when they run into the shore.

So I've got about three and a half hours before anything would be happening in my neighborhood. I'll probably stay up for most of the night, checking on the news. Megan's crashed out from a long night/day of traveling and Zac, in all likelihood, will be going in to work tomorrow and needs to get some rest. I'll keep the watch. If it sounds like we need to leave, we will. We really would only have to drive a couple hundred yards up the hill to be safe so it's not like we have to drive far. 13 months ago the last tsunami warning turned out to be much ado about nothing and I'm hoping that is the case again tonight. But there are only so many times you can get lucky with a near miss. I just want everyone to be safe and sound. They've been showing footage of the tsunami that hit Japan after the earthquake today. I wanted to cry. My heart breaks for those people affected. I can only hope that the loss of life is minimal.

*sigh* It's going to be a long night.

Company, orders

2011-03-09T23:36:00.007-08:00

I just sat down and counted: I am in the home stretch of 24 days out of 38 where we have had company. Megan and Paul arrive tomorrow to spend a few days with us, a few days on another island and then back to a few days with us. Then we're done - hopefully for awhile. It's not that we don't enjoy hosting because we genuinely do. It just gets you out of sync with your normal routine of eating and sleeping and can be a little draining. I'm fairly confident that it's one of the reasons why Zac and I have been battling monstrous head colds for the last week.

That being said, we've had a great time with our visitors so far. (First, Zac's brother, his wife and son and then Zac's cousin and his wife.) It has been a great "excuse" to get out and enjoy the island, which we sometimes neglect to do. It will be a entirely different visit when Megan and Paul are here because at this point they're not tourists anymore. Paul was stationed out here for three years (with Zac) back in the day and Megan made a number of trips out to visit him. If we needed to we could toss them the keys to the car and they'd be comfortable finding ways to amuse themselves for a day. It means we'll be able to relax and hang out more instead of hitting up the usual tourist destinations like the USS ARIZONA, Diamond Head, etc. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we'll be able to spend a fair number of days just laying out at the beach. Have to take in as much Hawaii as we can before we leave. Speaking of orders . . .

Zac's on the phone (Skype, actually) calling the other side of the world at the moment. We've been up for orders for a couple of months. Each month a list of available jobs pops up that Zac is eligible to apply for. He can apply for a job if there's something he wants, or he can wait until the following month to see if new jobs appear. However, at some point the Navy says, "You had your chance to chose and you didn't; now we're going to chose for you." That time is drawing near for Zac, so he's spent a quite a bit of time over the last couple months calling around to different prospective commands to see what the available jobs entail. He doesn't want to get stuck without any say in the next three years of his career.

Of course there are all sorts of factors to take into account. Zac is up for sea duty (which doesn't necessarily mean on board a ship but often-time does) which is usually more work and more stressful than shore duty. He's hoping to find a sea duty assignment that, to be crass, sucks less than other sea duty jobs. Certain places/jobs will be more career-enhancing for him than others. Some locations are closer to "home" than others. There are places that would be easier for me to find employment than others. There's a lot to weigh.

So Zac brought home the latest list of job openings and we'll have to investigate each of them to see what looks good. Hopefully there is something there that we'd like to pursue. But even if we get those orders, there is always the possibility that there won't be funding to move us (the result of a lingering budget problem) and there's the possibility that the Navy could always change its mind. So the short version is, I'll believe we're moving when I see orders in Zac's hand and we've made some substantial steps towards moving there. Until then, it's all speculation and wasted energy.

Side effects, tabs and retail therapy

2011-02-22T17:21:00.002-08:00

As I mentioned previously, Toivo has been prescribed potassium bromide to prevent his seizures. He has been the potassium bromide for a couple of weeks now and while he hasn't had a seizure, Zac and I are seriously considering pulling him off the meds. (It's too soon to tell if the meds are preventing a seizure - he was only having them every couple of weeks before we started the medication.) The side effects are driving Zac and I nuts. We're starting to think that we'd rather have a drug-free dog who has seizures than what we have now. I'm not sure which quality of life is better for Toivo, or for us.

One of the side effects that the vet warned me about was that Toivo was likely to get clumsier, since the potassium bromide messes with muscles working properly. He definitely has become uncoordinated. He stumbles around the house, has trouble with the stairs, and generally bumps into things. He also has trouble getting up from lying down. Now Toivo, due to his one-eyed status, has never been the most graceful dog, but he certainly never stumbled about as he does now.

Also he has become very clingy and barks, constantly. He follows you around the house, closely, and constantly yips at you at 30-60 second intervals. If you sit down in the living room, he'll lay at your feet and continue to yip. It's getting to be utterly maddening. Toivo has never made this much noise in his life, and though you tell him to stop, it only stops for a few minutes. Then he's back at it. This probably doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you work from home and are trying to concentrate on work having a dog constantly bark grows quite taxing.

He doesn't seem to be in any pain from the drugs. I've rubbed him down and massaged him, trying to see if he's hurting (a possible cause of the barking?) but he just enjoys the petting as he usually does. His temperament still seems Toivo-like, napping parts for parts of the day and then wanting to go outside and run around. He just has turned into a very needy dog, which is a 180 from where we were three weeks ago.

It's been hard not to develop a temper when he's constantly barking and you find yourself always tripping over him because he now stands right behind/next to you wherever you go. I'm not happy that we're getting short-tempered with him, because we know it's the drugs. Zoe is stressing out because we're stressing out. It's just kind of a mess.

I called the vet last night to ask about the meds (because certainly we won't stop the meds without talking to the vet) and she suggested a decrease in his dosage. We'll try this for a couple more weeks until his follow-up blood work appointment. If things don't get better I think we're going to discontinue use of the drugs. Toivo's seizures didn't seem to bother him, except when he was having them. And the rest of the time he was a great dog. Right now he has no seizures, but he's a different dog. One that we don't particularly like. That probably sounds awful, but it's the truth.

I don't know which quality of life is better for him - the one where he has seizures every couple of weeks (with possible increasing frequency in the future) but where we have love, patience and compassion for him, or the one where he doesn't have seizures anymore but he might fall down the stairs or hurt himself because of being uncoordinated and where we can't stand to be around him. I really hate all of this. I really do. We're just going to have to wait this one out and see what happens.

On a completely unrelated subject, I spent 45 minutes at the Department of Motor Vehicles (or whatever they call it here) trying to get new tabs for my car today. Actually I think they call them "tags" here. I'm referring to the stickers that get put on your license plate every year when your renew the registration for your vehicle. We got our tabs a few months ago and I dutifully applied them, making us legal for the next 12 months. On Sunday we were washing the cars and as I was washing the rear license plate I noticed that there was no tab there. I was confused and thought to myself, "Well, maybe we only put them on the front plate." I went around front and checked. No tab there either.

I looked closely at my rear license plate and sure enough, it looked like someone had scraped it off. I had heard of this happening to people out here before, but I was still shocked. Our license plate number was printed on that tab so whoever stole it couldn't apply it to their plates without being caught (if the cops noticed). Maybe they were just hooligans who were being jerks and just scraped them off so we would get busted for not having the tabs on our car. I don't know. I can't quite map the logic of people like that. So I had to go down to the DMV this afternoon to get replacement tabs which cost me all of 50 cents. (50 cents made the 45 minute wait a little bit easier to tolerate.) The clerk told me that I should score my tabs with a razor blade, making a "X" on them so that if someone tries to peel them off again they won't be able to get the whole thing. I guess I'll try that this time around.

Since our DMV office in the mall I decided to make myself feel better about the Toivo situation and the tabs situation by buying a new top. I went through my closet recently and got rid of a lot of my clothes. There's no point in hanging on to things that you like but never wear. Since my closet is pretty empty now and since I've been pretty frugal for the last six months and since I just got paid recently I decided I could cough up $20 and buy something new. It felt nice to buy something for myself, I have to say. Since I decided that this afternoon was all about me, I even stopped by Starbucks to get a coffee on the way out. I dare say I was mildly out of control - $25 in one afternoon! (I say this only partly in jest - I'll spend any amount of money on my friends and family with no reservations but it takes a lot of work for me to spend money on myself.)

But lest you think I have no self-control, I did manage to avoid the Cookie Corner though they tried their damnedest to tempt me with their wafting aromas throughout the mall. I'm pretty sure the Devil is the major stakeholder in Cookie Corner and Mrs. Fields and all those other evil fresh-baked cookie places. But not on this day, Cookie Corner. No, not on this day. This day I chose to ignore the pleas of your chocolate chip cookies, begging to be devoured. I won't say I wasn't tempted, I was, but I was pleased that I was able to resist the beckoning treats. Because let's face it, fresh baked cookies are delicious.

More waiting, visitors, and hating HP printers

2011-02-15T18:00:00.003-08:00

I'll get the cliff hanger out of the way first - yes, Zac put in for some orders. I'm not going to disclose anything about the details of those orders until we hear if he got them. That should be in a couple of weeks. So for now, we wait some more.

We in the throws of hosting our first visitors of the spring. Zac's brother, his brother's wife and their son arrived late last week and will be leaving later this week. So far we've had a terrific time with them. It has been a lot of fun showing Hawaii to our almost four-year-old nephew. We've spent a lot of time outside and my freckles are out of control right now. I've actually been to the beach three days in a row, which I'm pretty sure is a record for me. Today they're taking a day trip over to Maui to see the whales so I have a chance to catch up on some work and relax a little. Having guests is always fun, but it is tiring. I think all five of us will need a nice, calm weekend to rest up from all the excitement.

We'll be hosting Zac's cousin and his wife in a couple of weeks, plus I just got flight confirmation for Megan and Paul for a few days after Zac's cousin leaves. So it's going to be a busy first half of March to be sure. But we're looking forward to spending time with everyone. And it is nice to actually get some use out of all those swimsuits that I've accumulated since moving here. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them when we move, as the odds are high that we won't be moving somewhere tropical again. I'm sure they'll just sit there in a drawer, taunting me with memories of where we once lived.

Having the day to myself also allowed me some time to get my printer situation straightened out. You know how some things should be really easy? Buying and setting up a printer for your home use should be one of those things. Browse the ads a little, find one you like, buy it when you find it on sale, plug it in and GO. Alas, that has not been my experience with this latest printer. At this point I have no choice but to continue to invest time into getting this mess straightened out, but if anything in my life was ever going to drive me to drink, it may very well be this stupid printer.

I had been thinking about getting a new printer for awhile. I wanted something that had fax capabilities as it seems like 4-6 times a year I need to fax something and I scramble to find access to one. Also, I wanted one that was wireless as I got tired of having to take my laptop upstairs to plug it into the printer every time I wanted to print something out. (I guess you could just read that as me becoming increasingly lazy.) I found a HP printer that met the criteria and I purchased it when I saw it on sale a few months ago. I didn't set it up right away because I was waiting for the ink cartridges to run out on my old printer. That was a big mistake.

So 4-5 months go by and I decide that it's time to hook up the new printer. Still in its box and everything. I open it up, plug in all the appropriate things and put some paper into it. Turn it on and the paper jams. Ok. Clear the jam. Try again. Paper jam. Clear it. Paper jam. I checked to make sure that everything looked okay inside of it. I checked the installation instructions again. I went online to HP's support sight and followed their troubleshooting chart. Every time - paper jam. I was getting really, really irritated.

I decided to look at my receipt to see what my recourse might be with the retailer. Wait a second. Where is the receipt? I couldn't find it. I looked in my file cabinet (where I have a folder aptly named "computer" where I keep all my computer-related papers) and it wasn't there. It wasn't with the box. It wasn't anywhere. I went to the retailers website where they have a function of being able to look up receipts if you know the credit card number it was purchased with, the approximate date, the approximate amount and what state you bought it in. I couldn't remember when I purchased it, and I only had a vague idea of how much it was. I went through re-entering the information for each month with different amounts and got no results. Great. Now I have a printer that doesn't work and no evidence that I purchased it.

My next step was to pour through my bank statements, Zac's bank statement and the credit card statements for the last six months to see when it was purchased and for how much. (Because of course I couldn't remember if it was on my debit card, his debit card or our credit card.) I didn't see it. My blood pressure was rising. I know I didn't pay cash for the darn thing, but those are the only three plastic options that it could have been purchased with. I decided I needed to let it go for a couple of days so I could think more clearly. By this point I wanted to chuck the printer out the back second-story window.

A couple days later I looked at the bank statements again. I found the date and amount, which I must have simply overlooked the first time. I punched the info into the retailer's website and got a copy of my receipt. Ok, things were starting to look up. I called the HP 1-800 number for technical assistance and the nice lady tried everything in her troubleshooting power to help me but none of her tricks got the printer to not jam. (I was turning into Pavlov's dog with the sound of the jam and the beep indicating the error. The printer would make that sound and I'd clench my jaw and have to count to five to keep from cursing.) Because I could prove that I had bought the printer within the year it was under warranty and they would sent me a replacement. Ok, fine. Great.

So after sending the proof of purchase to HP I received a replacement printer in the mail about five days later. Color me impressed with the speed of getting it here. I un-boxed it today and followed the instructions to set it up. I press power, and?

"Printhead missing"

Wha? Um, no. There is a printhead in there. I know this because the picture shows me what the printhead is, I held it in my hand, and I placed it in the appropriate location inside the printer. It is by no means "missing". I took it out, the dread creeping up in me, and tried again. Printhead missing. Power it down. Try again. Printhead missing. I didn't waste time going to HP's website again. I called them straight away. At this point I have devoted numerous hours over multiple days trying to get the first new printer to work and now I can't get the second new printer to work either. I got a HP person on the phone who pulled up my service number. Again, she was lovely and tried her darndest to fix the situation. After eight or nine different attempts she conceded victory. I contemplated tossing both printers out the second-story window to see if they flew identical distances as they were both ineffective.

The HP lady said she'd send me a new printerhead which should arrive in a couple of weeks. Then I am to install that one. If it doesn't work (insert drained, crazed laugh here) I am to call them back for more assistance. Tonight I have to drive over to the FedEx store and drop off the first new printer so it can be sent back to HP for . . . I don't know what. Organ harvesting?

I guess the moral of this story is, if you buy a printer, test it out immediately whether you intend on using it right away or not. If I had done that I could have simply brought it back to Office Max and kept swapping it out until I got one that works. The ease of that alternate reality makes me want to go mildly nuts. So I guess I'll sit here and wait for the new printhead. Because waiting is what we do around here.

Wait and see

2011-02-10T17:29:00.011-08:00

1600 Central Standard Time has come and gone and I haven't heard from Zac yet. The lack of information is causing me to bounce off the walls. But we'll come back to that in a moment.

I took Toivo to the vet today. I'm not sure how much you know about my one-eyed wonder. The short version is Toivo lost an eye to an infection after he was scratched by a cat when he was a puppy. His monocular status means that he has some issues with depth perception and large, excitable dogs that want to wrestle with him at the dog park. I didn't want Toivo originally. My family had a cocker spaniel, Dusty, who was getting old. We knew that the time was drawing near that we were going to have to put him down. I was living with a boyfriend at the time and one day he announced that he was bringing home the dog that his grandparents had gotten as a puppy the previous year. (They didn't want the dog anymore.) I was indignant. I didn't want another dog. I had a dog at my parent's house that was using that part of my heart. Dusty was the dog I had been through junior high, high school and college with. I wasn't about to replace him prematurely with some prone-to-running-away farm dog.

My former boyfriend brought Toivo home anyway. I looked at the ragged looking dog and told him, "You are not my dog." Within the first three days of Toivo living with us he had been neutered and thoroughly de-ticked. I had no idea so many ticks could live on a dog. I spent a couple of days sweeping up piles of dead ticks. [shudder] I was hesitant to like Toivo, and I think he knew it.

Shortly after Toivo's arrival, the time came to put Dusty down. I won't go over that part of the story because I'll start crying like I always do. I came home from the vet, eyes red and swollen from crying the whole drive home. I sat down on the couch and started to cry again. Toivo was sitting on the other side of the room from me, just looking at me. After a few seconds he stood up, crossed the room, jumped up onto the couch next to me, laid down and put his head in my lap. I cried harder. "Ok," I told him, "You are my dog."

So Toivo has been with me ever since. We have lived in St. Paul in my old apartment, in Minneapolis with Grandpa, and Oklahoma and Hawaii with Zac. He's been on long road trips to and from Oklahoma, from Oklahoma to Nebraska, and the great road trip of 2008 that had us drive from MN to NE to Seattle, WA via Yellowstone National Park. He's been a great traveler through all of it.

One constant in Toivo's life has been seizures. Finnish Spitzes sometimes have them. Breeders are careful to try and track epilepsy in the breed, but Toivo didn't come from a breeder. For many years Toivo would have a seizure maybe every 6-8 weeks. Then in the last couple of years they happened about once a month. The vet told me that if they every increased in frequency beyond that I might want to consider putting Toivo on some medication. I've been pretty good at keeping track of when Toivo has seizures. He had one last week and I thought to myself, "Didn't he just have one?" When I went to record the seizure on the calendar, sure enough, he had had one just two weeks prior. I checked back and the next most recent seizure was about two weeks before that. Going back to about mid December, his seizures had started to increase in frequency. (Though they seem to be about five minutes shorter than they used to be when they were monthly.)

So Toivo and I went to the vet today. The vet complimented me on how good of condition Toivo is in. His weight is good, his muscle tone is excellent, his teeth are in good shape, his blood work looked good. We discussed the seizures and the vet gave me the run down. He said that if the seizures were something new that it could be indicative of a brain tumor, but that since Toivo has been having them his whole (known) life that it was probably epilepsy. He said there were two drugs we could put him on, one more aggressive than the other. Because Toivo's seizures were still only every two weeks the vet suggested we use the less aggressive drug, potassium bromide. He said that the best case scenario is that the seizures stop entirely. The next best case is that the seizures cut back to maybe one or two a year. The worse case scenario? The drug doesn't work and we have to try something else.

So, getting back to my impatience from the first paragraph of this post. One of the reasons I decided to take Toivo to the vet to get this straightened out now is because Zac is up for orders right now. We're waiting to see where we move to next. (Permanent Change of Station or PCS in military-speak.) Odd are pretty high that we're moving off island and we could be moving anytime between June and October, depending on what orders Zac gets. It worried me about the possibility of Toivo being stuck in his crate on a trans-Pacific flight and having a seizure. I'm not sure if he'd be more likely or less likely to get hurt being relatively confined. I figured I needed to give us as much time as possible to get his medical situation straightened out before we leave.

So what's with 1600? Zac said that the available orders would be posted at 1600 CST. I know he was anxious to see what was available because he'd like to put in his request for orders as soon as possible. He has a couple of possibilities of where he might go. I just want to know at this point. This will be my second PCS. I had to pack up and move alone from Minnesota because Zac was in El Salvador at the time. This time I have a house-full of stuff, a husband and two dogs. It will be a little bit of a larger undertaking, but I'll have Zac to provide some assistance this time so it may end up being a wash in terms of how easy it is. (Or isn't.)

So we'll start Toivo's medication tonight and watch him for side effects and hope for no more seizures. And I'll continue to pace around the house until Zac comes home to see what happened with orders.

Speak of the devil, Zac just walked in . . .

Insert Charlie Brown "Aaugh!" here

2011-01-25T23:59:00.003-08:00

I just messed an assignment up at work. This pains me to no end. I pride myself on how hard I work and how I pay attention to detail while continuing to work efficiently. I know that I would not have been able to maintain my long-distance editing gig if I hadn't demonstrated those abilities to my overlords over the last two and half years, so I take a little solace in that. But because my track record is so good, when I mess something up it crushes me. Today's screw up is particularly frustrating - I can't believe that I made an error that was so readily discoverable. I'm hoping that my handlers have some compassion for me when they get into work tomorrow morning to read my e-mailed admission of wrong-doing.

It's not like I negligently sent state secrets to the North Koreans or anything, I just didn't include some content that needed to go into the documents I was editing. But when the project has a deadline looming, as this one does, it eats up valuable time to go over the documents a second time. I also worry that the-powers-that-be might being to question the quality of my other work. I know that's a big leap, as they regularly tell me I do great work, but that fear is there. I'm glad that Zac is going to have a busy day at work tomorrow so I can spend a long, long day working and correcting my errors.

But on the upside I made a blueberry coffee cake tonight, and it is delicious. So at least I've got that going for me.

2011, so far

2011-01-17T20:56:00.003-08:00

Happy New Year to everyone!

The change over to 2011 made me realize that the end of our time in Hawaii is quickly approaching. We're not sure when (or really if) we're leaving. Odds are pretty high that we're leaving Oahu. As for when we'd move? Maybe this summer, maybe this fall. Ah, the joys of waiting for new orders. I'm starting to get impatient. It's little things that cause my impatience to flare up. For example, I'd like to get some new office furniture. If we're going to be here for another 10 months, I'll buy it here. If we're leaving in five? I'll just wait til we're back on the mainland or wherever else. I don't care where we end up, I just would like to have an answer so I can start making some plans.

Of course many of our friends and family are coming out to visit us before we leave. That's another reason I'd like to know when we're departing - I need to know when to have a visitor-cut-off-date. I've watched some friends of ours host family and friends right up until their last couple of weeks on the island. It gets to be overwhelming trying to coordinate packing up and entertaining people.

The first wave of our "Final Visitors" was last weekend when my folks stayed with us for a few days. We visited Iolani Palace, Punchbowl National Cemetery and the Polynesian Cultural Center while they were here. Then they hopped over to the Big Island for a few days and then to Maui. It was nice having them in town and it appears they had a good time on the other islands. The next wave of visitors will be arriving in a few weeks, the second week of February, followed almost immediately by another wave. Then we have a couple weeks off and then yet another wave of visitors. At the moment our middle-of-March visitors are our last scheduled guests, but I wouldn't be surprised if we don't get a few more people making reservations at Chateau Kotschwar before the end of the spring.

2011 has also found me working more hours, which is nice. My checking account certainly appreciates it. Zac had a pretty quiet time at work over December and the first part of January, but it looks like his schedule is going to get pretty hectic for a while. No baby news to report, for those that are curious. We're getting to the point where we're going to have to make some decisions about what additional steps we'd be willing to take to try and get pregnant, but we're not there yet. For now I'm content to bask in the excitement and joy of my friends' and family's pregnancies and new arrivals.

So 2011 will be a busy, exciting, sometimes stressful year. Hopefully it will also be a year filled with health and prosperity and at least a little bit of time to stop and smell the roses.

"Oh good! My dog found the chainsaw! " - Lilo

2010-12-30T22:15:00.003-08:00

I love the movie Lilo & Stitch. I remember when it came out in 2002 and it was a (sort of) big deal that it was hand-drawn animation. At that point Pixar and such were taking over animated movies and many people had sounded the death knell for old-fashioned animation. For a while when I was younger I wanted to be an animator. Painting cells seemed like the coolest job out there. So the fact that Lilo & Stitch was hand-drawn appealed to me when I saw it advertised for the first time.

Most people that know me know that I can be very sentimental when watching kids' movies. I tend to cry. A lot. I don't care if it's Benji or Finding Nemo, I'm getting choked up. Lilo & Stitch was no different. There was something that just touched me about this little girl and her older sister, trying their best to make their family work. There's a scene at the beginning of the movie where Lilo's hand-stitched doll is made fun of by her "friends". After they leave she throws the doll to the ground in disgust and stomps off. But a couple seconds later she runs back to her doll, picks it up in a sad, tight hug and takes it home. It's not a good doll, but it's hers. That gets me. Every time. Lilo is tough and spunky, but she is also sensitive and dramatic. She's one of my favorite characters.

The story really takes off when a funny little alien falls from the sky and joins Lilo and her sister, Nani, who adopt the alien thinking it is a dog. After naming him Stitch, chaos and hijinks ensue. Along the way they all try their best to make things work, even though everything they touch seems to crumble. In the end they find that even though sometimes life is difficult their ohana is strong. As Stitch says, "This is my family. I found it, all on my own. Is little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good."

Lilo & Stitch is set in Hawaii. I remember seeing the movie and thinking how beautiful the watercolor backdrops were. Little did I know that I'd be living here one day. The sun and surfing and lingo was all pretty exotic to me then. Lilo & Stitch was where I first learned the word "ohana" - and it is so true that ohana means everything out here. Watching the movie again a few months ago I appreciated and enjoyed the Hawaiian setting even more than the first few times I watched it. The slang, the accents, the lifestyle. It's all very familiar now.

This is the background that you need to understand why I was so tickled the other night at the frozen yogurt stand. Zac and I were sitting outside, eating our frozen treats, when I caught sight of a little girl inside the shop. She was about four, maybe five years old, and looked exactly like Lilo. Pretty brown skin with long black hair and bangs. And she was dancing. Boy howdy was she dancing. Spinning and jumping and moving about, just having a grand time. She saw me through the window and gave me a thumbs-up. I busted out laughing. She smiled and continued to dance, now knowing that she had an audience.

Zac asked me what was so funny. I pointed at the little girl through the window. She had stopped dancing and had turned to her mom who was pouring her some yogurt. Zac looked at me like I was nuts but when he turned back to the window the little girl looked up and saw that she now had TWO people watching her. She started dancing all over again, throwing a thumbs-up to us every now and again, which we returned. I couldn't help but laugh. She clearly had personality to spare and I admired her youthful exuberance. She was a total and utter hoot to watch. When the yogurt was paid for, she stopped her performance and headed out with her mom. She smiled at us as she left. She had made my day and she was the closest thing to a real-live Lilo I think I'll ever see.

As I finished my yogurt I thought, life is good, and sometimes that means you've just got to dance.

Christmas wrap-up

2010-12-27T11:28:00.003-08:00

It was an odd Christmas this year. As the 25th approached neither Zac nor I were feeling much of the holiday spirit. This marks our third Christmas in Hawaii. The first year we had only been on the island for a couple of months and I was homesick, but decorating the house and technology made it easier to overcome the sadness. The second year (last year) we went out to California to spend the holiday at Zac's sister's home. From there I was able to continue on to Minnesota and celebrate a late Christmas with my family. This year we celebrated an early Christmas with parts of Zac's family in Nebraska and Colorado during our mainland visit but we found ourselves on the island for the actual holiday.

Though the house was decorated as usual, it just didn't feel like Christmas this year. I think it had to do with the flurry of activity that occurred in the two weeks between when we got back from the mainland and the big day. We got back, had to to clean the house for arriving guests, put together a Christmas card, write the accompanying year-end letter, cram in as many work hours as possible so I could have at least a couple of hours of paid work for the month, do the Christmas present shopping, spend time at the post office mailing said presents, and take care of a bunch of other little things that seemed to crop up. By the time Christmas weekend actually arrived I was tired, irritated and downright crabby and Zac's wasn't much different.

A couple of months ago some friends of ours invited us to go to a luau with them on Christmas day, per their tradition. Zac and I held off on making a decision until Dec. 24th. It has been raining here in Hawaii over the last couple of weeks, and not just the occasional, brief showers that pop up usually. I'd say that over the last 14 days, 11 of them have been totally overcast all day with consistent rain including bursts where we're getting 1.5-2 inches of rain per hour. It's wet and soggy out here with the ground so saturated that when the sun does pop out it gets incredibly muggy. I know most people on the mainland are dealing with lots of snow and cold temperatures, so maybe my gripes sound minor but day after day of rain (which traps you in your house) does take a toll.

Anyhow, Zac and I decided to wait until the last minute to get tickets to the luau because we were concerned that the weather might be bad on the 25th. We checked the forecast and as usual, it called for occasional showers. Luaus will take place even in gentle rain, despite the fact that almost the entire event takes place outside - include the seating for eating and the show which is uncovered. It takes a serious kind of weather to get them to cancel a luau. We decided that it was worth the risk (mostly because we were tired of sitting inside the house for the last week) and bought tickets. Our friends that are staying with us decided to come to, so between them, us, the other couple and a couple other people our group numbered eight as we lined up on Christmas Day outside the gate to Paradise Cove, one of the local luau establishments.

When the gates opened at 5pm, it was partly cloudy and muggy, but not bad. Paradise Cove is located on the Leeward side of Oahu and most often if there is one place on the island that isn't getting rained on, it's on that coast. I held out hope that the evening might work out. Our group walked around, drinking mai tais, enjoying the pre-dinner/show events. I dipped my toes in the ocean just so I could say that I was at the beach and in the water on Christmas at least once while I lived here. As the sun set the clouds started to fill in a little more. A few sprinkles started to fall. Pretty soon it was a pretty heavy sprinkle.

Around 7:00 it was time for supper. As they called everyone over to the buffet tents (at least they protected the food from the rain) the heavens opened and it started to POUR. It was the kind of rain where you were instantly soaked. Zac and I made it to the tent grabbed some food and ran over to the gift shop to try and eat in some relative dryness. On the way we heard from people that the luau had been canceled and that people were being escorted back to their buses to take them back to Waikiki. (Most attendees at a luau are tourists that are shuttled in from their hotels. Since we're "local" we drove ourselves.) Zac and I finished up some of our kalua pig and macaroni salad and headed out towards the entrance to meet up with the rest of our group.

We drove home, soaked, but pretty happy despite the sogginess. Once we got home we changed into drier clothes and headed out to a local bar where the guys threw darts and us gals played songs on the jukebox. It wasn't a perfect Christmas, but it was memorable. I am looking forward to the day when Zac and I can begin to develop consistent holiday traditions, but in the meantime I guess I'm content to accumulate these amusing how-I-spent-Christmas stories.

Back by popular request!

2010-12-17T17:48:00.003-08:00

I've heard from a couple of people that I need to get a new blog post up. I agree.

Aside from the ice storm upon our arrival in Minneapolis, our trip to the mainland was fantastic. (And let's face it, the ice storm wasn't really a major detraction - it's a great part of the story.) We spent the first part of our trip in Minnesota visiting my family. We had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with the whole family so Zac got to experience the chaos and noise of a holiday at my parent's house. We also got a chance to go back to the Como Conservatory where we got married almost three years ago.After our trip to Minneapolis, we flew to Denver, rented a car and drove to Zac's home in Nebraska. We happened to be traveling on a Husker football game day, so we ended up stopping in Ogallala for some food so we could watch at least part of the game. Once Zac was confident that a Husker win was pretty much guaranteed, we continued on to his parent's house. It was good to see Zac back on the farm in his work clothes, driving his pickup. He was very content.

Zac spent a number of days helping his dad put together a new corral for the cattle. This involved digging post holes, putting in the posts, tamping them to get them to stay put, and then attaching large metal panels. It was dirty, heavy work and Zac loved every minute of it. I "helped" too sometimes. And by "help" I mean that I stayed out of the way most of the time. I did get to add some buckets of water to concrete mix, so I contributed something to the project.

We played cards and marbles and watched football over the 10 days we were there. We were also able to visit Zac's uncles and aunts, grandpa and grandma. I think we did a pretty good job of seeing as many family as possible. Zac's mom fed us a ton of great food so I felt compelled to run a couple of times while I was out there. I ran through the cow pasture one time, making sure to check over my shoulder every now and again to see if I was being pursued by a herd of cattle or a coyote - a wee bit different than running in my neighborhood in Hawaii.

After our stay in Nebraska we drove back to Colorado and headed to Zac's brother's home in Colorado Springs. Zac and his brother went up to Winter Park to ski for a couple of days while my sister-in-law and I spent some quality time hanging out. I really like my sister-in-law and this was a great opportunity to get to know each other better. We talked about everything under the sun, and hanging out with their kids was a blast. When the guys got back from skiing we celebrated Christmas and had a fun time watching the kids playing with their new toys. We had a great time visiting everyone, but after three weeks of traveling I think Zac and I were both ready to get home.

So now we're back in Hawaii and I'm all out of sorts. A few days after we got back to our home, a friend of ours and his wife moved in with us. So I spent the first couple days back desperately trying to get the house up to guest-status. I was balancing cleaning with trying to get some work done. My invoice for December work is due on the 22nd because of all the end-of-the-year holidays, meaning that I only have about 10 days to get some hours in for the month. No hours worked = no pay. And not getting paid for the month of December is not okay.

So now that our friends are here I'm trying to balance entertaining, working and Christmas prep which leaves little time (or energy) for me to run. I'm not sure you all realize how much effort it takes for me to go run - it's like being forced to go to the dentist for fillings three times a week. I find running to be just awful. Some of my friends find that they do their best thinking while they run. My only thoughts are, "Am I done yet? How much further/longer do I have to go? I've heard this song on my mp3 player too many times. I'm really not any closer to being done??? Has time stopped?" I don't know how people find clarity when they run. I only find boredom and suffering. But I like to eat dessert, so run I must. Cheesecake is cruel mistress.

Anyhow, we're home. The dogs are happy to see us, we are happy to see them and we're looking forward to some rest and relaxation over the next couple of weeks. (Well, except for the work bit. I've still got five days to bust my butt on that. But then rest and relaxation.)

Sitting on a jet plane, Don't know when we'll get off again

2010-11-22T07:22:00.006-08:00

Traveling in the winter is always an adventure. When Zac and I booked our flights we found that it was cheapest to have two layovers instead of just one, so our route to the mainland took us from Honolulu to San Francisco to Denver to Minneapolis. Of course the weather in Hononlulu was flawless upon departure. When we landed in San Francisco, it was a little overcast, but no "weather" to speak of. When we landed in Denver there was a little precipitation so we had get de-iced before we could take off. For the number of times I've flown, it was the first time I had ever been on a plane as it got de-iced. After a quick bath of what I'm sure are highly toxic chemicals we were airborne and heading to Minneapolis. The pilot came on the intercom and told us the flight would be about an hour and 27 minutes long. We had been on planes for more than seven hours at that point. Oh, sweet relief was so close.

The pilot quickly announced that we were starting our descent into Minneapolis. He noted that there was some precipitation. Soon we were under the cloud deck and I could see the orange glow of the Metro Area. I grinned like an idiot as I tried to figure out which runway we were heading for. I could see the residual snow from last week's storm and was looking forward to taking a good, deep breath of cold air in a matter of moments. The pilot set us down and we slowed to turn off the runway and onto the taxiway. Then we stopped.

People began firing up their mobiles and unbuckling their seat belts, because, really, who actually keeps their seat belt fastened until they stop at the gate? A few people started to gather their carry-on from under the seat in front of them. But we still weren't moving. We waited a few more minutes. Finally the captain came on the intercom to tell us why we essentially parked 200 yards from the terminal - ice.

Our flight landed at 11:15pm on Saturday night, right after a nasty, unexpected ice storm coated the region. According to the captain we were able to land safely because of the ridges that are incorporated into the runways. However, the taxiways were smooth and now, essentially, ice rinks. Since the storm wasn't anticipated, and it was late Saturday night, there were no sanding and salting personnel at the airport. The captain couldn't drive the plane to the gate, and the United towing crew couldn't come out to get us. We were stranded until the salter/sanders arrived. And that could take more than an hour. (Because, after all, the workers were trying to drive on the ice to get to work.)

People groaned. Most people expressed a certain amount of skepticism at the severity of the ice, but as more people started making phone calls to their Minnesota connections they started hearing stories of how bad it really was out there. Someone said that they heard that there had already been 140 car accidents that night. The captain came back on the intercom and told us that the buckle-your-seat-belt light had been turned off and that we were free to mill about until further notice. The flight attendants came around with more beverages and tried to keep the mood light.

And honestly, most everyone took the situation in stride. What other choice did we have? We were stuck. Now, if this had happened after the almost six hour flight from Honolulu to San Francisco, people might have been crabbier. But we had only been in the air for 90 minutes. We were doing fine. 30 minutes came and went.

Then an hour.

Then 90 minutes.

As I realized we had been on the tarmac as long as in the air, I got up to use the restroom towards the rear of the plane. A group of guys was hanging out back there socializing about stuff and talking with a couple flight attendants. I think they even weaseled a couple of free beers out of them. That was kind of the mood of the plane - whatever it takes to keep everyone happy. I spent most of my time corresponding with Paul who had planned on picking us up from the airport. Paul reported that getting to the airport was practically impossible. Some of the bridges had been closed, the freeway was a parking lot, and travel was just all the way around near impossible. We crafted a plan where, assuming we ever got out of the plane, Zac and I would take the light rail to the nearby VA Hospital were Paul could pick us up and then we'd drive back to his house.

2 hours.

At this point the captain came on the intercom to relay that he could personally see the salter/sanders through the front window. (I think he added that last part to emphasize that the end really was near.) He also mentioned that though our flight was supposed to taxi to a gate on the far side of the terminal, the folks at MSP Int'l decided to get us to the gate closest to our current location. The baggage folks and ground crew were on their way to take care of us too. People heaved a collective sigh of relief and in a few more minutes we were moving towards our gate.

As I got off the plane I got a blast of cold air in the face and smiled. Invigorating. (Which was helpful as it was now 1:45am.) We realized we could still make the 2:19 train to the VA so Zac and high-tailed it to the baggage claim to get our bags. We then hustled to the light rail station, purchased our tickets and finally decided to dig out our winter coats from our bags as we waited in the 26 degree weather for the train. The train arrived, I do love the light rail, and we took the five minute ride to the VA. We debarked the train and almost fell flat on our butts. It was slick. This ice was no joke. We shuffled our feet as we skated down the sidewalk to Paul's waiting vehicle.

At this point it was 2:30 in the morning. Between the late/early hour and poor weather there was no traffic so we slowed through stop signs and red lights as we slide home. I almost bought it a couple of time just walking through Megan and Paul's backyard. But finally, at 3:00am we were "home". It just took a little longer to get there than we had planned. :)

The beach, 28 hour days and packing

2010-11-07T20:26:00.006-08:00

For the third weekend in a row Zac and I went to the beach to catch some rays. It might come as a shock to some of you, but though we live in Hawaii we rarely go to the beach, especially just to lounge. Prior to these last few weeks I could count on one hand the number of times Zac and I had been to the beach in the last calendar year. (We haven't been diving in forever - back when we were diving we were at the beach every other weekend.) About a month ago Zac announced that he was a little too pale to be heading back to the mainland so we decided to catch some rays in hopes that our late-November midwestern-pale families would be jealous of our healthy Hawaiian glow. Of course I don't really tan. I get less white and add a few freckles. Zac tans. Jerk. So we've headed to a couple of beaches over the last three weekends, laying out and people watching.

As we get closer to our departure back home, I increasingly wish I had more hours in a day. There are a bunch of things I'd like to get done before we leave - arts and craft stuff, work, Christmas shopping, stuff around the house. Plus this week will also be busy as I've got a lunch date, I'm volunteering two evenings, I've got a meeting with the Captain one afternoon and I've got an ombudsman meeting another evening. This is really not the week that I wanted to cram all that into. If I could somehow lengthen my days, I'd be much more relaxed. I suppose I could try to get up a couple hours earlier, but my body is adamant in how much sleep it requires in a 24 hour period to function. If I pull myself out of bed earlier than usual, my body will flip the switch in late-afternoon and I will be worthless as I doze off for about the same amount of time I gained in the morning. I wish I could function on six hours of sleep like Zac does. I'd be insanely productive.

I'm starting to think about what all I'll need for three weeks in colder climes. Cold weather clothes take up a lot more room than warm weather ones. I'm excited at the thought of sweatshirts, sweaters, jeans, boots and scarfs. I'm sad that I no longer have corduroy pants that I can wear. Oh, how I do love corduroys! Since I'm going to be spending time in two very different settings (urban Minneapolis and rural Nebraska) I'm not entirely sure what all to bring. What I would wear casually around my parent's house is a little different that what I would wear if I was helping out with cattle at the farm, especially in the footwear category. I guess I'll just overpack and then decide I don't like any of my clothes any way when I get there. That's usually how it goes.

Grocery shopping, electricity bills and Halloween

2010-10-31T18:00:00.004-07:00

Taking topics in reverse order:

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is a low-key affair for us this year. Because of the holiday's occurrence on Sunday, there were plenty of Halloween parties all around the island this weekend but Zac and I spent Friday evening watching Food Network and Saturday evening throwing darts in the garage. Some friends asked us to go down to Waikiki with them, but Waikiki is an absolute zoo for Halloween. Almost as bad (or maybe worse than) New Year's Eve. Not only do we object to Waikiki's $20 cover charges and $10 drinks, but Zac and I didn't take the time to come up with costumes which would probably be the only fun part of going out to a party or a bar. Maybe next year we'll come up with something and host a party of our own.

As far as passing out candy goes (don't hate me) but we're not doing it. We're hoping that if we turn off the lights and speak in hushed tones that the kids in the neighborhoods will think we're not at home. Because of the way Navy housing works, and who's entitled to what type of housing, everyone on our street has kids. (We got into this housing only because there was a shortage of housing for a sailor with a spouse and no kids. To get into our neighborhood you're usually supposed to have at least one child.) I don't mind living in a neighborhood full of kids. I just don't feel like partaking in passing out candy. I'm sure the trick-or-treaters will find plenty of sugary sweets to keep them happy without us. If the kids do ring our doorbell, they might find themselves getting a ziploc bad of steel-cut oats, some whole-grain pasta or the dreaded apple. Sorry kiddos - candy isn't something we keep on tap around here.

Speaking of turning the lights off and housing, a new electricity usage policy recently started for us. I'm thrilled. Up to this point people living in military housing out here on Oahu didn't have to pay for any utilities. The housing allowance that was given to service members living in housing covered the rent and all the electricity (and water). This meant that you could set your thermostat to 62 degrees, turn on all your lights and run hot water all day and you wouldn't incur any sort of cost.

Somewhere along the line the top Navy folks out here realized that the Navy is the number one consumer of energy on Oahu. Yes, the naval base was using a lot of electricity, but housing was using it like it was going out of style. The powers that be decided that something needed to be done. The company in charge of housing had already made some changes to try and be more energy-conscious. All of the housing built in the last couple of years have a couple of solar panels on the roof that are tied to the hot water heater and all of the light-bulbs that they supply to the houses are CFLs. But the Navy folks wanted the service members to take on more of the responsibility.

The new policy is fairly simple: Every month housing will calculate what the average energy usage is for houses that are about the same size. Then they'll create a buffer zone that extends 20% above and 20% below that average. If your energy usage falls in that buffer zone, you won't have to pay anything - just like it has always been. If you fall below the buffer zone you'll get a rebate of the amount you were below. If you fall above the buffer zone, you now have to pay for that extra energy use. Hooray!

Now personally I think that the 20% upper limit is too modest. I'd like to see them drop that to 15% or 10%, making more people responsible for paying for extra energy use. 20% is a pretty high bar. I'm a little amazed at how many people still exceed it even with that high barrier. For the next couple of months everyone in housing will be receiving "mock" bills to show us our usage. Starting January 1 the program goes into effect for real. I'm really hoping that this program will cause the people in housing to quit abusing the privilege of having our utilities (mostly) paid for and cause people to be more responsible.

Since I'm all riled up about energy consumption now, let me end on one quick other rant. I went to the grocery store yesterday and you know what I saw? Stacks of sugar, flour, chocolate chips, oil, Crisco, vanilla and assorted extracts, cinnamon by the bucket, every and all baking things I could ever want. I wanted to buy a cart-load and head home to bake up six different kinds of cookies, a few pies, a cake or two and whatever other November/December-type treats I could think of. I love to bake so much.

But I can't. Why? Because Zac and I can't eat all that sugary goodness by ourselves and we have no one to pass it off on! Arg! I suppose I could bake it all up and freeze it, but I've already got a cheesecake, three different kinds of cookies and two banana breads already in the freezer. I really don't want to eat the stuff, I just want to make it. I think I have a disorder of some sort. Anyhow, grocery shopping will be a painful experience for the next couple of months.

But the approaching holidays mean that butter will go on sale at least once. I am sooooooooooo looking forward to butter being on sale. (It's twice as much out here in Hawaii as it is in Minnesota.) *sigh* You can never have to much butter around, just in case you do need to bake something . . .

Leave, Cirque, and fertility

2010-10-27T22:57:00.004-07:00

Zac got his leave request approved this week, which is nice considering we already paid for the plane tickets home. So to all of our Minnesota and Nebraska family and friends, we'll be in town visiting you sometime in the latter part of November or beginning of December. I'm looking forward to Zac getting to spend some time with my family, but more importantly I'm glad that he'll be able to get back to the farm for awhile. Zac hasn't been back home since September of 2008. We did get to see his folks and sister last year for Christmas, but that was in San Francisco. Zac needs to put on his old Wranglers and get out there and do some work. It's the best way for him to recharge his batteries.

Me? I'm not a whole heck of a lot of help on the farm. (Please try to hide your shock and surprise.) I generally tag along and try to not get in the way. Zac's father did let me drive the combine during wheat harvest a couple years ago for about 100 yards or so. I didn't crash the combine into a sinkhole, so I counted the outing as a success. It's always funny to me how Zac sees the remoteness of the farm as freeing and relaxing. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my time out on the farm. I just tend to always have the thought, being miles from your closest neighbor or emergency services, and no cell phone reception: "In rural Nebraska, no one can hear you scream." (My apologies to "Alien".)

Zac and I went to see Cirque du Soleil's Allegria last week. We don't get many traveling shows out here in Hawaii, so when I saw that Cirque was coming to town I decided that Zac and I should go. Zac had never seen a Cirque performance before and he was a little bit skeptical when I suggested the idea to him but he relented. It turns out he enjoyed the performance quite a bit. (Certainly it helped that one of the routines was two female contortionists who made his eyes pop out of his head. I gently whispered to him, "I will never bend that way, so don't get your hopes up.") I enjoyed the show too. I always wonder how people think up the costuming and make-up that goes into the Cirque shows. The music was very good. And the performers, as usual, do things that make you gape in amazement. It was certainly a good way to spend a random Wednesday evening.

The only other interesting thing to note lately is my lack of getting pregnant. (I know a lot of you are curious and it's easier to blog about it than to repeat the story again and again in person.) I've been on fertility drugs for the last few months, but so far - nada. This month my doctor, who really is quite lovely, put me on a different drug than I've been on. Both drugs are designed to get my body to over-do the progesterone-thing, making me Fertile Myrtle. But, alas, it hasn't happened yet. There are days that this bothers me immensely and I get really, really frustrated. But then there are days I gratefully thank the universe that I don't have children, and I toast the fact that I can do whatever I want whenever I please.

Truthfully, it's this teeter-tottering between wanting to be a mom and not wanting to be a mom that is the most stressful part of all of this. I thought I was completely bonkers for feeling this way but I've been talking to a few of my female friends who are also in their early 30s that are having the exact same feelings. I think part of the drawback of waiting to have kids is that you realize how good life can be without them. If you start having kids at 20, 22, even 24, you haven't finished school, haven't established your career, heck, you probably don't even know who you are yet. If you're 24, can you truly realize what kind of a life you're giving up by having kids? And then you get to your 30s, you've got a career, friends, hobbies, pursuits, and you realize that life can be very full and satisfying without children.

I'm not trying to be down on parenting. Parenting is not just responsibility, obligation and constriction. I understand that you get a whole separate, different life of richness and fulfillment by being a parent. But it is true that when you have kids, your life is suddenly not yours anymore. And maybe I've just become too selfish over the years. Yes, there are rewards for being child-free and different rewards from being a parent. It's just a matter of trying to figure out what rewards I want more.

I love kids. I do. And I think I'd like to have one. But if I don't have kids, I don't think I'm going to be crushed. I will be sad, to a point, but it won't be the end of me. I've got three nephews, a niece and a host of other children in my life that I would enjoy spending time with and spoiling over my lifetime. So I'll do a couple more rounds of fertility drugs and see what happens. I'll let Fate figure this one out.

I'm an ombudsman

2010-10-14T22:30:00.002-07:00

I interviewed for the position of ombudsman last year and didn't get the job. I wasn't surprised - I hadn't been an ombudsman before and I was still pretty new to the Navy. I figured that there would be a more qualified candidate that would get the position. But it was a good opportunity to put my name out there and make Zac's Captain aware of my willingness to help the command out. (It is a volunteer position.)

When the Captain let me know that I hadn't been selected for the position, he asked me if I'd be willing to attend the ombudsman training regardless, in case the position opened again. I jumped at the chance. Like when I took the COMPASS class, I figured more Navy information could only be a good thing. The ombudsman training was an intense week of evening classes where we learned about our responsibilities and other Navy topics. I left the class grateful for the info, but a little overwhelmed. It was hard to put all that information into context when I wasn't actually an ombudsman.

Fast forward about six months and I get an e-mail from the Captain asking me if I'd be interested in taking over as co-ombudsman. (The Captain had ended up hiring two ombudsman the first time around.) One of the ombudsman was leaving and he wanted me to take her place. I was flattered that he asked and accepted the position. The person I'm taking over for did a great job and my main focus right now is not to screw up the system she developed for getting information to people.

So what does an ombudsman do? (At least in the context of the Navy.) They're the point of contact between families and the command. It's a much more demanding role when you're the ombudsman for a ship, especially when the ship is underway. Your main job is to be an information kiosk, of sorts, for family members. My car broke down, where can I get it repaired? My kid is having trouble in school, are there tutoring programs? My husband beat me last night, is there someplace I can stay? When is the ship coming back? I'm having a hard time with my sailor being gone, who can I talk to? Are there any summer camps available for the kids? And so on and so on. I don't need to know the answers myself, I just need to know where to direct people to get the answers.

Like I said, it's a more involved position when you're assigned to a ship. Zac's command is a shore duty and it's mostly senior sailors. Usually when you've been in the Navy for 10+ years you have accumulated a pretty good idea of what resources are available to you. Also, the sailors are home to help out with issues when they come up. It's a whole other ballgame when you've got sailors that are 18-24 years old and they're underway for six months, leaving their families behind. In either case, being an ombudsman is a significant responsibility.

So while I'm feeling a little anxious at the outset, I'm excited at the challenge that I'm undertaking. Hopefully the Captain will like my performance and let me continue on until we leave ATG next year. And who knows, maybe I'll get the chance to be an ombudsman at one of Zac's next commands as well.

Khaki Ball 2010, housemates, and a general update of life around here

2010-09-26T18:35:00.005-07:00

I've been Oahu-home for three weeks now. We had the Khaki Ball two weeks ago, which marked the end of another induction season. To be honest, I didn't have nearly as much fun this year as I did at the last three. Bernadette and Ken are gone and Claudia and her husband, while still on the island, took part in a separate Khaki Ball celebration for Claudia's husband's new ship. (That is, her husband doesn't work with Zac any more.) We did have a couple friends to sit with, but the whole night felt a little . . . off. That wasn't just our lack of social circle though - the whole event felt a little soul-less. I loved my dress, but that was probably the high point of my evening.

Zac and I had a housemate for the last month or so, "Grant". Grant is/was one of Zac's co-workers, and he left for his new duty station in San Diego a couple days ago. Grant's wife (another friend who wasn't at the Khaki Ball this year) headed out to San Diego last month to get a head-start on getting their new home set up and finding employment. Grant and his wife are also selling their house, so by staying with us he was able to have the house vacant and available for viewing at all times. While Grant's wife took their cats with her to SD, Grant kept their dog here so for four weeks we had three canines underfoot.

Grant and I are great friends. He's my token conservative friend, and I'm his token liberal buddy. We have great conversations that never devolve into yelling matches. We disagree, on a lot, but more often than not we're able to find a middle ground where we both agree. It was a lot of fun having Grant around, and we're going to miss him a lot now that he's gone. (Although I am happy to have my bathroom back.) He and Zac are really close as Grant has been one of Zac's primary mentors for the last two years. It will be an adjustment having him gone.

I applied for a job a couple of weeks ago that I really, really wanted. I didn't get it. I was a little crushed. Ok, maybe a little more than "a little". I was in a pretty good funk about it all week. I'm happy to continue my telecommuting back to Minnesota with my legal editing gig as long as it lasts, because 1.) it's income and 2.) it's allowed me all sort of flexibility, but I am ready to move on when the opportunity presents itself. I'm resigned to the fact now that I'm going to have to do some/a lot of pro bono work if I'm ever going to be considered for a job practicing. I just don't think my job skills are appealing to prospective employers.

So as a pick-me-up I'm going to go with Claudia to visit Bernadette in Washington later this week for a long weekend. Claudia will be taking a Space A flight for the first time. I'm kind of excited about that. When there are extra seats on military flights they sometimes open up those seats to service members and their families for free or inexpensive travel. There aren't usually any bells or whistles on these flights, but have you flied commercial lately? Let's just say the bar isn't high for my Space A experience to be a success in comparison.

Since I'm just tossing out random stuff that's going on lately, I've also been asked to be Zac's command's co-ombudman starting this next week. (I'll probably use another entry to talk about that responsibility.) That will be a new and interesting challenge. I am looking forward to the experience, but I'm a little anxious about it.

A collection of quick MN thoughts

2010-09-10T06:29:00.004-07:00

Here are random things I thought about/observed/learned while I was home.

Jeans and a sweatshirt/sweater is the most comfortable outfit a person can wear. Much more comfortable than tank tops and shorts. Yay cozy!
I'm much more likely to wear makeup when it's not 80+ degrees because it doesn't melt off my face.
Jasper is one of the world's slowest eaters. But that means you get to hold him longer, which isn't a chore. He's got that good-smelling-baby-scent-thing going for him.
Lincoln is a great kid, 98% of the time. The other 2% of the time usually results from him missing his nap. And then you spend the second half of that no-nap day dreading what's coming down the pipe.
I love the south eastern quadrant of Minneapolis best, because it's where I spend 90% of my time.
East Lake Street makes me happy. So does the West River Road, the area around the airport and Ft. Snelling, 46th Street, 38th Street, Cedar Avenue, Chicago Avenue, the U of M campus and even a few pockets of St. Paul.
I would like to have Minnehaha Creek and the Mississippi River imported to Hawaii so I can enjoy either running, walking or biking on the trails everyday.
Where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers converge might be what heaven looks like.
I enjoy seeing kids wearing their high school letterman jackets. I've never seen someone wear one in Hawaii. Although that's probably because it would be uncomfortable to wear a wool jacket with leather sleeves in a tropical climate.
It was hard to drive past my Grandpa Clare's house and realize that it's not part of my family anymore. The current owner has put in some amazing flower beds and gardens. It looks beautiful, and it looks like she's taking really good care of the place. But I still cried.
I could eat out every night in the Twin Cities and never run out of someplace yummy to eat.
I'm concerned at the lack of Greek food available to me back in Hawaii.
Lincoln knows more about trucks than many construction workers. It's amusing to watch him name things off with such enthusiasm. "It's a FRONT LOADER!"
My parent's house is just about the right size for about 6-8 adults and four kids. It feels much smaller when there are almost a dozen adults and five kids. If I bring Zac (and potentially someday a kid of our own) the house may very well explode. I am currently advocating a plan to annex the neighbors house, potentially by force if need be.
As much as I miss many of the elm trees in the neighborhood, the maples really do provide some amazing colors in the fall. I'm very glad they're just starting to turn, so I could get my "fall" fix before heading back to my eternal summer home.
Target Field is an exceptional ballpark, and I got to see an exceptional home run hit there. (Thome's dinger off the flag poll.) Even in the rain, it was one of the highlights of my Minnesota sporting experiences.
Though I am not a mallrat, I enjoy having many, many malls at my disposal in the Twin City area.
Lincoln's head must be made of kevlar.
It's hard to see your grandparents' capacities diminish. I think it becomes more noticeable when you don't see them regularly.
I was surprised at how few cashiers/waitresses had seen a military ID before. I guess that's because Minnesota has no active duty military installation.
I am increasingly sentimental.
Dairy Queen is delicious. If we have one every two miles in Minneapolis, where at least a quarter of the year is not ice-cream friendly, why on earth do we not have more than a couple of them in Hawaii where it is eternally summer?
I like that my MN accent comes back when I'm home. I wish it was easier to hang on to when I'm not there.
Rooting for the Gopher football team is tough. Really, really tough. But yet I can't not.
I wish Zac and my family could spend more time together.
I love houses built before WWII. Even though the floors might creak and they aren't wired for lots of outlets and things might not be totally square, they make up for it in character.
I like power tools and wish I had more projects to work on around the house. I was particularly happy to play with my dad's new table saw and compressed air nail gun this time around.
Minneapolis really is one of the most bike-friendly places in the U.S. and should be damn proud of it.
Either I'm getting old or I have no fashion sense (and quite probably both) but a lot of the clothes out there for teenage girls are utterly ridiculous. I will enjoy 15-20 years from now when they cringe as they look at their old high school pictures. There is a price to pay for being too trendy, young ladies.
I'm beginning to think that the 35W/62 interchange might not ever be completed. I find it odd that they've been working on it longer than I've been married.
Listening to the rain is the best way to fall asleep.
Even though I'm not a huge fan of the guys calling the games, I loved listening to Twins baseball on the radio. And I love Hardware Hank commercials.
Minnesota has an abundance of riches when it comes to locally produced beer.
My friends are really remarkable people. I admire so many attributes of each of them.
I will always cry when I leave my family. And that's ok.

Friends, the Fair, Food

2010-09-05T16:50:00.005-07:00

I really want to have a blog entry where all it contains is a list of short things I like/love/miss/note about Minnesota. As I've been spending time here something will come to mind and I'll think, "I'll need to remember that for the list," and then I will promptly forget it. I need a notepad to carry around with me for the last week I'm here. Hopefully I'll recall some of those ideas that have evaporated.

I've had a great trip so far. I've managed to see a number of friends without feeling like I'm over-scheduled. My friends are terrific. Really, truly great people. Facebook and text messages and phone calls are nice, but face-to-face time can't be beat.

My feet are nice and swollen right now from seven hours at the Minnesota State Fair. One of Paul's good friends from the Port Royal, and his friend's wife, came up to visit Megan and Paul for the Labor Day weekend. Since I'm the fifth wheel of sorts, I've been spending some time with them as well. Today we introduced them to the Great Minnesota Get Together. I love the Fair. It makes me happy. Some people complain that it's always the same, year after year, but that's my argument in favor of it. Consistency. With the only exceptions being a few new food items or a couple new displays, the Fair is the same experience every year. Every year it marks the end of summer (probably more so than even Labor Day for a lot of people) and the beginning of fall. I love the noises, the smells, the general chaos of moving through the people-clogged streets. And doggone it, piglets and other baby animals are always cute and must be cooed over.

I ate more food than I should have today, but I didn't feel like throwing up at any point so I'm counting the day as a sort of victory. I'll be glad to go run some of it off tomorrow morning. (One of the few times you might hear me say I'm "glad" to run.) Paul's friend's wife wants to run with me but I'm not sure I want to run with her. She runs a 9:30-10:00 minute mile. Let's just say, I do not. I am a slow moving object. Especially now that I'm running outside with inclines, declines and a headwind. I'm surprised that casual walkers don't blow past me. But regardless of my pace, it will help in some small way to erase the damage that the Fair did today.

Home, the Dome

2010-08-29T15:39:00.002-07:00

My flights to Minneapolis took me from Honolulu to Phoenix (about six hours) and from Phoenix to Minneapolis (a little more than three). Throw in a two and a half hour lay over and five time zone changes and my body is still a little "off" from traveling. No matter. I'm back in Minnesota and plan on making the most of my time here. (Even if "making the most of my time" this afternoon involved a two hour nap.)

The flights were relatively uneventful. Pretty much sleep-a-thons. I did wake up with about 45 left until we landed in MSP. I could see all the farms out the window - the geographical squareness of plots and flatness of southern Minnesota. And then, after a few minutes and a hundred miles, I spotted more and more lakes, and the number of trees increased. Being that I grew up 15-20 minutes from the MSP airport in South Minneapolis, I tried guessing which route we were coming in on and which runway I was going to land on. Over the rivers and Hwy 5? No, not this time. I ended up on one that passes over Cedar/77 by the new(ish) Target and Home Depot. Yes, I'm such a Minnesotan that it's even important for me to know which route the plane took to land.

After I got my bags, Paul and Megan picked me up and we met my folks for an Ayers family tradition - post-flight pie at Bakers Square in Highland Park. (Do you know good it feels to let things like Highway 5, Bakers Square and Highland Park roll off my fingers?) I finally got to meet my newest nephew, Jasper. He's quite the little peanut. I'll provide my final assessment of him at the end of the two weeks, but his initial impression was positive. I think he'll make the cut and get added to the Dramatis Personae soon.

Because I'm here for three weekends and two of the other weekends are already planned, we ended up deciding to go to the Dome (the family cabin shaped like a geodesic dome) this first weekend. Dad, Megan, Lincoln, Jasper and I all headed up to the Dome on Friday evening, while Mom, Paul and the two dogs came up Saturday morning. I love the Dome so very much. I do not love mosquitoes, however, and this weekend they were not just pesky but plentiful. I have the welts to prove it. I can safely say that skeeters are the only thing I DON'T miss about MN.

The first night of sleeping was rough. (I don't sleep well on a good day, granted.) My internal clock was off and I couldn't fall asleep. Plus, my sister is breastfeeding Jasper, so she woke up at midnight, four and seven to feed him. The thing about the Dome is that everyone sleeps upstairs in the loft - there are no separate rooms. So when Jasper would start to fuss and Megan would wake up to feed him, I had already been "awoken" 10 minutes prior by Jasper's stirring. Which is to say, I had been roused from my drifting in and out of conscientiousness because I couldn't ever properly fall asleep. I got up the next morning feeling like a battery that had failed to be charged properly.

My lack of energy failed to stop me from helping mow the yard and play baseball with Lincoln. There was swinging on the tire swing and lounging on the deck, listening to the Twins play Seattle. There was construction of Lincoln-sized ladders and stacking logs that Dad has chainsawed up into firewood. We grilled burgers and I even went for a run around the 1.5 road that our cabin sits on. I figure I'm going to be eating a lot this trip - food is love, right? - and I need to make sure I don't abandon my exercise routine. I mean, c'mon. My family has things like post-flight pie for Pete's sake. Running will be necessary. I also figured that if I wore myself out by jogging while tired I would sleep better Saturday night.

After the kids went to bed, more traditions - playing Oh Hell and some cribbage. Finally it was time for bed, and while I still didn't sleep great I did sleep better, due to some drastic decisions by me. That particular story can stay exclusively with the family and in the annals of Dome lore. Today we headed back into town because it is HOT here. Hotter than Hawaii. And hot at the Dome isn't too much fun. But I feel that I got an adequate cabin fix and that I can leave here content with the time I did get to spend there.

Now it's on to planning time with friends and family. Let the great coordination of hanging out begin!

So happy to be one of 150,000

2010-08-22T14:08:00.003-07:00

For those that haven't heard, the military is probably going to repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell , (DADT) policy. As part of the repeal process, they sent out anonymous questionnaires to approximately 400,000 service members to see how they would feel about serving with openly gay and lesbian members. They also sent out 150,000 questionnaires to spouses to get their view on things. I was delighted to be one of the spouses that got to make her opinion heard.

The questionnaire wasn't very long and focused exclusively how openly gay members of the military would impact me, as a spouse. I was asked questions like, "If your family lived in military housing and a gay family moved in next door, what would you do?" My multiple-choice options to answer were something along the lines of "Get to know them more than your straight neighbors" "Get to know them the same way you would any other neighbors" "Ignore them" or "Move". I was also asked if I would be more or less likely to participate in various family support groups and social events if I knew there were gay family members also participating.

The main reason I was so happy to be one of the 70,000 active duty spouses that got to answer the DADT survey is because I'm sure there are spouses answering the survey that thought, "There's no way I'm going to the command picnic if a gay member's family is there." I want the Department of Defense to know that for some of us, having openly gay members and their families as part of our military family is NO BIG DEAL. I believe the repeal is a positive thing - it allows for honesty in the military. People could be who they are without compromise, secrecy or fear.

I think it's horribly unfair and wrong that Zac can have a photo of me on his desk at work, but a gay sailor can't have a picture of him and his partner. Something like 6% of the American public volunteers to serve in the military. This means we are counting on a very few to do a lot of the heavy lifting that freedom and security requires. So if a young man or woman, who happens to be gay, wants to join and serve us I think we should all say simply, "Thank you for your service."

Note that nowhere in the survey was I asked if gay members should be allowed to serve. I was also not asked what impact their service would have on my spouse's work (which, of course would be pure speculation on my part). However, there was a section for comments at the end of the survey, which I used as my opportunity to share that I whole-heartedly disagreed with DADT and that I was glad that it was being repealed. They didn't ask me, but I decided to tell. It's about time everyone got that chance.

How I spent my birthday morning

2010-08-18T16:57:00.001-07:00

totally relaxed . . .

Birthdays and an Admiral named Kate

2010-08-17T23:41:00.005-07:00

It will be August 17th for a few more hours out here in the middle of the Pacific, so I'm still 32 for the moment. Yes, another year - another birthday. I think I'll cling to one last year of my "early 30s" before easing into my "mid 30s" next year. I talked to Megan and Paul this afternoon and Paul congratulated me on turning 27 this year. He got a gold star for the day.

Tomorrow morning I'm celebrating by going to the beach with Claudia. This may come as a shock to some of you, but just because I live in Hawaii doesn't mean that I spend all my time at the beach. In fact, I can't even think of the last time I had a swim suit on. (Wow. Even I'm a little stunned by that realization.) Last summer I was a beach regular, when Zac and I would go diving every other weekend, but we just haven't gotten into the rhythm of going this summer. Our weekends always seem to be busy with other plans, and also I've read that women that are pregnant (or trying to get pregnant) shouldn't be diving since researchers are not sure what effect the increase of nitrogen in the blood will have on a blastocyst/embryo/fetus. And while it's better to be safe than sorry, it is still with a bit of regret that I look back at almost a full summer of no diving.

Getting back to the celebration of my birth, I'm probably not going to be doing much tomorrow besides the beach. I think I've convinced Zac that maybe we should head into Honolulu or even Waikiki this weekend to have some fun. Maybe other folks will want to tag along. I'll have to send some feelers out to see if anyone else wants to go.

Not much else is new around here. Induction season is in full swing. Zac is routinely getting up earlier than usual to go PT with the selectees. Neither one of us is too excited when the alarm goes off at 0445. You can't really escape the CPO/induction madness. Today Zac and I headed over to the uniform shop so we could drop off one of his uniforms to get dry cleaned and to get some tailoring done on a shirt that I have. (They tailor civilian clothes there too.) I was standing in line for a few minutes, waiting for the seamstress to finish with the person ahead of me when I noticed a bunch of chiefs hanging around the fitting room. One guy had a camera. It dawned on me quickly that there must be a selectee in the changing room getting fitted for his new uniform. (Chiefs have different work and dress uniforms from the junior enlisted guys.)

The selectee finally came out in his new choker whites. He looked a little dazed. The chiefs snapped up photos of him. "This is all part of the transition," one chief chuckled. The seamstress had the selectee try on another coat and they talked about pants sizes. I smiled at how much the selectee and the chiefs were enjoying the moment.

At this point an officer came up and asked me if I was the line for the tailor. We started to chit chat as we waited. She was a fit, petite woman, probably in her late 40s. She had an warm energy about her that I liked. I noticed she had a name tag on - her first name was Kate. A clear indicator of coolness.

I glanced at her collar devices to see what rank she was and saw that she had a star. Holy moly, she was an admiral. It actually took me a second to realize that she was an admiral because, honestly, I've never met someone with a star before. I tried not to stare at her too much, but she was really interesting. Since she was in uniform I offered her the position in front of me in line, which she politely declined. (We were both in no hurry - both of us were trying to avoid traffic on the way home.) I told her there was a selectee in the fitting room, getting fitting for his chokers. She smiled broadly and said, "There are two things in the Navy that I've always wanted to do but I've never gotten to do - serve on an aircraft carrier and be a chief." That stunned me a little. She went on to talk about how much she admired chiefs and the induction process, and how special it was.

We talked a little more about chiefs and Zac in particular when Zac decided to join us in line. He was wearing his Oklahoma City marathon t-shirt so the Admiral asked him about the race. They started to talk about running as I was called into the fitting room. I excused myself and went to get fitted. On the way out, the Admiral was getting fitted for a jacket. I thanked her for helping me pass the time in line, which she returned. Zac and I went to the checkout where he questioned, "Do you realize she's an admiral?" I said, with big eyes and a nod, "Yes." Zac was a little amazed because he didn't think he had ever spoken that many words to an Admiral before. Also, he was surprised that she had her Seabee warfare pin. A female admiral who is in construction? A rare find, indeed.

I got home and Googled the Admiral, of course. Rear Admiral Kate Gregory. (I know it's silly, but I think it's neat that we spell "Katherine" the same way.) She put on Admiral this summer. Part of me is glad I didn't know her resume before we met. I'm pretty sure I would have been more intimidated by her had I known she was was the Navy’s first female Civil Engineer Corps flag officer and that she is in charge of NAVFAC Pacific. That's no small feat. But on the other hand, it would be pretty neat to pick the brain of someone who has been so successful in the Navy. Who knows? Maybe we'll pick up our tailoring at the same time.

It's induction season again

2010-08-11T19:21:00.002-07:00

The Navy released the names of the sailors who have been selected to become Chief Petty Officers today. They are now Chief Selects (a.k.a. Selectees) and will go through about six weeks of induction to bring them into the CPO fold. It can be a taxing process for the selectees, but it is an important opportunity to learn some history, build camaraderie, and work on their leadership skills. Or so I'm told. A lot of what goes on with induction is between the existing chiefs and the selectees, and isn't open for public consumption. I do know that there is a lot of studying and memorization that selectees have to do. They run fundraisers like car washes and eateries for the Khaki Ball. There are events like a golf tournament and other outings they have to participate in. They will exercise a lot and have to endure a fair amount of mental stress, but at least they don't beat the selectees like they did 20+ years ago. Apparently the Navy figured out that physical assault doesn't have a role in developing leaders.

I have either been dating or married to Zac for four induction seasons but they've all been different so I'm still learning about what induction season brings. The first season was when Zac was going through his induction (by himself) in El Salvador. The next year we were in the middle of moving to Hawaii while it was happening, and Zac missed out on participating. Last year was the first "normal" induction season I've been around with lots of selectees going through it together at a major Navy installation. This year should be similar to last, with Zac being even more involved this time. Zac especially enjoys the physical training part of induction season, but he's weird that way.

What's different about this year is that Zac and I have a good friend who is a first class (E-6) that didn't make it. (I guess I'll dub him "Max".) It was Max's first year up for chief, and while it's not uncommon to not make it your first time, he's still very disappointed. Max is really the first guy who isn't a chief that I've become good friends with. That's not because I'm some sort of elitist wife who refuses to socialize with junior sailors - it's because the sailors that I've met so far (and befriended) have all been guys that Zac works with at ATG where almost everyone is a chief. And when I do occasionally meet some of Zac's old Port Royal friends (that are still in the Navy) most of them have been in longer than Zac and therefore they, too, all tend to be chiefs.

Despite the fact that Zac and Max have been friends for eight years, their difference in rank has caused a hiccup a couple of times since they've been back on the island together again. They both know that it's just the way things go when a system is structured like the Navy, but that doesn't make it easier. The Navy puts such a point of emphasis on the difference between being an E-6 and a chief that it makes for some tough situations that wouldn't exist in other branches, where the difference between being an E-6 and an E-7 is much less important. I know that Zac and Max will be able to handle this next induction season with understanding of each other's position, but I do expect a little awkwardness along the way. I'm not looking forward to that.

Perhaps I'm just too sensitive about stuff like this. Making chief is a lot like getting promoted anywhere else in life - the powers that be make a decision based on unknown variables and standards and you're left wondering why some people got promoted and why others didn't. It's not like an exam where there's a number you need to achieve to advance, like "You scored 75, which is above the required 72. You're being promoted!" The chiefs that I've talked to say that there are certain things that sailors can do to put themselves in the best position to be promoted, but then I hear about certain people that make it and I'm left wondering how in the world their "resume" looked better than those of some guys who didn't make it. Add in the fact that the Navy also advances people based on quotas, meaning that some years the numbers are just against you, and it can be a frustrating system.

So while I congratulate all of those that made it today, I have a lot of empathy for those that worked hard but didn't see their name on the list.

Busy weekend recap and heading home

2010-07-27T19:32:00.004-07:00

Uff da, what a weekend. This was one of those times I was happy to see Monday roll around, just so we could get back into a normal sleeping/eating cycle. Friday morning/afternoon was the ATG command picnic. Zac was in charge of running some of the competitive events (canoe races, horseshoes, tug-of-war) so he had to be there pretty much all day. (Which also meant that I was there most of the time.) It was a long, hot day, but fun. After the picnic wrapped up we rushed home so we could shower and get ready for another event that evening: the Chief Petty Officer Dining Out.

A Dining Out is a formal dinner that has established rules and traditions. While some regions have well-established, long-standing Dining Outs, Hawaii does not. In fact, this was only the second year that they've held one. As a result, everyone is still feeling their way through the process of making it as successful as possible. Some things that we will need to brush up on for next year's Dining Out: giving toasts and reciting limericks. (It's a dinner for sailors - don't tell me you're surprised that the event involves alcohol and bawdy language.)

On Saturday Zac and I spent the morning doing some chores and then headed out to see a movie. We decided to continue our date-night over on base where we could play some pool. We were expecting a relatively quiet, early night. But then we ran into one of Zac's Navy buddies and, well, that plan went out the window. This guy had just arrived back in Pearl to report to a ship later this week. He and Zac hadn't seen each other in years, so the quiet, early night turned into a energetic, late night of catching up. We finally decided it was time to head home around 2am, which is ungodly late for us. But it was a lot of fun getting to meet his buddy and we had a great time. There was always time for sleeping in on Sunday.

(Which is not entirely true because the dogs have no idea what a "weekend" is and demand to go outside by 6:30am no matter what day it is. Evil pooches.)

Sunday we did sleep in, some, and then did laundry. After lunch we met up with Claudia and her husband to help them get ready for Claudia's husband's advancement party. (Claudia's husband just got promoted to E-8, so they were throwing a party to celebrate.) We helped get the food and the keg over to the boathouse where the party was being held and stayed there all afternoon and into the evening. Yet another day of eating a lot of food, drinking a few drinks, and being out in the hot Hawaiian afternoons. While we love spending time with our friends, Zac and I were both beat by the time we got home Sunday evening. Apparently we need to somehow distribute events over multiple weekends instead of cramming them all into one.

On the topic of my return to Minneapolis: I'll be home for the last part of August and the beginning of September. I don't have a schedule of what all I plan to do, yet, but I do think I'd like to have some sort of grill-out for friends when I get back. Maybe over at the Wabun Picnic area by Minnehaha Falls? Or maybe some place with more shelter . . . still debating. If getting to see my shining face isn't enough of an incentive, maybe I can bribe attendance with burgers, beer and pop. I'm hoping to see as many people as I can while I'm back, so this is one of my attempts to achieve that.

Stay tuned for additional details!

Cheesecake is good

2010-07-21T20:32:00.003-07:00

Ah, cheesecake. How can something that makes my mouth so happy make my thighs so sad? Behold my latest creation:

For the last couple of years I have taken it upon myself to make Zac a cheesecake for his birthday. This year I modeled it after the kind of cheesecake we had at our wedding. It is a chocolate swirl Bailey's Irish Cream cheesecake, with a chocolate ganache topping. And yes, it is as good as it looks. (Much to my utter delight. Pretty and tasty? Success!)

Now that we've had our birthday pieces we come to the difficult part of slicing up the remainder and freezing the slices for later consumption. Hmmm. Maybe "later" could be after the evening news today . . .

So while I think I need to come up with a shorter name for it for the recipe card, for now I shall simply call it DELICIOUS.

Shake, rattle and roll . . . sort of

2010-07-18T21:24:00.004-07:00

I got to experience my first earthquake today. It was so minor that I didn't know I had experienced it until I watched the evening news, three hours later. A small, 3.5 earthquake went off a few miles south of Oahu around 3:30pm. Zac and I were both sitting in the living room; he was talking to his parents on the phone and I was getting some work done on the laptop. Suddenly it felt like (and sounded like) a huge gust of wind slammed into the house. It's not uncommon for us to get big gusts of wind, especially when the trade winds are blowing. When those winds get going you can hear the wind howling through the house, and if a big enough gust comes a long, the house creaks under the pressure. This afternoon's experience was different enough from the usual wind that both Zac and I looked at each other immediately and asked, "What the hell was that?"

But it only lasted a split second. Then it was gone. We figured it had been the wind. After all, there was no shaking, no rattling, no pictures falling from walls, nothing that said "earthquake". I didn't really give it much more thought until we were watching the 6 o'clock news and they reported the news that, indeed, it was an earthquake. It must have been just one brief, small wave of energy that swept through the neighborhood. Earthquakes on the Big Island are fairly common - Kilauea, the active volcano on the Big Island, causes small tremors every now and again. Earthquakes on the other islands are much less common. If I'm going to experience an earthquake I guess a little one is the way to go.

Baby Jasper and strep throat

2010-07-09T22:35:00.007-07:00

First the happy news - I'm an aunt again! Baby Jasper made his entrance into the world on the 7th. Congratulations to Megan, Paul and Lincoln! I was fortunate enough to be with Megan in Minneapolis for her pregnancy with Lincoln. I was there in the hospital, waiting for Lincoln to be born, and I got to see him grow up-close and in person for the first eight months of his life. Then I moved out to Hawaii and now, aside from the few trips home, I've been watching Lincoln grow up via Skype. I thank my lucky stars every day that the technology exists that I can spend face time with Lincoln and my family. It was tough missing out on Megan's second pregnancy and the arrival of Jasper, though. There are times you just want to hug people and, well, technology hasn't evolved that far yet. I had my first Skype session with Jasper, Megan and Paul 24 hours after he was born. How cool is that?

He's adorable, of course. Look at all of that dark hair! Makes me wonder how much he'll look like his fair-haired big brother. I'm really looking forward to getting home and being able to hold Jasper and playing t-ball with Lincoln. Since I don't have a photo of me and Jasper yet, and I'm all excited about my nephews tonight, here's one of my favorite photos of me and Lincoln from December:

On the down side of things, I started getting a sore throat yesterday that continued to get worse as the day/night went. For background here, a few years ago I got strep throat. It was one of those sore throats that I ignored, thinking that it was just a regular sore throat and would go away in a couple days. I woke up in the middle of the third night because of the pain. My throat was so constricted that I had a hard time breathing and swallowing actually made me tear up, it was so painful. I went into the doctor to have it checked. The nurse had me open and say "ahhhhh" to swab my throat and gasped. She said she could hardly get the swab to the back of my throat to take the culture. She said that she hadn't seen a throat like that in a long time, if ever. I was somewhat comforted that I wasn't making up my situation. (This whole time I was spitting into a cup because I couldn't bear to swallow.) Of course, the test came back positive for strep. I was given Tylenol with Codeine and some antibiotics.

After a couple of days I was back to normal, but ever since that incident I have a lingering fear that every sore throat will devolve into something like that strep incident. Like I said, my sore throat started out yesterday and got progressively worse over the next 24 hours. I chided myself for being paranoid, but I called the doctor's office this morning to ask to come in. They didn't have any appointments available but, maybe it was my mentioning that I had had strep before, the nurse managed to squeeze me in for a quick strep test. By the time I got to the clinic for the test my throat was pretty much on fire - it wasn't as bad as my last strep bout. That time I actually felt like I swallowing shards of glass that were shredding my throat. This time it just felt like I was being stabbed in the throat with a millions pins. Believe me, that is actually an improvement over last time.

It took about 15 minutes for the test to come back positive. Honestly, I was surprised that it was strep. I would have bet money that I was overreacting and just had a regular ol' sore throat. Anyhow, I've got my arsenal of Motrin and penicillin to get me through the next few days. So on the downside, while technology couldn't let me hold Baby Jasper, on the upside it also couldn't expose him to my strep when I got to see him yesterday. Here's one more photos, just because he's so sweet:

I need something to do, but I'm not sure what

2010-07-05T23:06:00.003-07:00

I'm bored. I think I need to meet some new people. At the very least I need to get out the house.

I spent a good chunk of time searching online last night for something to do. I first thought to look up some community ed classes. (I guess they call it adult education out here.) I think back to the very cool community ed class that Megan and I took a couple of years ago where we learned to make krumkake, a type of cookie, and some strange Norweigan cheese (its name escapes me at the moment). The cheese involved heating milk to separate the whey from the curds and mixing it with something else and, well, it was a strange concoction. But it was fun to make. I love community ed classes. If you haven't taken one in awhile you really should take advantage of them. I figured there would be something out here that would pique my interest. I checked out the class listings for the two closest locations, but didn't see anything exciting or motivating. I was kind of hoping that there might be a writing course, or a Thai cooking course, or some sort of beginning art class, but there wasn't.

I also spent some time looking at the community college catalog from up the street. Again, not much caught my eye. I'm not looking for another degree, just a class or two to keep the neurons firing. I could go big-time and head over to University of Hawaii and get another degree, maybe a MLIS (Master of Library & Information Science), but right now I feel like that would be getting another degree just for the sake of getting another degree. Of course tuition is always a concern. Heaven knows I have plenty of student loans remaining from my law degree. I'm just not interested in taking on another 2-3 years of school with no real reason to.

As far as employment goes as potential activity, I've applied for a few full-time jobs over the last few weeks, but no news yet. I suppose I could see if there is some part-time work out there. Maybe I should just wait til summer break is over (so the teenagers are back in school) and go see if there's anything that strikes my fancy at the mall. Borders never seems to be hiring, but that would be great. I still find organizing tables relaxing when I'm in there, even as a customer. They really should thank me for straightening up a few shelves in their cooking section the other day. Yes, I suffer a mild case of OCD when I'm in a bookstore. Anyone who has spent time working in one knows what I'm talking about.

This is quickly devolving into and entry of nothing but whining, so I should probably just stop while I'm I'm ahead. I'll figure it all out. Maybe I'll just spend a whole lot of time crocheting for the next year and a half.

Happy Independence Day!

2010-07-05T01:28:00.002-07:00

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! I feel like I spent most of my Saturday and Sunday in the kitchen. In no particular order over the course of 48 hours I made banana bread, lemon bars, potato salad, baked beans, black bean corn salsa, lasagna and garlic bread. I think I might need to fast for a couple of days to get back to feeling normal.

Zac spent the morning of the 4th golfing over at Kaneohe on the Marine Corps base with a couple of his friends. I took the opportunity to read for awhile and then do some of the aforementioned cooking. We spent the rest of the day eating and suffering through food comas. One of Zac's friends is on a ship that is in town for RIMPAC. Zac came up with the cool idea of going over to his friend's ship to watch the Pearl Harbor fireworks. I love fireworks, and I think the ships are cool, so I was pretty excited to go.

Back in day, when Paul was on the Port Royal, my sister and I came out to Hawaii to visit him. I remember that he took us on a tour of the ship, but I honestly don't remember much about it. It was big and confusing. Truthfully, I didn't have the interest in navy ships back then that I do now. I have a much better frame of reference to understand what things are on a ship now. My knowledge is still limited, though.

Zac's friend is on a frigate. The Port Royal is a cruiser. A cruiser is much bigger than a frigate. Zac's friend also said (half-jokingly) that a cruiser is modern and a frigate is straight out of the early 1980s. It was good that the Port Royal happened to be "parked" right next to Zac's friend's ship. It made the difference in size really stand out. That's not to say a frigate is small - it is still a pretty big boat in my estimation.

We sat out on the forecastle (a.k.a. fo'c'sle) on the ship and watched a pretty awesome fireworks display. The coolest feat of pyrotechnic engineering? Fireworks that spelled out U, S, and then A. They did that a couple of times. It was impressive. I don't know how they can get the pattern to make the shape of a letter A. I also don't know how they get those smiley face fireworks to explode correctly. Boggles the mind. But it's not for me to understand, just to enjoy.

It looks like I might be able to go back to his friend's ship tomorrow for a daytime tour, which would rock. I did get to briefly see the inside of the ship tonight, but I think it would be cool to be able to ask more questions. (I was like a little kid today - "What's this?" "What does this do?" "How does this work?" "Why do . . .?") I can't fathom the idea of spending months at a time on a ship. I asked his friend (who also used to be on the Port Royal) if the frigate got tossed around a lot more than the cruiser in rough seas. He answered with an emphatic, "yes". I got a little queasy just thinking about it. I was definitely not cut out to be a sailor.

I hope you all had a great 4th of July. I hope you spent at least some of it with family or friends, enjoying the American life that we all are lucky enough to have. Our country isn't perfect, but it's a pretty darn good place to be. Sitting on a US Navy Ship in Pearl Harbor tonight was the perfect reminder of that.

RIMPAC, HGE, IVs, PCV and whatever else in all caps I can come up with

2010-06-28T14:18:00.007-07:00

It's RIMPAC 2010! Are you read for an influx of ships and sailors? Pearl Harbor is. Possibly to the tune of an extra $40 million+ pumped into the local economy.

I had never heard of RIMPAC until a couple of weeks ago. Then I started seeing international flags going up all over the Navy Exchange and figured something was afoot. In short, RIMPAC is a joint military exercise that the US Navy conducts every two years with an assortment friendly foreign nations. It has made for a very crowded, very busy Pearl Harbor. They seem to be mooring warships wherever they can find room. When I first moved to Hawaii, and was driving around Pearl Harbor for the first few times, I was surprised at how quiet, how empty the place felt, especially after working hours. Granted, sailors with families live off base, so many sailors leave at the end of the day, but there are probably thousands of single sailors living in the barracks at Pearl. It struck me as odd that being on base after hours was like being in a ghost town. No one walking around, the bars on base relatively empty, most sports facilities idle except for the gym. Even Zac noted that the place seemed a lot more abandoned than when he was here in the early 2000s.

The arrival of 34 ships, 5 subs, 150 aircraft and 20,000+ sailors from 14 different countries has certainly changed the vibe around the place. I was over there on Thursday evening and Pearl Harbor was buzzing with activity. Sailors getting on shuttle buses to the Navy Exchange, maybe down to Waikiki, sports teams playing against one another (they have tournaments set up for five or six different sports), sailors actually lined up at payphones(!), and guys just walking around - destination and purpose unknown. It was kind of fun for me to see the place so full. I also thought it was really neat seeing all the different ships from all over the world. Who knew that the Canadian ships were a different color? (They're more of a green-blue than our gray-blue.)

The arrival of the RIMPAC ships also has meant the arrival of people that Zac hasn't seen in awhile. We were able to hang out with one of his friends from Zac's days on the Port Royal this weekend. I enjoy meeting people who have known Zac at different times in his Navy career. The stories are terrific. It sounds like the ships will be in port for a little longer then they'll get underway for a few weeks, head back in to port for a few days and then everyone goes home. Hopefully this means Zac will be able to have some more opportunities to hang out with his friends.

The other excitement around our house involves Toivo. [warning: this might be a little gross.] On Thursday last week Toivo started having the runs. That's not entirely unusual. Every now and again he'll eat too much grass or something and he has issues for a day. But this time around it lasted all day Thursday and Friday. I didn't think a lot of it since, other than the diarrhea, he seemed fine. On Saturday afternoon Zac noticed that Toivo was passing straight blood. That scared the hell out of me so I whisked Toivo over to our vet.

We couldn't get an appointment, but the clinic (which is also a 24-hour emergency vet hospital) does accept walk-ins. When we arrived a tech did a quick check to make sure that Toivo was stable. We ended up waiting for an hour and half to be seen. (I would have waited however it long it took.) The vet was concerned, but seemed to immediately know what was wrong with Toivo. He took a blood sample and ran a PCV test, which measures how much of the blood's volume is red blood cells. Toivo's was really high (64). Essentially that means that his blood was a lot thicker than it should be. Left untreated, the thickening of the blood can cause major complications.

The high PCV result confirmed the vet's suspicion that Toivo had Hemorrhagic Gastroenteritis (HGE). The vet recommended an IV of fluids to get Toivo's blood back in balance and starting him on antibiotics. This meant a night at the hospital for Toivo. I'll admit, I teared up when they took him in back. Even though you know that you're doing the right thing, it still makes you sad to see your dog being taken away by techs to be kept in a strange and scary place for the night. The vet told me that most dogs respond to treatment within 24 hours and sure enough, he was right. I got a call Sunday morning saying that Toivo had a good night and that if his next PCV test came back normal, he could go home. Finally around 8 o'clock I got to bring him home. We were both relieved to be walking out of there.

So now that he's home, and feeling better, I can breathe a little easier. Toivo is still a little tired, but he's not suffering. He gets to eat specially formulated wet dog food that is easy on the digestive tract. (We never give the dogs wet food.) This drives Zoe nuts, which I'm pretty sure pleases Toivo to no end. (Don't tell Toivo, but I did slip Zoe a spoonful of the food when he wasn't looking, just to be sort-of fair.) And, of course, he's getting lots of love.

But I can't help but laugh at his leg. They had to shave part of it for the IV. Since Toivo is so fluffy, this has resulted in a spot on his leg that looked naked and alien. I tried to take some photos that accurately reflect the hilarity of it, but I'm not sure they do the trick.
This just confirms to me that I can never shave my dogs because they would look terrible. I bet they're only half their size under all that fur. But the inch and a half that Toivo has exposed is gut-busting funny. (Only because he's okay, though.)

Who doesn't love a solstice?

2010-06-20T16:28:00.003-07:00

Happy summer solstice to everyone. Enjoy all that sunshine, especially you folks way up north who get to enjoy a hint of light until almost 10. We're so far south here in Hawaii that the longest that the light is pretty much gone at 8:00. I do miss those long, Minnesota summer days.

I don't have much new to write about. My weekend was pretty good. Zac and I spent a lot of time hanging out. We even checked out a nightclub last night, since I was itching to go dancing. Turns out the place isn't as much a dance club as a lounge, but we still had a good time. It felt good to get dressed up and break out of the shorts-and-tank-top routine.

As many of you know, Zac and I have been trying to get pregnant for awhile with no success. It's something that I've stayed away from on this blog because, really, it's no one's business but ours. But I know many people are curious and, frankly, it's been one of the major topics on my mind and it's been tough not being able to talk about it. So I'm breaking the silence here and catching you all up on where I'm at.

Zac and I have been trying for almost a year. That's pretty normal I hear. But I'm also just about 33 and while I know I'm not too old, I also know that time is not on my side. I decided I need to know if there's something amiss, or if our timing is just bad. I spoke to my doctor about a month ago and she referred me to a fertility doctor. I had a bunch of blood drawn last week (test results pending) and an HSG on Friday. An HSG is not fun. Not at all. After experiencing the procedure I could probably list off 1,500 other things I'd rather do than endure another one. Essentially it's a procedure to see if my, er "plumbing" is free flowing. It involves iodine, the radiology department and some serious discomfort. But the results of the test were positive: my tubes are nice and open and a blockage is not the reason for my lack of pregnancy.

I'll go in for more blood work in a couple of weeks and Zac will have to go in to have his numbers counted. (I'm going to try and leave Zac out of this conversation as much as possible, since I'd like to protect him as much as possible.) We won't know if there's anything "off" until we get him checked. I'm still convinced that our timing is just wrong and we've just been unlucky up to this point. But it is frustrating. I have friends and family that are in various stages of parenting and pregnancy and while I am deliriously happy for them, it's hard not to feel frustrated about the whole thing. I hear about people getting pregnant unintentionally or at a young age and I think, I did it right, right? I waited until I was married and in a good place emotionally and economically in my life - why is this taking so long? There are moments I feel incredibly selfish and angry, and then there are moments where my patience kicks in and I'm fine with waiting until Fate decides it's time. But it can be an exhausting roller coaster ride.

Adding to the emotion is that there are moments where I want nothing more than to be a mom, which are then occasionally followed by moments where I absolutely relish not having children. It's a give and take that I intellectually understand - you give up some perks as a childless couple for other perks as parents. I say "intellectually" since I can't understand what it's like to be a parent yet. I know full-well the perks of being childless. Going on vacation whenever, going out to dinner without interruption, the lack of child-rearing-expenses, etc. You life gets to be all about you and your spouse when there are no kids. And doesn't that sound pretty gosh darn appealing?

But then the other day I was in line at the check out at the grocery store and there was an 18 month old little girl in the cart in front of me and I couldn't help but make silly faces at her, trying to make her smile. And then she smiled at me and we played peek-a-boo for a few minutes. And that's when it washes over me - I'd be good at mothering. I believe that. And I would like the chance to try. I swallowed the lump in my throat as she and her mom paid for their groceries and headed to their car.

If kids aren't in our cards, for whatever reason, I'll be able to make peace with that. I've got plenty of love to give my nieces and nephews and friends' kids. I just want to know if it's a physical issue or just Fate messing with me. Since it's the summer solstice tomorrow, perhaps I need to sacrifice a small woodland-creature to some fertility goddess like Haumea. I suppose it couldn't hurt. Or maybe I'll just leave Her a chocolate chip cookie. I never was one for harming cute, furry animals, even if it potentially tilts the scales in my favor.

Memorial Day, work and travel plans

2010-06-02T20:12:00.006-07:00

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend last weekend. We spent almost the whole weekend socializing with friends. It's fun to spend time with everyone, but at some point you feel like you've been eating and drinking for too long. It also didn't help that one of our friends made a key lime cheesecake as a dessert for their bbq. A key lime cheesecake. It was sooooooo good. It took a fair amount of restraint to keep from having a second piece. Like I needed cheesecake in the middle of this weekend! It was good to get back to normal life (and normal eating habits) when Tuesday rolled around.

After a three week hiatus, I'm back to working on my legal editing work. It's always nice to have some time off, but after a while the bank account starts to dwindle and the panic starts to set in. The impression I got from my supervisor is that this is the last project for me - really and truly the last. I've had a stay of execution for the last 12 months as he's always been able to find more work for me to do. He warned me this last time that there isn't anything else available after this current assignment. I spent some time the other day updating my resume and searching online for jobs. I even applied for one - another job submission off into the mysterious hiring world hidden by the internet. I got the confirmation e-mail that they received my submission, but I won't be holding my breath to hear from them.

My contractor status been the best possible work situation for me out here in Hawaii. If I was working a full-time office job I wouldn't be able to do nearly the amount of traveling and spending time with Zac as I do. I've heard from other Navy wives that sometimes it's better to cut back on work when they're home (shore duty) and ramp up to full-time when they're gone (sea duty). Especially as the ships have leaner and leaner manning, the guys are working longer and longer days, even when they're in port. And then they leave for months on end - why not work then? (I suppose having kids changes that equation - once the guys are underway, why pay for childcare so you can go to work to pay for said childcare? I'll debate that issue when it comes up.)

Anyhow, I'm happy to be back working, even if it is only for a few more weeks. It's money in the bank and good for my sense of self worth. Once the project is all done I suppose I could work on that children's book that everyone keeps harping on me about - it's a lot harder than you think people! Blogging does not make me good at creative writing. I've got friends that went to school for writing - and they have spent years working on their craft. I have not. I've got writer's block and I haven't even started. (And beside not knowing what to write I have other issues like, how the heck can you write a picture book when you have no pictures? 15-30 words on a plain white page doesn't make for engaged readers.) It's all rather formidable and daunting and it's like standing at the base looking up at Mount Everest.

[exhale]

Wow. Got a little sidetracked there.

Going back to the flexibility that being less-than-full-employed offers, Zac and I are in the process of trying to figure out a trip back to the mainland this fall. We'll probably spend a good chunk of time in Nebraska together, then he'll head back to Hawaii, with me continuing on to Minnesota for a while. Zac is due a long trip home to the farm - he hasn't been back since we came out here. I'd like to get him up to MN, but that just isn't going to be in the cards for 2010. I'm planning on being out in MN after Megan has her second child (in July) and my cousin has her first (in August), so I'm shooting for something in September. I should start looking for Minnesota Twins tickets and Gopher football tickets now. The thought of catching a baseball game and a football game in our new stadiums sounds delightful. Living in Hawaii is kind of like living in a live-sporting-event-abyss. Yes, I can go to Warrior football games but going to a UH football game at Aloha Stadium is like going to a Gopher game at the Metrodome. (You MN people know what I mean.)

I'll have more concrete dates as September approaches. Just keep me in mind, and hopefully I'll be able to be see everyone this time around. I missed seeing my friends last time. Hopefully I'll be able to spend some time reconnecting this time around.

Ready to relax for a few hours

2010-05-24T20:23:00.002-07:00

It's been a crazy last five days or so. I'm emotionally and physically spent at the moment. I plan on doing a whole lot of nothing tonight and, hopefully, tomorrow.

It all started on Thursday of last week. I was having one of those days. 99% of the time I love living in Hawaii and the isolation of being on an island in the middle of the Pacific (and additionally working from home) doesn't bother me. But for some reason on Thursday I felt . . . stuck. I wanted to be able to call up one of my non-Navy girlfriends and meet up at a bar, have a few beers, shoot the breeze and chill out. I just wanted to get out of the house. To hang out. To spend some time with friends.

And as quickly as the desire to go hang out with my friends swept over me, so did the recognition that it was impossible. The friends that I wanted to hang with aren't here. I love Zac. I love spending time with Zac. But that's the thing - I spend almost all of my time with Zac. We both know that we occasionally drive each other nuts because we spend so much time together. Even when we socialize with other people, we're still together. It's either me hanging out with Zac and his single friends, or it's Zac and I hanging out with another Navy couple. Especially since Bernadette left, I don't have anyone that I regularly see without Zac being there too.

This is the long way of saying that on Thursday of last week I wanted to ditch my husband and go hang out with my not-affiliated-with-the-Navy-in-any-way friends. And when I realized that I had no where to go and no one to go with, I got really crabby. So Thursday wasn't a great day.

Thursday was also the day that I started dog-sitting for a friend. (A Navy wife and Bernadette's heir apparent. Since Bernadette's name was changed to protect her, I shall refer to this friend as "Claudia".) Claudia's father had passed away and she and her family were going to the mainland for the funeral. I offered to watch her two dogs for the long weekend. I have interacted with her dogs many times, and I didn't think there would be any problems having them stay at our house with Toivo and Zoe. Alas, I was wrong. The short version is that after cleaning up the "territory marking competition" between her dogs and mine [multiple times], and not getting any sleep on Thursday night, I ended up taking the dogs back to her house and spending the rest of the weekend dog-sitting from there. (Claudia gets back tonight.)

On top of dog-sitting this weekend, Zac's cousin, Cressy, came out to visit. She came in on Friday and left for a neighboring island today. We spent Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday showing her around Oahu, all while making regular stops at our house to let out Zoe and Toivo and Claudia's house to let out her two dogs. All the driving, plus the exertion of hiking and swimming and hosting wore all three of us out. Zac and I had a long conversation yesterday afternoon about how worn out we were and how we were starting to get on one another's nerves. We had a great time with Cressy and we'll get to see her again next weekend when she comes back to Oahu. Hopefully Zac and I will be a little less stressed when we see her.

I think it was just too much at the same time - hosting and dog sitting. But you don't always get to plan life. Sometimes things happen all at once and you just have to roll with the punches. All I know is that I'm glad it's Monday evening and the only thing that's in my immediate future is "Wheel of Fortune".

The simple joy of being able to stand up from the couch

2010-05-13T22:56:00.002-07:00

About three weeks ago I tweaked my back at kickboxing. I didn't think much of it when I woke up sore the day after the class. I routinely feel a little stiff the following day. But that day I was particularly sore and the soreness continued for a couple of weeks. At one point the pain was so intense that I couldn't do much more than lay on the couch. Simple things like putting on jeans, feeding the dog and going up stairs were pretty much unbearable. (Upside - I couldn't unload the dishwasher for a few weeks and had to leave that task to my dear husband.)

After a couple of weeks I realized that my back wasn't getting much better so I finally broke down and scheduled a doctor's appointment. My rationale for not getting an appointment earlier was this: "They'll tell me it's a pulled muscle, to take some ibuprofen, and put some heat on it." So I went to the doctor and she told me, "It's a pulled muscle. Take some ibuprofen and put some heat on it." Shocking, eh? The doctor did have me perform a few leg raises to pinpoint the source of the pain to make sure it wasn't a pinched nerve or anything. She gave me a prescription for some ibuprofen and also took the opportunity to teach me what class of pharmaceuticals are okay to take during pregnancy. (No, I'm not pregnant. But in case it ever happens I'd like to know what I can and can't take.)

The doctor also prescribed me some muscle relaxant that I was supposed to take at night. I didn't take it the first few nights I had it. Truthfully, I was a bit anxious about taking it. I don't like the idea of a drug that is supposed to render you unconscious. (Well, more like sleepy, but you know what I mean.) I am wary of taking a Tylenol PM so the idea of an honest-to-god muscle relaxant worried me. I didn't want to feel groggy or loopy or . . . off. It's just not my thing. Maybe some folks like to take a muscle relaxant, chase it with a glass of wine and pass out but not me.

Finally on day three of having the pills on the nightstand (and after some scolding from my mother who instructed my husband to firmly remind me that "Your mother told you to take them") I broke down and took a half a tablet before bed. The dosage on the label read 1/2 to 1 tablet per dose and I decided starting with the lower dose was best. I took it and then laid there in bed, waiting for the room to spin or strange psychedelic dreams to start. Color me surprised when I woke up in the morning with no ill effects from the drug. I've continued on the ibuprofen and 1/2 tablet of muscle relaxant for the last four days and, wouldn't you know, today I was actually able to bend over to pull up my pants when I was getting dressed. Progress!

On the Zoe front - she's slowly worming her way into our hearts but there have been a few hiccups along the way. For one thing - she doesn't know any commands. So whereas Toivo will sit, stay, come and lay down as we instruct him to, Zoe looks at us with this glazed look. It's going to take some work with her too - she's easily distracted by everything. Getting her to focus on anything for more than a nanosecond is a chore. I think even Toivo occasionally rolls his eyes at her.

Zoe is crate trained, so she's used to being in her crate at night and while people are gone from the house. We wanted her to be roaming the house free at all times, like Toivo. She's been great so far - only one accident on the first day. She doesn't seem to want to sleep upstairs in the bedroom on the floor with Toivo at night. Maybe she will eventually. She's really friendly and sweet tempered. Unlike Toivo, who is content to be on his own 23.75 hours a day, Zoe gets antsy without attention. During the day every hour or two she comes up to you demanding to be pet for a few minutes. She isn't as vocal as Toivo, but she's starting to make more noise. She was absolutely silent the first 24-48 hours. She also is one of those dogs that eats her food lightning fast and will eat any other dog food left out and unattended. This poses a problem as Toivo is a grazer. We'll fill his bowl in the morning and he'll snack on it throughout the day. We're going to have to figure out a way to keep Zoe from devouring Toivo's food as well, otherwise she's going to end up as one rolly-polly pooch.

I took her and Toivo to the dog park yesterday for the first time and she played well with the other dogs. Well, for the time she actually spent interacting. Like Toivo, she spent much of the time at the park on her own - smelling all the interesting smells and investigating the entire park. It must be a Finnish Spitz thing. Too cool for school or something. At least she followed Toivo to the gate when I called to Toivo that it was time to go. I had been worried that I was going to have to chase her around the park, trying to snag her, but apparently she realized that Toivo is part of her pack and should follow him.

Overall, I'm glad we got her. Even though it is going to take some serious patience to get her into our routine, she has certainly made things more lively around here and she really is a sweetheart. Hopefully now that I can bend at the waist again(!) I'll be able to work with her and she'll become a little more obedient. Until then, Toivo, Zac and I will just have to sigh and roll our eyes a lot at her.

Sesame Street: Lena Teaches Grover To Say "How Do You Do?"

2010-05-10T01:47:00.002-07:00

I loved Lena Horne on Sesame Street. I was sad to hear of her passing.

I just thought I'd share some of her goodness.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present . . .

2010-05-07T19:23:00.006-07:00

Zoe!

With her new family! (Zoe is the one with two good eyes, on the left.)

Zac, with Zoe and Toivo.

Yahoo!

Ombudsman, unemployment and Zoe

2010-05-03T12:34:00.003-07:00

Unless you all want to read about grocery shopping or rearranging furniture, I don't have much to write about . . .

I'm taking an ombudsman training class starting tonight and continuing for the next four nights. For those that aren't familiar with the ombudsman role in Navy life, they are usually a spouse of a sailor at a particular command. The ombudsman's job is to be a communication point between the command and the families. From what I hear the position is more involved when you're the ombudsman for a ship or on sea duty. When you're at a shore duty command it's pretty easy for the sailor to get information to the sailor's family - after all, they're usually home for supper. When the sailor is deployed ombudsmen can supply information about benefits, resources and other topics for people. Even if the ombudsmen don't know the information first hand, they have the training to know where to find out the answers. That's what I'm interested in - the information. I'm okay sacrificing a few nights to obtain it.

I'm sort of unemployed at the moment. I wrapped up my part of the project last week. At that time I reached a point where in order for me to continue to work on the project I would have to be granted access to some of the company's secure programs. My supervisor is in the process of seeing if I can be granted access to those programs. It might work, it might not. I'm waiting to hear how it turns out. I'm hoping that I will be granted access, but I wouldn't be surprised if it took a while. Things don't always move swiftly when it comes to big companies. If I don't get access, then I guess I'm really unemployed and will have to do some job hunting again. For joy.

I realized last night that as long as Zac and I have been together (literally together, as in our time in Oklahoma or here in Hawaii) Zac has never seen me work outside of the home. (Again, literally outside. I've been working from my couch.) It seems strange to me that he's never seen me get up in the morning, get ready for work, leave for 8.5 hours, and come home again, tired from a 40 hour work week, because that's who I consider myself to be - a full-time, office worker. These last 18 months in Hawaii (and four months in Oklahoma) are the anomaly, not the norm. I do think he will be in for a bit of a shock if/when I do get a full-time job outside the home and suddenly I only have two weeks of vacation to take a year. All that flexibility that he and I both enjoy will be out the window.

Lastly, it looks like Zoe will be arriving on Friday. I'm hoping that everything goes smoothly and we'll be able to pick her up directly after her arrival. Then I'm hoping that she gets along with Toivo. Lots and lots of hoping.

Fingers crossed

2010-04-21T18:46:00.002-07:00

It looks like we might be able to get Zoe the first week in May, via Portland instead of Seattle. I'm not going to jinx it by talking about it anymore.

Trying to be patient and failing miserably

2010-04-20T18:37:00.004-07:00

My frustration level is high right now. Seriously high.

Here's a quick recap:

I re-homed of my two cats, Nala and Alan, when Toivo and I moved out to Hawaii with Zac. This has left Toivo without playmates and bored. Zac and I spent numerous weekends at the Humane Society trying to find a second dog for our house and never found one that fit. We finally decided to see if we could find another Finnish Spitz somewhere on the mainland and bring the dog out to Hawaii.

As luck would have it, I got in contact with a breeder in Oregon that had a seven-year-old girl named Zoe that she was trying to place. Perfect! We would be getting a dog almost the same age as Toivo so we wouldn't have to deal with all the puppy-related issues. Due to the holidays, and the fact that the breeder lives in a fairly remote part of Oregon, it took quite awhile to get the quarantine requirements started. We knew it was going to take about 120 days of "stuff" on the mainland, i.e. shots and waiting, before Zoe could come out to Oahu.

After coordinating with someone to drive Zoe from Oregon up to Seattle where she could fly non-stop to Honolulu, we reserved a spot on a Hawaiian Air flight on April 28th. That's next Wednesday. I was told that the paperwork and everything else was in order. This is key, because if the paperwork is done right Zoe could be released immediately from the airport without spending anytime in quarantine upon her arrival. We were able to do this with Toivo, but at that time I was in charge of making sure all the "t"s were crossed and all the "i"s dotted. This time around I was relying on other people.

This brings us up to today. This afternoon I got an e-mail saying that there was a bit of a mixup on the paperwork. The Oregon folks did not realize that the paperwork had to be mailed so that it arrived no less than 10 days before Zoe did. The paperwork is still in Oregon - Zoe is supposed to be here in seven days. So direct release is out of the question now. It looks like if they send Zoe with the paperwork she might be in quarantine for five days. I hope. That's what I understand from the website. I put in a call to the Department of Agriculture to clarify that.

What irks me more than anything is that if they can't get all the paperwork together to send with Zoe on the 28th, the woman who is driving her is unavailable to drive her to Seattle again until the beginning of June. Yes. June. Another five weeks. At this point a small part of me is thinking, "To #@*!% with it. I've waiting four months, what's another five weeks?" But the other part of me is just livid.

I knew when I decided to get a dog from the mainland that there would be certain costs and waits involved. I was willing to absorb those costs and waits because I think Finnish Spitzes are terrific dogs and I really wanted to add another one to our home. But I am starting to get really close to the end of my patience. And it's even more aggravating because it's all out of my hands. I am totally dependent on these other people to get Zoe to Hawaii.

[deep breath]

Alright. I'm calming down. I am sure these people are doing their best to get Zoe to me. They probably have other stuff going on in their lives and couldn't devote most of their time and energy to the quarantine requirements, like I had to, to make sure everything was done correctly. Heck, the courier is willing to take two days to drive Zoe up to Seattle's airport.

Ok - moment of clarity. I think I might have come up with a solution. I need to go e-mail the driver. We'll have to see if this works. . .

Feeding my ego

2010-04-17T12:05:00.004-07:00

I love to go dancing but I rarely do. I'm reluctant to go out to clubs because while I love dancing, I usually don't like all the crud that goes with a night of going out. I'm never hip enough to know which clubs to go to and even if a friend suggests one I'm always stressed out about what I should wear. When I was younger and single I didn't want to deal with creepy guys that were looking for someone to spend the night with. Now that I'm married and in my 30s I'm worried that I'm going to be surrounded by a bunch of single-20-somethings that are more worried about drinking in excess and finding someone to hook up with. I don't want to go to their mating meat-market. I just want to dance. Me and my friends. If you're some guy and you're being really aggressive wanting to dance with us, please go away. We're just here trying to have a good time. Go work your "charm" on some other gal.

But last night was fun. Lots of fun. As I mentioned in another post, Bernadette is leaving next week. She decided that a group of us gals needed to go out dancing before she left. A couple of B's friends recommended a club in the Ala Moana Outrigger hotel, Rumors. There was a group of about six of us girls, mainly in our mid to late 30s. When we got to the club around 9:30 (which is obscenely early) the place was pretty busy, but it was most filled with folks in their 40s, 50s and 60s shaking a tail feather to some great 80s tracks plus the occasional dance-along song like the "Electric Slide". We were on the younger end of the spectrum at that point. But it was enjoyable if only for people watching. I got the sense that most of the patrons were tourists staying at the hotel. They just didn't feel local.

It wasn't too long after we got there that the DJ started shifting his play list to more Top 40/hip-hop songs. That's when we decided to hit the floor. I didn't really notice at first, but after a while the demographic changed substantially in the club. It went from a lot of older white folks to a lot of younger non-white folks. Black, Filipino, Hawaiian, Samoan, Japanese. Now this is more like Hawaii. The place also started to fill up quite a bit, so much so that I was glad that we got there as early as we did so we were able to get a place to sit for our occasional respites from dancing. Everyone in the club seemed to be in a great mood - no undercurrent of aggression. (I've been in clubs where the battle over the attention of women leads to a weird vibe of tension that flows through the crowd. Not last night though.)

Of course there were sailors. Apparently some event for submariners was happening last night. As our group was dancing I noticed the dress whites of junior enlisted guys scoping out the floor. Third and Second class Petty Officers. (E-4s and E-5s). Early to mid 20s. I thought to myself, "They are decidedly not going to have any issues meeting someone tonight." Imagine my utter shock when they decided to come and dance with us! If that's not an ego boost to a gal in her 30s, I don't know what is. Bernadette and her friends are all tall, blond and beautiful though, so I wasn't surprised that they got the guys' attention. I was surprised, however, that these young men like short redheads too. Go figure. The guys were sweet and very polite, exactly the correct way to approach someone to dance with them.

We spent the rest of the night dancing in our group and occasionally dancing with them. I'm guessing they knew we were unavailable, seeing as none of us girls were mauling them in their dress uniforms, but they didn't know that most of us were married to the military - some of us to senior enlisted Navy. It was nice to use my Navy knowledge to read the ribbons they had on and their rate and rank. I just had to shake my head at how old I felt compared to them, though. At one point Michael Jackson's "PYT" came on and one of the sailors started singing along to it. I laughed at him and told him that he wasn't old enough to know that song. Then I realized that I wasn't joking. This kid was most certainly born a few years after the "Thriller" album came out. I think I was seven at the time. I just laughed.

Probably the best ego inflater of the night was only indirectly tied to our sailor dancing buddies. At one point us girls took a breather at our table and one of Bernadette's friends, a tall attractive blond (a girl who I would imagine would never have any issue getting a guy's attention) took a sip of water and then paused. "Do you realize how young those guys are?" she asked. I smirked and nodded. "I mean, they're early-mid 20s." I nodded again. "And they're dancing with us!" she gleefully concluded. We all broke into huge grins, but I was stunned that I wasn't the only one who was pleasantly surprised that they were dancing with us.

I guess all girls like a nice ego boost every once and awhile.