Slabs, Christmas shopping and units of measurement

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:

1. After three Decembers in Hawaii, I am once again in a warm(ish) climate and it's hard to remember that it's winter.
2. My Christmas decorations are all in storage so there is no festivity around the house.
3. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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.