Tag Archives: Military

03/24/12

{365.84} I Want to Fast Forward to Summer, Please

I like how we finally have seating for two on our balcony… on the day David leaves for the next three months! To combat depression after he drove away, I decided to haul my papasan chair out of the spare bedroom where it had been moldering since we got our new couch. It fits nicely out there and while I was situating everything I remembered the old shelving unit we bought for our old apartment. Because we have a lot more storage space here, we didn’t have a use for this anymore and it was sitting inside one of the spare bedroom closets. I don’t have anything to put on the shelves yet, but I plan to fix that soon. Haha. I sat out there for a while, and it was so extremely comfortable that I could’ve taken a nap.

David’s currently staying the night at a hotel in Arizona, with 7 1/2 more hours to go before he makes it to the base in New Mexico where he’ll be staying. (I’m not allowed to divulge the exact location!) He’s not driving alone, one of his co-workers lives on the third floor of our building and they’ve been carpooling to work every day since we moved here so they decided to go to NM together.

I really hate goodbyes, and growing up it was a family tradition not to make them all long and drawn out. My dad served 20 years in the Navy, which meant he was deployed a lot and missed some of my birthdays. When he had to leave, we always said goodbye the night before and let him go without any more fuss the next day. Both parents always emphasized that this wasn’t goodbye, it was a ‘see you later’ and we’d all be together again soon. To this day, I still prefer to say goodbye this way… I just don’t like the torture of waiting and dreading that moment when it’s time to go. I think a huge part of why it was so tough watching David leave for BMT last summer was that his family didn’t feel the same way I did about long, drawn out goodbyes. They wanted to spend as much time with him as possible, down to the very last possible second. They wanted to all come drive him down to MEPS in Dallas, and sit with him in the hotel lobby, and then eat dinner together one last time before he had to go to his room, and it was just… awful. I wanted to cry the entire time, but I couldn’t, because everyone was there and it would’ve just upset them all. His mom was already rather upset and I didn’t want to compound it. And if I got upset, David was going to get upset, because he was the one leaving and it was a huge, scary step into two months of misery. And I understand why his family wanted to be with him down to the last moment, I just didn’t have a very good time through it all. I wanted to just say goodbye and get the worst part over with so the time could keep on running and the day would be over and done. I guess I think of it as, okay, let’s get over this really horrible part and once I’ve survived it, everything else should be easier to handle. I need to get through the goodbye before I can go on with making time go by as quickly as possible.

So, because David knows how I feel about long, drawn out goodbyes, we didn’t do that today. We got up, walked the dog together one more time, I speed-baked a batch of sugar cookies for David to take on the road with him (I’m not kidding, I produced sugar cookies fresh out of the oven in 10 minutes. It was a miracle~) and then we ate lunch together at Sonic for fun. By the way, speaking of Sonic, people in Las Vegas just do not get the point of this place. In Wichita Falls, Sonic is where EVERYONE goes. You park your car, you order your drink that comes in a giant Styrofoam cup with a red straw, and you put a little joy in your life before lunch break ends and you have to go back to the drudgery. Here, the Sonic is always so quiet. Sometimes people use the drive-thru, but it seems like no one quite understands parking your car and having your order brought to you on rollerskates. Come on, guys!!! Okay, done with that tangent now — we ate at Sonic and then around 1:45 I helped David start carrying his stuff to the car. His fellow traveler was supposed to come down at 2pm, so we said goodbye then in the apartment and he went down alone so I could hug the dog and cry in a corner. LOL. Actually I didn’t cry very much, because honestly I’m just glad it’s only three months. We had initially been told 6 months, and at least he isn’t going to a warzone or getting a year-long deployment. It will all be okay.

In the meantime, I will start watching Downton Abbey tomorrow night and I have a new job to go to on Monday. Here’s to the next three months going by as quickly as possible!!!!!!! *fist pump*

Oh, and it’s my sister’s 18th birthday today. She’s waiting on letters from Emory in Georgia and UC Berkeley in San Francisco, which are supposed to come next week, and then we’ll all finally know where she’s going to college. I’m kind of pulling for Berkeley because it’s closer to me, and my parents are going home to the Philippines permanently once she gets her diploma this summer. (She’s actually already finished high school, since January, but can’t walk until May.) The suspense continues!

03/23/12

{365.83} I Watch Movies & Eat Pizza, Etc.

We were busy all day getting David ready for tomorrow’s imminent departure to New Mexico. Another nice day out here today, warm and sunny. We cleaned out both of our cars and David packed bags and such. Then we ordered a $10 dinner box from Pizza Hut (pizza + cheesy bread + Cinnastix = I know I’m going to hell but I’ll be laughing all the way down there) and watched our last episode of Sherlock. Which was awesome. I LOVE SHERLOCK. Where has this series been all my life? Why will it not be airing on BBC America until May?? Seriously a brilliant show and I think everyone should watch it. Also I’ve become enamored of the idea that the actor who plays Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) should be first in line to play The Young Severus Snape if there is EVER anything made along the lines of a prequel. I mean, I know there probably won’t be, but he would be the BEST EVER. It totally suits him. Watch 15 minutes of Sherlock and you will see the light.

My next TV show endeavor: Downton Abbey, which is on Netflix, and which I will be amusing myself with while David is away. I wouldn’t go so far as to inflict Edwardian drama on him. I happen to have a bizarre fascination with the Victorian/Edwardian eras, as well as the Titanic and everything World War II, but this doesn’t mean I would expect others to share my historical obsessions. (Just bumped up to the top of the DVD queue: The Young Victoria starring Emily Blunt. *fangirl squeal* I have sooooo been meaning to watch that one!!!!) And now that everyone is staring at me because I’m super weird, I will slink away so as to avoid being judged.

Oh yeah, since I’m stepping out of character and talking excessively about watching TV (I rarely ever watch TV of my own volition, ask David), let me just say that today’s BIGGEST disappointment was missing Tangled Ever After on the Disney Channel. I had no idea it was playing until I saw a post from Tangled in my Facebook feed saying it would be on, and by then it was already over. SUPER LAME. I play to comb through the TV listings and DVR this if it gets played again. Grrrrr.

We also participated in the Tera Online beta for maybe an hour before becoming frightfully bored with it and reaffirming our belief that Guild Wars 2 will be the MMO to end all MMOs. I’m putting all that stuff under the cut.

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03/17/12

{365.77} I Should Be Pinched

Yeesh, what a gray and cloudy day here in Nevada! I think I saw the sun come out for all of 3 seconds before it disappeared again. A cold front was coming in so it got chilly right around the time David and I left to go searching for an end table to put in our living room, as well as a birthday card and present for his dad. Of course, what did we end up going home with? Treats and a new collar for Bubba. LOL.

By the way, it’s a good thing I have backup pictures to use for my entries that I took ages ago and never did anything with. I totally forgot to take a picture for this blog entry today. (Can you tell? If yes, shut up. If no, forget I said anything.) This may be attributed to how expertly I wasted my Saturday, first by not getting up until 11am, then by lazing around watching a movie David had on the DVR. We did go in and rearrange the spare bedroom so that it looks a little less like a storage unit now. With rain in the forecast, I left the papasan chair indoors, and it’s really the only thing that doesn’t fit well into that room right now. I never figured I’d have surplus furniture, but I do. #firstworldproblems (AGAIN!)

… I just realized that I didn’t wear one speck of green today. So much for commemorating St. Patrick’s day, haha. No one pinched me, and the only vaguely Irish thing I encountered all day was a chance glimpse of that terrible horror movie Leprechaun while David was channel surfing. *shudders*

I’m still in major denial that this is David’s last weekend at home until June. It’s weird to consider how it was so hard to get used to him being gone before — he was away for six months when he went to basic and then tech school — and yet extremely easy to get used to him being home again. Back in November, it felt like it would be ages and ages before the end of March came around and he’d have to leave again. Now, it’s suddenly the end of March and he’s driving to New Mexico one week from now. I’m trying to process the fact that he’s going away, but my brain refuses to kick in. LOL. Ah well, as he frequently reminds me, it’s only for 3 months. That’s a LOT better than 6 months, and nothing compared to a year. I truly admire those military families who get through year-long deployments, especially to war zones; I can’t even imagine having BOTH parents in the military, with both of them swinging deployments back to back. Growing up, the longest my dad was ever away on a tour of duty was six months. My mom didn’t like being here in the US without dad around, because she has never felt comfortable with speaking English all the time and this has always still kind of felt like a foreign country to her. This is how I got dragged back to the Philippines and slapped into Catholic school three times during my life. HAHAHA. I think that if David ever had to deploy for that long, I’d be okay, but it would definitely suck. A LOT. I’m grateful every day that his chance of deploying overseas is pretty low.

WHY DID YOU LET ME TALK ABOUT DAVID LEAVING! I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO THINK ABOUT IT! That’s it, I’m going to bed.

03/16/12

{365.76} I Admit That This Post Is Rather Aimless

Look! My dog sat still for a picture! We were sitting on the balcony together. He likes to go out there and work on his tan.

Today seriously felt kind of like a Saturday, because David got home so early that I wasn’t even out of bed yet when he came in. He was asked to help out with a 5k run instead of his regular work schedule today, so he left an hour earlier but got to go home after just a few hours. Oh, and he brought me a gigantic shirt as a souvenir. It has a somewhat creepy leprechaun on it, LOL. Anyway, since David was home all day, we got a head start on our weekend routine of doing absolutely nothing. For like two hours we were online laughing at random things. It’s his last weekend at home for another three months, since he leaves on Saturday the 24th for New Mexico :(

I’m clearly failing at trying not to think about it!!! Aajhfdajksfhd.

Have I already mentioned that I love our new furniture? Because I do. It’s amazing. We can actually both sit in our living room now without invading anyone’s personal space bubble. David can finally stretch out on the couch! It’s so awesome T-T I’ve come up with a few apartment projects for myself while he’s away, such as organizing our pantry (oh wow, I am soooo exciting) and figuring out a system for keeping the coffee table and bar clutter-free. Or more clutter-free than they currently are. Those places are just a repository of random junk. Excited to hit up the Goodwill Superstore near our house and “rehabilitate” some thrift store finds to serve new purposes. Has anyone else noticed that black furniture is an endangered species?? We have such a hard time finding matching furniture because of this. Our pieces are in black, so we had to paint our brown coffee table (inherited from my parents… another thing that I’ve had in my life since I was a kid lol) and are planning on eventually painting our brown dining table and chairs. Don’t even get me started on how long it took me to find a black TV stand that I actually liked… and could afford… Yeah, this paragraph need to be tagged #firstworldproblems. LOL.

Alright, I didn’t do any writing during the day so I need to knock out a couple hundred words tonight before I go to bed. Happy Friday!

02/26/12

{365.57} I Analyze Ballpoint Pens

Walked out of Target this evening with two bags of popcorn (one for me, one for David… not BOTH for me… I am not that depraved yet!), an 8-pack of shiny new colorful pens that was on sale for $3, and a bottle of Tresemme Split Remedy Conditioner to douse my hair with tomorrow. You may have noticed that the pens boast a “Revolutionary New System For Effortless Writing” on the packaging, but really I just bought them because 1) I can’t resist office supplies and 2) It was on sale for $3.

I did take them for a test drive earlier and I have to admit, there are very few ballpoint pens I’ve ever written with that can compete with how smooth these are. Not a hitch or a snag. I guess it’s kind of like if you combined gel pens with regular ballpoint ink, minus the unfortunate tendency of gel pens to smear. I do the majority of my writing on a computer just like most people do, but I keep notebooks full of notes that are handwritten. For some strange reason, I can often work out problems, plot holes, and storyline issues just by writing questions back and forth to myself in a notebook. It doesn’t work half as well on a word processor. I can’t explain, don’t ask! *waves you away* The point is, these are some pretty nice pens. And, a good deal at $3.00 for 8 of them. IN SHINY COLORS. Now my notes will be rendered happy and sparkling~

I’m in shock and disbelief that February is over this week! Yes, yes, I say this every month, just swap out the month itself and you’ll have a default statement from me to read out to yourself every four weeks. Still, I guess this month is causing more concern for me because David leaves sometime around the third week of March, and it seems like just yesterday I was in San Antonio to attend tech school grad and bring him back home after he’d been gone almost six months. He’s supposed to be back sometime in June, if all goes well and class dates aren’t pushed back. Admittedly, I feel a little leery over being alone in this city when we’ve only lived here since November. (Okay, not really alone, the dog will be here. In the event of intruders, terrorists, and/or zombies, he’ll be valiantly defending me by barking terrier insults at them while simultaneously backing away.)

I didn’t watch the Oscars tonight, since my tried and true awards night procedure is to wait until the show’s over and then go online to look at what everyone decided to wear on the red carpet. No commercials, no awkward moments during acceptance speeches, and I get to skip right over to the topic that interests me the most. Life should always be this way T-T

02/10/12

{365.41} I Believe in the Magic of Pancakes

Oops, guess who got distracted playing FFXIV and forgot to blog on time? Guilty as charged T-T In my defense, I was caught up with learning how to use all the controls and all the other things you adjust to when you start playing a new game. David’s been playing on his own, but convinced me that I needed to try it again. When the game first released, it was really boring and also a hot mess, so I made a character and then promptly moved on to something else. This time I’m going to try and stick it out. They aren’t charging any subscription fees right now since apparently there will be a massive overhaul of the game being released in October. We paid $10 (we had a $10 off coupon from Amazon, hurray) for the game download so I could have a serial number, and I gave it another go. So far, I’m having more fun than the first time.

First (second?) impressions so far: Lots of very pretty scenery, I definitely like that you can level any/all of the classes on the same character and sort of mix and match your abilities, and I like that you can do most of your traveling through teleports. This is because I am extremely lazy in both the real world and the virtual world, and I remain unrepentant about it. (Why run when you can mystically appear there between one loading screen and the next? Exactly. I contend that this isn’t really laziness, it’s being intelligent and evolved.) I’m looking forward to the updates and huge, drastic changes that are in store. I especially loathe their convoluted auction house system. Horrible! Just use a regular AH like everyone else T-T No one will blame you for it, I swear. One can’t be unique about everything just for the sake of being unique.

Anyway, before we decided to just get the game online, we were going to try and find a collector’s edition of it somewhere, so we tried a few different GameStops but of course they weren’t carrying it. We checked online to see which locations even had them, but the list was highly inaccurate, to say the least. LOL. After this fruitless search, we went to go use the IHOP gift card that my mom sent us for our anniversary. Yes, it was delicious. Pancakes are a magical food that can be consumed at any time of the day.

I can’t believe it’s already the 11th of February tomorrow. David leaves next month for New Mexico and won’t be back until summer. I’m really not looking forward to it. I feel like he just barely got home. Ugh. At least he isn’t heading overseas or anything, not that I will be able to visit him very much since it’s too far to drive. I plan to stay as busy as possible so I won’t have time to mope about him being gone. Perhaps by then I will be gainfully employed… lol.

Blah, sorry for this boring entry today, it was one of those I-forgot-all-about-blogging days when I had nothing planned for a blog post.

01/23/12

{Project 365.23} I Marvel That It Actually Rained Here

It rained today (!!!), which is impressive considering that’s probably only the second time we’ve seen rain since we moved out here in November. Another notable thing about today was that David came home from work at 11:00am. He usually doesn’t get back until around 5pm. To be honest, I wasn’t even out of bed yet because I didn’t go to sleep til around 4 in the morning T-T (If you must know, I was writing. I never seem to be as productive during the daylight hours as I am when it’s past my bedtime. ) I guess the lieutenant who was supposed to unlock their area wasn’t going to be coming in until after lunch, which meant that David and the other guys in his squadron didn’t have anywhere to go and basically nothing to do except stand around being bored out of their minds. This often seems to be the case over here, largely because they don’t have any actual duties right now. Their primary assignment doesn’t start until late March, when they’re all supposed to go to New Mexico for more training that lasts around 3 months. David gets really antsy not having any responsibilities or anything to do at work. I told him he’ll probably miss these days when they start putting them on twelve hour shifts… haha.

If you’re wondering how the editing is going, you are not alone. I, too, often wonder how the editing is going. It’s hard to tell if I’m making any progress, some days. There are times when I think about authors who have professional editors and copy-editors and the whole nine yards to get them through writing a book, and I feel so small and insignificant in comparison. I remind myself often that I’m not in this to make money, that I’m in this to share a story with other people. But even so, I have enough pride in me to worry that I’ll just end up putting something out there that isn’t very good. Something that only I would ever really care about. I was thinking about this today when I decided that, you know what, if I’m the only one who cares about it then that’s okay. At least I could say that I accomplished what I set out to do. And for me, that’s a big deal, because I’m horrible about only ever starting stories and never seeming to finish them. This time, I want to have a completed project instead of one that hibernates for years on my computer’s hard drive. So, I’m trying to go at my own pace and figure out what works best for me. I also keep this quote from one of my favorite authors at my desk:

“One of the biggest, and possibly the biggest, obstacle to becoming a writer — I’ve said this from a slightly different angle in another answer — is learning to live with the fact that the wonderful story in your head is infinitely better, truer, more moving, more fascinating, more perceptive, than anything you’re going to manage to get down on paper… So you have to learn to live with the fact that you’re never going to write well enough. Of course that’s what keeps you trying — trying as hard as you can — which is a good thing.”

– Robin McKinley (quoted from her FAQ)

12/27/11

S.A.H.W. Syndrome

It takes a ridiculous amount of paperwork just to be told that my Texas teaching credentials won’t be accepted in Nevada. Don’t accuse me of being negative, because I’m not — I’m trying to accept this. Hahaha.

So, I am currently a Stay At Home Wife. This is a label that I struggle with daily because I never really envisioned myself being in this situation. We’ve been here in Nevada for a little over a month now, and I’ve put in on average about 3 applications a week, with no results so far. Sure, a month is really not a very long time in Job-Hunting Land, but technically I’ve been out of a job since October. It’s a bit painful for me to be here every day, feeling shiftless and guilty about not having anything better to do than read books and eat Instant Ramen. I want to go shopping, but end up talking myself out of it because I feel like this money isn’t mine — it’s my husband’s, because he’s the only one earning anything right now. When I had a paycheck of my own, I guess I felt a little more entitled to purchase something here and there. And then there’s the scary fact that the outside world begins to look more and more daunting to me the longer I’m here, refreshing job search engines and wondering when my transcripts will come in so I can continue the most likely fruitless process of getting my teaching license transferred from Texas to Nevada.

In the beginning, when I first quit my toxic job in Texas to get ready for our first PCS (corporate HR is not a pretty place to be from 8am-5pm daily), the novelty of getting to be at home all day, every day was really nice. Relaxing, refreshing, and a major relief after the stress and drama that was my full time job. But then, the rejuvenating feeling faded into one of decreasing self worth. I coach myself throughout the day, tell myself I haven’t been looking for too long, that the paperwork (miles of it) will eventually go through and maybe then — MAYBE THEN! I can substitute teach.

Call me ungrateful, or a perpetual malcontent, or even a whiner, but this is definitely unfair to me. I’ve talked about it before, but you’ll discover that one of my major issues in life is that because I became a military spouse, I had to trade my chance at a career. This has been affecting me since even before David actually enlisted; straight out of college, I applied for a job that I eventually got, but because I was probably going to move away in a year or so, I wasn’t ever considered for a promotion despite the mind-boggling amount of work I put in every day. I was told repeatedly by my boss that I was her top choice for so and so salaried position, but that unfortunately they weren’t willing to invest in someone they would only lose next year. Embittered by this, I kept working hard nonetheless, not that it got me anywhere. My paycheck remained a pittance and my Bachelor’s degree continued to rot into paper pulp in a file box under my desk. For one thing, this wasn’t even a teaching job, because I had the good fortune to graduate during a major hiring freeze in the education field. So, if you think about it, here I am being passed over for promotions, stuck doing entry level work in a field that I never even trained for. This, I fear, is what I will have to resort to for a good chunk of my life.

What’s more, as I go through all this paperwork just to get my license transferred, I face the reality that even transferring my license could mean nothing at all. The teaching profession is suffering incredibly right now, with more hiring freezes and lay-offs continuing across the country. The local school district is “taking applications” but I have little to no chance, considering elementary teachers are not in demand. I’ve considered taking tests and shelling out more cash to get certified in something like secondary teaching or even middle school, but I’ve so far stayed away from it because I’ve always been more passionate about teaching 3rd through 5th grade. The truth is, I will be here jumping through hoops to get re-certified for Nevada, paying $161 just to apply, more money to get finger printed, more money to probably have to take tests all over again, all for the disappointing outcome of getting to substitute instead of having my own classroom. Sure — something is better than nothing. But what about the career I’ve always wanted? What about the little girl who stood on the stage in Kindergarten and proudly announced that when she grew up, she was going to be a teacher? It seems so drastically unfair that I have to give this up.

A lot of things have been in the works for military spouses like me — partnerships with companies who have agreed “not to discriminate against military spouses” during the hiring process, job search boards aimed at employing us, hiring preference for support jobs on base. But what it all boils down to is that my husband enlisted in the Air Force, and I signed my life away jointly. If I had little chance of getting a teaching job due to the economy and unemployment rates and the current depressing state of education, those chances were completely shot when David swore in last June. Who wants to hire a teacher who will move away in 3-4 years? You’d probably spend up to two of those years having to substitute teach just to prove you’re worthy of their attention. Never mind that you’re an intelligent, dedicated, hard working girl who would give everything just to have her own classroom. Who would gladly do the job for FREE, if someone would give her a chance.

In the end, why isn’t there more support for military spouses? Just because we don’t wear the uniform, doesn’t mean we don’t make sacrifices of our own.

 

photo source
11/29/11

Ye Olde Job Hunte

I was reading an article on some sort of military support website not long ago when I came across this sentence (or thereabouts): “Now that you are married to the military, you have become the trailing spouse.” And as I sat there, taking this in, I felt like I was akin to a sad puppy trailing behind a boy wearing flight goggles and pulling a little red wagon. You are the expendable one! You are just baggage! You must follow this man around, be uprooted every four years, and when you have children you get to uproot them too! Career? Ha! Bachelor’s degree? Irrelevant! And so on, so forth.

Well, typically I’m not depressed about being an Air Force wife. I’m extremely proud of my husband, he has a really cool job which also happens to be extremely important, and he serves our country. What’s more, he puts food on the table and buys me silly things that I don’t really need, i.e. a new camera, and more Christmas decor. No one in the world could accuse me of not fully appreciating everything he does for me and what he will continue to do for our family as the years go on. However, I’m often caught here in this place where I wonder what’s to become of me, really.

I come from a military family, too. But growing up, my mom never worked. Our family of four lived on my dad’s E-6 salary, and while we didn’t have all kinds of fancy things, we lived well. We had good food roughly three times a day. We had two cars and video games and computers. I couldn’t have the $200 prom dress that I coveted beyond reason, but in the end, it was okay. Now, there’s only two of us and we seem to cost more than what my own family ever cost in all the 22 years I lived in my parents’ house. It fairly boggles the mind. There is no question about it: I have to work. I have to find a job, and I need to do it soon, because we need the money to support our way of life. We just had this talk in the car on the way home from dinner tonight. So, now I’m depressed all over again.

It’s not that I don’t like working — I’ve had a job since I was 13, handing out commissary coupons door to door in the humid Florida summers. I started babysitting, technically, when I was only 11. I’ve been working for my money for a long time. I like to stay busy and I like to feel as though I’m a functional adult in society, just like (most) everyone else. Equally important to me is the sense that I have my own money to spend. Therefore, we can conclude that I certainly wouldn’t mind a job. The problem here is that I don’t want just ANY job, because I have a degree in education and I’m certified to teach. Teaching is my passion. And yet, here I am, in a new city and with all these fresh possibilities, searching for Human Resources jobs because I can’t teach in this state. My Texas certification means nothing to Nevada until I pay them loads of money, do miles of paperwork, and jump through hoops. And it’s this way in every single state I could go to. It’s probably going to be this way every single time we move. I may never have my own classroom, I may never feel fulfilled in my career, or even have a real career. If the moving around wasn’t enough, there’s also the fact that teachers are just not in demand right now. Hiring freezes and lay-offs prevented thousands of people like me from working in schools. In the small town where I come from, and in the Texas small-town mentality, they were only really hiring people that they knew already — girls whose mothers and grandmothers had taught for the district, girls whose uncle or aunt or something or other were already employed there. It’s been ridiculous and also extremely painful to face rejection in this way, to be prevented from doing what I love to do by all these outside forces that I have no control over.

And so, the question now is, will this be my life forever? Will I be the one who tags along, who finds any kind of job possible in whatever new place we are living in, because we need my income and there is no choice but second best? I sit here, fretting and worrying over the fact that we’ve been here 2 weeks and I still haven’t found a job, even continuing the job hunt in my DREAMS while dead asleep, and I’m horrified that this is going to happen over and over again. Everyone and their mother told me that teaching was THE thing to do, teachers would ALWAYS be needed, DEFINITELY go with that degree. I spent 4 years of my life in college, went thousands and thousands of dollars into debt for a piece of paper that proves I did, and it all essentially signifies nothing. Useless. I’m by no means the only person on this sinking ship, but that’s hardly comforting. Even less comforting is the thought that millions of people live their entire lives hating their job and yet continue on, every day, because they have to. Is this it, for me? Becoming an expert at searching for dead-end jobs? For menial office work, for everything BUT the field I actually trained for? There are so many obstacles. It’s like fighting a rising tide.

…Anyway, now I have to go back to job hunting so I can find a job to help pay bills and foot the cost of all the re-certification fees required by the Nevada Board of Education, which I will tack on to the 26,000 I spent getting certified the first time.

Bitter much? YES.

11/22/11

Road Warrior-ing

Behold, the view from my car for approximately 16 hours of driving, divided into two days. That’s David, blithely motoring along in his shiny new sports car, while my battle tank SUV and I make silly laborious rumbling noises as we attempt to accelerate uphill. Not shown: the two cracks on my windshield that resulted from having to drive behind trucks that kicked up lethal rocks at light speed. I refuse to show them because I am still upset about it. My car is 11 years old, a 2003 Chevy Tracker, and was my very first car. I went with my dad to pick it out when I was 19 and had only just moved to Wichita Falls, also known as The Prairie, Texas. I have this bizarre love for my car; from the very start, it was absolutely perfect for me. It was me-sized, an SUV, had space for all sorts of crap (like my purse, only with wheels), and wasn’t anything fancy. We were a bit worried about it though, when we found out we’d have to drive both cars to Nevada on this move. Still, despite being disfigured by windshield cracks, it’s still holding steady at 84,884 miles. Is my car made of awesome? YES IT IS MADE OF AWESOME.

Anyway, the most amusing thing about my car and this move in general were the things we had packed into both vehicles. One doesn’t quite grasp the ridiculousness of moving from one state to another until it’s actually happening. And, moving with the military can make it even more needlessly exciting/complicated. We were moving out of an apartment we had lived in for the past almost three years, so all 700-something square feet of it was a MESS. Once it was all clean, the conundrum intensified as we realized we would have to add a vacuum, a metal trashcan containing lotion, soap, and other liquids that the movers weren’t able to take with them, the Swiffer, a broom, a bunch of swords wrapped in a quilt (yes, blame David for that one), the dog, his kennel, his various accoutrements packed into a red bag labeled DISH Network, both of our computers and everything associated with them, the file box containing important documents, another smaller box holding discs for our wedding photos and my jewelry (not losing those!), a plastic bucket crammed with YET MORE cleaning supplies, a cardboard box of food and snacks, 4 duffel bags between each of us for clothes and toiletries and whatnot, a backpack filled with David’s paperwork and the laptop, another backpack containing total randomness, my camera bag, a tote bag with our moving binder (I defy you to rival my level of organization with this one) and both novels I was reading (HAHA), an iron, a gigantic garment bag for David’s uniforms, a bag full of shoes, a machete and a silver cross under my passenger seat (gifts for my parents, NOT a vampire-hunting kit as you might initially surmise… although that idea is much more awesome), and my body pillow because I have issues with sleeping body pillow-less.

No, seriously, we brought all of these things with us. And we still have all of them, minus the dog and his luggage because he went to stay with my parents in San Diego until we get settled. Oh, and the machete + silver cross, because they took those with them too.

We’ve been here in Nevada for almost a week now and I think I’m still caught up in the tangled process of moving. I’m starting to figure out where some things are, but the transitional feeling hasn’t worn off and probably won’t until we’ve got all our furniture to unpack and I no longer have to open the door to wherever I’m sleeping that night with a key card. My dad spent 20 years in the US Navy, meaning this is nowhere near my first move, but it’s so different when you’re the military spouse instead of the military child. Not to mention, different branches of the military really are different. So, while the hurdles are by no means completely cleared, and all kinds of random things continue to pop up in my face (SURPRISE!), at least we made it here safe and sound. With all of our stuff. Lots of stuff. Hahaha