Tag Archives: Moving

02/7/12

{365.38} I Provide Commentary on Texan Culture

In our latest installment of newspaper clippings from David’s memaw, which came in the mail a few days ago, there was a segment in the Crosby County Funny Farm (lol) of what I shall call Texas-isms. Every state has its quirks, with which one becomes familiar over time. Here is a selection of quirks native to Texas, with a few that weren’t listed in the newspaper clipping. I discovered these myself after living on the Prairie for five years.

“It is not a shopping cart, it is a buggy!”

Everyone refers to shopping carts as buggies. I continued to refer to them as carts, although David still insists on calling them baskets. We have had many discussions/arguments regarding this, involving me pointing at the hand-held baskets at the grocery store and falling just short of reaching over and slapping a label with the word BASKET on it. A BASKET is something you CARRY. A CART has wheels and is PUSHED. A BUGGY is a type of horse-drawn carriage. Why can no one see reason??

“Fixinto is one word. It means, ‘I’m going to do that.’”

This is part of Texas vernacular. Everyone is forever “fixing to” do something. I actually interpret this as more along the lines of, “I’m about to do that.” For example, “I’m fixinto go to Wal-Mart.” Or, “I was fixinto go to Wal-Mart when the phone rang.” I have since categorized this amalgamation of words under the same heading as the Hawaiian penchant for tacking the monosyllabic “ya” at the end of every sentence. (Right after “ya” is the even more nebulous Hawaiian vocabulary word “dakine.” I had no idea what that word meant for my first full year of living there. I’m still not sure I fully understand it now. LOL.)

“There is no such thing as lunch. There is only dinner, and then there is supper.”

Not true, because there is also breakfast. But, this was one quirk that didn’t puzzle me very much, because I had read the entire Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. They, too, had dinner and supper. When I was younger I seriously thought Laura, Ma, Pa, Mary, and Baby Carrie all had two dinners a day, I mean since they had dinner and then supper, which I figured to be the same thing. Little did I know…

“Iced tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it when you’re two. We do like a little tea with our sugar.”

Oh, so so so so SO true. David chugs tea like you wouldn’t believe. It is referred to in restaurants as sweet tea, but can also come as un-sweet tea, and the difference is apparently very important. We have an iced tea maker that generates one precious pitcher of tea every time, which lasts… oh, a few days. David will have tea with anything. Pizza, pancakes, popcorn… you name it, tea can be paired with it. Which I feel is super gross because I don’t like tea AT ALL. But they, to each his own.

“The local papers cover national and international news on one page, but require 6 pages for local high school sports, motor sports, and gossip.”

This statement is true, but needs to be amended. Yes, the front page or so does feature some national/global news, especially if it has anything to do with the president doing something that Texas doesn’t approve of. But it’s not just six pages of local news after this — basically, it’s the entire paper. There’s high school sports, profiles of high school players, schedules for all the games, and then definitely a few articles on sports in Texas in general, from college to pro. There will be a section devoted to all the various meetings held by societies, Junior League, sororities, fraternities, and the like. Then there’s coverage of rodeos, trade fairs, and agriculture. In small town papers, there will always be at least one full-page play by play of someone’s wedding from last weekend or a few weekends before, replete with details such as what color the bridesmaids dresses were and what the groom’s mother wore. (Trust me — OUR wedding appeared on a full page of the Vernon Record last year, and I have some copies of it. Hahahaha) Behind the weddings will be another page for who got engaged. Finally, you have some classifieds in which services involving horses, hay, and tractors will be found among the more ordinary postings.

“Y’all is singular. All y’all(s) is plural.”

Yes. Remain in Texas for about five hours and you will find yourself using the word y’all more frequently than you ever imagined. I personally think this is a fun word. It’s a shortcut word. I mean, why use three words when you can use one, right?

The following are my own self-discovered Texas-isms:

  • Oil is pronounced “oll.” My husband does this. I think it’s cute. Also, funny. But cute. He has no what I mean when I tell him he pronounces things in a very Southern way, but then again he used to not believe he occasionally snored.
  • You don’t honk your horn at people in Texas. Honestly, in the years I lived there, I hardly ever heard someone blasting their horn at someone else, even in traffic.
  • In every small town that you drive through en route to somewhere else, you will inevitably find at least one gas station called Allsups and the omnipresent Wal-Mart.
  • At every mall in Texas, you will find some kind of Texas-themed gift shop. In the window of this gift shop will be some kind of item with the following quote from Davy Crockett: “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” Should you venture inside, you will find those same words emblazoned on shirts, mugs, license plate covers, keychains, et al etc. It is a treasured Texan quote.
  • Texas is home to a fast food restaurant called Braums, wherein you will find delicious burgers, fries, and ice cream. Many Braums locations also feature a miniature grocery store where you can grab an amazing (very bad for you) dinner AND some milk, eggs, or veggies.
  • Also in Texas: the Dairy Queen menu has more than just dessert on it. When we moved here, we went to a DQ, only to find that all they had was ice cream. Where are the chicken tenders?? What about the steak fingers?? Man, Dairy Queen. “That’s what I like about Texas,” indeed.
  • The appropriate thing to say to someone who has just recounted a tale of suffering and woe is, “Bless your heart.” This phrase also works for any time you need to express that you sympathize with someone, i.e. they got stung by a bee, they’re stuck in a long line at the grocery store, they have a lot of homework tonight, they had to work overtime, etc. This is a guaranteed, no-fail response.
02/6/12

{365.37} I Tell a Pointless Anecdote About a Cookie Jar

I was filling up one of these Ikea canisters that my mom got me for Christmas (she got me a bag full of random Ikea things for our apartment — then today she sent gift cards to IHOP and Pier 1 for our anniversary, which truly illustrates how familiar she is with which retail chains are most likely to bring joy into my life), and it made me truly wish my cookie jar hadn’t rolled out of the back of my car and shattered on the hotel parking lot in New Mexico as we were moving here. (Ignore how long that sentence was because of my penchant for using parentheses, btw.) (And look, I did it again! I really like parentheses.)

To elaborate on this, we were finally stopping after driving the last seven hours from Texas, and were staying at a hotel in Albuquerque (craziest spelling word ever). We turned into the parking lot, checked in, and began hauling stuff to our room so we could then order pizza and settle in for the night. Both of our cars were crammed to the ceiling with stuff. In David’s (tiny) car, we had all our leftover cleaning supplies and the vacuum from when we cleaned out our last apartment, plus our luggage, and both CPUs for our computers. Because we were paranoid and wanted to have them with us at all times. Computers are treasured in this household. LOL. In my SUV, we had a box of food, two giant storage tubs of computer accoutrements (keyboards, both monitors padded with pillows and blankets, wiring, et al etc), some remnants of David’s sword collection wrapped in a quilt (yes, this happened), the dog’s kennel, and the dog. Plus other things. I can’t even name them anymore. Suffice it to say that all of these myriad items were somehow carried from Texas to Nevada. Except, my poor cookie jar didn’t make it. When we unloaded things from my car, the cookie jar decided to leap into oblivion.

I was very unhappy about this, because 1) broken glass is never fun and 2) the cookie jar still had cookies in it!!! I picked up the pieces without mishap and disposed of them, but now I continuously think about my suicidal cookie jar because I miss its presence in my kitchen. It used to be perfect for drive-by snacking. I changed cookies from time to time, and it was always strangely gratifying to see the jar sitting on the counter. “Come have a cookie,” it would say. “I will always be here for you.” But now it isn’t, and I need a new damn cookie jar. My Ikea canisters are adorable and classy and all, but I like seeing the delicious baked goods through the glass. This is a bizarre psychological thing, I admit.

I read in a magazine a month or so ago that there are two types of organizers: revealers and concealers. I am a classic revealer — I like to put things on display. I line things up on shelves, I prefer containers that are clear so you can see what’s inside, and instead of carefully organized photo albums, I have ten billion picture frames.  I feel that this theory applies to my cookie jar. The cookies do not exist for me if they’re hidden. But in my glass jar, they were warm and welcoming, and yet still contained in an orderly fashion that satisfied my control freak-ness. In contrast, my husband is all about being organized but keeping your organized items hidden from view. We couldn’t agree on how to store our DVD collection because I wanted them on shelves, while he wanted them in a binder. He won out in the end, but I guess I like the idea of “plenty.” See the amount of items I have amassed in all their glory. See how I so neatly organize them in rows. These are the movies I like, peruse them and learn more about me. It just doesn’t feel like home to me if all my little nicknacks and possessions aren’t scattered here and there. And a cookie jar on the counter seems so much more cozy than a package of cookies in the pantry. It’s not that I like things to be cluttered, I guess I just like the place to look like I live here.

By the way, the Ikea canisters hold hot cocoa packets and strawberry wafer cookies. I still haven’t found anything to put in the smallest one. But if you want hot cocoa and/or a strawberry wafer cookie, please have some and say a small dedication to my defunct cookie jar.

…I was going to write a quick entry and get this out of the way so I could go back to my writing, and instead I rambled about kitchen containers for much longer than I should have. OH WELL LOL.

12/5/11

Busy, Busy, Busy

I haven’t written since last Wednesday, largely because a lot of things have been going on. On Monday last week, my in-laws flew in from Texas to visit for a few days, so we were out doing things like errands and working on the house as well as heading to the Strip or eating dinner with them in the evenings. We finally got actual Internet and our cable installed on Thursday, so now I’m able to write from my desktop computer at last. This also meant that I got to finally start a project I’ve been meaning to work on for a while, which was updating and revamping my father-in-law’s saddle shop website. I had redone this about a year or two ago, but it was really looking horrible to me and plus I wanted to convert it to WordPress to make updating and structuring a lot more streamlined, so I took it apart and, in my opinion, improved on it. LOL. I also had to move the whole thing over to my own server because the Yahoo! webhosting installation of WordPress was extremely unreliable, the MySQL databases frequently going down and a bunch of other silly things. In any case, I should be finished with the website tomorrow, just 5 pages left to switch over.

My other project lately is setting up an online book club with some friends. It started out as just a two person thing, and then it grew a bit so now we have 10 girls and trying to come up with a name. We’ll also be voting for book selections. I’m excited about it, but this may be 40% my own voracious appetite for reading, 40% bizarre love for organizing things, and only 10% desire to actually discuss stuff. Hahaha. It is nice to have a group to talk about reading with, though. I hope it gets off the ground and ends up working out for all of us.

By the way, on Saturday we drove 5 hours to San Diego so we could pick up the dog from my parents’ house. Such a long drive, back and forth, but nice to see my family and of course nice to have Bubba back in the apartment… galloping around, doing backflips, et al etc. Our downstairs neighbors must be livid. He isn’t usually hyper all the time, but I think he’s still adjusting to YET ANOTHER new place to live and he happens to be naturally high strung since he’s a terrier breed. Ah well. I’m sure he’ll be okay! He’s already begun his personal mission of peeing on every single bush/tree/rock in the apartment complex… LOL.

In other news, my husband has to go back to work tomorrow :( I’ve really enjoyed having him here at home with me, so this is not a fun prospect. Not that I have issues with being home alone, I just like having him around! Surprise! Haha. I’ve been applying for jobs, on average about one job app per day, and right now I’m really hoping to get a call for a job with the State of Nevada when the posting closes on the 8th. Fingers are crossed. It would be really nice because it’s M-F (most likely, anyway) and when you work for the State you will get the day off for holidays. Believe me, once you’ve worked M-F from 8am-5pm, it’s REALLY hard to switch back to working on the weekend! Or working odd retail hours. So, I’m waiting for word on that one. If it’s meant to be, it will be, is what my mom would say.

Upcoming entries: reviews of The House At Riverton by Kate Morton and The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian, as well as entries about daily deal websites (I’ve gotten into these lately… run for cover, wallet!) and our forays into Titanic: The Exhibition at The Luxor last Tuesday!

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

11/7/11

Checking in!

I have a few posts on the way: 5 Favorites, a review of The Night Circus, and some photos I’ve taken with my new camera :) I take forever to actually write the posts, which is why it’s been several days since an update. Oh, also I’ve become absorbed in The Sims 3 ever since I started a new legacy challenge and also made a new game to try out the Daycare profession they added with the Generations expansion. It’s been a lot of fun so far. We have just one more full week here in our apartment before the movers come on Monday to pack everything up, which seems crazy to me right now since I feel like I’ve been waiting just about forever for all of this to finally happen. I’m excited to get to Nevada and start looking for a new place to live, it seems like the apartments there are so much nicer than the ones here. Of course, they have a lot more competition to deal with over there so that does make sense.

Anyway, I’ll return with more posts throughout the week before things get hectic as we start moving out!

10/31/11

2 Weeks Left!

I’ve been gone for a few days since David came home on Friday after his graduation, and ever since we got in from San Antonio it’s kind of been nonstop around here. On Saturday his parents drove in to see him and then David and I headed to the car dealership to see about getting him his new car. Which, by the way, was a traumatic experience for me because I am really not good about large purchases. Also, I grew up in a house where we wore everything out before we bought new stuff, which is definitely not the philosophy David grew up with, hahaha. More about his car when we actually get it, it has to be delivered from elsewhere. It will hopefully be here tonight or tomorrow morning.

It’s been awesome having David home again, I was getting really tired of being alone in this apartment. Well, minus my dog, he’s always with me. (Literally! Haha) But we have just 2 weeks left here, so there’s a monumental amount of things to do and A LOT of cleaning. I am not a fan of cleaning.

Anyway, I should probably get going, the house looks like a train wreck right now. Better, higher quality posting coming up soon! Hopefully! Haha!

10/25/11

Plans

“And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time”
What Sarah Said – Death Cab For Cutie

So, not having the best day ever. If there is anything in the world that serves as a source of endless frustration to me, it’s the fact that there are people who don’t mind being completely unreliable. Also, there are people who don’t care who they inconvenience due to their own incompetence. Ineptitude becomes a chain reaction, and then it eventually reaches me. David is still one of two people left who don’t have complete official orders, they’re supposed to leave on Friday, and it’s currently Tuesday. If he doesn’t have his paperwork, he can’t leave on Friday afternoon as planned. I will have to miss his graduation, he won’t get to come home until Tuesday next week, and the ripples in the pond become waves. You know, maybe that’s my problem: I hate when plans change. And yet, I persist in making plans because quite frankly, I would go insane if I didn’t. I am not a flying-by-the-seat of your pants kind of person. Sure, I can improvise with the best of them, and I can think on my feet, but in general I like to have things structured. So when plans fail, I end up feeling extremely frustrated, but the only way to make myself feel better is to make another plan. I don’t like stumbling in the dark, trying to figure out where I’m going, not knowing what’s ahead. Usually, not only do I have a Plan A, I have a plan B, C, and D. It’s my own personal neurosis. There are people who compulsively purchase things that they don’t need and then hoard them; there are people who need to wash their hands 10 times before they feel clean; then there’s me, the one with the plans. I’m always leaping miles into the future. When I don’t, I feel helpless and unsafe, like I might fall off a cliff any moment because I didn’t have the foresight to prevent it from happening.

Thus, now that plans may possibly take another hit, I have had to spend some time crying into a pillow (which was labeled “Firm” when I bought it from Target the other day but has turned out to be unimpressive and also misleading). This baffles my husband, for whom there is no apparent reason to cry, because there is nothing we can do. True, I am powerless to change the course of events or to make sure that my plans go through. True, there is no actual reason to cry, except that crying makes me feel better. When I’ve finished freaking out, my head is clearer. And I can make another plan.