Author: To the Nth

Good News

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This week has been full of excellent news.

  1. My husband successfully completed carrier qualification in the C-2A Greyhound and has just a few more events before he’s totally done with the FRS.
  2. We got word that he’s going to our first choice of fleet squadron!

As for Item the First, CQ was a major hurdle and I’m so proud of my husband for clearing it.  Fun fact: his class did CQ on a carrier whose commissioning we witnessed and on whose flight deck I have walked.  We are excited that my husband is a heartbeat away from the fleet.  After so long in the schoolhouse, we are looking forward to seeing what life in the “real” Navy holds.  He is keen to start actually doing the job for which he has trained with years of hard work and determination, and I am proud of him for it.

Sure, hitting the fleet squadron means that we now must be prepared for longer periods of separation and all the challenges thereof, but in some ways we are heading into a more stable part of the career.  We know where our home will be for the next three years, which is much more than we could say during any phase of flight training.  The sheer abundance of variables that affect the length of a given part of flight school meant that the only guidance we had as to how long we would be stationed in a particular place was, “You’ll be here as long as it takes to complete the syllabus.”  Now we’re starting the “normal” rotation between sea and shore tours, and while we know things can always change, it makes a huge difference to have a pretty solid guess as to when we can expect the next set of orders.

Snuggling cats

Bonus: We don't have to worry about hauling carsick cats across the country just yet.

Item the Second is one about which I’m almost afraid to be too elated.  We had been hoping for a long time that things would work out so we could stay in our current town and in our own house and not have to see all our worldly possessions disappear into the back of a moving van before starting the sea tour, and the word right now is that we got what we wished for.  As a matter of fact, the distribution of East Coast, West Coast, and Japan slots for the COD guys in the class happened to fall out fortuitously, so all the guys are heading to their top choices.  Perfect, right?  We couldn’t have planned it better.

We told our parents (who had been waiting on tenterhooks as much as we) and I’m telling you, but we aren’t shouting the good news from the Facebook rooftops or telling aunts and uncles and grandparents.  Why not?  Because we have been living in limbo and agonizing over the assignment possibilities for so long that we won’t quite believe that it actually worked out as well as it did until my husband is fully checked into his new squadron.  We’re paranoid, quite frankly, and still half-expecting the rug to get yanked out from under us with a last-minute reshuffling.  It’s unlikely, sure, but I guess we’re still a little superstitious about our good fortune.  Should we ever be blessed with children, I am sure that I will be the kind of woman who waits until the first trimester is completely over before announcing that we’re expecting — I’m the kind of person who wants to be really, really sure before allowing myself to get excited.

We are happy, though.  Little by little, I’m letting myself start to think about things like renewing our membership to the botanical garden, choosing a fancy new gas range for the kitchen in this house, participating in local CAP events this summer and beyond, and looking for jobs in this area.  I am looking forward to settling comfortably into the idea that this place will remain home for three more years.

Wine Helps

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U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Walter M. Wayman/Released

A C-2A prepares to land on the Boat.

Sunday afternoon is drifting into evening, I have a glass of red wine in hand, and I miss my husband.  (I wonder how many other military wives out there could start out with that precise sentence at this very moment.  I can’t be the only one relaxing into the day’s end with a pleasant vino.)  He’s been away for a couple weeks flying day and night to get ready to take the beast that is the C-2A Greyhound to the Boat — and yes, I’m far too immersed in the world of tailhook aviation to refer to an aircraft carrier as anything other than “the Boat,” make the SWOs wince though the term might.  Actually, from what I’ve seen, most Nasal Radiators will cheerfully admit that irritating SWOs is a wonderful reason to say “Boat” instead of “ship.”

Uh.  Where was I?  That’s one pitfall of mixing blogging with alcohol: my merry path through a given paragraph is far more likely to involve detours and sidetracks.  Bear with me and I’ll eventually figure out where I was going.  Or not.  Isn’t the journey supposed to be the important thing, anyway?

So my husband is getting ready for carrier qualification, which means that we can almost make out the light at the end of the FRS tunnel. If all goes as planned, we should soon find out where we will be stationed for my husband’s first sea tour. The wait is agonizing. We are both ready to be done with life in limbo and learn what it’s like to have some semblance of geographical stability for a predetermined (or at least a lot more concrete than anyplace we’ve been previously) period of time. At this point, I am trying to tell myself that regardless of whether we get our top location choice, knowing that we have three years anywhere is an amazing prospect.

Oh, who am I kidding? I’m quietly freaking out over the possibility that we might have to launch into full-blown PCS mode before the end of the month, this time with a house to prepare for rental and feline overlords to transport across the country (or into another country) rather than simply a lease to dissolve and ourselves to get from Point A to Point B.

I know I would grow to enjoy either of the not-staying-here possibilities, but damn, do I ever hate the uprooting/moving/household-reestablishing process and all its associated chaos.

The worst part about right now is that we could either be mere weeks away from a move or we could be three years away from even the possibility. I sure wish I knew which it was, because I might be borrowing a whole lot of trouble I don’t really need. Luckily, I am told that sipping a glass of wine is an excellent way to focus on the moment instead of getting worked up over things about which one cannot do a thing except wait.

Bogged Down in Bloggies

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The illustrious ENS Wifey over at Wife of a Sailor has magnanimously bestowed upon me a pair of awards for my blog.  Many thanks!  My dereliction of the duty to pay the shinies forward should in no way be interpreted as a lack of appreciation, but I will feel better once I fulfill my bloggerly obligations (well, possibly; I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I don’t play precisely by the rules) with an appropriately thoughtful post.  Well, here goes:

Award the First: “Best Blog Award”

Best Blog Award

The main thrust of this award is to pass it along to the authors of blogs one has recently discovered.  This was a timely task, because these days I feel like I’m adding delightful new-to-me blogs to Google Reader hand over fist.  If you haven’t browsed through these authors’ musings, you are missing out.

Award the Second: “Beautiful Blogger Award”

The rules:

  • Thank the person who gave you the award.
  • Paste the award on your blog.
  • Link the person who nominated you for the award.
  • Tell seven interesting things about yourself.
  • Nominate seven bloggers or fewer.

It is up to you, dear Reader, to determine whether my seven Nth factoids are interesting or not, but here they are, submitted for your consideration:

  1. It really bugs me when I see clocks set to the wrong time, especially when someone has set a clock ahead purposely to “trick” themselves into being on time. I mean, you’re the one who set the clock, so you know it’s fast — how could that have any real effect on your ability to get someplace on time? If it were up to me, all timepieces would be synchronized with the atomic clock.
  2. As publicly disdainful of “girly” alcoholic beverages as I am (apparently I am hardcore because I like my martinis so dry that I am essentially drinking gin with an olive or three), I have a sneaking fondness for the layered frozen pina colada/strawberry daquiri at Cheeseburger in Paradise. I especially like the strawberry/pineapple parrot-with-sunglasses garnish, and I don’t even care that I’m paying for a lot of sugar water and very little actual booze.
  3. When I was a little girl, I envisioned my dream wedding as taking place underwater. My groom and I would be in scuba gear, a dolphin would be the ringbearer, and the guests would watch from glass-bottomed boats. Luckily for all involved, my revised dream wedding took place in this reality on land.
  4. I semi-regularly have dreams where I am in the military instead of or alongside my husband.  One recurring dream motif is that I am looking at the daily flight schedule as usual, but find that my name is listed next to a sim event.  This tells me three things: one, the Navy takes up too much space in my head; two, my subconscious thinks I would look pretty good in uniform; and three, I’m a strange kid because I rather enjoy having such dreams pop up now and again.
  5. I cannot remember ever not being able to read.  My parents had to tell my elementary school that, yes, I should be allowed to go to the “chapter book” section when my kindergarten and first grade classes went to pick out books from the school library.
  6. I got to know my future husband when we were both acting in our high school production of Romeo and Juliet.  He was a Capulet, I was a Montague, and we got to fight each other on stage.
  7. I loved studying Russian in high school, and I would have continued in college had my school not done away with its Russian department between the time I was accepted and the time I started up there in the fall.  D’oh!  I wound up taking two years of German after a brief, shining hope that my school would actually manage to get its new Arabic program going before I graduated.

I am a nosy brat, so if you’re reading this, I am probably brimming with curiosity about what you might come up with for a seven-item trivia list.  If you’d like to play along, leave a comment here and consider yourself tagged.

En Papillote

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I know it’s the most popular cut of chicken in America, but I have never been a huge fan of boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  When I was a kid, I was a drumstick girl all the way.  In my adulthood, I have come to love chicken thighs for their deep, juicy flavor and versatility.  White meat wasn’t bad, but neither was it terribly inspiring to me.  Sure, it’s quick-cooking and low in fat, but I found that as often as not, eating chicken breast meant chewing through something dry and bland.

Enter my new favorite technique.  Not only is en papillote fun and Frenchy to roll off the tongue, but it couldn’t be any easier to put together a neat little packet of aluminum foil, throw it in the oven, and have a nifty little culinary present to unwrap less than half an hour later.

My first attempt was based off a recipe in The Joy of Cooking, descriptively titled “Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts Baked in Foil with Sun-dried Tomatoes and Olives” (which about says it all, but lacks a certain pizazz).  My first departure was chopping the whole thing in half, as I saw little point in making four servings for two people; we have not yet reached a level of feline exaltation that would prompt me to fix elaborate people food for them, much to their disappointment.

The Lowdown

  1. Preheat your oven to 450℉ and make sure a rack is in the middle.
  2. Take about a foot square of aluminum foil, fold and unfold to mark the middle with a crease, and spray it with your favorite non-stick spray.  Place your squares on a rimmed baking sheet.
  3. Plop a chicken breast on one half of each square and season to taste with salt and fresh ground black pepper.
  4. Now for the fun part: making your topping.  I very nearly followed the recipe in the book, only halving all amounts and using dried Italian herbs in place of fresh, but you can pretty much do what you want with this technique.  This version wound up containing:
      • 5 Kalamata olives, pitted (important step, this) and chopped up fairly fine
      • 4 sun-dried tomato halves in oil, sliced into wee strips
      • 1.5 Tbsp of the oil from the sun-dried tomato jar, as this stuff is infused with yummy tomato flavor.  Just make sure after you appropriate some, you have enough left in the jar to cover the remaining tomato halves.  If not, replace with your own olive oil, because leaving those babies poking up out of the oil will lead to sadness when you have to pitch the rest of the jar into the trash because it grew a science experiment.
      • A health half palmful of dried “Italian Seasoning” (make sure it doesn’t contain salt because you’ll throw off the balance.
      1. Top each chicken breast with half of your flavorful olive/tomato/what-have-you mixture, leaving a small border around the edge.
      2. Fold the foil over your chicken loosely (don’t want to mush down the topping) and crimp the edges to seal everything in.
      3. Slide the baking sheet containing those little packages of love into your oven, and spend the next twenty minutes contemplating how good your dinner will taste.
      4. When the timer buzzes, pull out the sheet and practice patience for five more minutes while you wait to unwrap your chickeny present.  Do this part carefully unless you are dying to know exactly what a severe steam burn feels like.

      I didn’t know what to expect when I took my first bite, but I knew I had never tasted a chicken breast like this before.  Rather than disappointingly dry and flavorless, this was moist and tangy and damn near perfect.  The next time we went to the commissary, we stocked up on chicken breasts to keep in the freezer, because variations on this technique are going to be in our mealtime rotation from now on.

      I think en papillote cooking is worth trying for anyone, but there are a few reasons I think this is an ideal military family meal.

      • It’s quick-cooking.  With schedules both busy and subject to change by the minute, this is an important quality if you don’t want the need for a must-eat-now meal to result in take-out every time.
      • It’s easy to scale down for a solo meal or up for a big squadron get-together.  Scalability is especially valuable to me when I’m cooking just for myself, as I’m not a huge leftovers fan.  (My husband, on the other hand, will happily attack leftovers for days.  I get bored quickly unless I can transform ’em into a new dish.)
      • On the subject of culinary boredom when one’s spouse isn’t around to take care of leftovers, I can switch up the topping every time.  I’m thinking of going even simpler next time and experimenting with Trader Joe’s pineapple salsa.
      • I can prepare the packets ahead and have them ready to slide into the oven whenever it’s convenient on days we know my husband will be home for dinner, just not exactly when.
      • Did I mention the moist, juicy deliciousness?  (Okay, that’s not MilSpouse-specific, but it’s still a bonus.)

      Let me know if you try it out.  I’d particularly love to hear about successful topping variations.

      Distractions from the Short Term

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      With my husband on a roll and progressing through his syllabus at a rate greater than one flight every several months, it is starting to sink in that we really might find ourselves out of FRS limbo in a couple short months.  I get a little jolt of adrenaline just thinking about it, and I’ll work myself into a tizzy if I dwell on everything that ought to get done in case of this or that eventuality of duty station.  I’m trying especially hard to avoid getting caught up in speculation over how many slots there might be for each squadron and how that breakdown matches up with the stated preferences of each student in my husband’s class, but it is hard to keep from tripping down that line of thought.  Rather than thinking about the short-range implications of PCSing or not PCSing, I think I need to extend my view to what I want to do after we are settled wherever we might be for the next three years.

      The obvious choice is to get a job.  We made the decision early on that I wouldn’t sweat looking for employment while we were living with the frequent moves and general uncertainty of flight school, and for the most part I think that was a wise decision for us.  I have been able to be flexible and supportive throughout some big changes and short-notice moves.  I have had the privilege of being home when my husband is home during a time when his schedule is different every day.  Besides, the job markets in some of the places we lived were, shall we say, not exactly brimming with opportunities in my field.  A lengthy search process coupled with the fact that we were only in a given place for an indefinite (usually short — under three months, in one case) period of time would have made for an absurd state of affairs both stressful and pointless.  So, I figured that it would be best to wait to begin my search in earnest until the Nasal Radiator of the family was firmly ensconced in his fleet squadron and we were looking at a luxuriously lengthy stint of three years in one place.

      Of course, neither of us had any idea that it would take quite this long to even approach that point.  That’s the Navy — and more specifically, flight school — for you.

      I now find myself nearly four years out of college without any real work experience with which to pepper my résumé.  I have volunteer experience I can play up, but I cannot shake the grim suspicion that it’s not going to look ultra-fabulous that my credentials rely heavily on academic work from four or more years ago, especially in a fast-moving, constantly changing field.  Hearing of job searches for people with much more relevant experience dragging on for half a year or more fails to inspire confidence in my ability to land meaningful employment.  Optimism doesn’t always come naturally to me, and I am terrified that prospective employers won’t give me another look after they say to themselves, “Hmm, graduated with a solid academic record, honor societies and club leadership and such… and then immediately got married and became a housewife?  Next, please, and this is for the shredder when you get a minute.”

      I think it boils down to nerves and uncertainty about my ability to do something I haven’t done before: make the transition from college to the working world.  Most of my peers have already done it because they didn’t have to immerse themselves fully in an “All Navy, All the Time!” bubble shortly after graduation.  I do not regret my decision to focus on our fledgling marriage and the necessary adjustment to the military lifestyle; adding my career angst to the mix would have made these last few years more stressful than they have been.  Up until now, my husband’s progression through flight school has been our top priority.  Now that we are nearing a point that has, until recently, seemed so far off in the future that it wasn’t worth thinking about, I’m just a little anxious about taking the first steps toward figuring out what I want to be when I grow up.

      Oh well.  It does give me something to think about other than how much I wince at the prospect of seeing our crap go into cardboard boxes again.