Author: To the Nth

Summer Vacation

2 Comments

I am not the most consistent blogger, as ENS Wifey kindly pointed out a few days ago.  I figure that if she can find the time to send words flowing Internetwards between vet bills, personal injury, and the Navy, in its infinite wisdom, deciding that she and her husband aren’t actually married, then I can probably handle taking a few minutes out of my Sunday morning to dash off a few paragraphs.  I must say that the relatively relaxed time we’ve been having this summer doesn’t make for nearly the compelling read that ENS Wifey’s saga does, but I hope the Powers that Be don’t take that as an invitation to throw anything interesting our way.  My poor readers will just have to endure the tedium of our present tranquility until the Navy sees fit to shake things up for us again.

I still don’t have any curtains up anywhere in the house, and I’m at peace with this fact for the moment.  The cats don’t deign to notice.  My parents and little brother didn’t care whether or not I had curtains when they came for the weekend of my cousin’s wedding.  Neither did my grandparents when they dropped by.  My sister-in-law, her husband, and the ultra-energetic, über-sweet, almost-ten-year-old twins won’t turn up their noses at me when they descend upon us later this evening, either.

The “almost-ten” factoid about our nieces is relevant in that their impending visit gave us an excellent excuse to mount an expedition to Toys “R” Us.  We did find them a birthday present I hope they’ll enjoy, but I’m not gonna lie, the true purpose at the heart of the mission was to drool over LEGO sets.   My husband and I have both been LEGOmaniacs since childhood, so every once in a while we must obey the inscrutable exhortations of our souls (bonus points if you know the source of that phrase) and spend some quality time perusing that wondrous aisle of bricky construction potential.  We were impressed with some of the new “=City sets this go ’round, especially the Farm and Coast Guard Helicopter (beware, the linked pages are noisy).  The set that came this close to coming home with us, however, was the Pirates Shipwreck Hideout.  C’mon, how could I not love the ship’s ribs, the rope bridge, the cannon, and the crow’s nest?  It takes me right back to being a kid and playing out elaborate LEGO plots with my brother.

I’m glad that LEGO has returned to its roots with classic themes like City (used to be Town, I guess), Pirates, and Castle.  For a few years there, it seemed like the company had completely sold out to licensed tie-ins for everything from Star Wars to Spongebob Squarepants.  While I’m not crazy about the continued existence of the licensed sets, it is good to see that LEGO is investing in its own creative ventures with themes that don’t rely on already established characters and storylines.

In the end, the Shipwreck Hideout stayed on the shelf at Toys “R” Us.  “The trouble with being an adult,” said my husband, “is that now that we’re grown up and have an income and enough money to get any LEGO set we want, we’re too responsible to do it.”  Maturity is totally lame sometimes.  Hmm… Chanukah is only four months away, though.

Decor in the Theme of Guilt

7 Comments

My husband and I find ourselves, at present, in a curious situation for a military family: that of living relatively near family.  Wonder of wonders, we are actually in a position to play host to family coming into town for my cousin’s wedding this weekend.  My mom, dad, and little brother (who has yet to see our house, having been busy finishing up undergrad for most of the time we’ve lived here) are descending upon us this Friday.  I suppose the courteous thing to do would be to have the guest room cleared of my beading and sewing paraphernalia and the floors free of the cat hair tumbleweeds that spring into existence when we turn our backs.  I swear we could make three more cats out of the fur they bestow upon this family like it’s fairy dust.

Luckily for me, while I am going to make an effort to get the house cleaned up, I don’t have to develop a case of OCD to do so.  My folks are wonderfully easygoing houseguests who don’t mind when a home looks a little more “lived in” than “museum-quality and dust-free,” and my brother lived until recently in a college apartment with five other dudes.  You do the math on that one; I should probably set out a pizza box and an arrangement of empty beer bottles to make him feel at home.  (Maybe not.  Lest you get the wrong impression about my brother, I should tell you that he is fastidious by nature and not inclined towards indulging in the usual 18-to-22-year-old male schlubbiness.  I understand that the six-dude apartment was far from the disaster area one might expect.)  In any case, while we’re going to clean up the place, we’re not living in fear that anyone is going to bust out the white glove treatment on us.

I tell you all that so you know that the domestic guilt I feel tugging at my nerves is of my own neurotic invention, not anything inflicted upon me by my extremely good-natured family.

I regret that I have not put up curtains anywhere in the house.  It didn’t particularly bother me not putting up curtains at our previous duty stations, because those places were temporary and so it was completely understandable that we wouldn’t want to waste time and money decorating that which wasn’t ours, not really.  But this is our house, bought in mortgage payments rather than rent checks, and I feel guilty that I wasn’t overcome by a new homeowner’s zeal to mark her territory with carefully chosen window treatments.  We don’t even have blinds or shades in our bedroom.  (Get your mind out of the gutter — we did have the decency to preserve our neighbors by blocking the windows first with cardboard boxes, then with marginally less trashy tea towels.)

I clearly would like to have curtains.  It does, in fact, bother me that we don’t have any up.  So why in the name of all that’s good and holy don’t I get off my tuchus and put up some curtains?  Good question, and I have a litany of excuses with which to answer it.

  1. Curtains are too expensive for the simple lengths of fabric that most of them are — you’re paying for the convenience of having pre-made panels.  I cannot bring myself to pay that much of a premium for something that isn’t perfect when I know I could spend a fraction of the money on fabric and thread for handmade custom pieces.
  2. I want to make curtains myself, as I know I have the skill to sew straight lines with my sewing machine.  When I go to the fabric store, though, I am overwhelmed by choice and pop mental circuit breakers when I try to divine exactly what this mythical “perfect” is.
  3. I know, I know, perfection doesn’t really exist, and for something as trivial as home decor I should just make something and try again later if it turns out I don’t care for it.  Curtains are not house tattoos.  Changing them does not involve painful and expensive laser treatments during which one wonders why in the hell their younger self thought a unicorn leaping through a heart of flames would represent their “true inner self” forever and ever.  (This is why I will never get a tattoo.)  Knowing perfection doesn’t exist doesn’t make the fruitless pursuit of it any less seductive, though.  It’s great: I can agonize and go back and forth and hem and haw ad infinitum without ever having to make a decision or do any work.  The excuse, “Oh, I’m still looking for the right fabric for my glorious home decor vision.  Boy, it will be fantastic when it’s done, you wait and see!” can be stretched out for years if you like.

The real biggie, though?  The real reason we’ve lived here in our own house for over a year and haven’t put up curtains?  I am scared that the instant we make this place too much our own, the second we get all our rooms set up the way we want them, someone will jump out at us from behind a tree with a set of orders  and a pack-out date of tomorrow.  I like living here.  I would love to find out that we’re staying here for my husband’s first fleet tour, because three years — three whole years compared to the three months we were at the last duty station and the bare year we were at the one before that — sounds like an eternity.  It sounds like time to get really settled in and worry about fussing with window treatments and maybe painting a room and gardening.

Yes, gardening.  I have guilt about that, too: a good-sized front and back yard all our own, and I haven’t planted a single flower.  That might have more to do with being too lazy to get out and water any plants I might choose than weird hang-ups about getting too attached to a house we might be leaving in a matter of months.

There is one home-related task I think we can cross off our to-do list before my folks and little brother get here on Friday, and that is to finish Rustoleum-ing the outdoor furniture my grandparents passed along to us when they got new stuff for their deck.  By Friday evening, I hope to be relaxing outside, gin and tonic in hand, on our shiny new-to-us chaise longue and laughing with my family at a low-key backyard party before the big bash my cousin’s wedding promises to be.  That’s pretty motivating, as is the fact that the grandparents who so sweetly gave us the furniture might drop by to see the house the morning after the wedding, and I don’t want them to see the paint job half-done.

All right, enough rambling.  I’m off to have breakfast so we can get going on what we need to get done in order to enjoy our time with family.  I’m really looking forward to it, because my family’s not going to care whether or not I have the perfectly coordinated curtains of which I feel I ought to dream.

Super Star

Leave a comment

I’ve been up for over three hours already without any outside impetus such as my husband having to get up for a flight.  That’s just wrong.  On the plus side, it gave me plenty of opportunity to do online things like post pictures of my nieces on Facebook, tweet about my cats chewing on little plastic F6F Hellcat fuselages, and wander aimlessly through the milspouse blogosphere.  In my travels, I came across a new blog I want to read and something worthy of military quilt lust (milquiltlust?).

The Mrs. at Trying Our Best is giving away a quilted service star banner, and she’s endeavoring to get the word out to as many military family members as possible.  Head on over and take a look if you’re interested!

Okay, that took a lot of effort to write, because I would dearly love to have the charming banner all to myself, and logic dictates that the fewer people who enter, the better chance I have to win.  I’m really working on that selfishness thing, though, so please go check it out and, if you so desire, throw your name into the hat, as well.

CAPtivated

1 Comment

When I went to my first Civil Air Patrol meeting last August, I didn’t know what to expect.  Having read a few forum threads in which people outlined their encounters with some cringeworthy toolishness from members of the organization, I feared that I would find a passel of wannabes more excited about dressing up in an Air Force-style uniform and marching around collecting salutes and bling than in contributing something to the community.  The stories were out there, and I don’t doubt that the unprofessional/disrespectful/downright WTF?-inspiring moments described happened.  I just had no idea whether they were the exception — as I sincerely hoped — rather than the rule when it came to the United States Air Force Auxiliary.

I needn’t have worried.  My fears were put to rest immediately upon meeting the squadron commander and a few other key members.  They exuded professionalism, good humor, enthusiasm, and a distinct absence of any uniform bling-hound tendencies.  I was, therefore, not at all surprised to learn that most of them were retired Navy, with Naval Aviators and NFOs strongly represented.  No wonder I felt so instantly at home!  I wound up turning in my membership paperwork shortly thereafter, and I’ve been volunteering ever since.

I qualified as a CAP right-seater in June 2009.

I qualified as a CAP right-seater in June 2009.

Of CAP’s three congressionally mandated missions of Cadet Programs, Aerospace Education, and Emergency Services, my primary interest lies with ES.  CAP is responsible for about 90% of all inland search and rescue in the United States; if you are in an airplane that goes down, nine times out of ten, CAP volunteers will be the folks looking for the wreckage.  I started on the path to train as aircrew for search and rescue missions, finally earning my Mission Observer (aircraft right-seater who assists the pilot with the GPS, radios, direction finding equipment, and anything else that will allow the pilot to focus on flying the plane safely while the rest of the aircrew focuses on the mission at hand) wings at the beginning of this month.

While I was having a grand old time training in ES specialties and flying with former Tomcat backseaters and learning all about the sweet Garmin G1000 in the Cessna 182, my husband was enduring a massive slowdown in his Navy flying.  Ridiculously enough, I was actually getting more flight hours with CAP than my winged Naval Aviator husband was getting with the Navy.  After deciding that the squadron was populated by some pretty cool folks and hearing how much fun I was having with a group of dedicated volunteers, the wheels started to turn in my husband’s poor flight-hour-deprived brain.  He turned in his own membership packet and jumped right into knocking out his on ES quals.

…which brings me to my present situation, which is that I am sitting at home waiting for my husband to return from his first Mission Observer training flight.  He’ll ultimately pursue his Mission Pilot qual, but he needs to pick up some 172 time before he starts that process in earnest.  I look forward to when he gets qualified in the left seat, when together we’ll make up the better part of a mission aircrew.  I think we’ll coordinate well in the cockpit.  For now, though, I’m trying to suppress a twinge of jealousy that he’s flying and I’m not; I’m trying to remind myself of all the other times our positions were reversed, but it ain’t easy.

Primary

Leave a comment

In honor of my husband actually being scheduled to fly today for the first time in millennia*, here is a video of fresh-faced young SNAs flying the aircraft he flew three years ago.

Makes the mighty T-34 look pretty cool, huh?  Of course, all my flight experience to date is in wee Cessnas, so take the fact that I would jump at the chance for a T-34 ride with a grain of salt.

* Slight exaggeration. Slight.