Military

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #28

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If you were a famous movie star, what types of movies would you star in?

I think it would be a blast to star in a big, loud, epic superhero movie.

What is a vacation you would like to take if money were no object?

Ever since reading Troubling a Star by Madeleine L’Engle when I was a child, I have wanted to see Antarctica. Since money is no object in this dream vacation, my trip to the planet’s deep freeze would be followed by a sojourn to some more temperate clime to thaw out.

Did you have pets growing up?

I sure did. My family had a dog that had been with them since the early days of their marriage, so my childhood is filled with memories of a good-natured, if not overly smart, mutt. After he went on to his great canine reward, my family adopted a cat, one we selected from the shelter because he was the only one who didn’t cringe in fear from my then-three-year-old brother. A few years later, my brother and I were desperate for a kitten. When my parents finally relented, off to the shelter we went. We came home with a darling black-and-white kitten whom the shelter thought to be nine weeks old. According to the vet, though, she was about four months old and just that tiny. She never got very big, but her personality was more than wacky enough to make up for it.

My husband never had pets growing up, having been born into a family with a severely allergic father and sister. The cats and I are very glad that he doesn’t share those allergies.

What do you do for exercise?

Not nearly enough, probably. I will confess my dorkiness and say that I do enjoy Wii Fit Plus. It may not count as serious exercise, but it gets my sedentary behind off the couch and moving and stretching. The little time piggy bank in the game does a happy little dance when I hit thirty minutes of actual activity, and I shudder to think what it says about me that I’m motivated by such things. I even sent away for a freebie tote bag from Nintendo.

I will be the most stylin’ gal at the commissary with this reusable bag, let me tell you.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received as a MilSpouse?

“Semper Gumbi.” Live it. Do it. (I frequently fail at this, but it’s still good advice.) 😉

Are you a military spouse/fiancée/fiancé/girlfriend/boyfriend? Hie thee to ENS Wifey’s blog, snag the questions, and add yourself to the Mr. Linky for this week’s MilSpouse Friday Fill-In!

New Year, New… Socks?

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Once upon a time, I was not a knitter. (Bet you didn’t know  “once upon a time” meant “last summer,” did you?) With the help of a scrying pool that suspiciously resembled my MacBook, I studied the lore of needles, knits, and purls. With much trial and error was this arcane knowledge won, and with each error I expanded my vocabulary of, ah… magic words of the sort with which Sailors (and *cough* some of their wives, apparently) pepper their speech and mothers attempt to keep from the tongues of their babes.

I have knit long scarves, lace dishcloths, and cabled hats. I have knit woolly fingerless mitts and Navy uniform-spec watch caps. I have knit for myself and for gifts and for no real reason at all. While by no means a master of the craft, I believe I am vanishingly close to being able to claim the title of sorceress Knitter, with a capital ‘K.’

Only one thing stands in my way of my own self-perception of knitting accomplishment: a pair of socks.

For reasons obscure even in my own mind, I will not feel I have truly arrived in the knitting world until I complete my first pair of socks. For me, hand-knit socks carry a cachet that outstrips the apparent humbleness of a couple of modified tubes into which one jams one’s chilly feet. You knit and purl and knit and purl forever. Then, screwing up your courage, you perform the mysterious rite known as “turning the heel,” which to me really does appear to be a magic spell one casts with wands shaped like double-pointed needles. Then you knit some more, conjuring up something called a “gusset,” and before you know it, there sits before you a sock where once was only a ball of yarn.

I’m still in the “knit and purl forever” phase of my first sock.

Sock cuff, with many stabbity needles.

Two-by-two ribbing, on and on and on.

I am a little concerned that I might just keep knitting the cuff forever, for fear that I will thoroughly embarrass myself with a pitiful first attempt at turning the heel. Things might progress a wee bit faster, however, if I had a mite less “help” from the feline contingent.

Cat noms yarn. Yum.

Vera's possession of four paws does little to help her manipulate four DPNs, so she prefers to snack on the raw material instead.

Actually, I feel fairly well prepared (thanks to Silver’s Sock Class) to turn the heel and make a go at finishing Sock the First. It’s Sock the Second that worries me. After the sense of accomplishment that comes from learning the skills necessary to complete the first, will the lack of novelty make the second an exercise in drudgery? Will I be whining, “But I just did this. I don’t want to do it again yet!”

Come to think of it, I have the same questions about deployment. We are in the early days of our first one, and I can’t help but wonder if the fact that I don’t really know what to expect is a blessing. I have yet to experience the kinds of things that can go wrong, so I can focus on the novel aspects of this type of separation. I wonder if it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that I really and truly will not have my husband home with me for several months. I fear that after we get through all the new challenges this deployment will present, after the joyful rush of homecoming and after the comfortable routine of having our family on one continent again, that the inevitable preparations for his second deployment will be all the more difficult. I’ll know what I’m in for, and it won’t even be shiny and new.

All those are worries based on borrowed trouble, of course, and are probably best saved for later. Meanwhile, I need to get a move on if I want to have a completed pair of handmade socks to show off before we get too far into this deployment.

Warning: Contains Frivolity

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Please note that the following post could be termed girly, frivolous, and quite possibly shallow.  If discussion of appearance is not your cup of tea, you might want to skip this one.  😉

All right, if you are still reading, I have a question for you: have you ever made a dramatic change to your appearance while your significant other was deployed?

The “dramatic change” percolating in the back of my mind is a haircut.  Once upon a time, back when my husband and I started dating (*cough-I was sixteen-cough*) I had long hair.  It got progressively shorter over the course of my college career, a little bit longer again before our wedding, and then I chopped it all off into a super-short pixie upon discovering that our brand-new duty station was wont to hit 90° in February.  In the two and a half years since moving back to a part of the country that has sensible seasons, I have let my hair get long again.

It’s not a cute, flowing-tresses kind of long.  It’s a too-lazy-to-get-a-haircut long, with an a dash of haven’t-found-a-stylist-I-like thrown in for flavor.  At least my hair is curly enough to somewhat disguise the fact that I don’t actually have a hairstyle per se, but it is definitely time to cart my mane to a salon.  I can tell, because all I ever do with it is put it up in a frowzy ponytail, a look that does nothing to dissuade people from the mistaken impression that I might be a teenager.

My husband, bless his heart, has never made any controlling noises over my hair.  When I chopped it all off just a few months after our wedding, he took it in stride and still told me I looked cute.  I am not unaware, however, that he prefers my hair longer.  Although he has made it clear that he knows my hair is my own to do with as I please, the fact that I know he likes longer hair has played a part in the past couple years’ grow-it-out venture.  The status quo has been easy to maintain.

Now my husband is getting ready to deploy.  There is a big part of me that wants to mark his departure with a major haircut, perhaps even going as short as the pixie cut I loved so much when we were in Texas.  I mentioned this to my husband, and it turns out that not only is he unsurprised, but he rather assumed that was the plan.  Guess I’ve been a little more transparent about my state of “enh” with longer hair than I thought.  He’s completely at peace with the thing I’ve wanted to do all along!  Woohoo, right?

Well… until my silly brain stepped in to complicate matters, at least.  As we approach his departure date, I find myself running up against a mental snag.  I had initially thought that going in for the Big Haircut was something I would do by myself after he left, symbolic of a fresh start for the upcoming months of living on my own, yadda yadda yadda.  Then I started thinking about our actual goodbye before he flies out to the ship, the last memories we would form of each other before saying, “See you in X months.”

I might actually have a problem with immediately changing my appearance from what my husband would have in mind as his last pre-deployment, in-person mental picture of me.  My, my.  How… sentimental? …of me.

I know everyone changes over the course of a deployment — life goes on, we can’t sit there and stagnate, etc.  I’m just not sure I have it in me to email my husband a picture of my new ‘do along with a message that effectively says (no matter what I might actually type), “Hey honey, you left and now I look completely different from how you remember me!  Hope you recognize your own wife next time we see each other, ha ha!”

There would seem to be a simple solution to a problem that likely exists only in my mind.  My tentative new plan is to get my hair cut before my husband heads out, while he still has a chance to get used to the look beforehand.

Whew.  If you’ve made it this far, thank you, patient Reader, for sifting through the above mountain-out-of-molehill mawkishness.  Ultimately, I do know that it’s just hair, and the wonderful thing about hair is that it (mostly) grows back.  Even if I have a hair “disaster”, it’s not important.

I am still curious as to whether my fellow military spouses have made or thought about making a big outward change during a deployment or other separation.  How did it work out for you?  Would you do it again?  Better yet, do you have any big plans for the next time military exigencies have you spending a big chunk of time away from your love?

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #24

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What do you see your life like in 10 years?

It’s hard for me to imagine what my life will be like in ten days, much less ten years.  I suspect we will have at least one small human underfoot and I hope I will be as accomplished a private pilot as my husband is a naval aviator.

What do you like most about your job?

I am not currently employed, but my volunteer time with Civil Air Patrol is incredibly satisfying.  I have the opportunity to work with talented people dedicated to service, whether in the air, in ground search and rescue, in working with motivated cadets, or in promoting aerospace education.  I am proud to be counted among them, and I am blessed to count them among my friends.

What are three things you do every day, no matter what day it is?

This is harder than one might think.  I can’t even say I brush my teeth every day, as there are certain fast days on the Jewish calendar where not even a toothbrush is supposed to pass our lips.  (I promise I brush my teeth on the vast majority of days, though.)  About the only things I can claim to do every single day are:

  1. Blink
  2. Breathe
  3. pump Blood through my Body

Sorry; got a little hung up on the letter ‘B’ for some reason.

What would you do with an extra five hours in your day today?

Pray forgive my hopeless dullness, but I’d probably sleep.  An extra five hours of sleep without worry that the phone is going to ring with some crisis that just couldn’t wait until morning is precisely what my husband and I need in the midst of this stupidly busy time.

What is your favorite Christmas (or whichever holiday  you celebrate) cookie recipe (please share!)?

Despite the increasingly widespread availability of kitschy cookie cutters in the shape of dreidels, stars of David, menorahs, etc., Chanukah is not traditionally a cookie-making holiday.  I wouldn’t turn down a Chanukah-themed cookie — hell, I might make them with our kids someday — but cookies just don’t scream Festival of Lights to me.  Chanukah treats tend to be fried in oil, a nod to the story of the miracle of one day’s worth of oil for the Temple’s lamp lasting eight days.

I stretched my Chanukah celebration out one more day to make latkes for my Civil Air Patrol squadron’s holiday party/change of command.  Everyone appeared to like the delightfully crisp potato-and-onion pancakes, but I was shocked to learn how many people had never heard of them until that very evening.  Where I grew up, even the non-Jews at least knew what a latke was.  Guess we really are in the South.  As my husband so succinctly put it, “We grew up a lot closer to New York than they did to Fort Lauderdale.”

Are you a military spouse/fiancée/fiancé/girlfriend/boyfriend? Hie thee to ENS Wifey’s blog, snag the questions, and add yourself to the Mr. Linky for this week’s MilSpouse Friday Fill-In!

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #10

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What secret indulgence do you act on while your spouse is away? (from Devil Dog Darling)

I will quite cheerfully pour myself a glass of wine and settle in for an evening of reading bad fanfiction.

Man, that’s embarrassing.  I should have made up something saucier.

If you were a spice, what would you be? (from New Girl On Post)

I don’t have a good answer for this one.  The question asks which spice I would be, but I think I’d rather choose an herb.  However, I am not having much success wrangling my pedantic tendencies into submission this morning, so I find myself unable to tell you what kind of leaf I am when I ought to be choosing which bark, seed, root, or fruit I am.

Where do you go for support when your significant other is deployed? (from Texas Meets Washington)

My undergarments remain supportive whether my husband is here or not.

Family and Twitter work wonders when I’m not making lame lingerie jokes.

What is the oldest thing you own? (from A Troop’s Girl)

I am not sure.  The oldest T-shirt I own (and regularly wear) is bright red and from the theatre at which my parents were working when they met.  Mom was an actress, Dad was a techie.  It was a match made in heaven, if heaven is a place where patrons are encouraged to boo, hiss, and throw popcorn at the villains.

How did you envision your future pre-military? (from Daddy’s Duty)

How far pre-military do we want to go?  If you asked four-year-old Nth, you would hear about a fascinating projected career as a paleontologist.  From about first grade onward, you would be regaled with plans for becoming a marine biologist specializing in cetaceans, particularly in orca communication.  Post-freshman year of high school, during which I had a phenomenally lousy biology teacher, my interest in computer science began to solidify alongside an interest in the Russian language.  I thought I might wind up working for the State Department or some other federal government agency (a career aspiration not uncommon when growing up in the DC-Metro area.

I had an inkling that my future might involve the military when I started dating my now-husband during my junior year of high school, as he had already gotten an appointment to the United States Naval Academy.  As we continued dating and eventually came to the conclusion that we were probably going to wind up married, it became clear that my career would not be as simple as staying in DC to seek a government job.  I still struggle with that a little bit, as I have not yet made the leap into wholehearted pursuit of alternate career ideas.

Are you a military spouse/fiancée/fiancé/girlfriend/boyfriend? Hie thee to ENS Wifey’s blog, snag the questions, and add yourself to the Mr. Linky for this week’s MilSpouse Friday Fill-In!