Because Watching This Makes Me So Sad

And as bad as things are in our country, at least our kids aren't dying like this. This is where our donation money is going this month.

Hanging With Emily

Emily, or what's left of the storm, is hanging out over the Bahamas today. The rain started last night, and we woke up to it this morning. Most likely, it will rain all day and into the night. That's okay, though, because we really need the rain! This winter was far too dry, and we're still struggling to recover from it.

They're still watching it to see if it will reform, so good luck to all of you on the East Coast!

I'm actually surprised to see there's internet right now. The tower we rely on has been jury-rigged after the line was cut during construction. It's power source is now the house next door, and the cord has been run above-ground through a large pipe. Not the best set up, and it tends to go out every time it rains. It's nice to have it now, though, since it appears we won't be leaving the house today.

The bad news for us is that the leak above the stove seems to have reopened. We woke up to a puddle of water on the stovetop. I've got a couple pots catching it now, but I guess I won't be cooking anything that way until the rain stops. Fun times in an ancient trailor.

Update, and Where oh Where did Emily Go?

I'm please to announce I'm finally on the mend. I went in yesterday and finally saw the doctor (he wasn't in the day before when I had the first reaction). He took one look at me and said to give me a shot of steroids, a tapering dosage of pills for the next 9 days, and off all antibiotics as my nose looks good and the one they gave me actually wouldn't touch staph anyway.

So, yay! Today I finally woke up feeling like myself (after being up half the night because the steroids really do keep you going - the boys were nice to let me sleep in to 9 this morning). I got back on the treadmill and ran three miles. I hadn't expected to do more than 1 or 1.5 since it's been about ten days since the last time I ran, but I kept up at a snail's pace. Took me 41min, but that's okay. I was running. I think it did me good, too, because the intense prickly feeling in my skin was much better afterwards - all that sweat maybe?

Figured I'd add a word about our dispensary, since I don't think I've ever talked about it. While I spent a lot of time freaking out that this would turn out to be something they'd have to send me to the States to treat due to their lack of facilities, I am very grateful for the ease of obtaining care here.

The dispensary is basically a long, rectangular building. You enter the middle of it and walk into a waiting room with a reception area attached. When you open the door at the rear of the room, you find yourself in a hallway that runs to either side of you. Exam rooms, a room for dental care, an X-ray room, the doctor's office, and a tiny room for pharmaceuticals lay on either side of the hallway. That's it. There is one doctor on staff, two nurses, and, for the Navy and Navy family members, a first class corpsman (who just made chief).

They have hours similar to basic working hours, M-F, and the doctor is on call at all other times. If you have a problem on the weekend, most people just go to the firehouse where there is a 24-hour dispatcher on duty who will page the doctor. Or, I've heard 911 works, although I don't have firsthand experience with that one.

For me, because I've had to go in there nearly every day this week, the best part is the lack of wait. The only thing I've ever had to make an appointment for was Wyatt's school physicals. Everything else is just a walk-in sort of thing. Typically, I can go in there and be back out, medicine in hand, withing 15min. One time I had to have a couple tests done, as well as an X-ray, and it took more like 20min. The times I had to bring the boys, I could leave them playing with toys in the waiting room while I saw who I needed to see because everything is so close. I totally could not do that in the States, nor would even a routine, scheduled appointment take any less than a half hour. What happened to me would have required a couple emergency room visits, which would have been a nightmare.

So, I'm really, exceptionally grateful that if this had to happen, it happened here. See, there are always upsides to every place!

Moving on to Emily, or what's left of here. She stalled out over the Dominican republic, and fell apart. It's been downgraded to not a Tropical storm, and is headed our way this weekend. It might regather at some point, but we'll not see much of that if it does.

So, much ado about nothing, not that I'm complaining. I really wasn't looking forward to dealing with an evacuation while I was so drugged up and everything seemed to be going haywire in my body. It would have been just me and the kids; Oliver is in a different priority for leaving. Kids go first, and the under 5 set first of them. So yeah, that would have been tough. I'm glad it's all worked out this way.

The Next State...?

I was randomly surfing through some blogs and ran across a post where the woman described a meeting she'd had with someone new. Apparently, he was from New England, which she described as "the next state over from me" (she's from New York). I scratched my head when I read it. Does she not realize that New England refers to six states, and is a regional term?

Sigh. This reminds me of the person I met in college who didn't know where Boston was. Although, I think that was a little worse.

Head Full of Sand

This has been one of the longest weeks of my life. And just when I thought I was nearing the end, it got worse. You know those powerhouse antibiotics I've been taking? Well, I went back in to see the corpsman when I ran out. He thought it looked good, and sent me home with instructions to keep using ointment until it goes away completely. I though, hooray, and went home - whereupon the phone promptly rings. He's calling because he talked to the doctor, and he wants me on them for five more days.

So, I'm back on them. Until this morning, that is, when I went back to the dispensary because I was having an allergic reaction to them. Now I've got Benedryl in my system, plus a new antibiotic to try.

Sigh. Will this ever end? Worst case is I have to go to the States if it just won't clear up here. There's a limit to what they can treat here. I'm praying it'll clear up. What a pain that would be...

Anyway, as for Tropical Storm Emily, she's still a tropical storm, and while we've gone to condition 3, no one is talking evacuations of residents (although all the visitors had to leave). We'll see what happens, but we might not even have to take to our assigned shelter when it runs over us. I can live with that.

Yikes!!

So, I went to the doctor today to get my last staph infection checkup, and while I was there tried to reschedule my son's physical for school. It was supposed to be yesterday, and I was feeling so poorly (hate these antibiotics!) that I completely spaced it. The nurse told me she didn't want to schedule for this week....because we might be evacuated. I stared at her in surprise, because I hadn't heard anything.

Turns out, Tropical storm Emily formed last night and is on a path to seep right through here. Unless it turns, we'll be out of here soon. Clearly, I must start packing...

Space 2

I've been meaning to write this for awhile, and frankly it's amazing I'm doing it now. I've gotten pretty bad about planning posts and never getting down to doing it.

This week has also been a weird one. Somehow I contracted a staph infection in my nose, so besides dealing with that, I'm on powerhouse antibiotics that make me feel sick to my stomach all the time. The doctor said he's seen several cases, so I guess it's not uncommon here. Wyatt actually had an infected toe a few months back that required two rounds of antibiotics. Ah, the dark side of life in the tropics!

Anyway, moving back to the real purpose for this post: I asked Wyatt if he wanted to get up really early and watch the space shuttle come back. He got all excited about it, so I set the alarm. When I went in to get him at 0515 (after making sure it was actually going to land, as there is always a chance they will have to change it), he got up right away when I reminded him why I was waking him up. I didn't touch Oscar because he would have been a bear to deal with the rest of the day, and I knew a replay would be enough for him.

It was really nice snuggling on the couch with my six year old while we watched them track the progress of Atlantis through the sky. I'm absolutely not a morning person, and neither are my kids, but sometimes it's worth it to get up for something.

I did feel a little bit badly when Oscar got up later. Their room is right off the living room, and though I kept the TV low, he is easily disturbed and got up just after the shuttle landed. He got all sad that he missed it, so I promised him we'd find it on the internet for him to watch. Luckily, that mollified him.

As it turned out, though, I didn't have to do that because the NASA channel replayed it over and over again that day. How do I know this? Because it's all we watched all day. The boys whipped out their spaceship Legos and played in the living room. The space shuttle Legos didn't come with a whole fuel tank and launch pad set up, so Wyatt built his own out of Duplos.

It's been, what, a week since the landing? They still ask to watch the NASA channel, and are still playing space all the time. I hope they will have the opportunity to be involved in the space program if they are still interested in it as they grow up. Or at the very least, they are able to do something they care about or are good at.

I've found one of the toughest things about parenting for me is this whole schooling issue. We've been spoiled here with a tiny classroom and teacher that is able to teach the kids at their level. Wyatt's gone way beyond what he would have done in a typical kindergarten classroom because of that. After another year of that, I know we're going to have to look to more unconventional solutions for their schooling.

For now, though, we're all learning a whole lot about space.

Space!

Our boys have been very into space lately. When we were in Orlando, we picked up a couple of the new LEGO space themed sets for them. So, now they have their own space shuttle, astronaut, and astronaut van. They've been getting a lot of play around here.

Interestingly enough, our first day in Orlando coincided with the launch of Atlantis. Unfortunately, we weren't paying attention and didn't realize that until after we were there. Because of our lack of planning, and the huge traffic jam to get over there, plus the cloud cover that nearly cancelled the flight (which would have made it much harder to watch much of the launch), we decided to just watch some coverage of it on TV before going on about our merry way.

The last few days, here at home, the boys have been obsessed with the NASA channel. I guess you can watch it on the net, too, but for some reason it's part of our cable package, along with all the overseas military channels (and I do mean all of them). Oliver's been rolling his eyes a bit at it because much of what you see is shots of mission control with no sound - not the most exciting thing to have on. We have, however, been able to see interviews with the astronauts both on the shuttle and in the space station, video from the launch from all angles, including one one attached to a rocket booster that followed it all the way to splash down, and shots of the astronauts floating around doing their jobs. The boys have been fascinated by it all, and astronaut is the vocation of choice this week. Today, we caught a special they made about the shuttle program, and it was really awesome, if a bit sad, to go over the last 30 years.

With all this space stuff, I figured it would be great if we could catch the landing on Thursday. So, I looked it up this afternoon. The time its scheduled to land? 0556 bright and early. Um, yeah, not sure about that...

Because You Just Never Know

I haven't really gotten on here in awhile. I think about blogging a lot, and I even write posts in my head, but I almost never get past that. I'm hitting a bit of a low, and guess it will just take some time to refocus and get over it.

We just got back from an amazing week in Orlando. Probably one of the best vacations we've ever taken. We rented a little condo with three bedrooms for less than $100 bucks a night about 15min from Disney (for orientation, although we didn't go there for Disney World). We saw three movies between us (one Oliver saw while I spent the time at the LEGO store with the boys), went mini-golfing at an awesome pirate-themed place, did Go-Karts, ate ourselves sick at an authentic Brazilian Rodizio, and even managed to fit in a few very needed errands (we took a leaky tire and had it replaced - never flown on a plane with a tire before; good thing it was small). And then there was the visit to Sea World and a few other things thrown in. We weren't bumped once on the flights, and everything went pretty smoothly.

Then we returned, and I realized how much I didn't want to go back. Oliver looked at me and asked if we were done with this duty station, because he had some of the same feelings.

Sigh. It's complicated. In some ways, absolutely. I'm tired of crappy, draconian internet and the utter lack of anything outside of beach combing to do. I've struggled to find friends in what is a rather insular community. Surprisingly, being Navy has marked us even more here than in the States, something I didn't expect. I miss fresh food, and I'm so, so done with having to plan meals around the 4 or 5 things in the produce department (okay, who a I kidding here - it's a produce bin) actually nice enough to consider buying. I miss being able to go to Church (something we also were able to do in Orlando, the first time in a year). I want a library to visit, and a store where we can pick up in five minutes what can take hours to locate online.

But, I also know the grass isn't always greener on the other side, which is why I'm not quite done. When we leave, we welcome back deployment. We lose the weekends and holidays, the birthdays and anniversaries together. I lose the parenting partnership we've developed in the last year and a half, and will have to once again take up most of the family responsibilities. We'll lose having a beach in walking distance from our house and Oliver's work, and will no longer be able to count on having it to ourselves when we go. We'll have to leave behind the coconut palms right outside our living room window, and the silent streets the boys can ride their bikes on without fear.

So, it's never so simple, is it? I'm a girl who tends to want to move when things get difficult, but after a lifetime of doing that, I am aware that you tend to just trade one problem for another, although the trick is discovering which problems you can live with and which are unbearable. (Since I've yet to decide on that one, I suspect it is why I can't think of one place I'd like to settle down in.) We've had some really good times here. I've grown a lot in ways I didn't expect. I'm not going to be sad to leave, but I'm not anxious to go because I also realize I just might be wrong about that in the end. You just never know about a place.

Ten Year Plan

Oliver and I had a long talk yesterday. We went through where we are at financially, where we want to be, what we want our future to look like, and how it all might play out. We've now mapped out a plan that will take us from now until retirement in about ten years.

It's been hard to plan until now. We've been so on the fence about sticking it out in the Navy. Now that we've decided on that, however, the rest is finally possible to debate.

Despite my penchant to do things last minute and my inability to schedule my days effectively, I like having a plan, goals to work toward. It's hard to do things without that. Sometimes it just feels like you're drifting and getting nowhere. The last time we really had any financial goals was back when we were married and facing down 30k of student loan and car loan debt (mostly mine). Two years later, the car was ours, and after another year, the loans were knocked out. We started saving for retirement and living small to save more, but it was more with the idea that we didn't know what was ahead and just wanted to be prepared.

Now, though, we've looked at what he's likely to make in retirement, what we'll have saved by then, and what we have to do now to make that all look better. He's got some career goals, I've got some goals of my own to focus on. Ultimately, my hope is that when his time in the military is done, he can have the freedom to choose whatever job he feels like without feeling locked into another job he doesn't love just to have the money it makes.

So, we'll see what happens. Obviously, there are plenty of things that could go wrong. But it's not worth stressing over those things. We'll just approach our plans again if we have to and adjust.

Just So I Don't Forget About It

On Tuesday, I dropped Oliver off at work, then took the boys to the beach after they had eaten breakfast. I didn't take a camera, and maybe I should have. It was cloudy most of the time there (we've been getting a lot of rain lately, which is fabulous). The water was calmer than I've ever seen it, which meant almost no sand was being kicked up in the waves. There is often seaweed floating around, too, but I didn't see any that day. Just beautifully clear water.

We spent a lot of time tunneling through the sand, building sandcastles, and burying Wyatt per his request. Oliver showed up at lunch time to get a ride home (the building he works in is literally steps from the beach we typically swim at), but we weren't ready yet. So, he took off to find us all some lunch while the kids and I took to the water.

Wow, so much fun! We saw fish, both tiny ones and larger ones as big as my hand. They were white with darker stripes on them that looked kind of like seaweed. Against the white sand, they were almost invisible. We sat still for a long time letting them dart around us.

After splashing around for awhile after the fish watching, Wyatt caught sight of a huge orange starfish sitting quietly a few feet from shore. I was carrying Oscar, as he is both short and uneasy in the water, and he started freaking out when I got closer. Apparently, he saw the starfish as something dangerous. Considering all the things in the ocean that truly are dangerous, I was okay with this even as I assured him we were perfectly safe.

Oliver finally got back with some food. He had to go to the store, then home to assemble a picnic lunch as the one eatery on base was unaccountably closed. (They do that when they can't staff it, is my understanding. That seems to be happening just about every time we want to get something from there lately.) We finished up our perfect morning making sandwiches and trying to keep the boys from getting sand all over the food. Luckily, the wind was much quieter than it normally is.

Then, it was back home to clean up and listen to the huge thunderstorm that rolled in a few hours later. Curiously, it seems to rain here at about 1400 every day lately. Oliver told me one of the chiefs in his office had made a joke about it, so we started paying attention to it. He was totally right, and we now look at each other and laugh when the clouds blot out the sun once more around 1330.

The one bad thing? The internet went out during a huge clap of thunder. Who knows why, but it was another day before it was fixed. I'm crossing my fingers it will stay fixed for a good long while now.

Internet, Welcome Back!

We got the internet back today, and I am so happy. Last Wednesday, someone somehow cut power to the wifi tower on our street. It took us a couple days to finally figure out who the right person was to call, and by the time it was actually looked into, it was Friday afternoon. Nothing happens here over the weekend. Nothing.

So, we had to wait out the weekend, then see how long it would be until it was repaired this week. Happily, it only took until this afternoon. Ironically, I was walking back from dragging both kids and our laptop to the playground so I could take care of some pressing business when I spied them finishing up the repair. Ah, well, it did get 'em out of the house (sometimes a huge feat - between the massive biting flies, the heat, and bright sun, they won't go out unless they have friends, we are entertaining them out there, there's running water involved, or we give them no option - or bribery; that sometimes works).

The net is my contact with the outside world. A few days of no internet has all of us pacing around this place. Luckily, I got a new book in the mail a few days before the net went out, so I had something to do when I'd otherwise be online. I am very sure, though, that we'll be ditching the cable when we move back to the States. There really is nothing on. I'm so glad I don't pay for it here.

House Buying

Every time I turn around, there's another article online about house prices being depressed. I knew it would happen; I mean, at what point do houses get so unaffordable that everyone stops buying them? I had no idea the banks would end up being such a huge part of that problem, but the high prices made us not even consider buying when we lived in WA for fear of what would happen there. Plus, we are military. The last thing we have wanted is to complicate our lives with a house that could be a huge pain to sell last minute.

I have to admit, though, my resolve has wavered a bit looking at home prices today. Especially since we will be at our next duty station for five years. I brought the topic up with Oliver the other day, thinking he might be warmer to it because it was more me than him that said "No way" to buying before. He surprised me, though, by kicking the idea to the curb immediately.

I was a little disappointed at first, but I'm thinking now that he's on the right track. We will be better off if we rent a house that's less than our BAH. I'm determined to find a place we can paint, but otherwise, I don't mind living in someone else's house. Ultimately, I value mobility over staying put. And why on earth would I want to do anything more than call the landlord when something breaks while Oliver is out to sea? That is not a stress I want in my life.

So, no houses for us until retirement. And even then, we might pass if we can find something more interesting. Like a job overseas. One can always dream...

He Loves Me, This I Know

I love getting flowers, and all those traditional expressions of love. There are no florists here, so it's been a long time. Yesterday, though, Oliver gave me something better. We were walking home from Wyatt's graduation, and I took one bite of the chocolate cupcake I'd picked up on the way out. It tasted strongly of mocha, which I detest, so I tossed it in a nearby garbage can and bemoaned my decision of what flavor to pick. Oliver told me I should go back and get another one (we are literally a five minute walk from where it was being held, and we'd only gone halfway home). I told him I'd thought about it, but I was too lazy to go back. On hearing that, he turned around without saying another word and walked back to get me a cupcake. I watched his departing back and realized once again how much I love that man.

One of the first things that attracted me to Oliver (other than his dashing good looks!) when I met him was his willingness to jump in and do things when someone needed help. He doesn't hem and haw over it, ignore it, or try to get out of it. When someone asks, he just does it. Even if that desire is as small as a cupcake for his wife.

I love that man.

Traveling About - Spouse, or No?

I have a friend here who plans on spending most of the summer off-island. She's going to visit family, and travel around in between. The catch? Her husband won't be along for most of the trip because the Navy isn't so willing to hand out three months of leave. Hopefully, he'll join them for a few weeks along the way, but that's it.

Listening to her outline her trip for me, I was just a tiny bit jealous. I'd love to get off island for three months, and spending it traveling around? Even better. (Yes, we do like living here, but it's an island. There's a reason they coined the term "island fever".)

Leaving Oliver home, however, is not a happy plan for me. I'm very aware that we'll be back to a deploying command at the end of next year. Even though I could really use a break from here, I am not interested in a self-made break from my husband. So, I'm going to stay here, and we'll take a couple week long vacations this summer.

I'm also looking at it this way: when he starts deploying again, I'll be traveling with the kids on my own every time. I plan on taking a decent trip in the middle of every deployment, now that I'm over my fear of flying alone with them. Plus, they are a lot older now and much easier to take along. Having a trip in the middle of deployment helps so much in breaking it up. I wish I'd done it more in WA.