Waxing Philosophical and a Punch Up

Tomorrow Dominic has his last T-1 flight, and then he's through with work until he has to go to survival school on September 11th, where he will be dropped off in the wilderness of Washington state and be punched up a good bit and made to kill and eat a rabbit. Also, I think he's going to have to sit in a box too small for him for a day or so and pretend to be a POW. Oh, the things one must do in order to be an aviator in the Air Force.

We're both kind of sad he has to depart on this bit of school--meant to help him preserve his life if, god help us, he ever needs to--on the 11th. Dominic, because he's nervous about flying on a good day (big fat lovely irony, right?). Me, because I try very hard not to associate my husband with the things going on with the American military and current affairs in general. This is probably stupid of me, but I find that Not Thinking About It works and helps to keep me calm. In an era of a presidential administration and foreign policy that I haven't been able to understand or support, I'm shocked to find myself so close to it all, just one step away from being impacted by war in the worst possible way. So while Dominic's away being beaten up I expect him to be a perfect student and learn a whole bunch about how to survive a worst case scenario. And then when he comes home we'll both be thankful that he won't ever have to go in there on foot, that he'll be in a plane high, high above the shooting, the landmines, and the bombs.

It's shocking to me how life seems to consist of a lot of randomly strung together coincidences that cohere together into these fragile and beautiful things: a marriage, a career, our lives together just beginning. Some people would call it fate. At this point in my life I'm more comfortable with seeing it as a mild, fortuitous form of serendipity. But I still struggle to understand what it all means, and how I have to change myself to accommodate it all, little by little by little.

Signs of Disfunction

Recently I made a caramel cake. Now, I was obsessed with the thought of making this caramel cake for nearly two weeks before I finally bought all the ingredients. During the making of said caramel cake I managed to dirty most of our dishes, and also the viscosity of the caramel? It was like cement, so cleaning up--well you can imagine how that went. Anyway, I went through all this trouble to make this caramel cake, and it ended up like heaven melting in your mouth and tasting like caramel, but in a rare moment of common sense lucidity I had made the mistake of giving away a generous portion of the cake to a neighbor WHO DIDN'T EVEN APPRECIATE IT I DON'T THINK, and therefore by the time I was down to the last piece of it, I wanted to kill myself because I wanted to eat the whole caramel cake because I am totally greedy like that and who knows when I'll bake another one? Something must be wrong with me because normal people don't pitch fits because they can't eat a whole cake by themselves.

But, seriously, the caramel cake: it was that good.

Also, I have been known to eat a whole giant sized box of Junior Mints during a movie. Those boxes have THREE portions in them. Maybe I should have my sweet tooth surgically excised. Or at least sometimes I wish I could.

The Countdown Has Begun...

Well after a year of flight school, Kate and I are almost out of here! Today I received my assignment papers to Offutt! I know that everyone is thinking, "Why the hell is he excited about Nebraska?" I honestly don't know, but I am. We have a report no later than of 15 November. So when I found out it was so soon, I called my bank and in fifteen minutes Kate and I had our first mortgage approved! Big news all around! I have been waiting so long for the opportunity to buy a house, it almost hurts to wait even if it is only another few months. The houses in Ne all have basements and I keep telling Kate that I'm going to buy a foosball table and a kegerator for flight parties and barbeques down there. Maybe a wine fridge...It's going to be awesome. Hopefully Kate will find a way to pay for all of this. Just kidding. Not really.

Kate and I also discoverd that Tommy Lee has got a new reality show where he attends classes at the Univ of Nebraska Lincoln where Kate is applying for graduate school. The school looks really nice on TV and Tommy Lee is really funny inadvertently. Anyways, everyone I meet who has lived there tells me it's a great town, but cold. That's ok, but Kate is probably in for a big surprise. I personally love the cold and can't wait to be around snow. I keep telling Kate one of the best things about cold weather is that you can leave your beer in the garage and it stays ice cold! No need to waste fridge space!

T-1's so far is awesome. It's such a nice break from the high stress atmosephere I was immersed in before. The jet is really fast and we'll be doing low-level flights at 500ft AGL and 240kts. That my friends is low and fast. I'm hoping it doesn't make me hurl. I'm pretty weak like that. Anyways, three weeks till graduation and survival school! I can definitely wait!

I don't want to know what you do with your personal time.

I just wanted to say that whenever I check my site stats lately I am increasingly creeped out by the people accidentally finding this site by search words like "jeremey piven chest hair," "stinky poo," and "dirty cat butt."

Stop it please, y'all. It's freaky.

I suppose by acknowledging this problem I've swung the door wide open for weirdos, or people whose cats have stinky butts and really they just want to diagnose and fix the problem, because cats can be gross animals, but well--"jeremy piven chest hair?"

Just stop it.

Planning A Severe Beating...

I just thought I should let everyone know that a month from now I expect I'll be getting pummeled by a bunch of Air Force guys whose only job is to toughen me up for a P.O.W. camp. I that wasn't enough, I've been scheduled for "Advanced Resistance." AKA: Advanced Beatings. I am incredibly excited about that...Nothing like walking wide-eyed into some guys fist to make you say, "What in the hell was I thinking?" It's not all gut punches from what I understand, you also learn how to live off the land and I think it's going to be a fantastic diet as long as you don't mind the not eating. I think the most disconcerting part of it all is the smile and "you'll enjoy it" comment when you ask other guys about their experiences there. I'm sure I will...

School is almost done I have a capstone presentation tomorrow to a couple of Colonels so I'm slightly nervous, but it can't be that bad. I mean they're not going to eat me or anything...I hope. Well I better run because it's late and I never get enough sleep!

Homebody

I go through various cycles of emotion lately, but listlessly bored seems to be the demon I battle most often. When the only human socialization I've gotten for the past two months has been my kitty (and yes, kitty isn't human, but for the sake of my sanity I've had to include her because we spend all day hanging out together and taking naps and being chill) and my husband, tired and bedraggled after long office hours, I begin to get worn out by the sheer pressure of the loneliness beating down on me. It's true that I have stuff to do. Like it or not, I've been a housewife lately, and that means the endless dishes and laundry and cooking are delegated almost entirely to me. I try not to complain about it because, you know, I don't have a job so I get to do whatever I want all day, and Dominic has to go to work and suffer long hours of tediousness and public math. Still, the housework can be tedious too, and I have a difficult time creating a schedule for myself when there isn't one laid out for me. If I know I can't get fired or get bad grades, I'm like, "Heck yeah! Pajamas until 3:00 in the afternoon!" But, after a year of what I now consider to be chronic unemployment, pajamas until 3:00 makes me more depressed than joyous, and did I mention the loneliness? It's lonely.

When we first moved to Texas I played around with the idea of maybe getting a job. I half-heartedly composed a resume and went to a job fair, but the choices there freaked me out, and plus I was scared of being in a big, new city, and I was scared of driving around in it, and I was scared of getting lost, and I was scared of being without Dominic, and I was scared, scared, scared. I decided to try my hand at substitute teaching, and well, we know how that turned out. Shortly thereafter I applied and was accepted to a couple of graduate classes at a local school, and that worked well for me, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was mostly treading water, biding my time, waiting until something more permanent could come along. Still, I'm glad I took those classes because now I know I can handle graduate school. When I go back for good I know I'll be able to finish it.

For a long time I've felt very uneasy about this past year, this gift of extra time that stretches out endlessly, my fortune at not having to get a job because we're comfortable enough as it is. As silly as it may seem, I don't want people to think that I'm lazy and good for nothing because I don't work, because I chose to stay home instead. I've always been a hard-working person. I've held various paying jobs since I was 13(!) and of course I was always in school until just a year ago, usually as an honor student. I suppose I've really come to terms with myself as of late, however, and I know that the decisions I made weren't made out of laziness or fear (or at least those weren't the states of being motivating me most). Truthfully, I didn't get a job because both Dominic and I consider this early stage of our marriage to be more important than a few extra thousand dollars. I stay home so that when Dominic has his brief respites from work we can be together. Because he never has set hours (there have been weeks at a time when he's come home from work at noon or mid-afternoon, weeks more when he works from six in the morning until eight at night) I like to always be available. Plus, it's been undeniably nice to have this break, to reevaluate and rethink my career track. I wasn't up to the challenge two years ago when all my friends were applying to graduate school. I was just too confused about what I wanted, but now I feel like I know more clearly what should be my next step, and that will be readmission to a graduate program in fall 2006.

That's still some time away, and I'm having difficulty, as the summer gets longer, hotter, and feeling more worn, visualizing the steps I'll have to go through to make it happen. But it will happen. I know because I've done it before. I did it here. But first, there will be more waiting. Waiting while Dominic is away at survival school. Waiting to get orders and dates for our relocation to Nebraska. And, lastly, the insignificant waiting I do everyday as I try to navigate through the things that must be done (dishes) and the things that need to be done (more writing to build up my portfolio, more research into local schools) and this is perhaps the worst waiting of all. It's the waiting that leaves me feeling lonely and helpless and like even though I have all the time in the world I am never getting enough done.

But, also I can read whatever books I want, and because we have a DVR I can watch all kinds of nuggets of goodness like Entourage, Gilmore Girls, Lost, Over There, and Grey's Anatomy without worrying how I'm going to fit in all that TV. So I guess it's a Catch-22. All the TV and books I can digest vs. being lonely and picking up my cat too much and calling her my "kitty baby." And also dressing her up like an Indian, I mean Native American. I know, my life is so hard.

Anyway, I know I'll soon be thankful for this time in my life when later things are so hectic I'll be pulling my hair out with frustration. And I guess that's how I make myself believe that this slow period is okay. Because sooner or later the poop is going to hit the big ass fan. But I'll be prepared, I hope.

Disorganized

I just spent the last two hours trying to commandeer some sort of order in our second bedroom, which is more formally known as the computer/music/place we deposit all our junk we don't know what do with room. This room is so scary and disorganized it might take us weeks just to shred all the old documents we have lying around with defunct pin and credit card numbers. I won't even mention the terror that is our closet in that room, a little nook stuffed so violently full each excursion into it is one door-opening closer to a fatal avalanche. It's only been a year since we moved in and this is the monster we have created. Either Dominic or I need to suddenly grow a completely different personality in order to deal with this, a personality that eschews chaos and embraces things categorized alphabetically. But that's just wishful thinking for me. My jig was up in first grade, when my teacher had to order a special conference with my parents because she was so concerned with the state of my desk, which was monstrously messy, let me tell you. Weeks-old opened packs of crackers and busted rancid juice box messy. I know, ew.

Anyway, so I'm tired of this project already. Next!

Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better

Saturday evening Dominic and I traveled to Austin to attend a showing of Annie Get Your Gun. The event was in a park. And it was free. And we could bring our own booze, so you could say it was a perfect evening. Saturday was also the first day in over two weeks that I had Dominic all to myself, so that was nice--and fleeting. He went back to work today. Yes, I know it's Sunday, but the art of navigation apparently demands blantant disregard for the five day workweek. Anyway...

Proof I am the whitest person alive. Someone! Make me wear some lipstick!

I'm Back Baby!!!

Hey Everybody, I'm back! I can't say from where because it's all very hush-hush, G-14 classified. No, I'm just kidding. Seriously though, I just finished advanced EWO (Electronic Warfare Officer) training yesterday. Yeah!!! I am so tired of learning. Unfortunately, I have one more phase of academics, and then I transisition to the T-1 for more flying training. They also scheduled me for survival training two days after I graduate which isn't really cool at all. I'm sure the survival instructors will have a grand time beating me with sticks and making me run all over Washington state.

Speaking of WA, I recently had a flight to Whidbey Island in northwest WA. I had a really good time except for missing Kate of course! I got to fly in an EA-6B simulator as part of an attempt to make us want to choose it as a permanant aircraft. No thank you. It seemed like fun but would require an additional year of training on top of the year I still have remaining. Anyways, the weather at Whidbey was like a dream, 70 and sunny until 10:00pm. It was awesome. I had a couple few good northwest microbrews and played an awesome round of golf. Really a lot of fun. We went into Seattle for a day and that was really nice. I know that Kate would enjoy the city.


This Is Where I Played.


A View From The Road.


Saturday In The Park

Well it's late and I better run for now! Later!

Randomness

Anyway, so my weekend kind of sucked, but I did manage to meet my quota for lying on the couch for extended periods of time.

A sign I need more human interaction: I watched Kinsey Friday night and thought it perfectly acceptable to talk to the characters in the movie throughout, like, "Liam Neeson, don't you do it! Don't you cheat on Laura Linney!" and "Laura, you go ahead, girl. Get it on with Peter Sarsgaard." Thing is, when you talk to movies out loud, maybe that means you're crazy. Or just bored and lonely.

I'm getting a haircut tomorrow. Oh, sweet haircut. And also, I ran three whole miles on the treadmill today. All at once! And then I did SITUPS. Omg, I am like so committed to my health.

Okay, I am officially sick of myself. What do you do when you need a break from your own personality?