Not So SAHM

Jaded and cynical? Yes. Surprised? No.

Yesterday I said that we’d be finding out where we’re going today. One more day, remember? Of course, that was a stretch of the truth. Technically speaking the powers that be did input his assignment into the system today. My guess is they did it at 4:29 pm. It should generate and kick out an email tomorrow. You know what? It’s not that big of a deal that we have to wait one more day to confirm our suspicions and to find out when we need to be wherever it is that we’re going. What I’m angry about is that for the past two and a half months I can bet you what time those assignment guys were going home: 4:30. Probably not a minute later. Should I work harder and longer so my coworkers will have an assignment on time? Whatever, I have a hot dinner waiting on me. “Good enough for government work.”

We’re in somewhat of a special situation. Most other families don’t need to know where they are going this early in the year. There are several hundred though, including my husband, where an early assignment is critical. What I have been saying all along still rings true in my mind: is this the first time they’ve ever had to give out assignments early? No. They do it every year. There were two special situations that threw wrenches into the system this year and apparently that was too much for them to handle. What they should have done is worked harder to get the job done. Isn’t there a saying out there that says “we get more done before 9 am than most people do in a whole day?” Oh yeah, that’s the army. My husband doesn’t work for the army. And I could get into a whole philosophical debate about what’s happening with today’s forces, but I won’t. And what about integrity. That email traffic we got the other day said that my husband would have at least an email notification (nothing official) within 24 to 36 hours of Monday. Does that dude not know how many hours are in a day? How hard is it to write, “you’re going here” and hit the send button? AAGGGHH. I need to go throw something. Where’s the cat?

So, for now you’ll have to sit in suspense for one more night. It gets old doesn’t it? Believe me, I sympathize. Please come back though. If this happens again I’ll just spill the beans about where I think we’re going.

P.O.ed but with no legal recourse to take,

N.B. My husband is vehemently denying my assertion that the slackers dedicated technicians went home at 4:30. His positive outlook on life is leading him to be certain that they worked their tails off night and day until 30 April. This whole post is just a personal rant that is not backed up on any foundations of truth (other than my 13 years of experience with people like these). So, Sparky and others who may read this and actually know some of the dedicated technicians of which I gripe; it’s just me blowing off steam (you should have heard me on the phone with Du earlier). Tomorrow’s post will be a glowing tribute to these same ladies and gentlemen…as long as our assignment comes through.

24-36-Never

One day left. That’s what we’ve been told. That’s what they, who break promises like the government, have promised us. Har har. We will be pulling up chalks and moving in as little as six weeks and we still don’t know our new address. Not only have we not found a house, we don’t even know the zip code, city, county, or state that the house will reside in.

We originally thought we’d find out in March where we’d be moving to. That was the first promise broken. We were given the last week in March/first week in April as “house hunting week”. With no house to hunt for we placated ourselves by going to the North Georgia mountains and not thinking about moving. That’s a lie, we thought about moving to the mountains but that would put a serious halt on my husband’s career.

We were then told we’d find out by the end of April. Supposedly they are legally bound to tell us where we’re going a certain number of days before we actually have to go there. Why would I assume they would start playing by the rules now though? April has come and gone. Except…there’s one day left.

My husband’s boss tried to take a little bit of control and emailed the people who are supposedly in the know. This was Monday. Approximately 58 hours ago.

Boss: “Dude, what’s up with Dressing’s assignment? He’s graduating in almost a month and has nowhere to go.” (name changed to protect the innocent and my butt)
Desk Jockey: “Relax, it’s being worked and he will be notified in 24 to 36 hours.”
Boss: “That’s great and all, but what job is he getting?”
Desk Jockey: XXXXXXXXX

We have not received that notification. Did I mention that this convo took place on Monday, approximately 58 hours ago (and it probably wasn’t typed out exactly the way I just made it sound)? That’s like the eleventeenth untruth told. Eleventeenth is Ashlyn’s favorite number. And am I to believe that we’ll actually get the notification tomorrow. Let’s just say I’m not holding my breath.

Are you noticing that I put a bunch of XXXXXXXXXes in place of where Desk Jockey said we were going? That’s because I want to kill y’all with suspense as much as we’ve been tortured with it for the past two and a half months. And plus, if I type it out God might have to play one of those big jokes on me by throwing another wrench in the system and changing it up on us. But look on the bright side, you only have to wait one more day.

I promise.

Your soon to be homeless, yet calm because God’s still in control, blogger,

She chose red

I mentioned yesterday that Reagan broke her arm Friday night. It was a very interesting end to a pretty interesting day. After returning from strawberry picking, which included almost running out of gas and finding out our next possible city of residence, we prepared for our Pity Party. We had invited neighbors over for an evening of grilling and chilling where everyone could jokingly commiserate with us since we’re one of the few families who still don’t know (officially) where they’re moving to next.

We set up our grill out front and had a nice relaxing evening with some friends. Don’t let the fact that our grill was out in the driveway affect your opinion of us…we’re in the south. We do it the southern way. We have a nice, big, beautiful backyard; everyone does in this neighborhood, but we all seem to congregate in front yards. I should have had Ashlyn out in nothing but a diaper; that would have truly completed the WT picture. No, what truly completed that picture was Reagan running down to the sidewalk to chase and catch grasshoppers.

She was playing peacefully by herself when all of the sudden a brown spider with yellow stripes on its legs (her words) jumped at her threatening to maim and dismember her (my words). She turned to run from it, took only several steps and fell hard…knee, right arm, chin…kind of a rolling motion. Du ran over to check on her; she was squealing pretty loudly. We, however, don’t really know when the squeal represents real pain or perceived pain so he tried to calm her down and took her inside to assess the situation. By this time it was already close to her bedtime and she was saying she was tired so he put her to bed. We didn’t need a cranky kid interrupting our awesome WT Pity Party anyway.

Later that night we heard her crying from her bedroom. She was afraid the cats, who were jumping up onto her bed, were going to touch her arm. She normally loves to have the cats bunk with her so we knew something wasn’t quite right. After checking the arm we could tell it was swollen slightly and was definitely tender to the touch. The loving mother that I am, I decided to solve the situation by taking her to the emergency room. If it wasn’t broken then she’d learn her lesson (the lesson of overreacting to smallish situations) by being scared out of her wits through the ER experience. If it was broken, well, then we needed to be there anyway.

Upon leaving the house I smiled inwardly to myself, congratulating myself that we were heading to the ER before all the drunk idiots had a chance to injure themselves on a Friday night. It was 10:30pm. We checked in at 10:45. We weren’t called back until 1 freaking 20 in the morning. I guess all the drunk idiots get started early in Montgomery. Probably in their driveways, grilling. Oh, by the way, I am in no way implying there was imbibing going on here. There was no drunken neglect of our children. We are not that WT.

I need to wrap this up. After a five hour ER visit we found out her arm was indeed broken. At this point I was super proud of Reagan because she was completely calm and collected throughout the whole ER experience, even when the doctors were poking and prodding and twisting her arm around. We couldn’t get the cast on until Monday…and that’s a story I could only cuss to tell. Our appointment was at 1:00 and we weren’t seen until 3:00. Livid. That’s all I can say.

Reagan got her choice of colors for her cast. I think everyone that knew her thought she’d go for hot pink. I would have. No, she chose red:

And this is the only picture I’ve gotten of it so far. Aren’t they the cutest! The old me would have had her pose outside, inside, out back, pretending to dunk it in the tub, pretending to do a headstand. Now? I catch her climbing out of the truck before life speeds by at 90 to nothing. We have no idea how long she’ll have to keep it on. We go back in two weeks for them to x-ray it to see how the bone is healing. Please pray that it’s healing correctly. She’s having to miss her last two swimming lessons, and the YMCA is graciously allowing her to make those up once the cast comes off. She’s also not going to be able to perform the gymnastics and baton portion of her recital this Saturday. She’ll still be able to do the jazz and tap though. She’ll be the one everyone will notice (proud, dance mother moment here. Wait, I am NOT a dance mom).

P.S. The moral of the story is don’t grill in your front yard. Grill out back with the grass. That way when your kid decides to chase and run from bugs s/he will not break a bone on the pesky cement.

Strawberry Fields

Friday the girls and I went strawberry picking! Organic, home-grown, sweet, juicy strawberries.

We picked for a while before our basket was full. What am I saying? I picked for a while; the girls picked for about five minutes and then decided they just wanted to supervise. My prize pick:

That’s odd. They swear to us it’s all organic! The best part was that the owners let begged and ordered us to eat while we picked.

Can you tell Ashlyn took her duties seriously?

A great morning to a mixed bag of a day. I thought we were going to run out of gas before we got to the farm. The directions were “just north of Prattville”. That’s like Du telling us Neueschwanstein was “just over the hill” as we were on the verge of mutiny while walking from the parking lot to the castle in Bavaria. We made it though with just enough gallons to get us to the nearest station when we left for home.

On the way home we found out potentially where we’ll be moving to next. This is a good thing since we could be moving in as little as six weeks. I’ll give further details once we’ve officially been notified.

Then later on that night Reagan broke her arm. I think I’ll post about that one tomorrow…

I Heart Huckabee

We got a chance to “meet” former Governor Mike Huckabee recently. He was our choice for the Republican presidential nominee, but alas were forced to vote for another guy when Huckabeedropped out of the race. We (I should actually say “I”) jumped at the chance to see him when I found out he’d be in Montgomery to help celebrate Faith Radio’s 25th anniversary.

Tickets were expensive, but we were willing to pay. I naively thought though that if we could reserve a whole table that the price per ticket for everyone at the table would be less expensive. I quickly got a lesson in fund raising. We did not reserve a whole table.

You know me and my penchant for meeting political figures and for getting to the front of the show and for being first so I should have been first in line when the doors opened, running to the first open table (closest to the stage of course) for peons who only bought individual tickets. Well, I know my husband and he doesn’t care for that as much as I do so I decided to just chill and see what the night brought us. It brought us two seats at the table the very farthest away from the stage. It was then that I realized my goal of shaking Huckabee’s hand was probably not going to be realized this night.

I’m not really complaining though. We sat next to wonderful people and ate great food. We watched Huckabee play his bass with a trio of local boys who are awesome violinists/guitarists/masters at all stringed instruments. To my delight he played “Sweet Home Alabama” and “The Devil Went Down To Georgia”. Could it have been any better? Well, maybe, if Florida had some rowdy song like that.

We were sitting so far back the guys are just washes of light on my camera. Huckabee’s on the far right. I swear that’s him.

Huckabee’s speech was great. Not political at all, except when he talked about the times during his campaign when people in airports would swear they recognized him. They would end up calling him Bob Dole or Mitt Romney. His speech centered around his career in radio and about how radio plays such an important part in getting messages of hope and faith out to vast audiences.

The best part of the night was when the emcee let everyone know Huckabee would graciously be sticking around for a short while to sign copies of his book, conveniently for sale out front. This is when the competitive spirit in me awoke. I’m sure you can guess that we did indeed end up shaking the man’s hand. Not only that, we got our picture taken with him.

Holy cow, I look like an idiot who’s never met a political figure in her life! Please laugh with me (not at me because I’m chuckling as loud as you are, and that’s not my bra, by the way, it’s a tank worn to prevent that sort of thing from happening). I looked the same in my picture with Sarah Palin and in my picture with Donald Rumsfeld’s wife. I’ve got to get this goofy grin thing under control, because when I finally meet George Bush I want to actually look composed and with it.

So, add another notch to my political belt. If Du had his way we’d already be in politics. I keep telling him though he’s too honest.

I need your help…

This is another installment of the homeschool posts, but I promise, you can help me even if you don’t homeschool. The first issue I need help with concerns time management. The second issue concerns yummy things for lunch. Summer is coming and we’re getting ready to move. Both of those things always make me more introspective about our lifestyle and what needs to change for our next assignment and school year.

TIME MANAGEMENT

For a while now…well, actually ever since she was born (there hasn’t been a day when she’s understood what it means to work within a schedule) we have had trouble getting Reagan to understand time management. I’ll give a little background and then ask for your help.

We do not know how to teach Reagan about time management. She has morning and evening chores to do and it takes her forever to do them. I’m almost not kidding. In the morning she has to take a shower (every other day), make her bed, brush her teeth, brush her hair, get dressed and pick up anything in her room that wasn’t picked up the night before. On days when she doesn’t have to take a shower that should take all of fifteen minutes and I think I’m being generous. You can rest assured that she’s never seen this side of fifteen minutes getting her chores done. The evening is somewhat similar.

If I ask her to do something during the day and let her know that it needs to be done quickly or that she can’t take her time on it guess what she does. She ends up getting distracted and losing focus. During school we see the same issue. It is so hard for her to keep her focus for very long during any subject except when I’m reading to her.

Yes she’s still young, but that can only be an excuse for about, oh, two seconds. There are plenty of kids her age who have to get up at a certain time and get ready to be at the bus stop at a certain time or else.

I’m wondering if we’re not being structured enough when asking her to understand structure. I don’t require her to get up at a certain time in the morning, although she always wakes up around the same time. I try to be flexible during the day because I want homeschool to be enjoyable (while still learning), AND I have a two year old you may have read about on this blog. It’s not easy. In fact, I used to be more structured about school and we were both miserable. Is she just not at the maturity level yet to get that I can allow our day to be flexible while individual tasks during the day still need to be done with focus and expediency?

WHAT DO YOU DO OR WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO TEACH YOUR CHILD TIME MANAGEMENT and what consequences have you used? I feel like we’ve nagged enough. I’m over hearing myself talk and nag and control and scold and warn. Right now we use a chart and a timer, but they don’t seem to be making much of an impact.

LUNCH CHOICES

I am so sick of lunchtime. I dread it each day because I’m tired of peanut butter and jelly; tortillas and Nutella; chicken nuggets and cheese sticks. I’m looking for some cool things to have midday. Obviously I will not have a lot of time right around lunch to prepare them, but I’m willing to make sure I have the ingredients on hand to get things made. I would like our meals and snacks to be healthy(ier than what they’ve been) and I don’t want to have to do cutesy stuff like use sundae glasses or dye food green.

So, before I start searching the internet and pouring through magazines: WHAT ARE FOODS THAT YOU SERVE FOR LUNCH? It could be as simple as beans and rice because that’s different than what I’m doing now. All I’m looking for is ideas that I can then implement into a plan.

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Thank you for your suggestions,