The "Eventually I Got It Right" Skirt

Remember this? It was my second sewing project, a skirt. It didn't turn out very well.

I really liked the concept and wanted the same thing, only better, so a few months ago I made another one. It took a lot of trial and error, because I had no pattern and apparently couldn't do the simple math required to calculate the sizes of the skirt's seven pieces, but eventually I got it right.

It's made of three tiers of cotton lawn fabric. It's longer in the back than it is in the front, which is a major improvement over my first effort. I used a contrasting color, hot pink, to sew the tiers to each other, and finished up with a drawstring closure.

Bad:

1. This fabric's very lightweight and, in the right light, practically transparent.

2. With all the times I messed up, I spent more money on fabric than I would have spent on the skirt if I'd seen it in a store.

Good:

1. It's just the right length. 

2. I finally made something I'm almost 100% happy with.

Finally, the Return of the Brain Sunshines!

I woke up this afternoon (at 1:30, because I have the most amazing job in the world and because I went back to sleep after Joe's and my 6:30 AM - 10:30 AM time together) with a peace and optimism I haven't had in, like, two weeks. I was like, *streeeeetch* "Hello world! It's so sunny outside! I wonder what time it is. Man, I'm comfy. Who would've known blankets on the floor would make such a great avoid-dragging-mattresses-up-three-flights-of-apartment-stairs bed? I think I'll lay here and read for a little bit then get up and do some things. Because you know what? I can totally get all my work done before I go to Korea in 36 days, or 21 business days, and I can do as much or as little today as I want and everything will still be fine."

It was nice. I haven't had the "I'll definitely get everything done before Korea" feeling in over two weeks. I've actually been extremely distracted and not very happy and and I haven't done any work. Yes, mom and Joe, my next sentence was going to include the words "blame" and "hormones," thank you. But! Apparently, I've snapped out of it. (For the next two weeks, anyway.)

Last week, I made two Korea Kountdown Kalendars and taped them to the walls in front of each of my computer areas. One of the kalendars is in front of my workstation to remind me to stop wasting time and start doing work. The other is in front of my play-station so I can look at it and be happy at how many days are X'ed off.

So! 36 more days to cram 3 months' worth of work into, with international moving preparations sprinkled on top.

36 more days til I get to leave limbo and make a real home again.

36 more days til I get to remember exactly what about our life together - about him - I erased so I'd be safe.

Of course, I'll be way happier when we're down to, like, 15, but 36 is good enough for today.

Army Wife Life: Alonefood

When Joe's around, I cook stuff. Whole chickens, pudding and pie crusts and bread and all sorts of other things from scratch, rice pilaf, apple oatmeal, disgusting apricot-pumpkin brownies. I have so much cooking stuff that most of my moving boxes are labeled "KITCHEN." When we go to the grocery store, Joe likes to check the utensil aisle to make sure I already own at least one of everything they sell.

If it's in the kitchen, I've got it covered.

Until Joe leaves, and I'm alone, and I decide that any food that takes more than 4 minutes to prepare is way too much trouble.

If you pay close attention, you can see each subtly different phase of my transformation from chef to minimalist. Watch:

Day -7 to Day -1 (Right Before He Leaves): My finest hour (other than Thanksgiving, of course.) I'm cooking everything he likes, everything I can think of that he might want. Visits to the grocery store cost an obscene amount. The dishwasher runs three times a day. The fridge overflows with ingredients and leftovers. Still, we go out to eat every few days, making our last visits to our favorite local restaurants.

Ground Zero/Day 0: I come home from dropping Joe off at the airport. I'm distraught, listless, and hungry for comfort. The candy or desserts, if there are any, they go first. Later, I begin to look through the cabinets and realize I don't care enough to actually make anything. I begin to prey on the leftovers.

Day 3: I'm still taking time off from my job. I still burst into tears at the sight of Joe's belongings. My supply of leftovers has grown quite meager, and I will soon have to switch over to freezer food. I let a ray of sunshine into my life by going to Chik-Fil-A for dinner.

Day 5: Still not doing my work, but it's about time I got back to it. I can get through an entire day without having an emotional meltdown, which is good because I really need to go to the grocery store. I'm out of leftovers, out of freezer food, and I haven't had fresh fruit in days. So I go out and buy more frozen food and some fruit. On the way home, I stop at Sonic and get dinner.

Day 8: The final phase begins. The transformation is complete. I've gone back to my job and mostly adjusted to life without Joe. I'm out of fruit again. The previous night, waiting in line at Chik-Fil-A again and brooding over my bank statement, I decide I'm done with fast food for a while. So I go to the grocery store and stock up on fresh fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs, frozen chicken, bread, and tortillas. (And a box of brownie mix.) These will be my staples for the forseeable future. (Except the brownie mix; that's my weekend binge food and will be replaced by something else next weekend.)

So here we are, Day 49. Once a week, to keep myself away from convenience foods and Chik-Fil-A and WaWa, I prepare giant batches of a couple types of food, and I live off of them 'til they start rotting or 'til it's grocery shopping day again. For example, last time Joe was gone, I lived off refried bean burritos for two weeks.

But here's what's on the menu this month:

Breakfast: Sugar-free honey-sweetened yogurt with blueberries and sugar-free granola OR frozen microwaveable greasy hot savory IHOP Scramblers with a side of blueberries to health it up.

Lunch: Chicken salad with grapes and apples. Here's this week's batch:

Alternative lunch OR snack: Two lightly salted hardboiled eggs, and raisins glued to celery sticks with sugar-free peanut butter.

Dinner: Chicken with spicy mayo and lettuce on a tortilla. This week, I ingeniously mixed the chicken with the spicy mayo to eliminate the burden of spending 2 minutes every night preparing the sauce.

Now doesn't that look appetizing?

On the dinner menu a couple of weeks ago was buffalo chicken with bacon and ranch on tortillas, served with celery. It was...kinda gross, and I will probably do it again when I get bored with mayo-based chicken salads.

So, in short, because I can't be bothered to plan meals and cook daily while Joe is gone, I've learned to be efficient. I live off sandwiches and wraps and grapes and celery sticks and watermelon. Sadly, by the time I'm with him again, I'll have completely forgotten how to prepare a decent meal and will have to re-learn how to cook.

At least by then I'll know roughly 27 quick & easy ways to make dinner out of a chicken breast and a tortilla.

What Happens When I'm Not Home!

I had no idea how to light the burners on my gas oven when I moved into this apartment. Wasn't I supposed to, like, turn on the gas and light a match or something? No idea. So a friendly maintenance guy came to make sure the pilot light was on and showed me how to make the fire come out, and now I know.

As I explored my new apartment, I learned that if I opened the back door without being careful, a piece of the blinds over the door would fall on my head. That disturbed me. I told the front office, who said they'd send maintenance the next day.

The next day, I was out doing stuff. Errands and clothes shopping. It was early afternoon by the time I got home, and I was worried that the maintenance guy might have had to reschedule since I hadn't been home all day. But when I got home, I found a note on the kitchen counter saying that he had been in my apartment while I was out and had replaced a part on the blinds.

Initially, I was horrified. I started looking for bloodstains on the carpet and around Jack's muzzle (also checking to see if I'd left any underwear on the living room floor) because I knew Jack's first thought would have been MUST DESTROY INTRUDER. But there was no blood or underwear. So a cautious feeling of delight began to grow. "I can put in a maintenance order and leave the house for as long as I want and not wait around and they'll still come?" I thought to myself. "O happy apartment life day!" But, alas, the blinds were still broken. And the toilet seat was up.

About a week later, I was in a hurry and I forgot about being careful when opening the back door and I ripped the blinds completely off the wall and they REALLY fell on my head that time. So, with the giant set of blinds in the middle of the floor, I thoroughly cleaned the apartment and then called maintenance. The office said they'd send maintenance the next day. The next day, the younger of the two maintenance guys came and started replacing my blinds. I asked him what had happened when he'd intruded into Jack's apartment the day I wasn't home. He said that Jack was nice to him after the initial scary furious barking. I said okay, cool, and then I left to run another errand because I was already on my way out when he arrived and because it was awkward to be there with him. When I got home, the blinds weren't broken anymore. But, naturally, (especially after the toilet seat incident,) I was slightly creeped out by having the guy in my house when I wasn't home, and I checked my bedroom for carpet-footprints which were not my own. I found no conclusive evidence and got bored and made a sandwich.

That brings me to today. Okay, well, first, I'm on the third floor of the apartment building. My downstairs neighbors on the second floor, the ones whose locked door I kept trying to open before I learned where my own door is, I see them on their balcony aaaaaaalllllllll the time and mostly try to pretend they're not there (except for the occasional "hi,") because I think that's proper apartment balcony etiquette. You know, give a false sense of privacy. Anyway, it was evening, and I had been out walking Jack as I do for the better part of an hour every evening. As I approached the building, they were on their balcony, and the man of the apartment said hello, and I said hello, and he asked if anyone had told me about the leak. I knew nothing about a leak. So he told me that there had been water in the carpet of their bedroom floor that morning. I panicked and tried to remember what I had done that morning that could possibly have caused water to go through my floor, but he told me that maintenance discovered that the puddle had actually been caused by leaking from a worn-out copper pipe in the 40-year-old building's wall. (He and the lady of the apartment also told me about the electrical fire that had caused them to be evacuated out of another building in the complex, but of course that's another story.)

But the whole reason he started the conversation with me - best part - was to let me know that while I had been at work earlier that day, maintenance had been in my apartment trying to find the source of the leak.

So it's a good thing I took a nap yesterday instead of cleaning up the place like I'd planned to. And a good thing I went on a cleaning frenzy earlier this afternoon, before I knew that anyone had been here and after they'd already seen what my place looks like when I'm not motivated to keep it clean for Joe. I had had absolutely no chance to check for underwear on the living room floor. Thank goodness there wasn't any.

I just really hope they didn't go into my bedroom.