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.

Semi-Trailer Tetris

Our stuff got here. Since I should be joining Joe in South Korea in a couple of months, most of our household goods are going straight into storage.

The semi-trailer with our stuff on it was dropped off the day before the unloaders were scheduled to unload, but there was no room for the trailer in the parking lot of the storage facility. So, after much discussion between me, the driver, and the storage facility lady, a conversation that was difficult because the driver had some kind of speech impediment, he left the trailer in the parking lot of the Rite Aid next door.

When he mentioned that he had a key to the truck, I got all excited because I wanted to see if my plant was dead yet. He said he'd leave the trailer unlocked for me, and was even kind enough to remove the giant metal and wooden bulwark inside the trailer that I probably wouldn't have been able to get past.

So for the last part of the conversation - the important part, about getting a driver to the storage facility the next day to move the trailer into the storage facility's parking lot - I wasn't really paying attention. All my mental energy had been redirected from trying to understand the truck driver to thinking about my plant. I didn't really know what was going on, but I assumed everything would be fine, because that's usually how things work.

After the conversation in which I was blissfully unaware that nothing was actually worked out, the driver left. I said 'bye to the storage facility lady, then went next door and climbed into the trailer.

My plant wasn't dead, so that was cool. But somewhere between Georgia and Virginia, the truck driver had apparently braved the perils of an earthquake to get my stuff to me on time, and everything in the trailer had fallen over or shifted.

A stool leg had gone through the cloth on our box spring. The teeth of the gears on my bike had chewed up the side of our aluminum trash can (which had been round but now had sides.) The plastic tub I'd positioned to catch the worst leak in the trailer's roof was at least three feet away from where I'd wedged it. And that was just the stuff I could see from the front. I absolutely dreaded seeing what else was back there.

Next day, a lot earlier than I expected, my phone woke me up because the moving crew was calling to tell me they were with the trailer. I asked them where it was. They said it was in the Rite Aid parking lot. I said I'd be right over, then called the moving people's office to ask when the driver was going to be there to move the trailer. They had no idea what I was talking about.

So after about fifty billion phone calls, some made while I was driving from my house to the trailer and the moving crew (where I was supposed to have been an hour ago,) it was worked out that the moving company would have another company send a truck to move the trailer.

The moving crew and I sat around for an hour and forty-five minutes. In case you find yourself in a situation like this, know that a moving crew might charge you $80 an hour for wait time.

Finally, a truck got there and moved the trailer. The crew started untangling the mess that was everything we own while I stood around feeling useless. I'd asked them to put the furniture and big appliances in the very back of the storage unit, and to unload that stuff first, so they started with the couch. I saw them closely examining part of the first piece of the sectional. Another bit of information: "Hey, ma'am....was this like this before?" is the worst thing you can possibly hear when your moving truck is getting unloaded.

Those places where the leather is scuffed and scratched? No, my couch was not like that before. I had done such a bad job of loading the truck that I had turned our poor 8-month-old couch, one of Joe's and my three major "us" purchases, into a victim.

It was really awkward with those three guys there, but after the stress of that morning, seeing that damage kinda made me cry a little bit. I know, I've been doing a lot of that lately (see last post.) So I got that out of the way, oversaw the putting of the couch into the storage unit, and then I went and ordered pizza.

A few long, hot hours later, they had everything unloaded and put away. I stuffed a bunch of boxes in my car and signed some papers and that was it.

Well, except for when they brought my plant to the apartment. My plant (the peace lily Joe sent me when he was in Basic) is huge and heavy and I can't carry it by myself. I was going to return to the storage unit another day with a smaller pot and put it in there and move it that way. Instead, the guys offered to take it to the apartment for me. They loaded it onto their van and followed me home, then carried it up the three flights of stairs for me. AND THEN they even unloaded all the boxes in my car and carried all those up the stairs, too. I think it's 'cause I was nice to them and tried to help but actually just got in the way and also because I made them feel bad when I cried over a piece of furniture.

I made another trip to the storage unit after they left so I could get more boxes. I estimated that I'd need two or three more trips to get everything I wanted. I ended up staying in the storage unit for about an hour, reorganizing, climbing around on top of things like I was navigating a cave. At one point I was sitting on top of the refrigerator, moving boxes around, and the timers on the overhead lights ran out. It was dark and scary. To make matters worse, I had walled myself in. I had to climb out a different way than I'd come in. The broken plastic tubs and slippery weight-lifting equipment made for a treacherous journey.

It didn't take two or three trips to get everything; it only took one trip because my car is incredibly spacious and wonderful and I love it and everyone should own a Passat.

Back at the apartment, I finished unloading the last load of boxes around 6:00 PM. It was a good time for a shower, some dinner, and some League of Legends with my brother and his fiancee. But then I was like, "Yeah, that would be nice...but you know what you could do? You could wash the car. Go home and instead of crashing for the night, just turn right back around and take Passat to a car wash." The idea put this big grin on my face, so that's what I did.

The move was finally over. Washing the car as the sun set was the most relaxing, most satisfying part of the whole day. And then I got a Chik-Fil-A spicy chicken sandwich, some waffle fries, a Coke, and a banana pudding milkshake and devoured it all on my way home, driving my nice clean car, with moving-truck dirt all over me and sticky sweat between the vinyl seat and the skin on the backs of my legs and sunburn on my shoulders, and I was happy.