Oh, beautiful Japan!

My thoughts and prayers are with Japan and all those who may be affected by any resulting tsunami. Stay strong, beautiful little islands.

Homemade furniture

Oh, I love to make things. It isn't very often that I put them to much use since I like the process more than the application, but I'm starting to think that making things only to hide them until I feel good about throwing them away is an utter waste.

So, I want to make one these:

Link.

And look at all those tools you need for it. I'm sure I could get by without a nailer and a sander, and a jig saw might do the work of the circular saw as well. It would be really hard to hide one of these babies, especially after painting it something fun like bright blue. If I made two or modified the plans to make six cubbies we're all have no excuse for putting backpacks and jackets on the couch (not that we wouldn't try with all our might to make new excuses stick). One lady even modified hers to add small drawers above the jacket cubby which makes the unit even more desirable.

It's interesting how DIY used to be a necessity, just something young people of a certain social class grew up learning. Now it's a sort of elitist hobby. What a funny old world.

Updates and inspections

We had an inspection yesterday which was attended by the IG and company. Man had told me that we'd be getting an inspection to make sure that no one is living in the squalor they found a few high ranking soldiers enjoying in post housing. He just didn't know when. So I was a little surprised to answer the door to an inspector yesterday, and shocked to learned that it was the Inspector General, four of his attending sergeants, a nurse case manager, a representative from the Fire Marshall's office, an electrical engineer who was interested in wiring since two houses have burned down in as many years due to wiring issues, and a rep from the government housing offices (so, our housing office's boss).

And I hadn't yet made my bed or vacuumed. Oy. At least I got my 8 loads of laundry put away the day before.

Anyway, it was interesting that many of them had already heard of Man because of the issues we've been having with getting his orders drawn up. "Oh, you're the guy with 90 days of leave they're wrastlin' over?" Man has 73 days of leave, which is unusual. The IG assured us that despite the confusion everything would work out for us. He spoke with authority and consideration. I've shaken hands with congressmen and mayors who didn't project nearly that level of certainty that he would speak and be obeyed, and yet he was kind and listened. Overall, despite my minor messes, it was a good experience.

Today, we had our pre-move out inspection. We were told in a letter that we'd have to pay all damages by this Saturday which made me mad, considering that if I had to pay damages before I'd even had a chance to clean without furniture in the house that it didn't seem worth the effort to set things right at all. In short, it seemed like a disincentive to leave the house nice.

It turns out that we can just leave a check at the office on the day we move. Sweet! And the damages are relatively minor: 3 sets of blinds that were the sad victims of a runaway basketball, and one door with an inexplicable crack in it. I'm thinking of spackling the door since the crack is small and merely cosmetic anyhow. So, now I just have to rent a carpet cleaner and do some more priming and I'm good.

It's funny how things turn up when an inspector is there scrutinizing things. We found nail polish on one wall, the above mentioned crack, and pen marks on more walls than we have previously noticed.

The last few weeks have really been revealing to me: Man and I are indifferent house keepers. That's it. I love, LOVE these wonderful blogs about having nice, well decorated houses:

http://www.centsationalgirl.com/
http://www.younghouselove.com/
http://orgjunkie.com/
http://lauragunn.typepad.com/

And for us it's more of a fairly tale ending we'll achieve after the kids are older or even gone. I don't know the first thing about window treatments or "balancing" a room, whatever the heck that means. I've thought about picking one room at a time and finding something online to imitate, which may be the only realistic solution for my decorating short comings. In the mean time, I browse and sigh and make plans to buy the tools to rock this website:

http://ana-white.com/

 Ok, so updates on the orders. Man's leave has been approved, but someone wrote the wrong date on some papers that accidentally got signed off on which means things have been delayed even more while they decide whether to honor the real date or the accidental date. At this point we're thinking of putting the move off of a week or two since it's impossible to schedule a move without orders (despite the high ranking memorandum Man has been using to begin outprocessing this week) and it'd be extremely difficult to move ourselves since we're both gimpy and there are only so many missionaries and guys from church who aren't on TDY at the moment.

I've also been in touch with MilitaryOneSource for employment assistance. They've already researched my case and sent recommendations for employment placement agencies (both civilian and military) and information on the Military Spouse Preference Program, which gives me a slight edge when applying for a government job or any job on a military post. Sweet!

So, we may be moving in 8 days or not. Heh. Exciting, yes?

The one trilogy to rule them all

It's official.

I'm finally going to buy a set of Lord of the Rings. The one trilogy to rule them all.

It's finally coming out on Blu-ray in extended edition.

So far, I've got the $5 theatrical dvd's. What I really want is everything from the extended edition in Blu-ray, including interviews and documentaries. I've held off on getting the extended editions for this long because I didn't want to be one of those material hungry fans who just hauls off and gets each new version that hits the market though heaven knows I wanted to be that material hungry fan. I can't even bring myself to watch those $5 dvds on my big, beautiful tv when I know that I'm missing essential parts of the story which are still billed as "extras." Finally, I'll be able to watch these movies the way they were intended to be enjoyed: full length, blu-ray quality, in the comfort of my own home, munching on my favorite brands of popcorn and licorice (Red Vines, man).

Now The Hobbit is going to come out and I'll wait for that special edition to come out on Blu-ray as well. And it will be sweet. My daughter is asking for the Harry Potter series on Blu-ray, but my understanding is that they weren't even filmed in hi-def until the fourth movie anyway.

Oh, I'm so excited. The One Trilogy won't even be available for many months yet but I hit that pre-order button after just a moment of awe. It will be mine...

...my preciousssssss.

Freida again

I love little kids and the way they don't quite get words right. At the moment she's playing Mario Gaxaly, and likes ephelants.

Me: Elephants?

Her: No, eph-el-ants, mom-uh.

And most of the last words in her sentences end with "uh."

Her: I want to go to the store-uh. Please-uh?

Perhaps it's infatuation, but it hasn't gotten old yet.

Resume.

Items that ought to go on the resume but wouldn't look professional: I can cook, help with homework, defrost a freezer, and arbitrate World War III in my kitchen all at the same time. I can sit with a stony face when everyone in the room doesn't like my work and make them say "thank you." I can do a load of laundry, prepare a tax return, fix or make a piece of jewelry, design and prepare two dozen cupcakes or announcements, and even occasionally shower and shave, all before school. I can discern in an instant whether the sad face in front of me is ill from nerves, germs, or laziness. I can find a system of success for my son who has ADHD wherein he now happily undertakes tasks which, a year ago, sent him into instant melt down. I can make, with a square foot of fabric and some thread, a couple of dolls that will keep a 5 year old and a 3 year old happily occupied for hours. I can clean every bodily fluid from nearly every kind of surface without adding to the mess myself. I'm a problem solver for issues both great and small, day and night, messy and classy, both what goes on the body or into it, for feelings and reactions and appointments and hurts seen and unseen. I treasure awkward story telling when it means that my child or partner is excited to share something with me, and intolerant of awkward story telling when in involves such heinous crimes as lamp breaking or cookie stealing. I can do all of this and still relax at a moment's notice during the day, I can be all of this and still have a centered identity, I can get the job done when heroes and leaders of men turn their faces. And my future employer will only know of these things after I've been on the job for a few months because it is unprofessional to show what being a mommy or a wife has taught me.

Freida-isms

Laying down in bed one day, she reached her hand into the air.

"Mom, this is my favorite hand friend."

Aw... wasn't sure if that was cute or sad.

Just now...
Me: That's so cool.
Her: Yeaaaaaaah. That's some cold water.

She always knows exactly what she's talking about.

tug of war

We found out yesterday that Man was supposed to contact a transition office 30 days prior to outprocessing from post. But then his squad leader said to not worry about it and just keep moving forward with the move as planned. Two housing inspections next week, one of which is for moving and the other is because some higher ups were found to be living in squalor. Ack!

"He's not so bad-guy" movies and job openings

It's a tale as old as time: cute [kid/woman] meets bad-guy who slowly starts to appreciate then love cute [kid/woman] and then he turns out to be a not so bad-guy after all. Cute story. Modern versions in cinema include Lilo and Stitch, Despicable Me, and my most recent favorite, Megamind.

I've seen it before in over a dozen iterations but for some reason Megamind really speaks to me. I may have to buy that one.

Speaking of putting your money where your fandom is, have you heard about the new Firefly brouhaha? Yeah, wow. I'm totally on that bandwagon.

I've posted my job qualifications over on LDSjobs.org. Things are so uncertain at the moment that it's looking like I'll definitely be getting a job while Man sorts himself out. Which isn't a bad thing. I've wanted to get back into being a some sort of professional for a while now and this is forcing my hand. Oddly enough, I'm attracted to working at Home Depot so I can learn how to use a forklift and maybe build stuff. There are other administrative jobs available but I'm starting to think that I want something that will also get me up and moving my body. I'm good to go for Military to Medicine which will get me a toe into healthcare as well with a certificate.

Another fabulously viral bit of news is a young lady named Amanda Hocking. She writes books and electronically publishes them through Kindle. I've also seen her stuff for Nook. Anyway, she has no publisher and no overhead and makes about $2 million a year just writing from home and getting noticed. Man wants me to finish my NaNoWriMo book and give self publishing a whirl. Who knows? Maybe we could retire to Italy after I become a best selling author. Wouldn't that be a peach.

Just keep on trucking

So our latest date to get out of here may or may not be a go. Again. What's wrong with March 20th? Well, first of all, it's a Sunday. No one thought of that when they were doing the math on leave and TDY. We may not get that leave approved despite the best efforts of Man's chain of command but it's still coming up soon. Two weeks.

How are we doing? The kids have been enjoying this new job chart website: Link.

It's free and you don't have to put personally identifying info in except for an email address. I like it because I'm notoriously inconsistent with my kids and this is a way for them to take the initiative and get their own rewards. One of the rewards I put up for Things 2-4 is to get a toy out of toy jail, where toys go to live when their owners don't clean them up when asked. Some toys skip Go and end up in the trash or the thrift store box but the rate of return on the toys is slow enough that the younger kids don't even miss the ones they never see again.

I've also finally got a working financial system for the kids now. I made checking accounts for most of them (sorry Freida, wait another two years or so) and savings for all four. Transfers to their accounts are easy (my fav four letter word) and there's a much lower minimum transfer than we had with their prepaid allowance cards. Money goes into savings as easily as into checking. The result is that they can watch their checking accounts like hawks now and suddenly Money Chores are all the rage. They have normal chores but there are things for which I'm willing to pay a nominal sum and they're all too happy to make it happen. Suddenly I've got a gaggle of entrepreneurs on my hands. Between Money Chores and the points system of the above website, their rooms are clean and the dishes get done with no questions asked.

Let's just hope it lasts this time.

I loved the House Fairy lady's ideas. She was far to saccharine for me, really, but the system was sound. The only problem is that leaving a small reward at random intervals didn't work so well when the two kids who stayed home from school learned that unguarded prizes were sprouting from pillows. It didn't occur to me at the time to make mail boxes. Oh, well.

At any rate, I like the new system and my new white board upon which I record all of the little things I've never been good at tracking in my whimsical brain. Who has earned a quarter for reading a book to their sister and recording it in her reading log? Who is grounded for how long, from what, and for why? I also write down the following day's events the night before or in the morning which helps keep things on my radar somewhat.

All in all, it's madness. No job yet, no house, and I'm scared. The events of the last year have heaped themselves on top of a decade of more madness and after this past Christmas I found myself imploding and I havn't recovered. Thus, I do not blog, call, write, or see anyone if I can help it. My instinct is to push away all relationships when things get this hairy which hasn't been the best way to keep up with friends at all, but I'm slowly learning to not exclude everyone all the time even if it's messy. I went to a church meeting last night and the most common greeting people met me with was "oh my gosh, are you alright?" It would seem that my troubles are written on my face in plainer language than I had supposed. I've been taking things one day a time for so long that two weeks from now is an eternity away, but unfortunately it's an eternity into which we'll be face planting soon. Private sector and all your woes, here we come with a gaggle of kids and two distinct but cold-comfort advantages: Man is soon to be a disabled vet (preferential treatment when applying for gov't jobs assuming he's qualified for them) and we're debt free (but without a solid assurance of future income).

My heartburn is back. I think I'll name it Portia. Portia is a high maintenance name, a name that demands attention and intimidation. Yes, "Portia came to visit after supper" seems to set the right tone and it's easier to say than Dyspepsia.