Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Swiss got a call from his ex the other day. That usually isn't a good thing, in fact, it is usually a miserable, horrible, no-good, very bad thing. But, against all odds, it was a 'good' phone call. One I never thought we would get...

She told us (him) that she thought Kid A might be better off with us.    *gasp*

This is very different from the previous calls in regards to this matter... those were more of the "I can't handle this anymore- you take him, I don't want him" type. This was genuine concern for how he is going to grow up and that troubles that he might find (or might have already found). A recognition that where he's at might not be the best place for him and that we might be able to offer him something she and her fiance can't. Not better or worse, just different. And maybe all Kid A really needs is a big fat dose of something different (with a large helping of rules to boot).

Now, all of this must be taken with grains of salt the size of your head. Things change quickly with this cast of characters and we thought it best for Kid A to finish out the school year where he is at so that means there is time for moods to change and opinions to reverse. And there are the mountains of legal documents and court dates that will inevitably come, so this isn't something that can (or should) happen over night. There are conversations about HOW this will happen and when and laying out ground rules for everyone involved. It will take a bit of time before all the dust settles on this newest chapter.

And can I just tell you how glad I am we have a few months to figure this out? I mean, talk about a change in lifestyle for us. WOW. Now, please don't take that statement to mean that I'm all self-centered and thinking this is all about me and Swiss. It isn't. It is about Kid A and doing what is best for him at this, arguably, most critical junction in his life. But going from newlywed/newly reunited love-birds living in our own little insulated bubble populated with only our dog and the TV/Internet to responsible parents doing homework and going to soccer games and hosting teenage boys at the house for Guitar Hero or whatever they play now hang outs. Goo! THAT is a huge change no matter which way you slice it.

I am part giddy and part angsty and nervous. Kid A and I have a great relationship and I am excited about the prospect of Swiss and I getting him squared away and helping him get on track. Part of me hopes that a few years with us will save everyone with a stake in this a lot of drama and heartache down the road. But I am scared. Because there will be fights and we will get to be the bad guys and there will be hours of homework and snooping to ensure he isn't lying and- yeah. Wow. A totally different lifestyle.

But like I said, we are a few months away from all this and, again, there is a huge possibility that all of this will fall through. But I find myself thinking where will his room be?, will he like the weird things I cook?, how will we get him to school in the morning?, which school will he go to?, how will he like living on a military post?, and how long will it be bad before it gets better? But, mostly, I find myself wondering if I will be able to be a good mom. I just hope the answer is yes.

Do you ever wonder...

Does this military life every leave you wondering "How the heck did I get here"? I don't mean that in a bad way, just that, do you ever wake up, look around and find yourself living in a state you never in a million years thought you would live in, unemployed, thinking to yourself... damn... I didn't see this one coming.

Of course this is part and parcel of being a MilSpouse. The Army's (insert your branch here) needs and wants of your spouse trump anything else... that is expected and at some point you just have to be okay with that. I suppose that I am. (Of course being okay with it and loving it are two different things, but that is a different post entirely.) Moving is what we do. Readjusting is the norm, every three years or so. Figuring out your new duty station and town and state is just par for the course.

Anyway, I'm sitting here on a Saturday morning, waiting out the last bit of this deployment, in a new place I never thought I'd live in, watching a Summerfest concert (Sugarland) on the telly (yay Palladia! I love you!) and getting all sorts of nostalgic for home and the life I (we) had before this PCS. Yes, I'm okay with this move and I am giddy at the thought of living with my husband for a change. But do I miss home? Do I miss the things I used to do with my friends who used to be close enough to do stuff with? Do I miss all the things that make Wisconsin Wisconsin? Do I get a bit homesick for the places that have been home for so long? You bet your sweet bippy I do.

BUT. (This is where the big girl panties go on and all that stuff I spewed the other day about sucking it up and moving on and perspective and yadda, yadda, yadda comes in). I'm also looking at this PCS as an opportunity. No, it isn't the Midwest that I grew up in and love. No, there isn't Summerfest. No, there aren't brats and beer and cheese everywhere you turn. No, my friends aren't mere hours or minutes away. No, I can't stand the local colleges (they ain't no Badgers). And no, it isn't my idea of Shangri-La. And yes, it is a strange, foreign place that I often just do. not. get. But that is okay. That is a reason to go out and explore. Go the the big cities here. Go to concerts here. Go to the insane state fair. Go see all the crazy things that make this place what it is.

In short, this place being so different is exactly I (we) should treat it as a challenge... a travel destination, a place to discover, a place to figure out. We are going to explore and immerse ourselves in the litany of quirky things that make up this state. We are going to walk away from this duty station with at the very least, some great stories about the crazy things we did and saw here.

And maybe one day I will look back on our time here, see a concert or place on the telly, and get all nostalgic for this state too.

J-O-B.

Sooo. It's been like 3 weeks since I applied for the Cytotechnologist position at Fort X. Complete with Military Spouse Preference.

I've heard nothing. Nada.


All I know is the nice Army HR folks at Fort Belvoir (Why, hello base envy! How are you today?) forwarded on my resume to the folks at Fort X, and I haven't heard a peep from anyone since. Best I can guess? The mid-level management position I've been doing the last 1+ years and the ridiculous fancy testing my current employer has us doing (which few other Cytotechs/Labs do) has landed me in the "Overqualified" bin. Now, I DO NOT say this to toot my own horn (I said toot!). I say this because with 5 years of experience, a major medical center on my resume, and Spouse Preference... you would think I would at least be able to garner myself an interview. Nope. No beans.

So where to go from here? I don't want to stay in this field anyway, I want to move on and do something that a) doesn't make me sad and depressed (cancer has a way of getting to you when you work with it all day long) and b) lets me use my creativity and biology degree more fully. But then what do I do? (Raise you hand if you are now singing an 80's song that I can't name right now.) High school biology teacher? Full on Biologist? Work for the CDC? The EPA? Or do I totally change things up and go get an Art degree? Do photography professionally? Find a way to mix the art and the biology? And how, after 6 years dedicated to another field, do I get the necessary experience to get a job that pays more than $JustLessThanDestitute.00/hr?

See, if all goes as planned, Swiss and I won't be at Fort X (knock on wood) for even a full year. So I won't have enough time to get my teaching certification. Nor will I have enough time to go back and get a Masters or whatever in Biology. So... I'm left with either not working (okay by me!) or trying to, at the very least, scrounge up some entry-level work that will help me out in the non-medical lab experience category. Sounds awesome, right? Ha! But... in this vein, a "seasonal biologist" position opened up at Fort X with the Nature Conservancy. And I am all like, Woah. They are a HUGE force to be reckoned with in the conservation biology realm (PS: In case you didn't know, my college major was Ecology, Evolution & Behavioral Biology. NERD ALERT!) and would be awesome to have on my resume. It runs November - April cataloguing and studying migrating sparrow populations on Fort X and is 100% entry-level. Not exactly thrilling stuff, but still... experience, a good name for the resume, and a pretty amazing company to work for (let's not talk about the $20/hr pay cut, the getting up at sunrise or working weekends bit though, okay?).

So, I'm going to apply (I think). Thankfully they requested a cover letter (unlike the cytotechnologist job at Fort X) so I can explain myself and why I suddenly want an entry-level job wandering through the scrub brush mist-netting birds and taking blood samples after 5 years at a leading medical center. It ain't glamorous, but if I'm lucky, it could be a good first step to reinventing my career... which is a pretty cool opportunity if you ask me. Now, where are my hiking boots and hip packs?

Mentally moving on.

I know we all do this. You know, once a decision has been made, you move on with your life in accordance with said decision. Even when the effects of the decision are months away from coming to fruition. Am I right?

Once we decided we were for sure leaving this place permanently (i.e. not coming back here after retirement) I chose my last day at work and have, ever since, been in varying degrees of checked out. I'm still here enough to do my job and do it well, but the long term implications of plans or future goals in the workplace hold no weight or concern for me now. I'm in the moment, and for now, it is working.

We also decided to just stick with on-post housing once we get down to Fort X. We've lived there before and if given the opportunity, we will choose the same community we were in before. All of the homes consist of a small galley style kitchen, large living room, 4 bedrooms and 2 baths in a ranch style duplex. I have already mentally started moving our furniture in. Which room will be the guest room? Which one will be our office/studio? Where will I put the sofa? Will the dining room set fit? It is a task I enjoy, like a giant puzzle where I get to rediscover all of the great items we have, the functionality of our furniture and mostly, because it means a new start for Swiss and I. One were we actually live together. What a novel concept!

Lately, I have been taking this mental moving on to new levels... I'm planning and researching how I want to decorate our home after retirement. Which is sort of hilarious given that we have no idea where we will be, let alone what type, size or style of home we will have. Apartment? House? Will we buy or will be build? No idea! But I do find that this process, the sorting out rooms that I love the look & feel of, finding colors or fabrics that I find inspiring, trying to imagine us in the rooms in magazines, figuring out what things I just can't live without, so relaxing and energizing at the same time. I get to use the right side of my brain (side note: take this test sometime, I am 47% Left, 53% Right, which I find fascinating as I am a scientist by trade and all that Right brained business has no place in a lab.) and think abstractly about spaces and color and feel. Which is so not what I do here at work. It is beyond refreshing.

Anyway, I totally beefed up my Daily Goodness Blogroll over to the right (down just over half way) with a ton of beautiful sites that are chock full of inspiration. All this planning and right brained thinking has me feeling much more settled and content, less anxious and uncertain. Maybe it is because this is a tangible thing I can work on, something that I can actually DO without input from an Army office, fill out forms for or cross my fingers to accomplish. Funny what a little paint and design can do for the soul.

Yeah, what he said.

The Degradation of the American Dialogue

Go read it.
The end.


And thanks to LAW for pointing this out to me.

FRGing goodness.

Seriously, we got a new FRG leader this month and can I just say that the turn around in attitude, information, timeliness, communication, everything has been AMAZING! I feel so, "Ooooohhhhhhh, this is what a FRG is supposed to be like!" It is awesome.

I have been a POC (Point of Contact) for our unit since they deployed, all I ever had were phone numbers and magically now I have e-mail addy's too! And the two ladies I was never able to contact? Yep, they are alive a kicking with apparently new contact information. MAGIC I tell you! She is so stinking organized and friendly and quick on replies and gosh-darned HELPFUL. I heart her. Plus she has the same name as me and spells it all funny too... we get all sorts of confused when we read e-mails now. Lame, I know, but still, it is cool.

And I don't want to dis on our past FRG leader... she was a super sweet lady, but man, she has 6 kids under the age of 10 so I have NO idea why she or anyone else thought she would be able to do this job well. I would say that she is a scatterbrain, but hey, 6 kids that age would make me scatterbrained too! At least she tried, right?

But yeah, I am super stoked about the new FRG leader, that ours is actually functioning the way it should be, and that someone is taking the time to do it right. Maybe it feels extra important to me since it is my only tie to the unit and post since I am living so far away, but yeah, I am pumped! And I am actually excited to be participating and be a POC and a part of this giant Army machine. Don't worry though, I only took a sip or two of the Kool-Aid, I am sure it will wear off soon! ;)

Nerd alert.

aka: The Joy of Science.

Okay, so I am a nerd. I fully and willingly admit this, dare I even say I am proud of it. As a Biology major (Ecology, Evolution & Behavioral Biology to be exact- even nerdier, right?) I spent a fair chunk of college holed up in our science building (Oh Chamberlain, how I miss you and your musty corridors, odd murals and clunky, green elevator) or working on lab assignments. But far and away the coolest thing I ever did in college was meet Jane Goodall. Yes, THE Jane Goodall.

I was taking a primate anthropology course (ugh, the memories, that class was h-a-r-d) my Junior year and she came to our wee college to talk to the whole campus and community about her experiences and her project Roots and Shoots. Our class was lucky enough to get to have lunch with her, chat and get her to sign our books (A Reason for Hope, it is a great read by the way, go read it!). She is so amazing, so wise and patient and kind and adventurous. Passionate. She is a pioneer- for scientists, for women, for educators and advocates. As Stephen Jay Gould said, "Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees represents one of the Western world's greatest scientific achievements." She is what science is all about... not stuffy professors who sit behind big desks, tenures and grant money. She is 'boots on the ground'... She is the real deal and she is everything that I wanted to be when I was in college.

Anyway, the point of this whole post is that today I saw an article about her at salon.com... I read it and I could feel the excitement building in me again. (By the way, go read it because her story is fascinating as is she... it isn't overly scientific, I promise!) I started thinking about how important all of this is, how important it is to teach future generations about their world, remembering how fun and thrilling science can be... discovering new things, putting the big picture together, understanding how and why our surroundings are like they are. I got excited about science and biology and all the things I loved about my degree in college again.

Yes, I know, the nerd sirens are going off. But here is the point: I am going to quit my job when Swiss comes home and go be a high school biology teacher. I am crazy, I know. But it has always been one of the options on the table... having such a visceral reaction to this article stirred up all sorts of 'emotions' that working in a clinical lab under government regulations had stifled. I can pass on this excitement and passion to at least a few kids, I can share knowledge, be creative and teach kids to think critically, to appreciate their surroundings and not be afraid to challenge the established dogmas. I know there are all sorts of issues that surround teaching and working with high school kids, I'm not naive. But I am excited about this and I have Jane Goodall to thank for it.

Thanks Jane, and happy 75th Birthday!

Change is gonna do me good.

So, being here, at home in the upper Midwest, working and going on with life like nothing has changed in the last year and a half is getting tedious. Maybe it has something to do with knowing that I am leaving in 10 months. Maybe I am just ready to not be in transition (Ha! *Snort* Who am I kidding?) Maybe I am just ready to get on with the life that is waiting for me, for us back at Fort X.

I am tired of my job. Not that it isn't a great one and not that some of the folks I work with aren't amazing, because it is and they are. I am just tired of being here. I am tired of cleaning a house I know I won’t be in a year from now. I am tired of pretending to everyone who knows me that once Swiss comes back I won’t be leaving. (Heck, my bosses have actually told me I can’t leave and I've had to lie my ass off so far. Awesome.) I am tired of going through the motions of the life Swiss and I used to have. God, I sound so melodramatic... get a grip girl!

I think I am just really ready for the changes that await us. And perhaps some of this has to do with how this deployment is playing out. Not on Swiss’s end, on mine. I dealt with all of the pre-deployment anxiety, the anticipatory grief, the crying jags and the practically numbing fear when we first learned of it in May. (I blogged about that super fun day too if you care to read.) I didn't really know what to expect to feel like when he actually left. I didn't know how well I would handle it (I had high hopes but you never know…). Surprisingly, I don’t feel even remotely like I did last summer. I am okay, still a bit scared and worried, but dealing with all of this just fine, thank you very much.

See, it was the fear of how I would cope, how I would handle this is why I decided to come back here to our home and not move to Fort X for the duration of the deployment. This way I would be near friends, near family, keeping as much the same as I could… like our house and my job. But now I just feel out of place. I know none of our/my life here is permanent like I thought it might be. Not my job, my house, or my surroundings. It has been kind of liberating to know that I don’t NEED any of this. Just Swiss and my family (and dear Val who I can’t bear the thought of leaving). But this lag time between the now and the future is awkward at best.

There is no solution. This is just me venting. The end.

Home and other things.

I am 'home'.

It is all very surreal... this deployment stuff. I suspect that I will have plenty to say in the near future about all of this. For now, I feel sort of empty. Maybe hollow is a better word.

Things are a little better now, nearly a week out, than they were just a few days ago. That first night was unbearable... not knowing if he got there okay, the empty spot in bed, the knowledge that we were SO far away from this all being over, the hurt. I think I cried harder that night than I ever have before. Nope, I know I did.

It is both good and bad to be home now. In some regards I am happy to be back here, to get a routine going, to get back to as close to normal as I can. In other ways, it hurts all the more. This is our house. This is where we first got to hang out at my house-warming party, where he asked me out on our first date, where we had our first kiss, our first Thanksgiving and Christmas, where we made so many memories... where we got married. He is everywhere here and I can't look anywhere without missing him, I can't look at a single wall without seeing his smiling face and right now that is like a punch in the gut. It brings all of those emotions hiding just below the surface bubbling up and then I can't help but cry.

But I am doing better, and as a friend said, even when it feels like I can't do this... I AM doing it. And that counts for something.

Thanks for all the kind words and well wishes... it means the world to me.

Chapter one.

So "Chapter One" of our life is coming to a close... Swiss moves from his ROTC post this Monday and we will be ending our dating/engaged life in a matter of weeks. The PCS is looming, as is the deployment. Life is changing... big time.

As I reminisce I can't get over how much has changed, with me, with Swiss, with our relationship and our lives in the last year plus.

Just over 14 months ago I has just bought my first house. I was happy, if not a little lonely... but I had my job, my friends, my hobbies... I was doing pretty good for myself. And then I met Swiss on a whim. After a few little speed-bumps we went on our first date July 24th. And I knew. I knew that was the last first date I would ever go on. I knew that he was exactly the man I described to my best friend Beth when she asked me EXACTLY what kind of guy I was looking for. I was looking for Swiss.

And here we are... with a bounty of changes on our horizon. We will be Mr. & Mrs. Swiss in just a few short weeks. We will have a whole month of being "normal" (by that I mean actually living in the same state, zip code, and home) together. We have a PCS in a matter of weeks and more than likely a trip to the Sandbox in the next few month. Both of which I am dreading... not just because it means a deployment, but because it means so much time away from Swiss. I hate time away from him. He makes me feel whole... feeling not-whole isn't much fun.

But as I look back on this past year (plus) I am always in awe of the joy, the happiness I have found, we have found. I am blown away by the changes and unexpected events that have come our way. I am proud of the challenges we have overcome. I am comforted and elated by the contentment, the respect, the friendship and the love we share.

So here is to Chapter One. You were great. You were bursting with surprises, you were stocked with fun and memories, and you were full of firsts.

You were the beginning of the rest of our lives.