Writer's Block

I can't believe this is my first blog in nearly two months. That is insane to me.

This is the longest I've ever gone between blogs. It wasn't because I didn't have an opportunity to write...I only went a grand total of five days without Internet during the move.
It wasn't because I didn't try to write...I actually started a post about my resolutions results and got about two minutes into it before running out of steam.
About three days later, I returned to the post just long enough to decide it was crappy and I wasn't going to finish it.
It wasn't even because I was too busy to write...so many days I have spent bored out of my mind looking for something to do here. Writing would have made for a pretty sweet escape.

No, I haven't written because I'm lost.

I am lost in the woods, yes. Though my last name, my accent, my love for rustic home furnishings, and my husband may have led people to believe otherwise, I am not--I repeat, I AM NOT--a small town country girl. I have never in my life lived anywhere without a mall or a Super Target. I have never in my life lived anywhere that has only one Starbucks (inside of a grocery store, to boot.) And I have never in my life lived anywhere with only two McDonald's--neither with functioning playlands. (Though the latter was not nearly as important to me until recently.)

But more specifically, I am lost because I am still trying to figure out who I am going to be here. I had this master plan to become "Suzie Homemaker" when I moved here. I knew that our time here would be brief, but I figured I could make the most of it cooking these delicious meals, decorating the new house, and planning all kinds of creative activities for the family. Turns out, I do not know how to cook on an electric gas range and burnt my first three suppers right out the gate. I was so overly excited to decorate the new house that I finished most of it the first week. And my son is so tired of arts and crafts that he won't even pick up a crayon anymore.
Apparently Suzie Homemaker will be better saved for another duty station.
So I can't be something new here, but what's worse is I feel like I can't be who I was before, either. It is too cold to run regularly here right now. (I have also learned that running in the ozarks is MUCH more challenging than running in the pass. Stupid, beautiful, wooded hills.) I have no friends to chipper up our otherwise quiet afternoons. I have no oldest child to care for the majority of the work week, which makes my quiet days even quieter. I have no organizational involvements. No clubs. No groups. No life. (No wonder I've had nothing to blog about!)

So here I sit with nothing to say. Hoping that something happens to spark some inspiration. Hoping that I learn to like my new church as much as my last one. Hoping that I'll make a friend, somehow, somewhere. Hoping that this place really is the playground I think it will be for us in the summertime when the ground thaws. Hoping that country music is right, and that small town living really is the best kind of living. Hoping that I find myself here.

Moving On Up

My apologies. I haven't posted in a really long time, because I am currently involved in the craziness that is the Army PCS (Permanent Change of Station--for all who are not hip to my random acronymns.)

As I have been preparing for our move these past several weeks, I have uncovered a few fun facts:

1. There is no amount of prep work you can do to protect yourself from the chaos that is moving day. You will know for weeks that a move is on the horizon, but your official paperwork will not be signed until it all comes down to the wire. Consider it the "Murphy's Law of Moving."

2. There will never be enough time for goodbyes. All at once, your paperwork is processed and movers are scheduled to come in a week. All of the little jobs you were doing to "help with the move" are forgotten as you widly fling things into your husband's garage and try to pencil in as many coffee dates as you can into the next seven days.

3. Moves become substantially more difficult when you have A) a child in school and B) a dog. You start to worry if it will ever be possible to find a house with a fenced backyard that is in a reputible school district. You start to wonder why you constantly pay $350 pet deposits for a dog you only paid $100 for. You start to wonder how much your child actally needs a kindergarten education.

4. The biggest jobs are the last to get done. You are doing things, just not important things. I might not sort through and properly file my legal documents before the move, but I will sort through and organize my ribbon drawer. I might not compose the case study for my certification that I need to complete in the midst of this move, but I will write this blog :)

5. Things you've waited on for months will come together just in time for you to leave them. The restaurant you have anxiously watched being built will open a few short weeks after you're gone. The jalepeno plant that you planted in March will just now begin producing peppers. The dance recital your daughter has worked on for the past three months is scheduled for 8 days after you leave.

6. You have WAY more crap in your house than you think you do. I have spent every free minute of the last two weeks sorting through rooms in our house and making a yard sale pile in my husband's garage. You can no longer walk through the garage, and it didn't make an ounce of difference in the house.

7. You have WAY more food in your house than you think you do. I go to the grocery store about once a week because we are "out of food." Now that I am trying to use up my pantry/freezer odds and ends that can't move with us, I've realized that I always have enough food left over at the end of the week to host a small dinner party and a cookie exchange. I also discovered that I might be a contender for the next Iron Chef America...as long as the secret ingredient is spaghetti sauce.

8. You will get sentimental about things you wouldn't expect. I fully admit that I was less than excited when I learned that we were going to be moving to our current duty station. And I am pretty sure that I cried for about two weeks straight after I got here. But somewhere in the last 3+ years, this place has become my home. I am going to miss the rugged desert mountains. I am going to miss the amazing sunsets. I am going to miss the mild winters. I am going to miss my delicious Mexican food. I am going to miss the house that I watched my youngest child learn to walk in/run around. I am going to miss the playground where my oldest child learned to cross the monkey bars. I am going to miss the crazy half-wall in the front of my house that displays our family portraits. And of course, I will miss the people.

9. You will always worry about what lies ahead. Moving is certainly an adventure-a chance for a new beginning. But it is also a blank slate, and starting over gets scarier the older you get. There is always fear of the unknown---Will I like it there? Will we find a good house? Will my kids adjust quickly? Is my husband going to like his new job? Is my husband moving into a deployable unit? Will I be able to find work? Will I be able to make friends as great as the ones I am leaving?---Though I am still relatively new to this Army Wife gig, I am guessing this part is something that never gets easier and never goes away.

10. You will always be grateful for how far you've come. Every time we move forward, I get to reminisce on where we started. For us, it was a college town in a 2 bed/1 bath "house" with a baby. Everyone starts out with nothing, but we are not exaggerating when we talk about what little we had: two lawn chairs, a small television on a milk crate, a desktop on a busted card table, four warped plastic plates, an end table that we can now only assume was given to us from an abandoned crack house (we will save that one for another blog,) and a dresser that we did not have to pay sales tax on if we did not need a receipt. (So fancy.) Now I sit in a house that is so fully furnished, the movers questioned our initial weight quote. (My husband's collection of barbeque pits, cast iron cookware, and gun cases will do that.)
I've heard it preached that if you are worthy with little, the Lord will bless you with much. I believe that. We took our crack table and milk crates and did our best to turn it into a home for our little family. Now our accumulation of furniture has grown. Our family has grown. Our responsibilities have grown. Our aspirations have grown. And our love has grown.

I am blessed beyond measure with the life I've been given, and I can't wait to continue building our life in our next homes... Wherever in the world they happen to be.

Hey Good Lookin!' Whatcha Facebookin'?

At the beginning of the year, I shared what is quite possibly the most random compilation of goals and wishes ever created and dubbed them my New Year's Resolutions. One of the key points on that list was to "Facebook less."
I have a love/hate relationship with my Facebook account for the same reasons everyone else on the planet does. I love that I can keep in touch with family and friends through pictures and messages. I love that I can feel like I am a part of the big moments distance would otherwise cause me to miss out on. I love being able to talk to someone when I need them, even if my stupid cell phone broke and I lost their contact info yet again. I love always being able to find the details for local events and happenings. I love the great deals I can get through a business's Facebook page...
I don't love the drama and negativity that often creeps into my daily newsfeed. I don't necessarily love knowing every nitty gritty detail of another person's day. I don't love how it incessantly feeds people's needs to be "liked" and somehow makes me feel inferior if I am not as well "liked" as others. I don't love the privacy issues. And more than anything, I don't love how much precious, fleeting, God-given time I waste puttering around on it.

With all of the push-pull, it would seem as if the best answer would be to just completely disconnect from Facebookland. But alas, I am already too tethered to it. And our society is as well. Living without a Facebook profile would be like living without indoor plumbing...you could do it, but you would just be making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself.

When I set this goal for myself in January, I didn't really have a clear view of what it meant--I still don't. What exactly does "Facebook less" mean? What would it look like? How exactly would I implement that goal?
For a while, I thought that maybe I would try an experiment where I would refrain from logging onto Facebook for a week. Then I decided that would be dangerous, because a)Facebook is one of the main ways I have much needed communication with other grown-ups when my husband is gone and b) people who know my husband is gone are most likely monitoring my well-being through my status updates, and if I didn't post anything for a week, they would probably assume I had dropped dead. No need to cause anyone undue stress!
But while we're on the subject matter, let's implement the following as a new rule for me, okay? Okay!

Anyway, my Facebook goal was not coming together for me, but I wasn't ready to give up on it completely. The neat thing about goals is that you can change them as your needs change. My goal just needed a slight revision. I think I have decided that my "Facebook less" goal has now become "Facebook better."
But what does that mean? What does "Facebook better" look like and how will it be implemented?

I am happy you asked :)

In order to Facebook better:
1. I will try not to bore you with my own nitty-gritty details. And while it is bound to happen sometimes, especially on days where the hubby is gone and I just need to vent, I will do everything in my power not to become this person:

2. I will try not to subject you to my soapbox.

3. I will not post a million self-portraits of myself. (I don't really do this now. I just needed an excuse to post this picture!)

4. I will not be a Negative Nancy, Debbie Downer, or Crazy Kate.

5. I will not be overly-sentimental. Sometimes, life is awesome and you have to shout it from the mountaintops...but not every day.

6. If I "like" you, I will tell you that I like you. (Roughly translated, comment more than click.)

7. I will try not to make it all about me. Because Facebook was originally created to be a forum for fostering social connections and not a site for personal showboating...that's what my blog is for :)

Here's hoping this goal is met with more success!



*Side note: Be sure to LIKE my blog link on Facebook!*
(I got jokes.)