Jackelopette

and, o’ course, Talk Like A Pirate Day…

we be aimin’ to pillage Chateau Ste. Michelle for the tourin’ o’ their lands and the drinkin’ o’ their grog.

Yarrr.

Here I am, a week or so later, and I am disappointed with my writing resolution.

It’s hard to write this, right now at least. Writing about the deployment makes it real. I know I’m not the only one sharing this sentiment. It’s hard to be lonely, but I feel like I’m doing a good enough job of keeping busy that I have run out of time to write. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing.

People often remark that I must be a very resilient person, to have survived the events of the last few months without breaking. I think I have simply been too busy to fully experience all of it. Again, I’m not sure it’s a bad thing.

What’s happened? Well, starting in February…

• I moved to Washington with David.
• Three weeks after I moved, David left on a long field exercise. Meanwhile, Mike (the previous roomie) moved out and deployed, I had a long weekend in Davis with my beloved Alumni Chorus, moved my crap out of storage and into the apartment, collected the cats from southern California, and saw Grandma for the last time, all in two weeks…
• David came back from the field exercise in time for St. Patrick’s Day, just the day after I’d returned with the cats, then I left for several days’ work travel in Oregon. We had about two weeks of normal time before he left again, this time for over a month of training with the whole Brigade — meaning that most of my new friends and/or their spouses were gone too.
• Shortly after David left, I found out that a good 4-H friend of mine had died. See the Ross post for more information, but there hasn’t been any more closure since then. And yet…
• Fortunately (depending on your perspective) I also had another ten days of Oregon travel and a hell of a lot of work. I’m not entirely sure how I filled my time during this month, but I know I didn’t have much of it to spare. David came back early, though, in mid-May…
• And a couple of days after his return, he had more surgery on his wrist. So we didn’t exactly have normal time for that, either. My dad visited in the last few days of May and that’s when my summer imploded.

Grandma passed away the afternoon after my dad left. I had spoken to her over her hospital phone the day he did leave, and I had dismissed the finality in her voice as illness. While I did ignore that tone, the things we shared in that few-minute conversation were pithy and a worthy way to say goodbye. It’s not that I don’t miss her or wish I’d had more time – of course I do! – but the things we said to one another have been enough to comfort me. Again, I don’t feel I’ve had much time to experience the full grief. I am sure I will come the holidays.

I had talked to my dad around noon that day, after he’d arrived in Santa Barbara, and we knew things were not looking good. I booked a last-minute flight for that afternoon and my cell phone rang as I was going through security. It was my dad, calling to tell me that she’d stopped breathing.

The next few days I spent at home are somewhat blurry – there was so much to discuss and do and share that I don’t have a clear memory of what I felt.

Two days after I returned, I had my wisdom teeth out. Oh, and that’s the day the ACCESS 4-H project director and project manager, both people I’d consider good friends, were no longer employed by Council. I’m selfishly glad I had the haze of pain and painkillers and wicked nausea to distract me – I found out via email blast as I returned from the surgery, so at first it all seemed like a dream.

I think we had two full weekends between my wisdom teeth removal and the beginning of our ridiculous vacation itinerary, and both were busy. In the last month we have spent a vast amount of time in Seattle and at Army parties, in the Bay area with family and good friends, even a week in London and another touring the east coast… Those three weeks alone deserve their own post.

Two days after we returned from the last leg of the traveling, David departed for a year. I’m still finding things that need to make their way overseas to him. I spent a day broken, though I still did my daily work. I spent a few more days fighting back tears whenever someone asked me how I was doing. I found things to do instead of cry.

But I haven’t given myself the leisure to examine the way I’ve felt until now. And see! I’ve filled it with recaps and observations. Of course, I doubt I’ll ever share the depths of what I do feel, but I felt an obligation to announce that Yes! I yet live! This is what I felt like writing. So yes, perhaps I’ve made a good start.

This week has been a shock of quietude, at least during the day. I am still swamped with work; we have looming deadlines and a shortage of hours to complete them. And with the rest of the Brigade’s soldiers yet to deploy, there have been plenty of excuses to get myself out of the apartment and savor what time I have remaining with the friends who haven’t yet left.

I suppose I’m finding out how good I am at distracting myself. Give me another couple of weeks, for them to leave, for me to finish my annual pilgrimage to the land of fluffy critters and blue ribbons, for the familiar structure of weekend parties and summer business to taper off… and I think perhaps I will have time to fully feel all that has happened.

Oops. No. I have a choir audition tomorrow. Perhaps instead of writing it all down, I’ll find myself singing it out. That’s always worked well for me…

And they’re off.

Mine anyway.

More of my friends will follow him soon. Now to fill the hours, the evenings, the weeks, and the months.

I don’t know how I would manage this without friends and family. Thanks.

Some of you may know (if you bother to check this blog, still) that there’s a thriving blogging community for servicemembers and their families. “Milblogs” have become not only the modern-day equivalent of the letters written in wars prior, but a means of collaborating and even organizing a vibrant veterans group online.

This article exhorts those who no longer update their blogs to keep them archived and available online. A bit of a wakeup call for me, as I’ve been terribly remiss in my updates, but also a reminder that I have my side of a deployment coming up. My first, David’s second, and perhaps the right challenge for me to keep writing here. After all, I’ve a decent-sized list* of milblogs that I check regularly – it seems only fair that I in turn update mine.

So, while things are going well, I’m likely to be quiet on this here keyboard. My greatest impetus to writing is strong emotion, and the absence of loved ones triggers a fair amount of introspection. Hence, the writing will probably resume with more regularity in the coming months. I’m both apprehensive and excited to see what insights I gain from this one.

Go Web 2.0 – keep everyone connected, on a variety of platforms, and pay me to make it happen. Woot.

*List (a mix of personal blogs, group blogs, and newsblogs that I check pretty regularly each week)

• Army of Dude – Alex’s account of his experiences in Iraq… and what has happened afterward.
• FOB Tacoma – the local newspaper’s blog tracking all things Fort Lewis.
• SpouseBUZZ – for military spouses, and I argue, the significant others as well.
• Stryker Brigade News – news organized by brigade, including both home front and overseas information.
• VetVoice – politics aside, it’s a pretty interesting set of public and personal blog posts by a variety of veterans. I often get some good links from these folks.
• Army Live – yes, even the Army itself has started keeping a blog. Go Army.

While the idea of “keep the litterbox in the unused bathtub” was a worthy one insofar as it contains the tracked-out litter and prevents it from joining the greater carpeted wilderness…

it turns out that using the bathtub’s integrated water-powered cleaning tool (read: faucet and/or shower) perhaps was not. For, you see, kitty litter is meant to clump up and turn into glorified mud, the same kind of mud that might be used for a facial, which means that it is goopy and sticky and stubborn.

I’ll be in the bathroom with my scrubby brush for the next little while. As soon as the standing water in the tub does its work and dissolves its clumps.

Oops.

I’ve been here in Olympia/Lacey for three-ish weeks now… and I love it.

I guess there is a multitude of reasons:

1. I chose it.
2. David!
3. Friends!
4. Pretty views! And weather!
5. I have a car.
6. I have space to nest, and someone to nest with.
7. I will soon have kitties
8. I am close to plenty of shopping and other recreation, and I’m near the outdoors when I need a fix.
9. New friends! And old ones coming out of the woodwork. Acquaintances and cousins I haven’t seen in years, if not decades.

In the meantime, David is off in Yakima doing silly things (let us not go there, for it is a silly place) for the next couple of weeks. Mike has deployed to Iraq with I Corps, and will be there for a year. Of course David will be going there, too, at the end of the summer.

Now that Mike’s room is cleared, I am facing a pile of stuff from storage that now needs to find a new home… I am nesting. Interrupting all this is a huge deadline for work, when our project launches to the world on April 22. Between now and then, I don’t think I’ll have much control over my schedule… but what’s new?

I have had a busy, busy month.

I’m now living in a 1-bedroom apartment, in Davis, with my beloved cat and my very own bills. While I have the basic furniture, I’d really like a couch. The bedroom, kitchen, and dining room are all functional, but I have no place besides the floor to crash and watch movies.

That said, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to contemplate the lack of couch. The first weekend back in Davis I spent arranging all my many boxes of stuff and acquiring more stuff to store said stuff and basically settling in to my revised life. Then there was Picnic Day – I entered one of the Alumni Association drawings and ended up with a new duffle bag filled with stuff. Not bad, but more stuff to arrange.

I left for San Francisco the Monday after Picnic Day for the Web 2.0 Expo with my colleagues. Not a bad trip in the least, but it did mark the first of several overnight trips away from my new nest. We spent the majority of the time in meetings with our developers and ironing out bugs… but the eating was good and the company enjoyable.

Two weeks ago Grammy passed away.

I had just returned from San Francisco when I heard, and was looking forward to a trip to Seattle. I ended up heading back to Ojai instead. I won’t say the weekend was easy, but it was surprisingly relaxing in many ways.

I sang Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus at the funeral, and spent most of the weekend reconnecting with all the family members I haven’t seen in a year or more. It felt a little strange at first, but the overall consensus was that Grammy always wanted to be in the middle of wherever the family party was taking place, so it was our duty to give her a good party. There were a few who missed the proceedings, but I think we gave Grammy a good send-off.

About 30 minutes after I returned home, I started a lovely bout of digestive upset. It knocked me out for the bulk of Monday and Tuesday of last week. After a frenzy of catch-up work, I headed up to Seattle for the first purely relaxational weekend I’ve had in a long time. Oh, it was lovely.

Now I’ve returned to Davis once more, and perhaps this will be a normal week. No, in fact it won’t.

I’ve come down with a cold.

On my wish list:

1. Sweaters. Lovely warm sweaters. Loose turtlenecks, pullovers, layer-able sweaters… it’s cold here.

2. A Garmin or similar device … since I’m planning to drive out here in April and will be exploring the east coast in the spring and summer, seems like a smart thing to have.

3. Friends for exploring and hanging out here. I dearly, sorely miss my people back in California, but if I’m going to make this work I need people here, too.

4. Travel vouchers for Sacramento, Seattle, and Burbank/LA. Those are my ports of call and I intend to visit them as often as possible.

I am a creature of contradictions, frustrations, and easy joys.

Seattle and surrounding areas were gorgeous this weekend – snow, sunlight, friends, boyfriend, explorations, roses, and chocolate. I managed to acquire the flu from a coworker so I’ve spent the last few days popping pills to keep the fever down but apart from the sick I had a fine old time.

March approacheth, with all the huge project milestones and beta and visitors and friends and conferences… birthday and festivals and springtime. April with its copious travel to California. I am a springtime kind of girl.

I find it harder and harder to resist the idea of returning to the west coast. I am also becoming more and more comfortable in this city. I’m not really sure how these two reconcile themselves with each other, but here I am. I am searching for housing without really wanting to do so, which is an awkward frame of mind to be in.

My cell phone got bricked last week – by which I mean that a “software update” allegedly from AT&T turned my cell phone into a beautiful, expensive brick. The warranty replacement phone should arrive soon, but in the meantime I am without calling ability. Perhaps I’ll try some of you on Skype.

Work is busy, stressful, pressured, and rather satisfying. I come home too exhausted to think very clearly, but I am glad to have full days.

I have roses and chocolates on my desk. I’m cautious in believing that this is a happy February but here is the evidence in front of me, denying the last five years’ experience. I can’t describe how relieved I am.

It’s not that I don’t have my share of disappointments and frustrations, it’s more that I’ve got far more things keeping me interested and hopeful in the world than I’ve had in previous Februaries. I’ve their experience to remind me that it does get better – indeed, look at where I am right now.

Now, if only I could straighten out the cell phone, housing, and need for a teleporter… I’d be set.

Yes, the transitions continue. It’s … strange, how easy and how hard it is to play at being an adult here.

I’m still a college-style internet geek. I’m the youngest person actually at Council right now, soon to be the youngest non-intern employee (more about that when it’s finalized). I’m living in Warren Hall still, starting to look around at other housing options. So much has changed since those first few months of college but I still feel like the same person.

I’m a grown-up now, right? Most of the time I don’t really feel like one. Believe me, I’m not in any hurry…

Sometimes I think a little long-term motivation would help. I’m getting closer to figuring out what I want to do for that long term. What I’m doing right now looks like it’ll work for a good long time – I hope so, certainly.

Being here has given me, to exercise that overused cliche, a little more perspective. It’s easier to deal with the losses of home and childhood when I’m in this city, I think. I can walk along the west end of the Mall and see the names, symbols, ghostly reminders of others who have lost far more than I have. These things bring me closer to my loved ones, at least in mood and heart.

I’m always at the threshold of something. It’s an exciting, intimidating, exhilarating feeling. I’d rather be a little stressed than bored.

Meanwhile, I have family and friends to love, I have a city to explore, someone whose visits I anticipate like Christmas, and the promise of more good things to come. It makes dealing with the downs so much easier when I’ve got hopes like these.