Lessons and metaphorical violence.

Today is a day for putting my feet up. Mostly because putting them down causes the blood to rush to the giant blisters forming after yesterday’s overly ambitious dog walk up and down the torture trails the locals quaintly call “hills”. I thought I was finally experiencing those famed exercise endorphins all the fitness-geeks rave about until I realized it was just the rarified air causing my light-headed euphoria. 

It’s also Monday, meaning the start of a much needed new week. Last week was all about learning experiences. Really painful ones that leave me with glaring reminders of what a flawed person I am. Glaring. As in, neon signs pointing directly at my head. 

It started off with a humiliating and ultimately humbling reminder that as much as I pride myself on thinking before speaking, even I am not immune to the “post in haste, repent at leisure” phenomena that is the product of narrow thinking and internet access. I’m not going to rehash details, but suffice it to say, a “virtual” statement yielded real world damage. 

In public, I dealt with it by retracting my statement, posting a clarification and apology (sans excuses, because I recognize the difference) and submitting said apology to the injured party via email with full intent to back it up the next time we meet face-to-face. 

In private, I came very close to vomiting from the guilt and shame. WHAT was I thinking? Clearly, I wasn’t, and because thinking before you speak is such a huge deal to me, the emotional fallout was equally epic. 

Added to the earned shame is the just-as-bad-if-not-more-so horror of embarrassment - a quirk of my personality that I’ve been struggling with since I was a child. To be publicly embarrassed... as a kid I had absolutely no coping skills for that social situation. None. Zippo. Zilch. 

I don’t just mean that I found the sensation unpleasant. We all do. I mean that even good-natured teasing left me rigid with abject fear. Of what, I have no idea. I just remember that even if I did something unintentionally funny, instead of developing my sense of humor and feeling a part of this greater experience some call, oh, THE HUMAN RACE, I often cried with fear over the outcome. 

When I was really little (I guess 4 or 5?) I got a teddy bear and a bath set of grooming stuff (shampoo, lotion) at the same time. So I set about to give my teddy bear a bath. Adorable, right? Sure, to a normal adult and parent. But for years I lived with the memory of all the adults in the room rushing to stop me, their cries of “Oh, no!” booming in my kindergarten ears, and the crushing mortification I felt in my chest under all that attention. I wasn’t in trouble. Reflecting on those adults with my now-adult sensibilities, I can safely say that there wasn’t an undue amount fuss made over it. But the episode is burned into my memory as one of the most painful of my young life. And it’s not as though I don’t have a selection of painful experiences to choose from, so clearly there’s some bad wiring of the brain, there. 

Anyway, my perspective did not get better as I tumbled through my adolescence and I’m not even sure how I survived being a teenager at all. I think it had something to do with cloaking myself in a thick cloud of dour intellectualism and pot smoke. Mystery of loner status: solved. 

Learning to laugh at myself was a slow and self-taught process facilitated by motherhood and my few close friends. It comes a lot easier than it used to. But there are times when it is utterly beyond my reach, and when that happens the mostly disused but still well-worn paths of terror and guilt swell up before me, cutting off all other means of escape. Last week they were there, leading me to a familiar dark place that I only just barely avoided before lesson #2 body slammed me from out of nowhere.

The circumstances of lesson #2 are actually still in play and I have a superstitious fear of going into too much detail lest I karmically unbalance the delicate victory we are (hopefully) experiencing. The upshot is that the deal on our house very, very nearly slipped through our fingers. And when I say “very nearly” I mean that Randy and I had already started formulating a plan B - one that did NOT include home ownership, and DID include protecting ourselves from a possible lawsuit. 

The important thing to note about this situation is that it was through absolutely no fault of our own. I really can’t stress this enough, because it’s at the heart of lesson #2 and is the reason for one of those aforementioned neon signs blinking its garish neener-neener at my head. 

As the new reality of our dire circumstances was sinking in, as my husband valiantly strove to problem-solve, even as an ocean’s volume of salt water poured out of my eyes and dripped all over my shirt... as all this was going on, my prevailing emotion was relief. 

Relief that the other shoe had finally dropped. A sense of rightness came over me, a feeling of justice being served or of my universe being restored to balance. It was brief, this relief, because a shit-ton of worry for my family was hot on its heels, but it was there. 

And that’s lesson #2 - that no matter how hard I try, how grandiosely I brandish that sword of self-esteem, the first voice in my head is the one telling me I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve good, stable things like my own home. Singing two-part harmony with this voice, this Arbiter of Impossible Virtue, was a sniggering little whisper who gleefully planned to tell all those people who were supporting me that they were wrong! It was going to take vicious, brutal pleasure in informing every single one of them that their opinions were worthless and they were idiots for supporting me. 

It’s not just that I’m hard on myself, or hold myself to a high standard in certain areas. I am and I do, and I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing. Especially when it’s balanced by a healthy dose of unconcern about things beyond my control. No, this was something far more insidious. This was a deep seated, gut reaction that good things are too hard to deal with and bad things are the rightful state of my reality. 

The lesson isn’t that the voice is there. She’s an old, familiar companion. The lesson is that I clearly haven’t STOMPED THAT BITCH INTO OBLIVION like I thought I had. 

I have a good handle on the idea of cause and effect. When I can draw a line between a job well done and a favorable outcome, I feel deserving of praise. The converse is also true. But, again, this was a situation utterly beyond deserving or not. It was like sitting at a poker table with everybody all in, staring at a full house in your hand, only to be told that it’s just been unanimously decided that your hand is an instant disqualification in the game. And then the Arbiter of Impossible Virtue tells you that not only should’ve you known that in the first place, but here is a stick to beat yourself with - go to it. AND THEN YOU SAY, THANK YOU MA’AM, CAN I HAVE ANOTHER!

It’s pretty obvious that this illogical bitch is a waste of time. No rational thinking person would give her the time of day. I’m proud to say that I’m a rational thinking person... most of the time. But her trick, the secret to her past success in my life, is that she rides this wave of relief. Everybody likes relief - it’s the freedom from stress, a freedom so acute as to be almost euphoric. Relief is the endorphin equivalent to a master key - it opens you up to all sorts of stupid suggestions, like the idea that you’re better off without good things. 

This is not me fishing for reassurance. In fact, one of the most frustrating experiences is to have other people tell me I’m deserving. First of all, how would you know? Secondly, I ALREADY KNOW IT. Thirdly, it doesn’t matter how often my ears hear it, the Arbiter of Impossible Virtue never does. And she’ll be there long after you’re gone. It is up to me to gag and hogtie that hateful harridan, then shoot her in the head. Then burn her corpse, just to be sure. Maybe dissolve her ashes in some kind of caustic liquid. 

The point is, during the cogent light of day I am full of righteous indignation for the injustice dealt to us. But the lesson about not forgetting what voices lurk beneath vulnerability is as bright as a neon sign. Two of them, reminding me that some battles are just never won. 

Impressions, minus the funny voices.

If you follow me on twitter, you’ll recall I mentioned successfully avoiding jet-lag but accidentally resetting my internal clock to geezer time. That’s asleep by 7pm and up again at 4:30am. It’s getting better - this morning I slept in ‘til 5:45. I’m still a little out of sorts and therefore my impressions are somewhat... hazy? Sleepy? Grumpy? One of those dwarves. 

Temporary housing is spacious and comfortable, if a little decrepit. We’re staying in one of five bungalows on the edge of an on-post neighborhood and if the doors stick a little, the beds are 4-star hotel quality, so I’m not really complaining. It even has clean and new-ish appliances in the kitchenette, so being here for a month is not going to be a hardship. The best part is an expansive yard area where Heidi can run around and take care of her business. 

Fort Leonard Wood is a city unto itself. Vast and rambling over rolling woodland, its reputation as a place to “get lost in the wood” is well deserved. Having visited some of the services, I have to say I’m impressed with the variety of resources available inside the gate. 

Of course, they kind of have to be resourceful since there’s nothing but redneck wasteland outside of the gate. There’s a super Walmart, a Lowe’s and about eleventy billion restaurants, but out here, ladies and gentlemen - We. Are. Country. 

This is an impression reinforced by the prevalence of pick up trucks (old and new), the abundance of hunter’s camouflage apparel (for men and women), and a reluctance to pave roads not maintained by the state. Houses on a single lane run the gamut from single-wide tornado-toys to rock-solid (literally) 1950’s bungalows to the newly constructed (my house). There are churches approximately every 10 ft, and no small number of greasy-spoon diners. 

It would be very easy to fall back on metropolitan stereotypes to classify the people here. They do say things like “you’uns” and “get ‘er done” and the males of the species do tend to run toward the bear-like in appearance. On the surface, it looks as much like a cartoon version of middle-America as a girl from California would expect.

But I have to live here for at least the next 3 years, probably the next 5, and it would be a mistake for me to rely on shallow clichés to describe the people that will make up my non-military community for the duration. Mostly it’d be a mistake because clichés by definition are only part of the picture. Underneath the dialect marked by twangy contractions, there is an unexpected genteelness that can’t be found on either of the more jaded coasts. The inherent friendliness that one expects to find in the mid-west is - here in southern Missouri, anyway - tempered by a polite distance and a minding-one’s-own-business ethos. I can totally dig that.

Now granted, I’m working on less than a week’s worth of interactions. I reserve the right to change my mind according to my mood or degree of inconvenience. I also have yet to make it to the more upmarket city of Springfield or tour the natural beauty of the countryside. I figure my opinions on these will be mitigated also by unpredictable and capricious factors like my mood. 

To my family and friends, the only way to know for sure is to come check it out for yourselves... ;>

Crossing the pond.

After spending 20 solid hours traveling from Schweinfurt, Germany to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, I can say the following with utmost confidence:

International travel sucks. Airports are the fifth circle of hell. Car rental services are lying liars. 

My dog is a superhero. My husband and kid should be sainted. And I need strong drugs before I’ll ever consent to that sort of trip again.

Our day started at 2:15 a.m., German time, Saturday morning. Next came a two hour ride to the airport and a last minute scramble because our pet carrier wasn’t airline approved. Of course they were happy to direct us on a four mile trek into the bowels of Frankfurt am Main airport to purchase an approved carrier. For 215 euro. Cash only. What a racket! Then I had to leave my crying pup in the carrier and wait for an inspector to come say Heidi was okay to ship. By the time we were FINALLY able to head to our gate, I was crying! 

The flight to Chicago was uneventful, mostly because I took one of Randy’s muscle relaxers and relaxed myself right into drooling nap time for 85% of the ride. This means I was only a nervous wreck about my dog for 15% of the time, which my husband and kid can tell you - feels like oh-my-god-she’s-fine-shut-up-already% of the time. 

Look, you have to understand... I love my dog, but I harbor no illusions about her coping skills. She has none. She whines if I spend too long in the bathroom. Of course I expected her to be physically fine - it was her mental state I was worried about. Like the pitch of her whining would cause her brains to melt and slide out her nose. 

Ha. You think I’m kidding. You’ve never heard my dog whine. 

Anyway, Chicago proved to be a much calmer way-station than I expected. Since it was our point-of-entry to the US, we had to collect dog and luggage, move through customs and inspection, and recheck everything for our flight to St. Louis. Heidi was a paragon of normalcy (well, normal for her) and this did much to relieve my nerves, which had by this time eaten a hole right through my stomach. I was able to take her out, give her a little water and assure myself that what brains she has were still solid in her head before handing her back over to a TSA agent to be boarded on our next flight. 

By this time, we’d been traveling for about 15 hours and I pretty much felt like the Swamp Thing on a bad slime day. Rowen looked fresh as a daisy with an attitude to match and Randy - whose 6’4” frame is tortured by airline seats - was way too upbeat for a man who is married to the Swamp Thing. 

The flight to St. Louis is only a little over an hour long - a good thing since it was in a sardine can. Our flight crew was super nice, though - the flight attendant came to tell us that the captain had seen our “adorable” dog, Heidi, and that she was doing fine. I almost hugged her, but thankfully was too stuck in my seat to get up. My overwhelming fear had been that Heidi would get misplaced during our travels. 

As it turned out, only my suitcase didn’t make it onto the flight from Chicago. Whatever. All the times I’ve flown in my life and this is only the third incidence of delayed luggage. Not complaining (too loudly).

Randy reserved a full-sized SUV in St. Louis - the better to fit our dog, luggage, and passengers for the 2 hour drive to Fort Leonard Wood. Shyeah. Full size my ass. Let’s just say it’s actually a good thing my suitcase didn’t make it or one of us was going to be walking the 110 miles to FLW. 

After getting here and one minor mix up with the lodging (easily fixed, but really - after 20 hours of travel, does ANYTHING really feel minor?), and everyone was finally able to get horizontal (in comfortable beds, even!) for some shut eye. 

Impressions on our new surroundings after I’ve made some....

Kidney stones and crazy German doctors.

It is now three weeks before I and my family are due to fly back to the US and take up residence in Missouri. If you've ever moved before, then you know this is crunch time - things that couldn't be done before, now need to get done and right quick. If you've ever been moved by the Army before (especially overseas and especially with pets) then you know that this is OMG, MY LIFE IS A HOUSE OF CARDS  time. The timeline is delicate, and doesn't take to being poked at.

So when the internal right side of my abdomen started doing an impression of the battle of Gettysburg yesterday morning, I was rather concerned it was an acute bout of appendicitis and an emergency appendectomy was going to bring that house of cards down in a slow motion, mushroom cloud effect type destruction.

I'll admit to some dramatic jumping to conclusions with that visual, but in my defense, KIDNEY STONES FUCKING HURT.

Yeah. Kidney stones. One, actually, though it certainly rolled out the red carpet for itself - making it's way from my right kidney to the section of ureter just above my bladder, where it stopped to pose for the x-ray, then presumably dropped. I say presumably because forty minutes after the x-ray that showed it practically smiling for the camera, another x-ray showed nothing - it was gone.

Simple, right? Oh, okay, a kidney stone. Painful, but not life threatening in this instance and actually, my body seems to be doing a fairly decent job of making sure the little bugger doesn't outstay its welcome.

But here's the thing: in the throes of OMG, I'M DYING-style pain, I made the executive decision to go to the German emergency room. They took very decent care of me there, solving the pain issue right away and sending me directly to urology for the appropriate internal pictures.

Side note: the same is true in Germany as in the US - doctors are assholes, nurses run the joint.

The gist of what happened over the next 12 hours is this: See the stone, make arrangements to keep patient overnight and schedule a go-in-and-grab-it procedure under general anesthetic for the next morning. Patient settles into room. Doctor delivers news that kidney stone has disappeared according to most recent x-ray. Doctor tells patient: wait here tonight, we'll do another ultrasound in the morning. No stone? No problem, send you home with a sieve to pee through and some pain meds. See the stone, or inflamed kidneys? Proceed with procedure.
Patient grumbles, but grudgingly agrees. Unbeknownst to patient, doctor FAILS to inform staff of change in plans. Patient is forced to raise voice next morning to be heard over insistence that she prepare herself for general anesthesia. Staff finally listens, calls doc. Doctor changes mind: ultrasound and x-ray scheduled, see stone? Go in and get it. Don't see stone? Go in and look for it. Patient smiles sweetly at staff as they deliver news, waits for them to exit room, then grabs her coat and hightails it the fuck outta there.

German doctors have a reputation for operating first, asking questions later. I hadn't had any experience with this personally, but after today I won't question that reputation. General anesthesia, in case you didn't know, is actually really quite dangerous and should be reserved for only the most dire of circumstances. Since I was peeing (like a racehorse) without pain or inflammation of any kind, and showed no other signs of infection, I made the executive decision to tell those gas-happy lunatics to get bent.

Randy drove the getaway vehicle and with his field first aid training, removed my venous catheter. I followed up with a US doctor on post, got my freaking sieve and pain meds, and now wait at home for the inevitable.

Aside: The Stick Figure Christ hanging on the wall in my room really gave me the creeps.

Self Service Sangria

I know it's the end of the year and most bloggers say something profound to wrap it all up, but all I want to do is talk about our vacation to the Canary Islands over Christmas. This is probably because I'm still slightly hung over.

Ha ha, just kidding, Mom! I'm hung over from the wine I drank LAST NIGHT, not last week! Ah ha ha! Hee hee... um, ahem.

Anyway, as I mentioned here before, I was apprehensive about my ability to fully embrace the concept of a "relaxing vacation" but let me tell you what the surefire cure for that is: ALL INCLUSIVE.

The view from the upper level of the reception and dining building .

Dudes. Seriously. When you take yourself to the pool and there is a bar not 10 feet from your chaise lounge and it has beer and four different kinds of wine ON TAP and you just help yourself.... Well, let's just say you get relaxed pretty darn quick. When three meals a day are served from mile-long buffets for three and a half hours (each) and the biggest decision you have to make involves deciding which dessert to HAVE SECONDS OF, relaxation becomes a kind of reflex.

The Canary Islands are technically part of Spain, but they're off the western coast of north Africa, about even with the southern border of Morocco. They speak Spanish there officially, but also German and English. And that seems to be where all of their tourists are from: Germany and England. Although there were a few French also. The activities coordinators would get on the PA system at the pool and give announcements in ALL FOUR LANGUAGES. Sometimes they'd throw in a translation in Italian... for the hell of it, I guess. Or just to make us English speakers heads' explode. (It's not just Americans, by the way, the English are equally as mono-linguistic as their colonial counterparts.)

Up close and personal at Loro Parque.

We planned for one excursion by bus to the Tenerife's animal park, Loro Parque, on the opposite side of the island. It was a really neat place that reminded me of Marine World Africa USA (not that Six Flags abomination it turned into), and we saw an excellent dolphin show and less exciting orca show and ate some really fine paella at one of the cafes on site.

The entire industry of the islands is based on two things: tourism and banana trees and even at Christmas there were a lot of both. The beach is literally two blocks down the hill from our hotel (Luabay Hotel Costa Los Gigantes, if you were wondering) and because the islands are volcanic, the natural beaches are made of black sand. It seems a little off-putting at first - like you expect the sand to be harsh or something, but nothing could be more opposite. It's like black silk running over your fingers and although I didn't get in myself, I have it on good authority (Randy's) that the water is clear, calm and inviting.

The room we had was divided so Rowen had basically her own room in the living space and Randy and I had the bedroom. The satellite-equipped tvs came with plenty of English-language channels, so when we waddled back to the room after dinner we could zone out and digest to BBC news or whatever movies were broadcasting.

There was an arcade room where Rowen and I challenged each other repeatedly at air hockey and Randy taught her how to play pool. There was an extremely comfortable seating area at the main bar where we would occasionally have coffee (or more wine) after dinner. There was even a Beatles tribute band one night and Rowen and I TOTALLY SANG ALONG. Fortunately, the sound system was loud enough, no one heard us.

To be honest, the beds weren't all that comfortable and tragically, their shrimp was consistently bad, but other than those two relatively minor complaints, we had the most amazing time. I am now converted to the allure of island vacations (something that I never thought would appeal to me) as long as the climate is arid and a steady 74-degrees. Sadly, I don't think I'll be enjoying Hawaii any time soon. But I would go back to the Canary Islands in a New York minute!

If you're interested in seeing more pics and you have just under 9 minutes to spare, I put together a slideshow here:

Or you can click through mainly the same pictures (but also a few more) at my flickr.com album.

I may be a homeowner, but I still watch cartoons.

Awww, look. My li'l girl's ALL GROW'D UP!

That's what I say when I look at myself in the mirror these days. 

And then I stick out my tongue, just so I still know it's me. 

About 10 years ago, when I had a good job and a good kid and a good idea that I was pretty much stuck in that gig for a while, I started to be on the receiving end of a lot of social pressure to buy a house. The market was booming, it's what everybody was doing, and didn't I think it was about time I started behaving like an adult?

It won't surprise some of you to know that this sort of comment made me dig in my heels and strive for ever greater feats of immaturity. 

The fact was I was wholly unprepared for anything RESEMBLING the kind of commitment a mortgage represented. I was already committed to being a parent and like, WHOA! This responsibility shit is KRAZY, yo!! Also, I knew that despite my biweekly paycheck, my financial situation was not stable enough to survive a downturn in the market. 

I was right. It wasn't even stable enough to survive the next few years of booming market, but that's a different story. 

Anyway, when the housing bubble burst - around the same time the jobs in this country started drying up like... like... things that dry up real fast - I sat back on my heels and gloated. That's right suckaaaahs, I GLOATED. Because neener neener, I was right. I also felt really bad for everybody that got shafted in that deal, but it would be lying to say that I didn't celebrate my escape from it. The funny thing is that over the past 4 to 5 years, while everybody else has been taking losses, tightening their belts and just generally watching their retirement go up in flames, Randy and I have been watching our nest egg grow. 

I don't know how - I'm not even working and we take a very expensive vacation about once a year  - but just thanks to a little judicious saving and a lot of luck (oh, yeah, and a year's worth of combat and family separation pay, but I don't recommend that as a solution for everyone), we find ourselves in a nice, middle-class position. 

So we bought a house. Well, we're buying a house. We're in the preliminary stages of pre-approval letters, contractual obligations with a builder and picking out cabinets. 

Oh, didn't I mention? We're not just buying a house, we're having one built. This is what it looks like so far:

It doesn't look like much yet, I know. But the plans are convincing, so I'm hopeful.

If you think I typed that going WTF??!! in my head, you are correct. 

So how do we get away with this giant F-U in the face of a sluggish economy and saturated home market? Well, part of it is location, location, location. Our next duty station is Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and nobody in their right mind WANTS to live in Missouri, so the houses there are really cheap, compared to more desirable places like THE REST OF AMERICA. The other part is that thanks to a special combination of Randy's work ethic and my penny-pinching, our bank thinks we rock. Actually, they think this because they administer all of our family accounts, our retirement, our insurances (multiple policies) - basically our life. If USAA ever goes belly up, we are fucking doomed. But right now, they think we're a safe bet for a home loan. 

The other safety net in our favor is that rentals snap up faster in the FLW area than sales, so if it ever came down to a choice between taking a loss or renting it out, we could rent it and still turn a profit. It wouldn't be FUN, and I wouldn't LIKE it, but we could do it. 

So far, we've been parceling this information out like little take-out bags to various friends and family members, and each time I have a mini anxiety attack while the enormity of my adult life bitch-slaps me right in the face. So I thought I'd just blog it, have a heart attack and get over it. Don't worry, as soon as I hit "publish" I'll have a defibrillator on stand-by.

I'm sorry you're an idiot.

I don't much care for the word "sorry." Actually, I'm not a huge fan of apologizing, come to think of it.

Part of it is being female and as such being expected to do it more often than males. Mmm, no thanks.

The other part is hearing it so blasted often. Everyone says "sorry" at the drop of a hat these days. Loses the impact.

Then there is the infamous follow up "but." If a sorry is followed by any kind of "but" besides the one walking away, it is worthless. Utterly and completely.

I especially despise the "I'm sorry, but that's the way I feel" brand of opinions. Don't BE sorry for the way you feel. Ostensibly, the "sorry" portion of that statement is meant to express regret in the event that one's opinion causes the listener some kind of distress. If you truly regret that expressing your opinion is going to cause an adverse reaction in your conversational partner, DON'T SAY IT.

Want to express regret or contrition over something relatively minor? Use a different word. Step on a toe? Try, "Please excuse me." Wrong number? How about: "Apologies for the disturbance." Someone somewhere might have been offended sometime? This works for me: "SUCK IT."

The thing that makes me so crazy about this trend is that the word "sorry" is supposed to be some sort of blanket excuse for whatever comes out of our mouths. All too often, it is simply a shortened version of "Yeah, I wasn't really paying attention to what's going on, but I'm going to spout off with my opinion anyway." In which case, you're not actually sorry, you're an imbecile and there's no excuse for that.

Apologizing is in itself an almost worthless custom. I admit I don't do it that often. Here's the thing: if someone has been damaged in someway by my words or actions, just saying "I'm sorry" is almost always inadequate to repair said damage. Own it. Fix it. If it can't be fixed, move on.

Owning it is not the same as apologizing, but I think it's often more effective. "I see your pain" is an acknowledgment without the defensiveness that comes with a lot of apologies, especially if you're unwilling to change your words or actions. I fall into this category more often than not.

Sometimes (thank goodness not very often - anymore), I heedlessly say or do something that hurts someone I care about. One time, not long after the death of my infant niece, I said something to my brother along the lines of "try doing all that and being a parent, too!" To which he quietly responded, "I did." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. I seriously wanted to bite off my tongue. What a horribly thoughtless thing to say. All I could do was acknowledge it. "That was thoughtless. I apologize." Talk about inadequate. Fortunately, he forgave me, but it wasn't because I apologized. Yet I still atone for that reckless statement by making DAMN SURE I never say it - or anything like it - again.

Apologizing is an excuse for the offender, not a clean slate in the eyes of the offended. Regret should be expressed as such. There is a HUGE difference between "Sorry" and  "I hate that you're feeling pain because of what I said. I wish I could take it back." Or between "Oops, I apologize" and "You have every right to be angry at what I did. I hope that you will forgive me."

Maybe the words sorry and apology were originally meant to convey those sentiments, but the fact is they don't anymore. Especially in this day and age of 140-character tweets and winking emoticons, it is SO IMPORTANT to mean what you say. I know that I've been on the receiving end of some apologies, but I don't actually remember them. I do, however, remember the relatively few times that humans have come to me in full acknowledgment and acceptance of their actions. Funny thing is, they didn't actually say "I'm sorry." They didn't make everything magically better with their words, either. But they did get my respect, which should have a higher value than forgiveness, anyway.

I always wanted a friend that was part swimming pool.

I did a number of things this week, none of which included meeting my daily word quota for NaNoWriMo. I did get SOME words written, but not nearly enough to stay on track. I'll be flogging myself with my laptop later...

One of the things I did was pay a visit to the travel office on post and book our Christmas vacation. When Randy was deployed, we discussed vacationing over the Christmas holiday because A.) it would be the last time that both his leave time and Rowen's school vacation time would coincide before moving stateside and B.) he would have just returned from spending a year in the southwestern Asian desert and pretty much deserved a freaking vacation. You just can't fault that logic.

A note on our family vacations: we're nerds. As such, a vacation for us includes seeing/doing/learning as much as possible on our middle-class budget. For example, eight days in Tuscany included five different cities and a dozen museums, not to mention innumerable historical sites and probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a million miles covered on foot. When people say they need a vacation after their vacation - WE CAN RELATE.

Typically, we put a premium on experiences - an admirable quality, I think, for parents and nerds alike. But that does have the regrettable side effect of precluding a relaxing vacation. I've never taken one of those. What? Go somewhere for more than 48 hours without a flow-chart and itinerary? What madness is that?!

A lot of that stems from growing up poor. Not destitute - I'm not trying to fabricate a Dickensian childhood. But I do know what government cheese tastes like. "Stuff" was always too expensive, but "knowledge" was an investment and that kind of rationale is embedded deep in my psyche. Randy grew up on a farm, with all the sensible, thrifty, DIY sensibilities that implies.

For this last vacation, however, we decided that the experience we wanted most was to DO NOTHING at a place that isn't our home. I'm still having trouble saying that out loud. Witness my internal dialog:

Pay money to relax? This seems counter-intuitive. I could do nothing for free at home.
No you couldn't - you could do housework and FRG stuff and flog yourself with your laptop, but you could not  do nothing. I've seen you.
Well, what kind of learning experience could I derive from a relaxing vacation? That doesn't sound very educational.
YOU COULD LEARN TO RELAX, YOU NEUROTIC PSYCHO!!

*ahem*

Yes, well. So now we're off to the Canary Islands for a week during the Christmas break. We booked an all-inclusive retreat at a four star resort on Teneriffe, which may be a little windy at the end of December, but will most assuredly be lacking in the four feet of snow and blowing ice that Schweinfurt is likely to have.

My internal dialog is somewhat muted by the novelty of spending Christmas week poolside with a book and a never-ending supply of fruity alcoholic beverages. However, it did occur to me that this vacation costs TWICE AS MUCH as my first car. Shutting up, now.

Dear Realtors in the Fort Leonard Wood Area,

It's the electronic age. People are connected to the larger world around them visually, through their computer screen. Military families are often limited to online research since travel can be prohibitive. If you want to show your prospective property, you better get it right online first. Here are some handy tips from a frustrated online browser:

1. Pictures. Everything else is really a sub-listing of this, but I really want to make a strong point here.  Lots and lots of pictures. Oh, and by the way, posting the same five pictures five times SHOULD NOT FRIKKIN' QUALIFY for the 25 photos slot.

2. If your seller seems like a good candidate for a reality t.v. show like "Hoarders" you might want to encourage them to get professional help before you try taking pictures of their home.

3. If it looks like the home was decorated by the design team of Laura Ashley and Jesus, get the sellers to tone it down a little before picture day. Cabbage roses and Christ don't do it for everyone. I feel like I'll need a pressure washer to get all the guilt off.

4. Unless you are featuring a specific architectural element, never - ever - take a vertical-format shot. First of all, nine times out of ten you'll get it crooked. Secondly, what are you hiding?

5. While it's true that smell-o-vision is not yet a reality, certain visual items do impart a olfactory experience. For example, plastic on the couches smells like grandma and not in the baked-goods way. Messy nurseries smell like old diapers. Red-violet walls smell like crazy. Just a thought.

6. Take the CRAP off the refrigerator. The single most important picture is the one of the kitchen and if the fridge is stuck all over with finger paintings and grocery lists I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING ELSE. Fair? Probably not. True? Abso-frikkin'-lutely.

7. The picture of the blank wall. Why??

8. Finally, and this should go without saying, except that it obviously can't: if you don't know how to operate your camera, get someone else to take the damn pictures. Blurry shots, shots with your thumb in the corner, dropped camera shots... these all make you look like an idiot and no one wants to buy a house from an idiot.

To be filed under: What the Hell Was I Thinking??

Welcome, November first! Ahhh, a day to nurse glucose hangovers and start counting down shopping days 'til Christmas.

For me, it is also the start of my month-long, self-prescribed torture of NaNoWriMo. It's not off to a very good start.

The good news is that I've already written my 1667 words for the day. The bad news is it took me two hours.

The good news is that I'm pretty sure I've got a rudimentary plot worked out. The bad news is I'm already bored with it.

See, the thing about NaNoWriMo is that you're not supposed to start until November 1st. It's a 30 day writing exercise and if you cheat, well... where's the fun in that? But that means that what sounded like a kick-ass idea back in September has been percolating in my brain for over four weeks with no outlet and now I'm just feeling bleh about the whole thing.

Kind of like a Halloween candy hangover, actually.

The other thing about those 1667 words a day, is that it has to be EVERY DAY to make the 50K by November 30th. We have a three day trip to Berlin planned this month, not to mention little things like my birthday and the Thanksgiving holiday. I was hoping to ride a wave of initial creativity and build up a surplus word count before then, but evidently it's bad form to hide out in your bedroom like a survivalist in stinky sweats with your laptop when you have to share your bed with another human being.

The problem doesn't seem to be inspiration so much as motivation.

I am SO SCREWED.

Updated 8:44pm: Switched my POV to first person, pumped out another 500 words in 20 minutes. Problem solved! I am a writing ninja!