Conundrum

What would you do...

If you had interviewed for, been offered and accepted (but not signed any paperwork for) a job that you were mildly passionate about, in a state capacity (read stable and lots of longevity and benefits), with tons of advancement potential, in a field that had always been alternating between a career goal in and of itself and sort of a back-up career, depending on the time.

And

You had applied for and interviewed for a job in a field that is so amazingly tailored to your academic and personal interests it is uncanny, but for an organization that is a non-profit completely funded by donor support and potentially going to be very significantly and negatively impacted by the upcoming elections. Of course I found out they wanted to interview me about 12 hours after I accepted the other job. This is something that I am passionate about, but it is much less of a stable potentially long lasting job. Also, it would probably not translate well into similar positions due to its uniqueness, although I could be wrong about that.

sigh. I'm sure that I'll be writing more about this in the days to come. Boy am I glad that this blog is as anonymous as possible right now!

Snorkeling

Lil Bro and I went snorkeling today in Kaneohe Bay. Well, he went snorkeling and I stayed in the boat and read for my class. Stupid school. And I couldn't bear the thought of going snorkeling with Mr. SCUBA Ranger Man... so I read in the boat. I took some pictures before my batteries died though, this one is my favorite.

You can tell that it wasn't a great day- although it wasn't quite as gray as this where we were. This is Chinamen's hat, and you can see the rain clouds coming down and it was pretty cool looking.

Here's another that shows the greenness that is the Windward side of Oahu. So pretty.

The Beach!

Okay, maybe less of a hiatus than I thought!

Here's where we were this morning:



I'm a little redder than usual, but it was so lovely and not too hot, just right! Lil Bro (who is bigger than me!) played in the water and I just knit and listened to podcasts on my iPod. I was knitting at the beach in my bikini, how cool is that?!

Blogging Hiatus.

My brother is here and we're playing tourist here on the Island so I'll be away from my computer for a while (hopefully the weather won't be icky!).

I'm planning on taking lots of pictures though, it should be a good time!

Too happy vs. minor inconsistencies?

I always thought, or maybe not always because February kind of rocked my concept of always, but it always seemed logical to me that children who grow up in a nuclear family tend to lean that way when they grow up themselves. Obviously I'm not saying ALL the time and there are of course tons of exceptions, but tonight I was thinking that maybe I was really wrong about that.

I crave a family. I want to get married I want to have kids... I absolutely wouldn't have thought that was going to be my heart's desire growing up, but it truly is- even before February (sidenote, I definitely feel like my life is divided into two camps: before and after February...). But is it possible that this desire sprung from the innate and mostly unconscious knowledge hat there was something slightly off in my family? That perhaps, instead of growing up with a closely knit nuclear family, I grew up with an almost closely knit nuclear family and the inconsistency is what drives my desires now?

Ranger Man, on the other hand has parents that seem to have an absolutely rock-solid marriage, and he his conception of marriage can be most optimistically characterized as ambivalence. Is this simply because the machine was so well oiled that he never noticed its existence and therefore its function? That without the inconsistency I felt, he doesn't conceptualize marriage as a necessity simply because it worked too well and was too happy? Is there such a thing as too happy?

(And no, reconciling these two different worldviews is not fun.)

Roller Coasters

I do not like roller coasters. I don't know that I've ever been on one except the small one at the county fair and I did that about once and decided that was enough of that.

I get motion sickness from those creepy moving sidewalk thingys in airports, roller coasters are not for me.

Emotional roller coasters though... Boy, do I have experience in that department. Excitement to start a new and wonderful phase of life, anticipation about the job that I'm really, really hoping to get, sadness about not seeing Ranger Man for a very long time, anxious and concerned for his safety... Up and Down and Up again.

Roller Coasters. I haz them.

Off Again

I am officially still going to Georgia. Yay!

I don't think anyone understands why it is important for me to go. My parents, his parents- shoot, even him... They think that I should be going back to stay with my family and ... do what, just wait for him to come back?

I don't understand why I wouldn't go to Georgia. We knew that he was going to be deployed while I was there, we didn't think it would be right away, but we knew it would happen. I knew that even without a deployment he would be gone on TDY most of the time anyway. So, this is only different in that he won't be there right away when I get there. Okay. big deal? not so much. I can deal without furniture etc for a while- I've done it oftentimes before and I can do it now.

Moving to Georgia means moving forward with my life and not standing still or, worse going backward. Moving to where my family is means going back to the job that made me realize I wanted to go to grad school so I wouldn't have to be anyone's copy bitch any more, and that I wouldn't have any punk-ass little construction workers asking how their "favorite little secretary" was doing. Seriously? Secretary? I was the one that decided if their particular machine was going to be scheduled to work the next day or not. Yeah... not so much the secretary. Gr. I would go back to that job because I know that I could and I know I would get paid decently and it was in all honesty not a bad job, but it wasn't a career. I want a career. Sitting around on one side of the country waiting for who knows how long for Ranger Man to come back so I can move to the other side of the country just doesn't sound like fun to me. And that's not even taking into consideration that I don't really feel like I have a home left, right?

Also, through all the stuff that has been happening all year, I've had this mindset that once I got to Georgia, everything would be fine. Getting to Georgia meant that everything would be OK. When I thought I wasn't going to get to go to Georgia, it totally freaked me out. How was everything going to be find if I couldn't get there?

But I have the most amazing boyfriend in the world, and he may not understand why it is important to me but he does get that it is important to me. And so he's doing everything he can to make it happen and I think that is absolutely amazing of him.


I promise, sometime in the near future I will explain why I call him Ranger Man. Well, besides the obvious. There is a story behind it.

Embrace the Suck.

Of all the sucky times for a surprise deployment...

Okay. Seriously. This is what I keep trying to convince myself. There is no such thing as a "good time" for a surprise deployment. Yes, this time sucks because I don't have a place to live, but next time is going to suck for some other reason. Yes this time sucks because I don't get to see him to talk about things like the fact that I don't have a place to live, but next time is going to suck for some other reason.

Okay, so I at least kind of believe that. Why doesn't it make me feel better?

Ugh, I just edited a serious whine out. For about an hour there was whinage here, then I took it out. I am working on that whole "choose your attitude" thing. I don't know how successful I'm being, but I'm working on it.

So, I'm thankful that I found The Perfect Job Ever and send in a CV for it a week and a half ago, and that I heard from the organization today. Okay, so it wasn't anything earth shattering- they couldn't open my attachment, so they asked me to resend it- but it was still something, and obviously they were interested enough in my cover letter that they wanted to see my CV. So.. I am thankful for that. And I am thankful that Ranger Man isn't Downrange yet. Well, most of the time (the sooner he leaves, the sooner he can come back!). And I am thankful that, no matter what, I get to see Webster in just a few weeks! There, that wasn't too bad for choosing my attitude, was it? I can embrace the suck! hooah. (Ranger Man would KILL me if he knew I said that on the internet... hehehe)

Tactile Memories

I don't think he knows this, but before he deployed last year, and when he wasn't looking, I would just watch Ranger Man, trying to memorize everything about him and trying to make a memory that would last for as long as the deployment plus however long it took for me to be able to see him after the deployment.

Tonight, I am trying to sleep (which is obviously not working as I'm blogging instead), but all I can think about is how I know he's sleeping, but that I want to be watching him sleep. That I am missing out on that time to make that memory to tide me through the deployment. We didn't think we'd have a deployment since I last saw him, so I didn't do that. Now instead of seeing him in less than a month it could be another year or so before I see him and I am really feeling the loss of that memory making time.

Yes, I have pictures, but I have nothing left that smells like him (the clothes he left here in January have long since lost their man-scent). I don't have the full tactile experience of sight smell and touch to make that wonderful memory. Luckily, my old memory is only a year old, so it will have to suffice. And you better believe that there will be full tactile experiences when he comes home!

the "Get off work soon!" mantra

I'm getting very good at this mantra. Ranger Man is working approximately 18 hours per day, 7 days per week during his current TDY. I can't talk to him until he's done with work, but I have news for him! It's a state holiday here on the Island, so I'm not working today which means the hours are creeping by ever so slowly! So I'm saying the "get off work soon" mantra. It's sort of like "are we there yet" but slightly different and involving a lot more staring at my cell phone and willing it to ring (I swear, sometimes that works!).

Drawstring Chemise

Okay, so a bit of progress on the knitting front. Quite frankly, the knitting has been kicked into overdrive with the absurd amounts of uncertainty that is happening around here, so...

I'm working on the Drawstring Chemise from IK, in Knitpicks Cotlin in the Glacier colorway.


It's much further than this now- I've got the entire back done and I cast on last night for the front. Here's a close up of the lace pattern:
not bad, right? the pictures aren't stellar but, you get the idea.

As far as everything else goes, I still don't know where I'm going to live, I still don't know anything about anything else, really... so I am just knitting to pretend like I have some sort of control over something. Poor Ranger Man's TDY school thing that he's doing sounds insane, so I don't get to talk to him much (and him being so busy is part of the reason why I don't know what is going on!)

If anyone has any suggestions on how to get a power of attorney when not able to access a JAG office, I am definitely open to suggestions...

I got nothing.

I uploaded some pictures into my flickr account today, I was going to write a post about my latest knitting project, but I just am not feeling it. The uncertainty that is running my life is leaving approximately 1.5% of my brain functioning, and the whole pictures in blog post apparently is not included in the percent and a half.

I am knitting like crazy because it's the only thing I feel like I have any control over.

Hopefully tomorrow I will find out where I'm going to spend the next 6-12 months. Hopefully tomorrow. That's what I've been saying for a week now, so I'm not holding my breath. I sooo want to go to Georgia even if Ranger Man isn't going to be there. At least I'd be there when he gets back, and I would get to keep my life moving forward instead of on a holding pattern waiting for him to come back. But, I don't know if I can move into the apartment without him being there. The short version is that I need a Power of Attorney and don't have one. So hopefully tomorrow I will find out what the heck is going on. until then... knitting.

Thursday Evening Sunset

This is about how much sky I can see from outside my door, but it was pretty colors last night so I snapped a picture. Not too bad for the middle of a bunch of tall buildings on a tropical Island, right?

the other shoe.

Remember how I was waiting for the other shoe to drop (I think that's the phrase...)? How everything had worked out a little too nicely with leave and breaks and the like?

Yeah. It caught up to us. In a big, ugly way.

So, I'm leaving here in a few weeks, but I have no idea where I'm going.

Tickets

I just wrote a big long post and realized that, while it was technically compliant with opsec regulations, it was also whiny and thus probably not as opsec compliant as I would like it to be. Not that I know anything to tell... but it's not a habit I want to get into.

So I'll say this. while I got my ticket to Atlanta at 8 this morning, by noon it became highly, highly likely that I wouldn't need it. I don't have a ticket anymore.