coming up:

excuse the radio silence in advance.

here's what the next few weeks look like for us:

next week: visiting family in western Kentucky

seeing our alma mater

(please, can the bookstore be open during our visit for the first time since we graduated?)

a Charlie Daniels Band concert

oh, and two seven hour drives with cats

then the movers come to pack us up

load everything into a truck

and take it all to storage

cleaning of old apartment

followed by drive to Ft Bragg

two weeks at Aunt N's house

(poor kittens, there are two doggies so they'll probably hide in the basement)

and then

FINALLY

unpacking everything for the first time in seven months

Georgia On My Mind

Husband and I went on a little trip over Memorial Day weekend.

We're both history buffs, which leaves us a bit spoiled for choice in the South - in just a few hours' drive, we can be at any number of historical colonies, Civil or Revolutionary War battle sites, even Washington, DC. 

Here's a hint about our location of choice:

Yes sirs and madams, we went to Savannah. Not only for the historical points of interest, but Savannah is also where Hunter Army Airfield and Fort Stewart are located. Good friends going all the way back to Husband's initial officer training course were recently stationed there and graciously played tour guides extraordinaire, and allowed us to crash their pad and spoil their children.

 

They have a charming home - beautifully decorated, as she has impeccable taste, with an enclosed back porch and a pond. There are resident ducks who have caught on quickly that their yard is a good racket for bread: any time I walked up to the fence, they paddled at high speed over to the fence, even when I wasn't bringing carbohydrates.

We went on an absolutely fascinating trolley tour of the historic district and very quickly fell in love with the city. It rocketed to a top-five ranking on cities we would happily retire to.

Of course, many historical things were seen and facts acquired. For example:
Did you know that at the height of the cotton trade, the cities that set the price for cotton worldwide were Liverpool, England and Savannah, Georgia?

Treacherous stairs - there was a lowered alley between the main street and the mercantile buildings along the river. This was so the farmers bringing cotton had a ramp down to the water to load their wares on the ships, and as they passed underneath the men who judged the cotton were able to view it from above and set their price.

We had an incredible lunch at Clary's, as seen in the movie In The Garden of Good and Evil. If you ever stop in, I recommend the malted pecan waffle. It is served with honey and butter and might possibly be made by angels and ferried down on the clouds. 

and the gardens! the houses! the wrought iron, the ivy, the vibrancy and lushness of the city!

Pictures hardly do it justice.
 

Go see Savannah for yourself.

finish it up Friday

well.

still not feeling 1000% motivated, but I'll take activity in the +/-75% range.

this week:

The Cookie A club patterns for April & May were Game of Thrones themed - Drogons above and Daenerys below. So was the yarn - the colorway was Tyrian Mollusk, seen used in the Drogons.

I don't really follow Game of Thrones, but I still enjoy making the patterns. Plus every finished pair gives me an entry in the drawings: one with each package release, and the big one in October that could win me another year's membership!

(I never win anything, but a little part of me always hopes I'll get lucky.)

And I finished a quilt. The pattern is Round & Round by Camille Roskelley, and the fabrics are Kate Spain for Moda. The pinwheels use fabrics from the Honey Honey line, the backing is from the Sunnyside line, and the binding from Daydream.

disappointment and frustration

excuse the absence; husband was off work for the last few days so I feel a little weird talking to myself.

i hate to be so down-in-the-dumps so soon after my last mopey post, but it's tough. the army definitely does not set up a lifestyle that allows the spouses to follow their dreams - even as simple a dream as having a career i enjoy. i'd also ideally like to travel the world, or at least visit one other country in my lifetime, but there's no telling where we could get stationed down the line so the army might actually help with that one.

seriously, though. even with an understanding of economies and markets, it's incredible how depressing and frustrating job hunting can be. especially after nine weeks of searching, networking with the limited amount of people i know in our new duty station, and sending out at least 40 copies of my resume. i'm a little discouraged, to say the least.

and i don't want a job just for the money - although that would be nice, because we're not really living like rockstars over here, what with continued budget cuts leading to decreased pay and allowances for service members - i want a job for the purpose it gives me. i want a job so i can have a function. so i'm not just sitting here in this ugly blue recliner knitting and watching Netflix all day. because wasting away the days like that really, really sucks. this apartment feels like a prison and i can not wait to get the hell out of here. (and go where, a new prison? i really hope not.)

anyway. my poor husband has finally had enough of my funk and gave me a bit of a come-to-Jesus meeting last night. it's time to wrap my head around the possibility of not going back to work - not just right away, but if we decide to start a family, i won't be going back for a very long time. it's time to suck it up and realize that nearly every single military family makes it work with just one income, it's not the end of the world. i should just shut up and enjoy the fact that Husband makes enough money that we can actually afford for me to not go to work if i don't want to work at mcdonald's, or if i want to stay at home with our future child?

but how do i explain i want something more than being a stay at home mom? and what is the more that i want?

hobbies

Husband's hobby - straight razors. Researching them, hunting them down, restoring them, sharpening them, shaving with them. I help by going with him to antique stores and knowing how to eBay. 

The cats enjoy watching the occasional bug meander across the carpet for hours at a time.

I knit. 

and quilt (with supervision, of course)

and we all enjoy cookies.

and now, back to your regularly scheduled nap.

Five year check-in

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer. As a child of an alcoholic, I have spent my fair share of time at AA and Alateen meetings, and have seen this prayer on my mother's refrigerator for the last twenty three years. While it is primarily seen as a prayer for alcoholics, I'm choosing to use it to channel my frustrations a little more effectively.

You see, five years ago, I graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree in business. And right now, all I have to show for it is a few thousand dollars of debt. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change.

I married a soldier over spring break of my senior year (okay, so college got me a few grand in debt and a husband) and shortly after graduation, we moved to Washington state. He deployed almost immediately, so I put my career on hold in order to have the flexible schedule I would need to see him while he was on his two weeks of R&R mid-deployment, to go home for the holidays and see family, to be able to take time off when family came to visit me during my very lonely year, and to adapt to him returning home after a year of being gone. Once we had reintegrated, I started to look for a position that could lead to a career. The courage to change the things I can.

It took me four months to go from part-time retail in a clothing store to part-time retail in a jewelry store. An upgrade, but not by much. It took six more months for me to find a normal, full-time, Monday through Friday nine to five position, and that was by sheer luck of knowing someone who knew someone. In those six months I did not stop looking for a non-retail job. There was frustration and heartbreak, and an overwhelming feeling of helplessness and despair every time I came home from an interview and spent the next week on tenterhooks waiting for an answer. The serenity to accept the things I can not change.

But that position worked out fantastically for me, and I loved every day I spent in that office. I loved learning about mortgages, how the different loans worked, and how to troubleshoot some of the extensive and complicated issues that can come up in the home loan process. I even loved the process of getting licensed as a loan originator. I loved the people I worked with and the positive work environment that my branch manager and operations manager worked so hard to keep. There were tough days, but there were never days that I was dreading going to work or wanted to run out the front door and never look back (and I absolutely can not say the same thing about retail). But then... my husband received orders to report to South Carolina for a six month course. He and I went back and forth for a long, long time over whether I should move with him or just stay in Washington. My managers knew I was in a tough place and they totally went to bat for me with our home office to make me working remotely feasible. I finally heard that the home office had approved me working remotely for the Washington branch from South Carolina, and after we were here for a few weeks we found out we would be going to North Carolina next. I was hoping that I would be able to transition from the Washington branch of the company that I worked for to the North Carolina branch, but that did not happen. I am extremely, extremely disappointed about how that played out. It feels like the home office of my former employer essentially washed their hands of me once we moved, and they didn't even let me keep working for the Washington branch that had worked so hard to keep me on the team. If I had known I'd be cut two months into our stay, I would not have moved to South Carolina. But - the serenity to accept the things I can not change.

So year and a few months later, here I am again. Unemployed and on a job hunt. Most days it feels like I will never find a job again; the job market is shit to begin with, and where we will be in NC is a substantially smaller market than where we lived in WA. But here is where the freakin' wisdom to know the difference of what I can and can't change comes into play - I can't change that I'm unemployed. But I can change what I'm doing while I'm waiting for a job opening. Dear self, take the rage and heartbreak and disappointment and helplessness and channel it - get your ass back into running. I can change my expectations - the way mortgage rates are rising, I am sure a lot of companies will be trying to do more with less, and during the last two months that I have been looking for work in North Carolina I have seen zero openings in what I would like to be my line of work. I can change my perspective on available positions. I may not end up working in the mortgage industry, but I'll just have to hope that wherever I end up next will be something I enjoy. Or, at least, learn something positive from that experience. Grant me the... courage to change the things I can.

All of that to say: job hunting sucks, and I never want to do it again. But please stay tuned, because I will very soon be ranting about how increasing cuts to military servicemembers' benefits and pay leads to spouses needing to find employment to make ends meet, but since they're military and they move relatively frequently it's very difficult for them to sustain consistent, gainful employment (AHEM.).

weather report

Do you see the temperatures for this week?

Even Bub's going WTF. Look at her face, she's aghast.

And me?

 Melllllltiiiiiiing.

Seven Quick Takes

I've been catching up on the goings on at Camp Patton for a little while now, and miss Grace the Hilarious has inspired me to do one of these - my brain is a little haywire right now so I think we'll all be happier if I limit my self expression.

1. Kayaking - we went on a kayaking trip down the Congaree River today. The team at Adventure Carolina was awesome, and we really enjoyed the excursion. We'll be going back next week while some friends are in town; this trip was a pretty mild three mile course, so we might go for the more adventurous Saluda River trip that includes rapids (if our guests are familiar with kayaking, that is).

2. Paleo diet - husband is on a Paleo kick lately. He's hoping to make it a new lifestyle versus a thirty day whim, we'll see how long we last. I have a few pent-up rants on the subject, namely that the Paleo diet excludes many of my primary vegetarian forms of protein and amino acids that were most certainly harvested by paleolithic man. Lentils, I'm looking at you.

-HOWEVER- he just brought me a parchment paper cone of almonds that have been roasted in honey and cacao powder so I'm feeling magnanimous and will say that I do feel much brighter and perkier on the Paleo diet than when left to my own devices. But I still eat kimchi and rice with a fried egg for lunch most days.

3. Running - it's time to get right with my body and get back to the grind. Should I sign up for the Marine Corps Half Marathon or the Army Ten Miler to motivate myself? Or... since they're only a month apart from each other... both! Anyway, other than a weird allergic-reaction-even-though-I-didn't-touch-anything I had on my walk (and I am sure my bright red thighs and splotchy calves terrified the other pedestrians), I discovered a nice little path that is relatively flat, free of traffic, and, most importantly, a few miles long for nice introspective runs.

4. New House! - I'm scouring Craigslist for the items of furniture we are going to need for the new house (erm, that's 'need', #firstworldproblems anyone?). Oversized chair and ottoman may be on lock, still ISO side table(s?), china cabinet, dresser for husband, I'll know more when we get there.

5. Strings and things - almost done with what might be my favorite quilt to date. No fewer than nine piecing errors but I still love it. Pictures when it's washed so you can't see the oopsies as well.

6. Strings and things part 2 - almost done with a pair of socks for one of the most intelligent women I know. and by almost I mean almost done with one, but I'm pretty fast once I sit down and, you know, knit.

7. Strings and things part 3 - and now I'm struggling. Anyway, I'm going to attempt to knit two socks at a time after I've finished the pair above.

Five dollars or a pair of socks if you comment.

May... May I Please Get A New Job

May already? Thank goodness. I've never been so ready for another month to pass by. I am feeling strangely motivated today, which means that the coffee table I'm perched against has been moved off the area rug and, in between snickering at Archer on the television, I've been pulling up a handy pageful of 'quick' workouts one can do at home.
It's distracting me - somewhat - from all of the frustration. I suppose I can either wallow in this frustration or embrace the free time and availability I have now, and I'm pretty sure a month (and a half) is long enough for the wallowing. If I had known my employment arrangement would end two months into our move to South Carolina, I would have stayed in Washington. But I didn't know that and I'm here now, so time to suck it up, Buttercup.
Sometimes my husband is fantastically supportive, and sometimes... Let's just say that today, I am very very ready to not be the one in the house all of the time. I don't blame him for being frustrated with me some days. That being said, I do NOT want to be the only person who takes out the garbage and recycling, sweeps and mops, does the laundry, unload the dishwasher, wipe down the counters, vacuum, dust, cook, groceries, this is not the fifties any more and I am absolutely not the housekeeper. I take no pleasure or glory from being the only one to clean the house, and when we decide to start a family I know all of these inane responsibilities will remain with me. Yay.
I want a job. And I don't want a job just for the money; that would be nice, but we seem to be okay without it. There might be less Lilly Pulitzer in my closet, but there is still plenty of food in the refrigerator. I may be losing. my. mind. but I can watch a Coursera class and potentially learn something (while simultaneously being a wee bit pissed off that what I am learning is not the continuing education courses I need to keep my NMLS license valid, BUT that is neither here nor there). But I miss having a purpose. I miss feeling like I contribute to society and to our household in a meaningful way. I miss having my mind challenged on a daily basis. I miss my friends. I feel like I'm wasting my existence floating from part time retail job to one decent year of employment to this lame-ass unemployment stint. I hope it's short-lived and that I am back to busy as f*ck soon.