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| She who has made the most stressful year ever my happiest year ever. (Sara about 2 months ago at age 9 months.) |
My thoughts right now are jumbled. A mess, really. But if I put them in a list, they will automatically seem organized! Right...?
- Sara is almost 11 months old. I fully expected her first year to be recorded in excruciating detail here on my blog. But it's not. Alas.
- David and Mary are very happy here in Ohio. Greg and I are not.
- My computer slowly died this past fall. It was sad. I really liked that computer. We'd been through a lot together. But its time had come. So I reluctantly got a new computer. This turned out to be a big debacle because Windows 8 and I don't get along very well. Finally I special ordered (and paid a premium for) a computer with Windows 7 on it. No more tears. But the whole thing left me computer-less and digitally disorganized for more than a month. (In defense of Windows 8, Greg got the new Surface and it's really slick. I get Windows 8 now. It just doesn't work for a regular laptop--even if it comes with a touch screen--and regular non-tablet type computing stuff.)
- Greg is deploying January 3. He is going to Qatar. From there he will be traveling around to different bases in Kuwait, the UEA, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and who knows where else. He will be gone 7 months.
- Modern life is very complicated. I think back to Greg's first deployment. We lived in an apartment in Dover, Delaware. I had a scratch piece of paper tacked to the wall with a list of the things I needed to take care while he was gone. This time around I have a binder, its contents growing bigger every day. I am not very good at house things and technology things. So Greg and I are desperately trying to find time together so he can show me everything. Everything. Like: which light bulbs go in which fixtures, all of our usernames/passwords, how to upload audiobooks to ipods, who to call if the heat pump/garage door/toilet/fuse box breaks, how to reset the wireless router, where he put the batteries. And so on. In ten years we went from a quiet 2 bedroom apartment and an old laptop with a dial-up Internet connection ... to... our life now. It is a good life. But with cell phones and multiple computers and three printers and five million Internet accounts and a yard and a mortgage and two cars on different maintenance schedules and all sorts of electronic entertainment devices that invariably wig out occasionally and so many more bills (so many!) and hectic schedules ... sometimes I think living on a farm a hundred years ago and doing exactly the same thing every day your whole life is preferable.
- We have been working on the house, cranking through our to-do list before Greg leaves. So far we (by "we" I mean Greg or, in some cases, someone Greg hired): deep cleaned, cleaned the carpets, installed shelving in the laundry room, painted Mary's room, gave the living room a fresh coat of paint, replaced the blinds on every window, painted the master bedroom, painted the second bathroom, painted the master bathroom, replaced the front door, painted the front door, got a new refrigerator, did some plumbing repairs, installed a new water softener, cleaned out the vertical dryer vent, installed a bathroom fan, improved ventilation in the attic, replaced light switch covers, replaced two ceiling fans, touched up floor board paint, replaced all the locks, installed motion sensor lights on the exterior, fixed the banister, removed a medicine cabinet and a weird recessed toilet paper holder and repaired the wall, and fixed the light fixture in the laundry room. This list does not include unpacking or organizing--and there has been a lot of that too. Almost every box is unpacked and picture hung. It's been exhausting. But it is nice to feel moved in and like the house is ours.
- We still have some big ticket house projects, but they are not the fun kind. Next fall we have to have all the concrete replaced--the driveway, front walk, and front stairs. It's all sinking into the ground. We also have a leak in the heat pump--fingers crossed we make it through this winter.
- Usually when I move I have 2 things that help me: a sense of adventure and a sense of humor. This time I have neither. (Maybe I have mentioned this before?)
- "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Maybe that's why I haven't blogged much lately. Frustratingly, I am rather negative right now.
- Despite it all, this is where we are supposed to be. I'm not blind to all the good things about living here. I just prefer to be cranky, I guess.
- Blogging. I need to decide what to do about blogging. First of all, I need to get organized. You cannot imagine the mess my pictures files have been. Some on this hard drive, some on that hard drive, some on Dropbox, some on Carbonite, some on this memory card, some on that memory card. It's crazy. I enjoy blogging, and it's easy...if I'm organized. Okay, so once I've established some level of organization, I have to re-evaluate this whole blogging thing. Is it for me? You? My kids? Greg? What's out of bounds to talk about now that my kids are older? Does this question no longer matter in this day and age? Should I focus on the positive? What if I let it get too saccharine? But, then again, what if I let it get too negative? Also, it helps me organizationally to start a new blog when we move, so do I do that again? Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure the blog is now for my kids. Turns out they love it. How does that affect what I write?
- I am very tired. I think Greg is more tired. He has a lot going on right now, and a deadline. January 3. I guess that whole having a baby/selling a house/finishing a dissertation was good practice...for how stressful life is for him now. Ha ha--and we thought life was overwhelming then. Good thing he is a strong man. (His deployment will probably feel like a vacation! For him. Not me.)
- Sara is so sweet. She makes me so happy. (She makes everyone happy.) She is like this bright shining ball of joy and happiness in my life.
- So, I am going to start posting all kinds of random stuff. Stuff from the summer. Stuff from last week. Chronological order is going out the window. A picture here, a picture there. A link to this video, a link to that video. Sara now, Sara then. It will be a mess. But what fun. Maybe.
