smile

Today's starting point? "Smile".

This sweet little pup is the one thing that will always bring a smile to my face. I love my Daisy so much, it's ridiculous. And she somehow knows when I'm having one of those days where I really need something to smile over. Like today. Like most of the "todays" lately.

I'm falling into the "deployment rhythm", I guess...all the days are rolling by steadily, blurring into one another, day after day. It feels like it's been forever since the ship sailed off into the distance, and then I look at a calendar and see that not much time has passed after all. It's a little depressing!

I've found myself using the weirdest things to mark time. Like, when I wrote my rent check the other day, I realized that I only have to write four more checks until I can move into another house. That doesn't seem very long at all! Or, the other day The Knot sent me a vaguely panicky email telling me that I only have 229 days until my wedding, and it dawned on me that it's only a little over seven months away and Adam will be home well before that.

It helps having a new batch of classes start every seven weeks. I've definitely got my hands full, and things will probably be hectic for the rest of the year, especially with grad school applications and all the fun stuff that comes with that next big step.

Today was just another groundhog day. Work, school, yoga, chores. Happy, frustrated, excited, sad. Now I'm just exhausted.

Neighborhood

So this is my neighborhood.

I wanted to live at the beach ever since I moved to San Diego, and about a year ago I found the cutest little cottage a half a block from the Pacific. It's teeny-tiny (390 square feet), but perfect...I have a little driveway to park in, a gorgeous backyard full of lovely tropical palm trees that the parrots love, and a washer/dryer. Parking, a yard, and laundry is pretty much the holy trinity of San Diego real estate, and I was stoked that I found it all so close to the water.

OB, as my neighborhood is affectionately known, is awesome. It's totally laid-back and mellow...Southern California beachy all the way. Adam and I love it, and while we're planning on finding something a little bigger when he gets home, we're trying hard to stay in the area.

The FRG had a "halfway to halfway" picnic today. It was a lot of fun...it's always good to get together with friends who miss their spouses as much as I do! And on the way home from the picnic, I got one of those precious phone calls from half a world away. It's amazing how deliriously happy I am to receive a too-short, crackly phone call from my extremely over-tired sweetheart...the sound of his voice is the most comforting thing on earth. It's like a warm blanket for my heart. The days are starting to tick by faster and faster, but I'm still so terribly lonely when I slide into our bed at night...that big cold empty space next to me makes my heart ache.

up

Today's word, according to the March Photo Challenge, is "up".

It's pretty much the perfect word for today.

February was a weird month: hot and cold and up and down and long and short and really just strange. The weather over the last few days, in fact, was record-setting cold. But this month began calm and clear and sunny, we broke 60 degrees for the first time in weeks, and I got a letter from my love. The temperatures are up, my spirits are up, and I have high hopes for March. I think I'm really just looking forward to April: a vacation, a visit from a beloved old friend or two, and the halfway point of this deployment? I'm definitely ready for all of that!

I took this picture in my front yard, looking straight up at the brilliant blue sky under one of my gorgeous palms. I think they're King Palms...they are gorgeous. Seeing them out my window while I listen to the parrots squawk and the waves pound against Sunset Cliffs makes me so ridiculously happy. I feel like I'm on vacation all year round.

I feel a lot more certain about the way things are going. I feel like I finally have good solid goals and a way to reach those goals. It makes me happy. It's amazing how wonderful life is when you have someone believing in you, y'know?

twenty-seven candles

So yesterday was my birthday.

I wasn't in a "celebration" kind of a mood, honestly.

I'm in the middle of one of those weeks, one of those weeks where every stupid little thing makes me sob like someone just killed my puppy. I'm tearing up right now, writing this. It's really pathetic and I'm mildly embarrassed for myself. I don't know if it's the six week blues, or crazy hormones, or just the fact that the last few days have included Valentine's Day and my birthday, but I am currently eating a giant piece of tiramisu cheesecake and throwing myself one hell of a pity party.

I actually had a fun little girly date last night. I went out to dinner with some girlfriends, and we pigged out on totally delicious treats that we'd normally never touch and gossiped about the silliest stuff. It was so much fun. Then we went to see The Vow, which was the sweetest, sappiest, chick-iest chick flick I think I've ever seen, and of course it made me feel even more lonely. Sigh.

Then I came home, miserable, to our silent empty little house....and discovered a giant bouquet of flowers, complete with giant "happy birthday" balloon, perched on my front step. I love that man so much...I'm not sure how he's so adept at making me smile from eight zillion miles away, but he's got it nailed.

I miss him terribly. I can't wait to see him. I can't wait to feel his whispers tickling my ear, instead of straining to hear his voice over a faint, crackly phone line. I can't wait to kiss his lips, instead of scrawling XOX at the bottom of letters. I can't wait to share the dinner table with him, to laugh under the hot water of the shower with him, to fall asleep snuggled against his chest.

I know next week will be better...it has to be better. Right now, though, it kinda sucks.

front door

Day 3: Front door.

I love this little wooden plaque I've had hanging on my door for a bazillion years. Its perfect.

While I love this little greeting, and Daisy's happy wagging tail waiting for me when I walk through the door, it's just not the same as having Adam waiting for me when I walk through the door. I miss him so much.

Especially this week.

Oh my goodness, this was a ridiculous week. Seriously, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.

I had a giant food show Monday and Tuesday, and it was seriously a total comedy of errors. It was just awful. It didn't help matters that my boss was super stressed out and in an awful mood...I hate being bitched at for things that I can't help. It made me feel even more stressed out than I already was.

Then, first thing Wednesday morning, my fancy-pants Keurig coffee maker inexplicably died. It's the third Keurig I've gone through since Christmas 2010, and I'm terribly annoyed that I'll have to ether suck it up or call the company for another replacement brewer. Honestly, I'm tired of dealing with such a poorly constructed machine, especially when it's the top-of-the-line Platinum model, and the ridiculously expensive coffee pods that go with it...I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy myself a nice normal coffee pot for my birthday present. I bought a french press the other day, to serve as an electricity-free alternative, and it'll definitely work as a back up...but I'm definitely looking forward to finding a new coffee maker that won't need to be replaced every few months.

After the coffee fiasco, I had a bunch of meetings to attend in a really short period of time before heading to a major meeting up at a distributor at 10:30. I was racing to unload the food show gear from my car before flying up to Poway, and I somehow dropped my Blackberry. It shattered. I nearly threw up. That was a fun conversation to have with the boss. So now I have my calls forwarded to my iPhone, but it's still an enormous hassle, and I don't have any access to my contact list or voicemail or anything. It's stressful.

This morning I was in the kitchen washing a coffee mug at the crack of dawn, and I heard this funny noise. I glanced up just in time to see a wall of dirty water cascade out of the giant light fixture encompassing half my ceiling...I was soaked, the dog was terrified, and my kitchen floor looked more like a swimming pool. I sloshed next door and alerted the landlord (there are days when I feel enormously fortunate to share a yard with the owner!), and he spent the rest of the day working with the maintenance guy to find a solution. The maintenance guy, Hugo, practically lives at my house lately...there's been problem after problem, but this totally took the cake. It was ridiculous.

Then, this afternoon, I logged into my work laptop to check some emails and do some paperwork, and the whole thing froze. I couldn't believe it. I turned the machine off and rebooted it, and since then it's been stuck on this blank blue screen. And, of course, the IT department is MIA. And now I have no way of checking my emails. I'm so glad tomorrow is Friday. I need a weekend.

words

Day 2. Words.

I dread my Statistics text. I've been putting off my Stats homework all week, and I can't put it off any longer. It's not that it's terribly difficult...the problem is that it's so unbearably dry. It's excruciatingly boring. I keep catching myself skimming over the words, thinking about other things, and realizing I don't have the slightest clue what I'm actually reading.

Unfortunately, though, I finished all my other assignments for the week, so I kinda don't have a choice. Stats, it is.

And I should probably stop procrastinating...

Views

Day 1."Your view today".

I spend a lot of my time in the car, so I thought it reasonable to make this shot a windshield shot. It's kind of fascinating, crisscrossing San Diego county every day. It also gets frustrating: people do the most ridiculous things. Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with my non-office job.

Honestly, I also kinda wanted to show off our gorgeous January weather...it was 75 degrees and brilliantly sunny today. Hey, they call it America's Finest City for a reason!

Today was an interesting day.

Here, a little background first: I love my job, but I'm grossly underpaid. It's especially demoralizing because my boss told me a full year ago that I was hired low and was definitely underpaid, and we settled on a specific dollar amount for a raise. I was, obviously, pretty pleased. Well. A few weeks shy of a year later, and the raise still hasn't taken effect. So basically, I'm aware every single day that I'm working for less than my worth.

So last night I was looking online for a job for a girlfriend, and stumbled across a company looking for promotional models. I've done that before: it's easy fun work, and generally a nights-and-weekends gig. So I fired over a resume and a photograph. First thing this morning, I get a phone call. It was the company, asking for an interview. "Sure," I said, "when?" "How about this afternoon?" Uh, sure. Why not? So I cruise on over, chat with the marketing manager, and was hired on the spot and given my first assignment. Hilarious. Then, the kicker: "You know," the guy said, "I think you'd probably be an excellent fit for our sales department." Next thing I know, I'm interviewing with the sales manager, who also offered me a job on the spot. And yes, I researched the company pretty thoroughly and know it's not a scam. I'm just hoping it winds up being as good as I think it could be. Either way, it's a little extra pocket change for a month or so, right? We'll see.

So, I think this challenge sounds like an interesting way to be more in tune with all the little everyday details that slip through the cracks when we get busy.

And besides, talking about "button" or "handwriting" sounds like way more fun than whining about school or deployment or the wedding, which are virtually the only three things on my mind lately. And the only three things I've been capable of writing about. Yeah, I thought you'd find it a refreshing change, too. ;)

But, y'know, there probably still will be a little whining. I mean, it's me we're talking about here. Just sayin'.

Anyway, so we're starting today. And I'm excited. Here we go!

fourteen

So, time is starting to move along pretty steadily. It's been two weeks since I kissed my sweet fiance goodbye at the pier, two weeks of getting used to the gaping hole in my heart and the deafening silence in the house. In some ways it feels like he's been gone for months, and in other ways I'd swear he just left yesterday (like, oh my god, why do I STILL have so much of his laundry coming out of the dryer??)

It's been a rough transition. I mean, it always is, but this one is harder than I'd expected. It's different this time.

Luckily, school is keeping me busy. That's kind of an understatement...I don't know why I thought that Statistics 390 would be fun cut with a little Astronomy. I haven't done this much math in my entire life. I'm holding a B in Stats, though, and scored a huge victory in Astronomy today: one of my assignments this week was a hugely lengthy exploration of the electromagnetic spectrum (that's a vague summary, sorry), and I scored 102% on it. I nearly passed out when my score flashed on screen. I haven't been so relieved or excited or astonished in my whole life. It brought my score up to an A in the class. There are. no. words.

I think I'm going to go sit on the couch and revel in the sheer amazingness of it.

Good night, y'all!

huh?

So, I forgot how much these first couple of days suck. Especially right now, in the late afternoon, when Adam should be coming home from work and walking in the door and kissing me hello. No such luck today, though. Oh, well, only a few hundred more days...

My concentration skills are severely lacking today. I went on a sales call this morning, and the MA was trying to set up a follow up call. He suggested a day and time, and I guess I repeated back an entirely different day and time without realizing something was odd until I saw the look of utter bewilderment on his face. It was actually kinda funny. We got our calendars synced, eventually, and I realized I'm going to have to mainline coffee straight into my veins for a few weeks.

My concentration skills aren't helping me with school right now, either. Arizona State requires another science, since my UOG credits were starting to expire, so I jumped into an astronomy class/lab. Stars are easy, right? Uh, no. I didn't even stop to think about the sheer ridiculousness of the math behind astronomy. I'm up to my eyeballs in excruciating geometry problems, and compounding the struggle is a batch of TAs who won't answer emails. I'm also taking a statistics class, which is also math intensive. And both classes are 7 week intensive courses, which is good in that I'll be done quickly, but the sheer quantity of work I have every day is kind of crazy. The next 7 week term should be easier: I'm taking all upper division Political Science classes, which shouldn't require so much math. I hate math. So far, I'm holding A's in both classes. Let's see if I can keep it up. :)

Actually, speaking of school, I've probably been procrastinating long enough, and I should probably go jump back into my homework. Wish me luck!

New beginnings

So we're less than two weeks into 2012, and it's already looking like it's going to be one of those landmark, life-changing, amazing years. I've been meaning to get back into blogging for awhile, and I figured that this is probably as good a time as any.

I felt so stuck for so long. Lately, though, it's been kind of amazing to break free of that sense of paralysis. I feel like a baby bird who suddenly figured out how to fly. I have days where I'm absolutely overwhelmed with joy and gratitude...I never imagined I'd be suddenly handed so many second chances, a way to wipe the slate clean and completely start over, and I feel like a giant weight has been lifted from my shoulders. It's amazing. I don't know how else to put it. A beloved old friend talked me into taking that first big leap of faith a few months ago, and it started the ball rolling...and, wow, things get better every single day.

My kind, handsome, funny fiance left on deployment this morning. Kissing him good bye and watching him man the rails from the end of the pier was so hard...but honestly, it wasn't as hard as I was afraid it would be. He has been blessed with a truly great division on a fantastic ship, and I think that's going to make this cruise so much easier on both of us. It helps, too, that one of the sailors in his division has an awesome wife here in San Diego, too. We waved good bye to the ship together, and it made it so much easier. It was actually unbelievably awesome, seeing the ship set sail in the golden glow of dawn, on the glassy surface of the San Diego Bay. I can't describe how proud it made me. The ship had to take on some additional supplies at another base in the harbor, so a bunch of us held a picnic on a nearby beach. It was so much fun to meet a bunch of the other spouses, and I am genuinely excited about getting to know them. Eventually, the ship left the bay, and waving good bye as she vanished into the haze was an oddly comforting thing. It's nice to know that I'm not alone in this, which was something I was more worried about than I think I was willing to admit.

I know that there will be some terribly lonely moments ahead, but for the most part I think this will be a good deployment and an amazing opportunity for us to strengthen our relationship. Adam is my best friend, my Prince Charming, the man of my dreams, whether he's snuggled on the couch with me or halfway around the world. And knowing that he's coming home soon(ish), and that we're getting MARRIED in 283 days, makes my heart so happy.