Moving on out!

When the hubs and I first landed in Southern California and we were all bright and shiny and optimisticky (I think it was the new longitude) we said we would be thrilled if in six months we were back out on our own. And as the months wore on and absolutely zilch progress was made we laughed at our original goal. Well, I am pleased as punch and totally freaked out to share that we are moving into our own place in a few weeks, or whenever our HHG (householdgoods for you non-milfolk) arrive. April 18th will be six months. They leave Georgia April 3rd!

We decided to be bold once again, and despite not knowing if I will have full time employment the next school year beyond the two days a week, and the GI Bill living stipend is variable and won't be coming in this summer due to hubs needing to go to Ft. Bliss to do his two weeks of reserve duty, and the falling unemployment rate (good yes) that might squash hubs benefits, and the uncertainty of what two weeks of employment will do to said benefits, and my benefits ending  as I start work, and so basically yeah income stream challenged this summer and possibly less than hoped for in the fall. That was a major run-on sentence right. That is basically how my brain thinks. So despite all that we decided we were ready to move out.  (Insert shit in pants.)

A few weeks ago after the job offer glory we found a great place but I pulled the plug and said we should wait until this summer, save more money, know better our financial picture, move when I am not working and hubs is not in school. Ya know that totally makes sense. So we passed on the place, which pained me because it had granite counter tops and was five blocks from the in-laws and two from childcare, and it had a washer and dryer in the kitchen and tile floor and a fireplace and a garage and three bedrooms and two baths and and was down the street from Target and was $1650. I let it go and patted myself on the back.

That lasted two weeks and then I found another rental and we went and saw it on the spur of the moment and then we decided to take it. It was the granite counter tops again. I am such a sucker for them. It is a HUGE three bedroom three bath (I have never lived in a home with three full bathrooms), incredibly nice, two car garage (will be putting in an automatic opener pronto (who does not have that??)), coin laundry (blech!!), shared pool with three other units!!! (holla pool party), some ugly dark brown carpet (oh well) , about 1.5 miles from in laws and day care) and is $1800. And it was a steal! Ya'll not from California shitting at the price??? Yeah crazy here. If I get full time all will be good, if I don't all will be tight, but doable, and we have a healthy savings just in case.

This is not responsible cautious behavior. Several times a day I have the hubs reassure me that this is the right thing to do. I am not convinced. But throughout this crazy journey we have taken nothing but huge risks, and together we have figured it out, so I am going to take a deep breath and try to have faith. I am also extremely excited to be reunited with our things and be out on our own again. It would have been way easy to stay. Just like it would have been easy to stay in the military and all the other decisions I have not made the past two years, easy safe decisions that I went in the opposite direction of. See I am still trying to convince myself of our boldness is badass not dumbass. Stay tuned and here is a shot of our place. It is a fourplex with a great private outside area on the other side. Loads of windows! Our front door is behind the palm tree, it is Southern California after all. 

Redundancy

I have noticed quite a few bloggers who have called it quits. There are various reasons given  and then sometimes just poof. And I get it, life changes, there might not be room for blogging anymore, or maybe you find you don't have much to say anymore. Or could it be that the more condensed social media is taking over. I sometimes find myself deciding where I should post things, facebook?, pinterest?, or my blog? I have a twitter account but just couldn't get into it.  Sometimes I post in all three places. 

There are a few friends that I met in the real world that know about my blog. There are a small few that I met through my blog and now we are facebook friends.  I mean who cares whoever follows me on Pinterest, nothing saucy there. Facebook, I do edit what I put out there since it is on the interwebs, but I trust my facebook friends for the most part, and I am again careful.  My blog, well for the most part it is anonymous except for those select few.  I want my blog to be my free space, where I can really put it all out there and not edit. I did just that and it totally bit me in the ass, and I had to go and move my blog, lose followers (and I had few to begin with), and now I cannot blog about one of the saddest and most challenging aspects of my otherwise pretty great life, because of fear I will be "found" again.  Losing.

Anyhow, I just wonder if blogs are going to be a thing of the past at some point and be taken over by the rapid fire condensed social media I mentioned above. I hope they do not follow the lifespan of personal letters, newspapers, and calling your friends on the phone.

Pinterest IRL

So I did a crafty from Pinterest. I squeezed it in during naps and such. I am not such a crafty person, as you can see from my result, but I do like to pin stuff.  I am not quite pleased with the result, I think it looks kinda schlocky and I am not sure I want to display it in my home. But I give myself an A for effort and bonus points for making something about my marriage instead of my baby. Without further ado, here is what I made:

Here is what it is supposed to look like. 

Where I went wrong. I used an inkjet instead a laser printer bc I am too cheap to pay kinkos for crappy craft shit. My blocks were sawed off 2x4's so they ended up being  4x4 blocks instead of the 3.5x3.5 and it made a difference with my letter squares. I printed them for  3.5x3.5. But I got the blocks for free from my FIL workshop. When I sprayed the finishing stuff and glued I often made the ink bleed. Dang inkjet.  I think my distressing looks crappy. Highlights of this project: I actually did one, I got to use my FIL's power sander, that was really fun. I did buy stuff to make blocks of the baby's name for his month by month pics. I may wait until I have access to a laser printer.

It's the little things Part I

Thanks to Handling it with Grace for such a great Friday blogtivity. Yes I just made up that word, that is just the kind of mood I am in. A few things I am grateful for this week:

WORKING MOM!!!

This is so not a little things, this is HUMONGOUS, I got a job this week. In a month I will head back to work and I am feeling immense gratitude. I am sure I will find plenty of things to bitch about when the times comes, but for now happy. There is so much about this job to be grateful for, mainly it's existence, the location, my chosen field and the timing.

Orange blossoms 

My in-laws have an amazing orange tree in their front yard. I have been devouring the oranges, so much so that I got sores in my mouth. And now the tree is flowering and it smells amazing. Ah sunny Southern California.

My in-laws 

I may get grumpy, I blame hormones, but they are really the most amazing people in the entire world. I have never experienced such unconditional love and support.  This again is not a little thing.

My kitty Stormy

I love her so. She has been by my side since  those first tough months in Georgia. She is beautiful. She has no claws because of her spirit. Despite her possibly being the reason I have had the worst asthma in five years, I snore way bad and snot running wild, she is my buddy.

My family

Again huge. It took me so long to get to this place and I love the life I have now.

Have a great weekend everyone!

The search is over-ish

Ah man do I feel great. Getting that phone call today with the offer, a moment we have been waiting for more than a year now.  I honestly don't know of anything else I have gone after that has been so difficult. I guess that makes me one pretty fortunate person. I mean even when I was dating looking for my beshert/soulmate, and that went on for decades, I didn't find it this challenging. 

I had a pretty good feeling I would be getting an offer. I had two emails from my soon to be boss over the weekend, she asked me to call her by her first name, told me the town we lived in was great for raising a family, called only one of my references and the most senior one. I mean who does that if they are not going to hire you? I mean let's face it, I have known when I am not going to get an offer plenty of times. By the way, got two rejections today that I didn't make it past paper screening. Sheesh. Whatev.

I know the only reason I got an interview for this job was that my mother-in-law was able to work an inside track. Then I went into the interview and knocked it out the park.  Now we just got to hope that this two day a week position in the fall turns into four days. My new boss sounded fairly confident that she could make it work, and even went so far as to say that perhaps it could even be five. We shall see. But I am going to try not to spazz. I will keep my eye open for other part-time gigs, but I am going to take a deep breath and concentrate on some other things, like crafts on pinterest.

One of my favorite parts of today was when my new boss told me she had another question for me:

"My team wants to know why someone so accomplished as you is interested in part-time?'

I came back with something very professional sounding about goodness of fit, balancing work and family, bullshit bullshit bullshit. But if I didn't have a filter (thanks frontal lobe), I would have replied something like;

"Do you have any idea how fucking difficult it is out there. I have applied to over 100 school districts and you are the only one that wants me. If you would have told me you only had one day of school psychology work for me and the four other days I had to clean all the toilets in the kindergarten rooms after swordfights, I would have still been eternally grateful for the opportunity."

And so you few people out there (four followers, :( ) the search is overish. Hopefully the position will get funded for more days. I will work in my chosen field in a school district 3 miles from my front door, hubs will get do what he wants rather than what he needs to do, I got to spend my baby's first year home with him, we left the Army and it seems we are going to make it, so the answer was NO and stays NO- we do not regret leaving the service. This indeed seems to be a very happy beginning to the next stage of our lives. I am so appreciative that it has worked out this way. And just to be clear this was not some grand karma/god plan-we purposely with clear vision dedication and belief in ourselves and HUGE support from our loved ones made this happen. Amen.

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!

will write more later, need to bounce around the house for a bit!!!!!!!

WHOOPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Progress wrapped in a cliche'

No one has cliched me yet but the day is still young. I had the interview yesterday and it went very well. Ya know when you just feel the right energy. Kinda like when you are on a good first date, but this is like so much more serious. I got to the interview and realized that I had not eaten anything except for two cups of coffee. It was 11 am, I had furiously gotten ready when the baby was napping (yay interview for making me shower and wash my hair!) and then when the hubs got back from class at 10:23 I flew out the door. So yeah forgot to eat and while I was waiting to be called into the interview I contemplated going down to my car to scavenge cheerios from the baby's car seat. I mean that is breakfast food. I decided against it and just suffered.  The interview consisted of verbally responding to six vignettes, no canned tell me about yourself questions. I respected that, they could definitely get a feel for the type of work I did. Then I had to give a sample of my report writing. It all spoke to my strengths. I truly felt that I showcased my talents. And there were a few perfect opportunities to share some of my accomplishments. I even got to whip out a previous paper copy of a power point proposal to the Board of Education on a hot topic. I offered it and they took it! So yeah I felt like I rocked it.I sent a thank you email and got a response today that I am one of their top candidates and they will be checking references.

YAHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!

!!!!!!

So we shall see. Here is where the cliche' comes in. In the email they asked me if I planned to stick around or would my husband be transferred again. Milspouses we all know what this question was about. It really rolled my stomach despite truthfully being able to respond, that no we are not going anywhere. We are no longer active duty. It is obvious from my resume that my husband was in the military because I listed my community outreach work while at our last duty station. I needed to fill that two year gap in employment. I know in the past I have been passed over, even in paper screenings because of this. I know that the only reason I got this interview is because my mother-in-law was able to call in her contacts and get my application pulled from the monstrous stack. Not because I have 16 years of outstanding experience in my field, a master's degree, and five credentials/licences. But because I had an inside track this time. So yes I am seriously excited, trying not to get overly excited, but also sad.

Milspouses need employment too, and in this precarious world, I wish employers would just hire the best candidate. They shouldn't consider that us milspouses have to move so much. I know plenty, plenty of spouses who have stayed behind to keep their jobs. Give us a chance dammit.  Milspouses have so much to offer. We are such a bunch of resilient folk. To say we are problem solvers is an understatement. Imagine having your life run by big government but keeping your goals and sanity intact.Able to deal with ambiguity and change much? Our entire lives are murky and subject to change with not even a moments notice. To say we are hard workers is an understatement. Deployment much when we run our worlds single handedly? To say we are persistent is an understatement. Dealt with Tricare lately? Honestly some of the strongest women I know are milspouses. Self-starters, budgetary analysts, independent, multi-taskers, joiners, community builders, professional packers and movers and shakers. The list goes on and on. So much is heaped on their shoulders in the name of marriage and duty. Employers would be beyond fortunate to have milspouses in their ranks. Yes we might leave in 2-3 years, but many many of us do not.  Stop with the "racism" and give us a chance. Show some patriotism dammit!