Happily-Ever-After-Land

This is where we SHOULD be living...

And it'd be nice to be as skinny as that chic up there, too!

But that's beside the point.  In all the whirlwind of this move, I had neglected to relate to you, my fabulous studio audience, the odyssey that led your favorite Happily-Ever-Afterers to the land now known as Cacaville.

Well, as with everything in Navy life, it started with Grand Plans.  Plans that would have taken us to Atlanta, actually.  You know, the one in Georgia. 

Now, let me tell you that I KNEW we were NOT going to get to Georgia.  Hubsters had the job all set up.  He wanted it and they wanted him.  All we were waiting for was orders to officially declare it so.

It meant no more cruises.

It meant fewer trips away from home.

It meant work trips to South America.

Which meant vacations for us in South America!

But I KNEW.  And, unfortunately, I was right!

Let me clue you in a little on how the Navy works.  They let you make your Grand Plans.  "I'd like to live here, here, or here," you express to your Detailer (essentially a human resources person).  Then somewhere, somebody in Washington gets your wish list and they all sit around laughing uproariously, "That's adorable!  This guy thinks he's going to go here and do this!"  Then they make a game out of who can find the worst place to send you.  Each person combs through all the available jobs and chooses the one they think you would like the least.  Then they come together and vote on each one, based on uniqueness of location, time away from home, and perceived level of misery.  The person with the most points by the end of the year wins a trip to Mexico.  (Of course, sometimes they get too busy and you slip through the cracks.  That's how we wound up in San Diego for a while!)

So it was less of a surprise to me, as we waited for those orders to come through, when Hubby got the call that told him no, he would not be traveling to the Deep South anytime soon.  A staff in California had a job to fill and he was the ONLY person in ALL THE NAVY with the credentials and timing to fill it.

Shit.

And the new station meant leaving for cruise right away.

F&ck.

Our new orders were for Cacaville, California, a location we already knew we'd rather not be around.  But other guys doing the equivalent of his job for other ships were able to live in Oxnard, CA.  Ventura County.  Only an hour north of Los Angeles.

Whoopee!

That's only an hour from my best friend!

That's only 60 minutes from my cool cousin and her family!

That's an AMAZING location with beautiful beaches and malls and small-town life next to big-time shopping!

It would be HEAVEN to live there!

And hubby tried.  Bless his little heart, he tried so hard.

And I KNEW.  Yes, as much as I wanted to deny it, at some point I just KNEW we were not going to be that lucky.

So here we sit in Cacaville.  Amongst the cows and goats and horses.  Hoping the smell doesn't stick to everything we own, the way my grandma's cigarette smoke did when Sissy and I stayed at her house over the summers.

But hubs still has to travel once in a while to Oxnard.  Land of beauty and clean air and safe drinking water.  Which is where we were last week. 

And, unfortunately, I found out that friends of ours from Hubby's squadron days are living very happily on the base at Pt. Mugu.  He does the equivalent of Hubsters job on a different carrier.  HE was originally based in Cacaville, too.  HE managed to get it switched to Oxnard before they moved.

But I'm not jealous.  No, not me.  I LOVE living in our NEWER, more spacious base housing, with my WAY more adorable kid and my WAY hotter husband! 

(P.S.- We're WAY COOLER then them, too!)

The Eagles Have Landed...

Yes, folks, your favorite Happily-Ever-After-Landers have arrived at their final destination, safe and sound!  It was a looooong trip (with the dog and the kid), but we are now California residents once again and have been busily unpacking all the crap that we swore we could NOT live without.

I find I learn something from each of our various moves.  So what did I learn from the Iowa to Cali Move of 2008?

• No matter how hard I try, it is impossible for me to pack up an entire house all by myself.  Consequently, the fact that hubby came home and we had to turn it around in three days turned out to be very, very BAD idea.  From here on out, I am NEVER packing up a whole house by myself ever, EVER again.
• It doesn't matter how many "healthy" snacks you pack, you will only eat the junk that you find during your frequent stops.
• When hubby says, "I have a great idea for eating healthy!  We'll stop at grocery stores along the way, cause most of them have pre-made sandwiches and salad bars!," just go along with it.  No point arguing that you know, FOR A FACT, that they don't show grocery stores on those signs along the highway, or that grocery stores do not exist in most of the small town stops we make.  Just let him have his moment.
• When you're on day three and your kid thinks "shy-shies" (that's french fries to the rest of you) is a food group and you and hubby are on your fifth meal that involved a "Run to the Border," hold in the urge to yell out "I told you so!"  If, however, said urge is too much to resist, make sure declaration is made at one of those fancy gas stations or truck stops - some place you don't mind being left at for a few hours.
• More Mickey DVD's.  We only had three Mickey Mouse Clubhouse videos, and I now know all of them by heart.
• Wind Farms are all the rage right now.  If you want to be one of the cool kids, get yourself a windmill and plunk it in your front yard.
• It's very creepy to see one wind turbine spinning very so slowly, all by itself against the stark, flat farmland.  Gave me visions of the whole propeller falling off and cutting us in half as we drove by.
• Nebraska is the "Home of Arbor Day," and they are very proud of it.  Whatever you do, do NOT make comments like "Geez, THAT's the best they can come up with?"  They are pretty touchy about it.
• The only thing creepier then one wind turbine spinning slowly by itself, is a whole FIELD of turbines standing DEAD STILL amongst old, brown corn crops.  Looked like what was left after Armageddon.
• Miss Priss LOVES pancakes.  However, she ABHORS McDonald's pancakes.  After two breakfasts of untouched pancakes, we will never be ordering those again.
• Always depend on the kindness of strangers.  Well, not really STRANGERS, per se, they were actually family that I don't talk to enough.  (And before you get on me with "how can you NOT stay in touch with your family???" let me cut you off with a couple facts.  A) My mom is one of fourteen kids.  B) I have something like 122 cousins.  Yeah, let me see YOU keep up!)  We were fortunate enough to stay with relatives for three out of four overnights of our trip.  So much better, more fun, and cheaper then hotels!
• But if you have to stay in a hotel in a deserted state like Utah, be sure to book it the day before.  My planner of a husband made sure to book a room (actually because of the dog) in advance, and we found out when we got there that the whole town was booked solid.  Turns out there was a whole slew of geologists and other scientific type people in town till December to check out the area for drilling.  Yeah, right, "drilling."  Bet there was an alien ship that landed and they're hunting down aliens AS WE SPEAK! 
• Don't pick up hitchhikers in Utah.  They might be aliens.
• Wind Turbines are NOT man made, as I had originally thought.  They actually have little windy babies.  I saw this on a mountain slope at the Nevada/California line.  Big, tall turbines, standing with their itty bitty baby turbines.
• NEVER try to leave Las Vegas after noon on a Sunday, headed toward Los Angeles.  Stay, play the slots, do some shopping.  You're not going to get anywhere anyway.
• I've said it before and I'll say it again.  Cali people drive like MANIACS!!!  There's no such thing as "defensive driving" here.  People would rather see you run into a guard rail then give you room to merge into traffic. 

I am so happy to be back on the ol' blog again!  We're still busily unpacking, so it'll be a bit before I'm totally back to bloggy normalness.  Still, it's so great to be around the Blogiverse again!  Can't wait to catch up with everyone!

The Love Letter

My adoring husband called.

Mind you, this is not the easiest feat when you are floating on a boat a million miles away.  He has managed to call about once or twice a month during this entire cruise.  He's a little higher up the food chain this time around.  On our first cruise, I had one drunken phone call, during all seven months, from a port he was stopped in.  But that's another story for another day....

This was an unscheduled call, too, which was that much more exciting!  What wonderful thing could he not wait to tell me?

ME:  Hi!!  (gushing with looooove)

HUBBY:  Hey.  Can you check your email?  (like he's in the grocery store or at the gas station.  totally ignore the attitude, though)

ME:  Sure!  Let me get to the computer.  (Thinking, ohmygosh!  He emailed me a poem or a love letter or a picture proclaiming his love!  Oh this is gonna be the best day ever!) 

HUBBY:  OK.  (obviously containing his excitement for the AMAZING thing that he just emailed)

ME:  (at the computer) Nope, nothing here.  What am I looking for?  (practically purring)

HUBBY:  Oh, it's a link to my Fantasy Football team.  I have to switch some of my guys around...

ME:  It's a WHAT?!??!

HUBBY:  Well, I kept trying to do it myself out here, but the internet isn't working very well.  It is by satellite, you know.

ME:  But...I thought.....You suck!  I'm totally blogging about this!!!!

HUBBY:  What would you do without me?

In case any of you are worried about it, it turns out his line-up changes that he was trying to make had, indeed, gone through.  I know, we can all rest SO much easier now!

I'm still holding out for my love letter.  I know there's only one measly month left before he's home. 

I like to dream the impossible dream.

(And, let's face it ladies, by blogging about it, I'm pressuring him to perform.  So leave a lot of "you suck" comments, I think he reads those, too!  Sometimes the impossible dream needs a little deception, manipulation, and a LOT of public humiliation!)

Someday My Prince Will Come.....Back

After months of shooting a bazillion pics documenting every second of Miss Priss' movements, like some papparazzo, and mailing disc after disc to my sweet hubby, I finally snapped.

"How come you never send any pics to us???"

"Oh, well, yeah, I guess you're right.  I'll get some to you."

I had been wanting a really nice camera for a while, the kind with the lenses and all that.  A major upgrade of the point and shoot that I've got now.  Hubby was more then happy to oblige.  But he had the camera sent to him.  On the ship.  And yet we still hadn't gotten any photos from him!

Until now!  Here's one of the five that he emailed.  Isn't he cute?  He's sitting in his bed.  Kind of coffin-like, isn't it?  If you think that's handsome, you should see him with hair!  Oh, wait, I'll show you....

Mmmmm, dreamy, isn't he?

I have to admit, during the first several months of any deployment I don't pay much attention to the calendar.  His return seems like light-years away, so there's not much point.  Then his due date begins to crop up on the horizon.  Close enough to touch it!  Currently we're looking at just a couple of months left.  Which means the calendar is now a constant in the back of my head.  Give me another few weeks, and it'll be all I think about!  Once we're down to a week, it's like a screaming.  I never miss him as much as the last two weeks of deployment!   

See the world? Maybe not!

Got an email from hubby.  He said their next port call has been canceled.  Then he said his counterpart on a different carrier has had 6 port calls already (they just got there) and his ship has only had 2.5 (they're about to leave).  Poor guy!  The 1/2 port is when they have a "sandbox."  That's when the ship pulls in, they rope off a section of land, have food and beer available, and make the guys stay in that area the whole time.  Sounds like tons of fun, doesn't it? 

The lack of ports reminds me of his first cruise.  We had only been dating about six months, and physically in the same spot even less, since he had to go out weeks at a time for training.  I guess I had watched WAY too many romantic comedies, because I was just sure as shootin' he'd find some exotic woman in France or Spain and fall in love and come back married.  I dreaded the idea of port calls, and you know what?  He didn't have any!  He was on the Roosevelt at the time, and they broke the record for number of days at sea without a port call!  I felt kind of bad, but soooo relieved!  They finally had one on the way back, in France, of course.  It was only a few days, but one drunken phone call from his hotel room had me convinced he only had eyes for me.  Ahhhh, young stupid drunk love!