Homesick

I have been homesick before. When I was only 16 and living in Germany I got incredibly homesick around Thanksgiving and I sucked it up and my time in Germany was wonderful. I have only fantastic memories of that experience. But now I am literally HOMEsick. I miss my HOME. I miss our house with our wonderful concrete floors that keep the house so nice and cool during the 100 degree summers, I miss the bare white walls that we never painted because we couldn't agree (actually Matt likes the white and I hate it but that's another post), I miss the deer eating all of my plants, I miss the absolute quiet on a summer evening only broken up by the sound of crickets and birds. I even miss the rattlesnakes and scorpions that I always end up having to kill if Matt's not around because while Connor is a spider killer he hasn't quite mastered the art of killing a fast moving scorpion and there's no way I am letting them close enough to kill a rattlesnake. Madeline runs screaming like the true drama queen that she is at the mere mention of a creepy crawly.....

I miss having MY stuff around me, having MY stove to cook on, having MY washer and dryer to to laundry in, and having MY bed to sleep in, I miss being able to let the kids go outside and play and not having to worry about who is around because there wasn't anyone around. I miss letting Madeline ride her bike up and down the driveway, I miss hearing Connor play with his cars in his bedroom at night before he fell asleep.

If I had MY house here in AL this experience would be much different. If we had rented a house instead of an apartment maybe this would be better too. I don't know, all I know is while sitting here in this cigarette smelling apartment listening to the neighbors talk while they are out on their patios drinking and smoking, is that I miss California and I miss my HOME.

I was told once that HOME is where all of your stuff is, and I thought I would be fine with just the bare essentials of my HOME. What do you know she was right HOME is where my family and my stuff is, and so I am here in AL only half of a home. Granted the important part of HOME is here, my husband and kids are here, but man I miss my STUFF!

Wud Fer Sale.....

Those of you that actually read this must know me, and to know me is to know that little stupid things drive me insane. I like to think of myself as easy going, but little things like misspellings and poor grammar drive me nuts, imagine my horror this past weekend at seeing a sign painted on the side the road that read, "Wud Fer Sale"!!! OH MY GOD! Seriously, that's what you put on a sign?! Okay, I know that I was in Butt F**ked Egypt, (BFE) also commonly known as rural Tennessee, but come on, you are going to take the time to paint a sign showing that you have wood for sale and you can't take the time to figure out how to write wood for sale?!

Okay, now that that is off my chest let me tell you about our adventures through rural North Carolina and then into Tennessee. If you haven't ever seen the movie Deliverance then some of my references might not make sense, but if you have seen the movie then let me rest some of your preconceived notions to rest, YES that movie was filmed in TN and in GA and YES, it really looks just like the movie, and YES they will stand out on the street with their banjo's and play duelling banjo's like they are proud of this fact. The countryside is stunningly beautiful, it is lush and green and it looks like if you stepped 50 feet from the road you would be lost forever and nobody would come looking for you.

I try not be be a snobby Californian while we explore this part of the country, we are going to be here for a little time and I really want to enjoy our time here, but man I feel like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. I can barely understand them when they talk, it's like I know they are speaking English but I just can't understand the words that are coming out of their mouths. We spent the night in Spruce Pine, NC and we asked the lady at the front desk for directions to a place to eat dinner, Matt was standing right next to me while she rattled off something that sounded like "y'all go down right then head towards town and there's a good steakhouse on the left." We get back in the car and Matt asks me what she said, and we end up laughing at the fact that neither of us understood a word she said. We found the "good steakhouse" and it turned out to be a buffet! Not my idea of a good steakhouse, we ended up finding a Pizza Hut and had pizza for dinner.

The weekend was wonderful, (the 4th of July weekend) we went hiking in the Great Smokey Mountains and had a great time with DJ and Justin exploring Tennessee with them and North Carolina with the Gem Mountain Mining experience. I have to say that Gatlinburg, TN reminded me a little like Vegas, with all of the cheesy t-shirt and souvenir shops and they had a ton of wedding chapels. The only thing missing was the gambling. Apparently Gatlinburg is a major destination for the 4th and it was fun to people watch while walking around downtown.

Alabama....

Okay, I have come to the realization that I am a snob. I do not smoke or drink to excess. I like having a clean orderly house and am polite because I like people. We are here in Alabama, the trip across country was fun, except for getting food poisoning in Oklahoma(hint do not eat hamburgers in Oklahoma!). We are here in Huntsville, and the people are super nice, but there's no sense of urgency for anything. We were told when we moved in that the washer and dryer would be installed on that day (Friday) and after asking about them three times, they were installed yesterday (Tuesday). They are OLD and DIRTY!!!! Scary dirty too, not just dusty, but caked on crap from the millions of load of laundry they did before being taken to our apartment. Old I could live with as long as they worked did it really matter how new they were? But dirty I have a major problem with. I was in tears as I scrapped the caked on crap off of the inside and outside of both the washer and dryer.....deep breathing excersises helped a little.


We have been spending a lot of time down at the apartment pool. The kids are in 7th heaven, they get to swim for about two hours a day. I don't mind because I can get in get wet, get out and sit in the shade and read my books while the kids play. I also get a front row seat to the on going drama of the other residence at the complex. The drinking, I can sort of see, it's stinkin' hot and humid and drinking a cold beer would hit the spot, but the consistent drinking to the point where you can't walk in a straight line to the bathroom is a little excessive. Now add to that two little kids that can't swim and that would be one mom that was down at the pool yesterday. The kids were yelling "mommy!!!" and the mom was just laughing and giggling with the ubiquitious men who were providing the beer. Then there is the smoking. EVERYONE here smokes. There's ash all around the pool, and our apartment stinks. It's either because of the previous residence or it could be the person living below us smokes, but the place stinks. I got a candle and all it did was make the apartment stink like smoke and candle. While watching the drunk mom yesterday I noticed a pregnant mom with a two year old little boy, and I watched in horror as she lit up and proceeded to smoke her way through a whole pack of cigarrettes while we were down at the pool.

I am trying my best to not be judgmental, and snobby. I honestly like the people I have met so far. Absolutely everyone is super nice, and friendly. The drunk people are nice to the kids and they are friendly as the light-up. I am just having a bit of culture shock.

Connor's 1st Grade Performance of Desperado

 

Into Perspective

So, while I know that my situation isn't unique, I still don't have to like it......my hubby left for a year last week. Lucky for me he's not going into harms way per say, he only gets to go learn how to defuse bombs, yeah that's not dangerous at all. I think watching him say good-bye to our babies was absolutely heartbreaking, more than saying good-bye to me. My little ones were so brave and walked off to school without losing it, unlike me waiting in the car I was blubbering like a baby.

What this has done is put my life into perspective. I don't care where we live as long as we are together. If I have an opportunity to move and live in Alabama and I get to be close to him then I am off to the southland. I was born and raised in California but I would leave in a heartbeat to have my family together.

It has also shown me that my hubby is my best friend. I have best girl friends and I love them and would go absolutely bat-ass crazy if I didn't have them, but my hubby is the one I talk to everyday about everything that has happened during the day. We laugh at the same crazy things, and he helps put my crazy fears about little things into perspective. I miss him! We have been talking via Skype several times since he left and I don't know if it's better or worse to see him and talk to him like that knowing he's 2,000 miles away.

He started his school today, and depending on how the next two weeks go, I might get to drive across country and live in Alabama and then Florida for the next year. Adventure here we come.

Stunningly Beautiful and Smart

I know that I am biased, I am the Mommy I am suppose to be biased, but my Madeline startles me sometimes. I like to think that I am smart, but compared to Madeline I was a blithering idiot when I was her age. She has hit the double digits, she's no longer a little girl, but a tween. Sigh. We had the afternoon together yesterday, Matt took Connor for some Daddy/Connor time before he leaves for his EOD training, so Madeline and I went shopping. I don't normally do a lot of girly things, but Madeline wanted to go to Claires. A store doesn't get more girly than Claires, jewelry, make-up, hats, scarves, etc. We spent a good 30 minutes trying on hats and looking at all of the bling. She looks so cute in hats, I had to buy her one. We then went to a new store called Justice, and she tried on a bunch of clothes, she had a blast and I got to see what her style is, and what colors she likes, she loves things that I wouldn't have normally picked, but she looks great in what she likes. On the way home we were talking about something and she was spelling something, and she couldn't think of a vowel, so she tells me "you know a non-consonant". She loves to talk about metaphors, similes and analogies.

Then this morning I was struggling to get Connor's hair to lay down. No amount of water was getting his swirly to stay put, and I gave up. The kids were in their bathroom brushing their teeth, and I hear Connor complaining about something, and I go in to their bathroom and see that Madeline had gone and gotten a piece of tape to hold down Connor's hair. I had to laugh, it actually worked! I couldn't send the poor kid to school with a piece of tape in his hair, but the tape idea had merit. She is always thinking, maybe not the nicest thing to do to her brother, but it worked.

Evil Giggle

My best Jen keeps reminding me to blog these little stories about my kids and since I am unemployed I really don't have an excuse.....so here goes a Connor story.

Connor loves Bionicles, these are little robot/machine/weird creatures from Legos. He absolutely LOVES them, he will play for hours with his two Glatorians, he got a new one for Madeline's birthday and it shoots out a little rubber spiked ball. He will plan an attack with his little spiked ball and his favorite thing is to sneak up on me or Madeline and shoot his ball into our hair and run away giggling. He loves it because the rubber spikes get tangled up in our hair and it is hard to get out. I will hear him in his room with an evil giggle as he tries to sneak up on Madeline. Lucky for Madeline he's not very good at the sneaking part because of his little giggle. It is easy to find him because he just can't keep quiet. I find it hard to get mad at him for torturing his sister because he gets such delight in the sneaking and attacking. I think it's worse for Madeline because she is his ultimate target, Mommy is easy to hit, Madeline actually will put up a fight. I warned Madeline that someday Connor was going to be bigger than her and that she needed to be nice to her little brother, well Connor's not bigger yet, but he does so love to sneak up and attack her with that Bionicle rubber spikey ball. I love the evil giggle that goes along with the attack.