Exhausting day

I have a draft with a couple notes in it, but I want to share somethings from the past few hours.

My sleep schedule is messed up, so after I woke up around 6pm (from four hours of sleep), I knocked around the room, tiding up little things and trying to sort out what goes where. We're living in such a small space right now (too small for the things we had when moving in, way to small for even the small number of items we've gathered in the past year) that any attempt at massive reorganizing feels like a maximum difficulty game of RushHour


Get the red car OUT!

My mom was doing her annual birtday puzzle--


--for the THIRD time when I went downstairs to tell her I was wigging out and ask if she had any advice or ideas for dealing with the task.

We talked about my struggles in getting ready for boot camp, both needing to work around DH and without him as he finishes up freelance work. He can't help me right now, and he can't get out of the way. Frustrating!

Mom and I discussed it a little bit, as well as some of the unspoken expectations I have about living in her house, and not being as amazing a steward of the rooms I'm in as I could be. She offered to pick up some boxes for me, and to come help start the process after DH and I get back from our New Year's adventure.

Somewhere in there the topic of conversation turned to the puzzle and Mom's method and enjoyment of putting them together. She always does the border first. It's a respectable way to go about it, and probably the most popular one. Out of curiosity, I asked if she ever worked from the inside out. She hadn't, but after we finished the third assembly of the image, we broke it down, mixed up the pieces,, and started over. From the inside.

It was an unspoken thing. She didn't ask, "Shall we do it again?" or "Will you stay and help?" We just did it. The (61) border pieces were stacked to one side, and we began the sorting pieces and snapping the matching ones together all over again.

Looking back that was a great metaphor for our discussion, which went on for three hours. For the two of us together, three hours of serious conversation is epic. Normally when we're together alone that for long, we're running errands. The puzzle wasn't the only thing to be broken down, I did, too. My well-forged facade broke to pieces and I came apart at the seams.

The collapse wasn't absolute, nothing like hitting rock bottom or revealing anything devastating, but it was significant to show and tell about the family-related wounds I feel. Oddly enough, some of those wounds relate to the puzzle metaphor as a lack of clear and direct communication ("Shall we do it again?") contributed to those wounds.

Suffice to say that, yes, my mom does love me and wants to be supportive of me and my decisions and is happy that I'm going to Tennessee while DH is in boot camp. (And while she is concerned about my financial future, she is happy that I am an artist, too.)



Now it's past midnight, meaning today is December 31 and only 13 days remain until DH departs.

More importantly, today is December 31 and exactly 3 years ago DH and I had our first personal encounter. The last thing my best friend told be before I left was "Don't kiss him!" I didn't that time, but DH will be away for the anniversary of our first kiss, so I'm going to celebrate this one with all my might.

I love you, DH, and these words never do enough to express it. I'm looking forward to another fantastic year with you. I think it'll be the best yet.

Folding Laundry

After today, I might only fold DH's laundry one more time before he leaves for boot camp. That's a bit of a quieting thought.

As I pulled each item of clothing out of the basket I considered it more closely than I usually would. I notice how threadbare some of my socks are. I notice which pairs of pants are losing their creases. I notice all the stray lint and fibers clinging to every black piece of clothing. I notice how tank tops are stretched and dingy from being washed normally with everything else, instead of by hand.

Also, I mentally catalog each item and where it will be three weeks from now. Where am I going to put DH's clothes? What am I going to pack into my luggage? What am I going to ship to my temporary home? What will go into U-Haul storage with the rest of our belongings that have been stashed away since we moved back from the east coast.

My wardrobe's in pretty shabby shape, but for the most part it doesn't bother me. I'm a low maintenance girl (it's hard for me to call myself a woman) who usually prefers function over aesthetics, and with limited space and very limited money I don't try to change that.

One camisole did get tossed, mostly because it's no longer close to white or to being "presentable", but also partially because it reminds me of an ex. Getting rid of such a thing is long overdue.

But I'm keeping every eight year old sock that is so worn out that I can see through it. It brings back memories of high school. Shabby shape, like I said.


During the process of folding clothes and considering the future, I decided that whatever money I make in Tennessee while DH is in boot camp, I'm going to spend a significant percentage of it on clothes. Probably socks. This is very unlike me; I'm normally very frugal. But it will be a motivational tool, and a nice way to treat myself.

The Plan

The same day DH is driven down to San Diego by his recruiter, I'll be driven to the airport by my parents. I won't come back until shortly before he does.

The Plan (tm) is to stay with a couple DH and I know who live in Tennessee. They guy is ex-Navy, and, like Reagan, isn't someone you would expect to enlist for military service. His wife is the creative sort, too, being in a band and a part of the zine community. She also is part of a non-profit that helps local kids form bands and make their own art and stuff like that.

I click well with both of them and feel so incredibly lucky that they offered me use of their spare room in exchange for me playing cook-and-dishwasher for them.

If things go well, I might go back after DH's graduation and stay while he's in MOS school as well.


It might be a sad commentary on my life that I would rather cross the country and stay with friends instead of staying here where my family is. This house, my "stucco tower", is "home" in the sense that I grew up here, my parents live here, and it's been my address for over a year, but in other ways it's not half the home our apartment on the east coast was.

While I dread waking up in familiar rooms without the familiar and wonderful presence of my husband, more than that I want to avoid slipping into "daughter" mode without the counterbalance of "wife" mode. When DH is deployed in the future, I'll surely be alone in familiar rooms, but those will be our rooms, where no one else has a claim on them.


So, yes. Other side of the country, different people. I plan to spend that time helping out the non-profit, work on my webcomic, do lots of amazing cooking, and (if I can find work that doesn't require having my own car) make some money.

T Minus 14 Days

I was typing up another post, but shelved it. There is no way to justify going any farther before introducing myself, my husband, and our situation.

Me - I've recently taking to calling myself a creative dilettante, both as an honest compliment and dry insult to myself. Although I'm 24, I haven't finished college yet, nor had a regular job in 18 months.

I'm a writer, but my credits only include self-published hobby books and one newspaper article. I am constantly scribbling down ideas in notebooks and on sticky notes, and occasionally fleshing things out, but haven't tried to sell any short fiction or finish any long fiction. Recently I've started writing poetry semi-seriously and plan to spend more time on it next year. While my natural response to life is to write, I have been spending more time and effort on drawing.

I don't call myself an artist yet. I've been filling sketchbooks with my practice drawings for three years, and hope to be attending art school once DH and I settle down next year. Ideally I want to bring my art skills up to match my writing skills and do things like Mouse Guard or Promethea (an all-time favorite).

Not having a job is both a blessing and a curse. I appreciate DH supporting my creativity and my goals more than I can express. He saw how much it sucked the life and energy out of me to work the kinds of crappy jobs I could get hired for. He willingly was the one to go out and get a crappy job this year when we were in limbo and only had one car. I love him for supporting me so gladly, but often got frustrated when I felt like I wasn't contributing enough.


DH (my Dear Husband) I'll do this best I can without gushing.

For 18 months before we met, I was a fan of DH's artwork, having found it online through a mutual friend. I think it's a key point to understanding this blog to realize that from when I discovered DH, through our whole friendship, courtship and newlywed years, up until he started talking about joining the USMC Reserves, I never saw him as someone with the personality and interest set to enlist.

He enjoys a military aesthetic, he draws stories about wars (although in a fantasy setting), he is one of the most knowledgeable people I know when it comes to world affairs, he has strong values and believes in honor. He has many qualities that, on paper, aren't at odds with military service. I can understand why people might be confused when I say I'm apprehensive about his joining the Marines.

"But.. but... but... he's an artist!!" I protest. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled and proud that he wants to serve, and think he will do well. Despite being an individual, I believe he will excel at "playing the game" when it comes to conforming and doing what is expected and demanded of him. I just spend every day seeing a man who gets cranky when he doesn't get to draw in his sketchbook, who is so often lost in epic tales unspooling in his mind, who doesn't look like he has a violent bone in his body.

I know there are other men in the service like him, and I know we'll do fine making friends with people who aren't like us. I just feel that the path we're on is not the one usually traveled by Marines and their families.



The Limbo
April 2006, I was accepted to an art college on the east coast.
May 2006, we were pushed out of the house we were subletting when the real owner returned. Have to move with my parents until...
October 2006, we have our wedding celebration and
November 2006, move to the east coast.
For the next year, DH is run in circles by the admissions department, I delay entry to wait for his acceptance to the art college. He does freelance art, I work retail.
August 2007, DH starts looking for a full-time studio art job, we give up on the east coast art school.
November 2007, our lease is up and we have no reason to remain where there are no art jobs. Come back to stay with my parents so DH can finish a big, important project.
January 2008, DH completes big project, starts looking for a studio job. I start a webcomic.
March 2008, nobody is hiring, DH mentions USMC Reserve duty, I say "Why not active?" and it's all downhill from there.

DH insists on having a particular job field (Visual Information) on his contract (recruiter's worst nightmare) meant that his projected date for entering boot camp was August, then October, then December.

Only a week or so ago did his recruiter finalize things. Then say something very crude about how DH better do a good job in boot camp because it was very very difficult to get that MOS.

So for the past 13 months DH and I have been depending on the boundless hospitality of my parents. In some ways I've been in limbo for over two years, since being accepted to that art school back east. I still have 6 or 7 months to go before the Marines tell us where we're going to live, but at last I see a light in this long, long tunnel.

I think I can stand it.

T Minus 15 Days

I often refer to our current living situation as my "stucco tower". Frugality, the busyness of wrapping things up, and a lack of local friends all contribute to DH and I seldom leaving the house. Personal weirdness means I don't leave our room much, either. (But I will leave the convoluted and not-quite-noble tale of our situation for another day.)

These hermit tendencies are exacerbated by an irregular sleep schedule: my days are often 26 or 28 hours long, putting me at odds with the outside world. That's not so bad. The real trouble comes when my odd patterns put me at odd with DH's schedule.

He's not a 9-to-5 person either (often staying up till dawn and sleeping past noon), but there pressure to get his freelance illustration work wrapped up as soon as possible. That pressure, plus the fact that his working space is the same as his living/playing space all conspire to be stressful. I let him manage his own time, though.

These factors, and a few others that I can't distill into words, conspire to keep us from spending a lot of quality time together. Sure, there's five minutes here and there when we snuggle and exchange recaps of the past few hours, so I'm not completely deprived, and if I asked he'd probably put things aside to hang out. There is merely a dearth of spontaneous walks and meals without the accompaniment of TV or computers. It seems odd to bring this up so soon after we spent Christmas Eve and Day out of the house and with each other, but now I'm watching a countdown: 15 together, 84 apart, 10 together, 100 (or more) apart.

But how does one measure the stores of warm-fuzzies that I'm trying to save up for those separations? How does one plan natural, memory-making quality time? Any time I collect "romantic" elements and construct an hour or two for us to spend alone, it can feel awkward and scripted, as though there are hidden expectations that I need the experience to live up to. Turning on a camcorder and saying "be memorable" is just as ridiculous as telling someone to "act natural".

In my mind it's a proven fact that things that happen organically make for better memories than things that are set up with memory-making in mind. For example, when thinking about our wedding, a walk we took a week or so before the ceremony to talk about our pending nuptials stands out better than the event itself. Similarly, when we made plans to take pictures (film and digital) on my father-in-law's land, we had a good time, but I was still overly conscious of the reason the moment was set up, instead of letting myself be in the moment.

All of it it so messed up and convoluted. Making plans, not making plans, making not-plans... and wondering if we'll find time to get out from under this cloud of obligations in the next fifteen days.

I do have this good news: I purchased plane tickets today. It's not a sure thing until I'm on that plane, but I now have both a place to go while DH is in boot camp, and a way to get there.

T Minus 16 days

It hurts to write that number.

My husband is leaving for USMC boot camp in 16 days.

This is the first time I've put it in those terms.

We have known (and told people) the date he leaves for more than a week, but I hadn't looked at a calendar and done the math until right now. Making a count down like this is helpful for knowing how little time I have for the things to do before he goes, but it also turns up the pressure, reminding me how much quality time I need to cram in the coming weeks.

Here's a partial list of preparations to be made (and a glimpse at what the near future of this blog):

Buy plane ticket
Take more pictures
Organize Our Stuff (tm)
Prepare files for storage
Pack life into luggage
Record Husband Sounds (tm)