These days, I feel so far removed from military spouse life that I sometimes wonder if I was fooling myself into feeling a part of it in the first place. There is no avoiding the face that I am a military spouse. If the ACUs in the laundry hamper and the various items of other military gear lying around the house aren’t good reminders, then I have serious issues.

No, what has happened is that our life has become quite civilian, living out here in the so-called boonies.  I no longer hear the bugle calls, there are no unruly children running around in my front yard, every second person is not wearing some kind of military uniform and a trip to the supermarket does not mean I will be one civilian swimming amongst a sea of ACUs.

To be honest, I sometimes forget that we are military. It feels as if we have transitioned to civilian life and I suspect that is only because I was civilian for a lot longer than I have been military.

In some ways, I miss it. I felt safe living on-post in Texas and in Kentucky. I knew that no matter what, I was one amongst a community that would be taken care of in the event of something bad happening. It was an illusion, though; at least in Texas. When Maj. Hassan blew into work one morning and emptied his gun into a crowd of soldiers, all I officially knew about it was that we were to stay inside and keep our doors and windows locked and our air conditioning systems off. (Yes, our air conditioning units.)

A few months later, there was a flyer being placed on our front doors warning us to be on the alert for a man in uniform who was not a soldier but a sexual pervert who had assaulted at least two other women on post.

When they caught the guy driving a car full of explosives near the gate where we lived, we heard nothing about it until way after it happened.

Safe? Safety is an illusion in this crazy world. There are so many disillusioned and ignorant people around that I am beginning to feel safer trusting myself to the wild than to the wider community. I would rather be mauled by a bear in my backyard than come that close to a car full of explosives again.

Meh … I fear my misanthropy is showing again; and while that may be true, I have to say I like living out here in the boonies. I like the peaceful quiet of this neighborhood. I don’t know what I would do if I learned I had to leave.

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I am studying communications at the University of Phoenix Online and the course I am currently in is dealing with interpersonal communications. This week, we will be dealing specifically with cultural barriers to interpersonal communication. One of the week’s resources is to watch a series of interviews with people from different cultures talking about their integration into the community the now live in and how it differs from what they call “home” originally. One of those videos is the inspiration for my post today.

I posted this photo on my Google+ profile today. My post said that I’d forgotten what awesome photos I used to take and I said where this photo was taken. Years and what seems like a lifetime ago, I took this photograph on the coast of Jamaica, on the Palisadoes strip, just outside of the Norman Manley International Airport. The photo is from a different time in my life. I was my own woman then and no one else’s. I had already met hubby I think, but the relationship at that point was not yet formalized into anything other than a fascination. Neither of us had any clue we would end up where we are today.

The day I took the photo, I was out with friends on a fishing expedition. If I remember correctly, this was the day I caught my first fish. A tiny little thing that I threw back in almost immediately so that it would be able to breathe and continue to live. I was a hardcase. People called me “bitch”. But I could not catch a fish and let it die.

I worked in the corporate world and I earned enough to be comfortable on my own. Internet was a staple. I had ditched my TV cable service a couple of years before because I rarely watched TV and anything I wanted to watch I could get on disc and watch from my player. Or just watch on my computer.

There was no such thing as worrying about credit ratings. You paid your bills so that you would not have a disruption of service. You tried not to get into too much debt because banks charged exorbitant interest rates on credit cards. Debit cards had recently (within the previous 10 years, that is) become the latest convenience yet quite a few merchants still did not accept your debit card for purchases.

Cell phones plans could be had on a prepaid basis and all cell phones available were sold at a subsidized rate. Phones were “locked” to a network because that network had possibly invested money in importing your phone and wanted to ensure they got your money from calls as well as. “Unlocking” of phones was possible, but only if you wanted to travel abroad and slip a foreign carrier’s SIM card into your phone whilst you were abroad.

The beach was taken for granted. It would always be there, so I didn’t feel the need to visit it that often. Every chance I got, however, I drove north out of the city just for the hell of it. There was nothing I loved more than a road trip to the countryside – especially if it took me into the cool interior of the country.

Coconut water was most certainly not taken for granted. I would order a gallon a week and it would be finished in a matter of days.

Life was good. I wasn’t happy, but I was satisfied.

Fast forward 6 years. I am sitting in my “office” – the middle bedroom of a 3 bedroom house – in Olympia, Washington. It’s freezing outside. We had some snow today – the kind that is really just frozen rain but it looks white. Hubby lit the wood stove twice today but the house is still cold. I am wrapped in a blanket, doing schoolwork at 4am and writing – something I would never have dared to do in Jamaica since Monday morning meant work at 8am. Now, to go to work, I simply have to open a browser window.

We are bound by the military. Well hubby is. I can leave for Jamaica anytime I want; hubby can’t. Even if he could, it just isn’t in the budget. Contrary to popular belief, money does not grow on trees here – much to my consternation.

There is no coconut water. Well, none like I have ever tasted anyway. The ones I have sampled are bland and tasteless and no matter how good it is for my now soaring blood pressure, I refuse to drink them.

There is no beach of the likes we have in Jamaica. No such thing as gentle surf, white sands, coconut water and blue waters. Here, the beaches are grey and rough and freezing cold.

Here you pay your bills or you’ll never get another credit card, loan, or checking account ever again.

Cell phones are subsidized so long as you commit to 2 year agreements to continue service with the carrier … otherwise you pay an exorbitant amount of money to go somewhere else.

I am ecstatically happy but life is much different from it was in Jamaica; more restrictive.

Americans don’t know how to make you feel at home in their country. There are constant reminders that I am not from here and while I could care less about those who choose to hold that against me, it is still something you will never have to encounter as a Jamaican in Jamaica. I tell everyone the reason why I love Washington so much, and in particular the Seattle/Tacoma area, is that I feel less out-of-place here than I have felt in any other place in the United States – and I have been to many places in New York, D.C., Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Maryland. Here, I feel less like a black girl married to a white man and more like Camille than I have since I left my home in Jamaica.

‘Farin’ not so wonderful unless you can find that one thing (or person) who makes you happy. If it weren’t for hubby, I think I’d be on the first plane back home to Jamaica. I hate the heat, but I hate feeling out-of-place more.

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It’s probably a good thing that hubby and I have some experience with basic home plumbing. And while the extent of our experience is simply watching and assisting Dad while he fixed the leaky faucets, it was thankfully enough to help us figure out how to handle our kitchen sink leak over the last 24 hours or so.

…

Grocery shopping for one is largely different from grocery shopping for two. After our trip on Sunday, we ran out of supplies on Thursday. So on Friday afternoon, once I had gotten my errant headache under some semblance of control, we hit the road for lunch and groceries. There’s nothing much to be said about a trip to the grocery store, other than it happened. Especially when the most important part of this story happened upon returning with said groceries.

While I unpacked the bags, I stepped into a puddle of water on the floor in the kitchen. It was odd because I couldn’t figure out where that amount of water might have come from. So I stepped back to the sink and looked … and ‘lo, there was water coming from the cupboard under the sink. I opened it and … well, it would probably be a overly dramatic to say water gushed out as if a dam had broken. Overly dramatic and untrue. But, there was enough water under there to soak through 3 kitchen towels, 3 times over.

I called hubby and we did some troubleshooting. We figured that it was the inlet pipe to the kitchen faucet that was leaking – well, one of them at any rate. There are at least 3 down there (I am guessing it’s 4, 2 for the sink and 2 for the dishwasher). We panicked a little, looking for the main shutoff location. I went outside and walked around the house twice trying to find it. There was a huge iron pipe looking thing in the back that I at first thought was the shutoff, then I realized that an iron pipe probably meant waste and not fresh water.

Meanwhile, hubby was playing with it some and eventually revealed that the water was hot which meant it was the hot water pipe that we were working with. This meant we could turn off the water to the water heater and stop the ever-increasing flow of water. That worked, but it meant we had no hot water and hubby had to work today – so showers were almost impossible to avoid. He came up with a strategy. He’d stand poised to jump into the shower, yell to me to turn the water on. I’d position the empty bucket under the leaky pipe and turn on the hot water to the heater for him. He’d shower while I watched the bucket to ensure it wouldn’t overflow.

As it turns out, none of those dramatics were necessary because as bad as the leak was, the bucket wasn’t even at halfway when he was done. I got a shower while he monitored the bucket and we both brushed our teeth. Then he turned off the tap and we proceeded to de-stress by playing some WoW.

I should note that all this started about 2:30 in the afternoon, at which time I called the property managers. They remarked that they could do nothing before calling the owner. Considering I know how unreliable they are (another story for another blog post), I told hubby we’d better call him and make sure he got the messages.

By 10:30 we had gotten the situation under control and the owner called me back to determine the level of emergency and make plans for getting it sorted out … thankfully. He was here early this morning to sort it out. And I thought it was all done with – I did a little WoW’ing myself. I finally decided to be responsible and get the kitchen cleaned up and put stuff back where they belonged. I rinsed out the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. Then opened the cupboard to put some stuff back and encountered yet another puddle of water.

To cut an already too-long story short, one of the guys had bounced the drainage pipe out of kilter so most of the dish rinsing I was doing before loading the dishwasher was ending up on the bottom of the cupboard. And here is where my little experiences holding the flashlight for Dad while he fixed leaks comes in: I figured out how to fix the drain pipe!!! Yay me.

So now our plumbing worries are really all over with… or they better be unless I am going to run away with my Ironman Druid and never come back.

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I am sick again – for the third time this season.

The first time was a cold, the second time was the flu and again I am battling with a cold. It seems as if no matter what I do I am destined to be always fighting off some bug or other. I comfort myself that it’s just that my body having been dried and burnt out in Texas for 2 years and not being used to this cold and wet climate. That it is just overwhelmed and that sooner than later it’ll be able to withstand the constant barrage of germs. That pep talk isn’t working.

I know that the greatest part of my problem is being sedentary and as much as I would love to run – yes, I think I would love to run – I just can’t do it now. I can barely walk. Yoga was a problem. Just going the 300 or so feet to the mailbox is an issue. Sometimes just carrying a laundry basket up the stairs here at home makes me winded. I am in bad shape.

I have never been very active. High school was the last time I was physically active and without batting an eyelid, I will tell you that high school for me was a good 30 years ago. Yes indeed. I am that old. And lately, I have been feeling it. Lucky for me, I think I finally figured out what is wrong with me and I am going to get it looked after. I sincerely hope that once this treatment kicks in I can actually climb the stairs here at home, at a brisk trot and not feel like I’ve run the marathon when I get to the top rung.

That being said, I refuse to let this cold keep me down for much longer. It’s kept me mostly stationary all weekend. There are so many things I should have been doing this last month. Not the least of which is spending time with my friend and her newborn. I am tired all the time, and I am sick almost every other week and I just don’t feel well. It has got to stop NOW.

School starts next month again, and hubby will be gone for 6 weeks starting the first. I need to get myself sorted out quickly. I can’t be alone and sick for 6 weeks whilst I take on extra work and school. So I’ve vowed to also include a dose of airborne everyday with my one glass of lemonade too. I think in a little while work will require me to be up for far later at nights and awake far earlier in the mornings and I need to prepare myself for that.

(P.S. By the way, I am loving After the deadline. )

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When we heard we were going to be moving here to Washington state, my friend who has lived here for years warned me about S.A.D. I was never sure I would be affected because I have always been a fan of the rain and the darkness it brings.

As it turns out, the rain and the overcast days are actually the least of the problems. The real problem has started to emerge within the last few weeks as fall settles in for the long haul. Now underlined and bold-faced as we switch over to standard time from daylight savings.

The number of daylight hours is restricted even more when it is overcast and rainy. We have lived here for just about 3 months now, and I can tell you that on an average week, we get maybe 2 days of full sunshine – if we are lucky. Now that the days are shorter, it’s dark by 4pm or thereabouts. And I see it getting worse as we near the silly season.

And while I don’t know that I will suffer from S.A.D., I can see how the light (or lack, thereof) is going to play havoc with my internal clock. It already does. I find myself panicking at 4:30 because it looks and feels like much later. And I am finding that I am not a fan of the dark at all. I might like the rain and the overcast and the opportunity to build a fire and wrap up blankets … but I do not like the dark.

Yep – I am still adjusting to life out here. I never dreamed it would be this different, but nevertheless, I am liking it – a lot! I don’t know that I can live anywhere else after this. Dreary, rainy days or not!

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