in tempore belli

Sitting down with my laptop after spending the greater part of two hours working through a laundry SNAFU brought about by an overloaded washer and a dryer lint trap that had gone without emptying for several cycles. I *think* it’s squared away now - which gives me a few minutes to finally write this entry.

It’s May, ye gods - how is it May already?

~*~ To everyone who wished me happy birthday and good luck with the job interview, a million million thanks. I’ve not heard anything from the company I interviewed with, but I did indeed have a happy birthday. And as it turns out, I’ll be sharing it from here forward with a wee lad named E. - G.I.J’s sister’s son.

~*~ I did some guest blogging at Chocolate Bytes while Heather was away. She’s currently running a giveaway promotion, and taking entries through today - head on over and check it out!

~*~ G.I.J and I celebrated his return to civilian quarters this weekend by having a bit of a low-key weekend. We headed out to the movies yesterday and saw Iron Man - I found it entertaining, and I’m glad that we went, but the scenes when the action was taking place in Afghanistan? I relived that sleepless week in September 2006 when G.I.J was out of contact.

Heading home afterwards, he turned to me and said, “Well, I can tell you that I’ve been at Bagram, and that’s what it looked like!” My stomach twisted. And he’s been home for almost a year.

~*~ The complete failure to find employment has led to a profound depression. It took me three days to get up the energy to go to the MOVIES. I’d speak to my doctor about it, but the woman can’t even manage to remember to write me a prescription for the sinus infection she diagnosed me with on Friday. I am sad, and frustrated, and overwhelmed.

That last paragraph .. describes the first four months of the year pretty succinctly, actually.

~*~ Lest I end this entry on such an energy-draining sour note, I want to share with you my favorite line from Iron Man, one that resonates with me on many levels:

Hogan, drive. Cheeseburger first.

G.I.Journalist, the pussens, and I live close enough to post that we can hear all the bugle calls when they’re played. Just now, I heard the first few notes of Taps sound, and something compelled me to go out onto the balcony to hear the call better.

It wasn’t the weather; the air was chill, and the sky still overcast from today’s monsoon rainstorm .. but even though I could see my neighbors’ lights on in their various windows across the way, it was just me, the peepers, and the dear notes of that old, old call.

Goodnight, world. See you in the morning.

Yummies.
Originally uploaded by adrithinexile

I went to the market for something for lunch, and came away with this piece of cake and a pint of my favorite soy ice cream. There was no candles and no singing, but they tasted just fine anyway.

In other news, in amongst the presents and good wishes, I got a nephew for my birthday! My sister-in-law and her husband are now parents.

But now that the ice cream is melted and the cake half-eaten, I should really go back to real life and clean up the birthday explosion.

Na na na na na na, I say it’s my birthday!

(Wishing also a Happy St. George’s Day to my English friends!)

A numbered list. I assure you, it’s more organized than my brain is at present.

1. I survived my in-laws’ visit. The house looked pretty good, and five minutes after they were here I was asking myself why I’d been so freaked about it being presentable. We spent Saturday touring in Annapolis, Saturday night playing on the Wii, and Sunday touring the monuments in DC. We introduced them to Five Guys and Fuji, and a good time was generally had by all.

(On an aside, let me say now how very odd it was to see my MIL and her husband so thoroughly entranced by the Wii. For the rest of the weekend, it was all “OH HEY THERE’S A BEST BUY” and “Do you think they’d have Wiis in stock at the PX?” We convinced them that it would be easiest for them to buy one in New Hampshire; at the very least, they wouldn’t have to bring it home on the plane.)

2. Now that G.I.Journalist is done with BNCOC, he’s begun teaching. He’s teaching two classes and got staff duty this week, and he’s got Combatives II and a promotion board coming up in the next three weeks. And he told me he could expect to be in Combatives III this summer.

If I do end up finding a job, we’re going to be like ships passing in the night. Seriously.

3. And hot on the heels of #2, I have an interview on Thursday with a staffing company who deals exclusively with libraries, archiving, and information. I don’t know if they have a position in mind for me, but a face-to-face interview can only help my cause.

4. I have a date with J. to do some scrapping tomorrow. I’m trying to get the projects I want to work on organized so that I don’t have to bring my entire scrapbooking collection with me. Wack is hopping up on my desk and sitting down on G.I.J’s photos from his instructor course as though she has every right to be doing so. Argh.

I forgot to take my Claritin this morning, and my sinuses are suddenly very congested. I’m finding it hard to keep my thoughts together, much less my organizational plan in my head.

5. My husband bought me my registration for the Army Ten-Miler today for my birthday - a week from today. I need to get training, in a bad way. All the walking we did this weekend will only help me in the long run. (Not that I intended that pun.)

6. Fantastico finally picked up the WordPress 2.5 update, so I need to get around to doing those updates. Edited to add, 1:57 am: Installations updated. So far, good.

7. (I knew I’d forget something!) The Claritin experiment of a couple weeks ago seemed to have worked. It took almost a week, but the sinus congestion found another home to inhabit, and now I’m taking my Claritin - and Lactaid - daily. Stupid d’n lactose in pills..

And now I’m really going to bed.

My MIL and her husband are flying down to our neck of the woods from New Hampshire tomorrow afternoon. On the agenda for the weekend is checking out the “new” apartment - we’ve been here six months Monday, so it’s hardly new to us anymore - and going into DC for the usual touristy thing.

This means that today has become a day of cleaning. I started the morning with a cup of coffee with J., and then came home to set in. It’s been just about two hours since I walked in the door, and so far I’ve got laundry in the wash (double-drying the overstuffed load that I discovered in the washer, yay) and a load of dishes in the dishwasher. I’ve dusted in the living room, watered the poor plants (I think I killed them), and backed up my photographic data so that I could wipe my card. Because I just don’t go into DC without my camera.

The weather is gorgeous today. I had the door to the balcony open for over an hour, only closing it once both cats had had enough bird-watching. The bedroom windows are still open. Thank the Divine for spring!

~*~

Edited to add, later:

It’s just after seven in the evening, and I’m starting to lose steam. At this point, there are a handful of things I feel I absolutely must get done before my mother-in-law knocks on my door at eleven tomorrow morning.

* The coffee table needs to be cleaned off. This won’t require too much work: only sorting through the papers on it, shredding the shreddables, tossing the tossables, and filing the rest. And there aren’t that many papers left on it.

* The counter that surrounds the kitchen sink area needs to be cleaned off. It’s a bunch of assorted random crap; you know, the kind of stuff that gets dropped the moment you walk into the house and never touched again until your mother-in-law threatens to walk in the door. There isn’t much on it, considering it’s a small surface to begin with.

* The china bureau, also by the door, also has a small collection of assorted random crap of the kind mentioned above.

* The dining room table has a small pile of G.I.Journalist stuff on it. Dunno where it went, but it’s not there now.

* The downstairs bathroom surfaces needs to be made neat. The toilet cleaned, the surfaces gone over with Lysol wipes, etc. If I had more energy, I’d clean the shower, but it’s been cleaned recently, and the in-laws are not staying with us, just visiting.

* The laundry needs finished. The bed could stand to have fresh linens, and the other ones washed and put away.

We won’t discuss the state of the guest room. It’s not a job I have the energy to tackle tonight. If I have some leftover somewhere, I’ll see if I can’t make it look neater than it is. But to make it look presentable tonight would take a miracle. Or a maid. The rest of the house is just more important.

G.I.J, bless his heart, came home and immediately set in, washing the remaining dishes in the sink and cleaning the litter tray. But he’s about to drop from exhaustion, I can see it in his face - it’s time for me to pick up the standard and trudge through the battlefield.

I hope my foes roll the dice poorly. At present, I’d probably fall over on a 3+.

After War, Love Can Be A Battlefield. From the NYT, with thanks to Loving a Soldier for the link.

“After the first day of the retreat, a group of wives gathered in the hotel hallway, sitting on the carpet, pouring red wine into plastic glasses, and children wandered back and forth smelling of chlorine. They discussed other echoes of war that stress their marriages: civilian friends and family who cannot understand their husbands’ choice to re-enlist and shower them with unwanted pity; husbands who leave when children are born and show up a year later only to disappear again; and watching other military couples divorce at what seems like an astonishing clip.”

I may not be the wife of an officer, but many of the experiences told in this story are my experiences.

Today’s unpleasant “There’s lactose in that?!” discovery:

Claritin.

Second inactive ingredient, listed for all the world to see: lactose monohydrate. I stood there in the pharmacy, staring down at the box in my hands in complete and utter disbelief.

And then I threw my hands in the air and took the box up to the register. Because, you see, as I was surfing the milspouse blogs this morning, I came across another blogger who had recently been posted to the DC area with her husband.. and she was mentioning that her allergies were acting up. I thought, “Hm - perhaps if this is allergy related, I can head this off at the pass with a little Claritin. They sell that over the counter now..”

Oy.

At least I got the super-sized box of Lactaid the last time I picked some up. It seems a little ridiculous to have to take a pill just so that I can take a pill without getting sick .. but if it’s a matter of feeling like a hypochondriac, or not being able to breathe for the next month entire, pass me the damn Lactaid.

I’m crossing my fingers in the hopes that this really is just allergies gone haywire.

My plans for the past week have been mostly scuttled thanks to being sick. AGAIN.

I made plans for today, involving picking up G.I.Journalist’s BNCOC graduation gift from the post office - where it’s been waiting to be picked up since Saturday - which have since fallen through. Now not only am I sick, I’m a bit stressed (will the post office send it back if I can’t pick it up today?), and frustrated by the circumstances.

I will be overjoyed when Friday comes, BNCOC is done, and we can have some semblance of order back in our lives.

Thank you, Easter bunny! *bawk bawk*
Originally uploaded by adrithinexile

Happy Easter to those celebrating today.