I keep writing.
I keep deleting--
Avoiding having to see my own disappointment in words I expect.
ha.
That's probably it right there.

::exhaling::

Still waiting on a contract to go through.
I'm giving up cognitively--albeit more slowly on the emotional side in regards to the job in Iaq. Politics here have made the Iraqis there bold and so they are refusing to honor contracts when USG assets will be theirs soon anyway. I'm processed with passport in hand, but I don't think it's a go. At least in saying this, I get a finality.

Hell yes, I'm disappointed.
Those who thought it was a crazy idea, but were diplomatic in saying how could you leave your family to go to work? Thank you for your candor and point of view. It was welcome.

Those who dismissed, ridiculed and judged (mostly IRL).
Go fuck a farm animal.
Sorry Phil, I know you think there are lots of others words in the English language which convey thought more optimally than the word 'fuck'.
I agree.
Though the word 'fuck' in terms of its versatility and ability to relay extreme pique remains unsurpassed in my mind.

Indeed, it is my hope They-who-know-who-they-are do the farm animal simply on my exhortation above, but go copulate with a horse just doesn't flow. There's no ring to it, no alliteration, no nothing. :::thoughtful look as I review the missive:::
c-o-p-u-l-a-t-e
Nope.
It doesn't work.
:::brightening:::
"Fuck" it is!

Yeah, I'm cranky.
Yeah, I kept putting off a post because of it.
Yeah, I posted other crap just to avoid it--though you have to admit the Lent/masturbation combo did have it's charm.
Yeah, I am still doing the stay at home mom thing, baking the damn cookies, doing the shopping, and lurking all over the blogosphere. Yes, I know fellow SAHMers, you prolly do way more than I just listed. I'm focused on underachievement at this point though. Don't want to get too good at it. It could change the hubs perspective on which of us is more suited to domestic tasks and then I'd really screw myself.

It's a slow simmer all that.

Pop is working his stateside contacts and gearing up for Plan B and I'm going to go find work tending bar or waitressing or something until we head out into the wide world of land agents. I figure just about the time I find the barjob to maintain sanity, Pop will call and say it's time to hit the road.

Meh.

This is what it is.
A rant.

I'll get over myself.

I never write the title to my post before I write the post.
Mostly, because, aside from a general topic
or the occasional rant necessary for the avoidance of a felony arrest of some kind,
I never really know where I am going to go with a post.

The last few days since returning from time away have been difficult.
I knew as I sat on the deck and watched endless horizon,
I wouldn't be able to write about what I was seeing or feeling.
I would just have to be.

Which I suppose is the same intent I am trying to capture
as I experience uncertainty where my life is concerned at the moment .
Like the Gulf water it seems to be spread out in every direction.
Deep and unexplored.
Like the water, I can only presume to know
the surface and its depths
and yet, dare not assume I am right about what is there.
Not yet, anyway.

Which is the question I suppose.
Taji is still hanging out in front of me present,
but just beyond the tips of my fingers.
I have the Taji orientation trip slated for San Antonio,
but confirmation has not come, yet.
My itinerary is here,
but no recent word from powers that be.
My job here ends on Tuesday.
The nature of teaching and the rhythm of the school year
made my resignation necessary
for the transition I want for my students here.
Yes.
I quit my job without another one locked down.

My mother in law is unhappy with me...
well mostly, I suspect she is since my behavior in regards to her position is one of apathy.
Somewhere along the lines this last year,
assimilation and acceptance into my husband's family has become a non issue for me.
I don't care anymore.
Given my nature, I don't care now as deeply as I did care then.
Going on the cruise without her son, who did not want to go,
taking a job far away whether it be in the States or in Iraq,
all of these things do not please her
and it's compounded by my knowing this
and yet, doing nothing about it, when every other time, I have.

I had a great vacation.
People should take the time to get away from the noise and just be.
Look at something beautiful.
Read a book.
Walk a beach.
Immerse yourself in another culture.
Even drinking and playing a game,
where at some point you have to give some stranger your bra,
are all things I highly recommend.

A lot of life gets wasted on all the living you are or feel compelled to do.
To each their own compulsion of course.
Though I do think it should be spent on the living you chose to do.
'Course one is scarier than the other.
Which one is scarier varies from person to person as much as one's compulsions.
----

I need to go and answer comments. I love to hear back from people and shouldn't have taken so long. xox

I know I am rather random about what's been going on and piecemeal my everyday goings on so I thought I would try to organize my thoughts a little and answer some questions I have had both on this blog and privately asked.

I'm married to Tony.
We have been married for sixteen years, seventeen in June.
We have four children 12, 10, 7 (8 in Feb) and four. My birthday baby is our only girl.

My background is in teaching and curriculum development. I did that until I was pregnant with my second child and then began a large event production company in Houston for about four years. After some burnout, I returned to teaching, became pregnant with my last child and returned home to raise my kiddos and homeschool.

For the next four years I ran a homeschool group, started a coupon group and supported jarheads in a nonprofit effort that my homeschool friends did much to support as well. Due to money concerns and I'm sure my own need to redefine somethings, (I suspect catalyzed by a car accident and a cancer scare), I returned to teaching and continued with milsupport last Fall.

A few months ago talks began with a military contact concerning my potential job in Iraq.
It entails training Iraqi Army officers at the Taji Training Depot, 3.5 billion dollar facility which the vocational institute is a part. It's Jordanian owned and they have hired ex-pats to run it. Most, including, my boss are former jarheads. My tasks involve evaluating instructors, essentially teaching them to teach, writing curriculum or overseeing others who will be writing it and various administrative duties related with the day to day operation of the institute. We teach everything from painting, to upholstery to how to recondition weapons. My quarters are near my office and my trailer is wet. Meaning I won't have to share a shower facility.

We live on the non-coalition side of Camp Taji which is about 45 miles from Baghdad in the Sunni Triangle. Security is managed by Nepalese Gurkha guard, an elite regiment of the British armed forces. On the compound and gates we have about 70 of these fighters--not as "tough as a Marine, but close" according to my own jarhead here at home.

I was having some passport trouble, but I think it's worked out now. I hope. I'm holding my breath and refusing to celebrate or exhale until I hear at ten am tomorrow when I can pick up my passport. Lisa, my friend going on the cruise with me, swears she's calling at 2:16 to make sure I am enroute after school dismissal (2:15) to get it. She said so after she came over tonight to help me pack. I'm glad. She made short order of it and my brain is grateful. I was fried.

The cruise is to Cozumel and Presidio and no, I have never been on this kind of a vacation. Usually they involve parents or reunions or a family function of some sort. The last real vacation I was on was my honeymoon in 1992 with Tony. So I am excited to go and wish my husband was more interested in the opportunity, but he's not crazy about traveling and I didn't want to MAKE him go so there you have it.

Now on Saturday my principal and I are going to interview a potential teacher right before we go to Galveston to board the ship. He really has been very good about the whole matter. I've been taking too many phone calls, and I left early yesterday to go to the State Department. I'm fairly certain we will be hiring this new man, if he's willing to accept the salary and if that is the case this week may be my last.

If Taji falls through for some reason and there is a small chance of that due to the lengthy hiring process, I will go to work with my father. He works as a land agent. I'm not as well versed in that field, but I'm a quick study and hope to catch on quickly. It is a lucrative situation as well and I would be in Denver or Pennsylvania most likely. Between you, me and the fence post, I think he is purposely beginning a new contract in order to entice me to stay in the States. Daddy's little girl and all that.

So I think I have covered everything. *soft smile.

I am looking forward to working hard and testing myself either in Iraq or here.
I'm looking forward to making a good living
and putting money away for our future as well
as using it to enhance our present.
This morning it took me a four point turn to make a parking slip.
I think the car got wind of the potential prosperity on the horizon
and got into line behind the sink.
I'll expect it has a big ass mouth
and this line will be even more populated in the next few weeks if the Universe is what it is.

In a couple weeks,
I will be meeting the director of the school in San Antonio
to continue the process
and awaiting a contract sometime after I return from vacation.

Thank you to everyone that reads this blog.
I never really post like this,
it seems like it would be boring,
but in any case I hope it clarifies things a bit.
I am touched by all the well wishes on blog and off.

Tomorrow I have some blogs to pimp
and hopefully some good passport news to post!
If I missed a question from comments in doing this post please let me know--
well in comments...lol and I'll do my best to answer.

I'm really surprised at how interested people have been.
Surprised and touched.
xox

It's so damn quiet here.

The night's temperament such a stark contrast to that of Thanksgiving day.

I have a million things flying around in my head.
Work
home
milsupport

The school break is 2/3's of the way over.

My boss in Taji gave me a call today confirming airline tickets and whether I prefer window or aisle.

I didn't have time to absorb it while I was in the midst of everything else today.

Now those last two words ring in my ears.

Window or aisle.

I know I have mentioned in the past that at one time I was a special events florist. I owned a company in Houston. I called the post Working and Breathing or some such thing and it was an appropriate title.

I'm one of those people who has to be working.
HARD.
I get bored when things get too routine or offer no challenge.

Floral work was great because a bride was rarely unchallenging, nor was her venue, her other contractors or the inevitable planner whether hired or self proclaimed--every single family has at least one obnoxious aunt or second cousin...it's a rule.

Still I loved the ebb and flow of the week.

By Wednesday floral would come in to be processed and fussed over.
By Thursday I was assigning tasks and making sure my arrangers were copying my designs well.
By Friday things were tagged and lists were checked-
what truck was going where with who,etc.

Running all along side that was the handholding, the phone calls, the snags with the wholesalers, the logistics--all of it. Maps, photographer schedules, when linen companies would be throwing the linen, when the usually medicated cake lady would have the cake ready...lots of details. for an end product that was expected to look effortless.

Loved it.
The Devil's in the details and man--
He and I
hung
out.

Now granted I expect that which contributed to the final demise of my business was mostly being no longer able to do more than think:

Come on people
This is floral work.
You aren't even going to really see it, you'll be so hung up on the blur of the day and in 6 months you'll be pissed you blew it on hydrangea and not a down payment on a house.

Still at the time it served it's purpose.
It provided the hard I needed.


Fast forward 6 years and I get this call from an old client on Tuesday.
How she found me I still don't know, but she did.

She wanted flowers for her other daughter's wedding.

(Sigh.)

Just a couple of pieces she said.

(Sigh.)

No one else would do she said.

(Sigh. )

Hmmmm, I think.

It might be nice to see if I still have the hands and eyes for it.
The money would be handy, too.

Still.
Ugh.
Sigh.

Awww--- what the hell?
I mean really.
Isn't going to be like riding a bike?
What's the worse that can happen?
I'll come up with something mediocre and she'll never call me again.

The lure to be creative drew me in and made my tongue form the letters
OK.

"Okay," I said, "I'll do it."

"You really should get back into the business," she said, "I can't believe you've been at home THIS long."

I know.
I can't believe it either I think.
I've been home with 4 kids for five years and no one has fitted me for an orange jumpsuit or flip flops.
I have have managed to avoid any and all felony convictions navigating Momminess.


"Think about coming back," she presses.

"Nah."
This I said out loud.
"You can't go back."
I said that out loud, too.
It sounded stark hanging in the air as we spoke via cellphone.
But it was also subtly comforting.

I'm finally getting that one.
I think this as I am hanging up and letting what I said out loud resonate.

Not only can't I go back.
I don't want to.

So
today--

I have flowers on my porch waiting for my hands and this wedding tonight--
Something my past brought.

and

I have an email regarding my job in Iraq--
Something my future sent.

I'll be working hard again soon it seems--just around the last week in February.

Note: I had to edit this. I wrote it early this morning and it seems my normal biorhythms will affect my ability to communicate.ha. Thank you to Fairy for being the first one to suck it up and say something along the lines of: "Huh, what are you talking about woman?" I wondered why no one had commented.
--------------------------------
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Not because I was the only one at work--
(incidentally, I like to work late,
in fact I don't even consider myself fully conscious until after 4 pm night person that I am).
or because it was dark
or because I don't generally believe in the paranormal.
well other than being accused of not being normal myself.

Still
Like I said, the hair on my neck was up on end night before last.

Ohmyhell," I thought straining to see and hear.

(Thanks for the new expletive L, I knew it would come in handy when I read it on your blog
just not this soon or for this kind of reason.)

Trying to reason things out did not correlate to other human processes,
in this case the process being thought--
I was trying to identify the noises I was hearing from the other part of the school. I was trying to be rational and not choke on my heart now pounding somewhere up around my tonsils as the sounds came from down and across the hall.

I looked down the hallway transformed from a lack of light.
The normally short, sunny, hallway with pictures of scarecrows and pilgrims plastered on the walls
was now a narrow, incredibly long portal
which I wouldn't run down now if I was on fire
and water was on the other end.


"Hello?"
Is anyone there?" I say trying to sound casual and vague.

Sick pause.

"Why are you asking that you idiot?" I think.
"It's 130 in the morning.
No one that you WANT to know is there, is there,
so why are you trying to strike up a conversation with them?
Finish painting your damn flag for Veteran's Day,
get your purse
and
get
the
fuck
out,
dumbass."

Logic and processing were starting to jibe.

Good plan, I think.

Fast forward to playground the next day.
Two faculty were standing on the steps having a chat.

I bypass pleasantries.
Actually,
I probably totally interrupted the conversation
about just how afflicted one of the kindergartners is
as we all watch him fall off the back end of the swing for the fourth brain stem bruising time to find out more about the night before from my colleagues.

"So umm..when did someone plan on telling the new girl?"

They look at me with eyebrows up.

"Uh huh...don't look at me like that.
When had you brilliant people planned on mentioning the 'night' faculty to me?"

"You,"pointing to the Blond, "went to school here and
"You,"pointing to the Brunette, "were here when she, pointing to the Blondie, was toting her Scooby Doo lunch box. You both have to know something about whatever is wandering around in that school at night."

Their eyes get bigger.

"WTF people?"
By this time I'm laughing and gauging a the 'should we tell her looks' they are exchanging.

"Spill!!!!, I say, then rethink.

"No wait.
I'll tell you what I heard and you just tell me I'm not crazy.
It's a good plan.
K?"

They nod.

"Okay here goes," I say as I tick things off on my fingers.

"Doors slamming,
someone walking with keys in their pocket,
and knobs turning on the doors.
How 'bout that?"

I look from one of them to the other them expectantly in a kind of 'so where is your homework?' kind of way.

They both start in at the same time:

"Well you have been coming late since school started and you never said anything"
"We wondered, but you never--"

I interrupted them for the second time silently comparing the goosebumps on my arms to theirs...

"Yeah yeah...what were you waiting for--the bad Monday night movie to come out???
I mean.
COME
ON
PEOPLE.
Why didn't anyone tell me about the ghost or whatever it is in there?"

"Yep," nods the brunette to the blond, "She definitely heard him."

"Ohmyhell...," I mutter.

"Well," the brunette goes on, "did you hear any growling? He'll growl at you sometimes."

OH.
MY.
HELL!!!!
now they know the new expletive,too.

Let me tell you something dear readers, I will never be hearing any freaking growling,
much less
door slamming,
knob turning
or key rattling again
cause, I am now officially a morning person.