hmm, i’ve been rather absent.

from this blog, atleast.  

perhaps because i have been feeling that i am too “alive” on the internet.  i am beginning to wonder just how much information i want about myself floating around this traceable world.  i know, a little late for that, bekah.

primarily, i’ve been thinking this about my “real life,” specifically job hunting.  why am i so honest with everybody?  this is probably why i have not been able to get a job. . . .once i open my big, fat mouth and explain how it is that i came to tacoma and [what it is my husband does for a living], my chances of getting that job are probably now ZERO (zero percent?  zero in 1,000?? whatever.).  

how about being vague for once in my life?  ”i moved here for personal reasons.”  ”i’ve always wanted to live in the northwest.”  something stupid like that.  and how about not even mentioning that i am even married?  hmmm….applying as a “MS.” instead of a “MRS.” may make a world of difference.  [and i now fully understand why there is such a thing as a "ms," and not just "miss" or "mrs"] 

 

we’ll see.  maybe i’m just getting too flustered at the fact that i have unknowingly put myself in a restrictive box (“are you a teacher or a nurse?”).   what if i am not cut out for those things?  it’s true, i’m certainly not “cut out” for either of those things.  listening to me tell a story or instruct someone on how to do something is like listening that peanuts character (what’s his name?).  mwamwama.  i faint at the sight of blood, so that instantly disqualifies me for a profession like nursing.   GRR.  

/end of rant.

on to happier/different things…

we are doing well.  ben came home early from this last trip (yay!), so we are finally making it out to see TROPIC THUNDER.  if we’re lucky, we’ll get to see the new cohen brother’s movie this weekend as well.

yesterday i came home to a dog who was unable to use her back legs.  she just collapsed on the floor several times and at one point i had to carry her up the stairs (one stair at a time…she is freaking 65 lbs).  finally get her to the ER and the vet tells me that she either has “coon hound disease,” which they get from raccoon saliva (RANDOM?!)…it causes them to be paralyzed from the back legs on forward.  no cure, they just eventually become completely paralyzed.  OR…she had a herniated disc in her spine.  more likely.  this dog likes to jump really high in the air and she plays rough with rowan.  however, to get an MRI to verify that it is a herniated disc, i was asked to fork over $300.  NO, i didn’t do it.  because i learned that the surgery to correct this is a mere $6,000.  no way that is going to happen, so i figured that regardless of the diagnosis, we were just going to buy her some painkillers and go home.

good thing i did, because this morning she was her normal, perky self.  :)  so far, so good.  she seems a little lethargic, but nothing terrible like yesterday.

thanks to everyone who called/texted me yesterday  i miss you guys.

we have closed!

just a quick announcement to let you all know that we have finally closed on the house and are in inflatable-mattress-mode.    movers *should* be coming on tuesday and then we drive to california on wednesday or thursday.  woo hoo!

 

 

i wish i had good news.

but i don’t.

the house has been a total fiasco.  we are at the end of our rope trying to buy a house.  our closing date for this new house was june 12th (tomorrow).  we have been getting conflicting information from our bank on the results of the inspection and what the requirements are before closing.

today we are being told that the entire exterior and interior will have to be painted before we can close on the house.  what’s difficult about this is that we will have to get an extension on our loan application (which costs money) and we will have to get the seller to agree to pay for the painting on the exterior.  what’s even more difficult about this is that we are playing a game with the bank trying to get clarification on their requirements.  IF the seller agrees to pay for the exterior painting, we just have to cross our fingers and hope that it does not rain for the next sixty days.  chances are that the rain will prohibit us getting any painting done.

i will not be happy about this deal until (1) we are in the house and it has closed, and (2) a certain someone at our bank loses their job.   i’m not even kidding . . . that is how frustrated/angry i am.

on the street.

as i was driving home to tacoma from gig harbor last week, i saw a man on the side of the road propping a gnome up on the top of his car and taking a photo with the tacoma narrows bridge in the background.  made me laugh.

also, apparently  word on the street is that the tribulation will begin in october of this year.  i heard a very lengthy conversation about this downtown tacoma the other day.  haha…what a great conversation to eavesdrop on. 

keep [tacoma] weird?

weird tacoma #1 in a series. coffee kiosks.

There are numerous coffee kiosks all around Tacoma. This is understandable, right? Cold, rainy weather always makes me crave coffee. The thing about the kiosks around here is that they are like mini-Hooters. Since I had never stopped at a coffee kiosk in Washington, I never gave much of a second thought to names like, “Cowgirl Coffee,” or “Bikini Bottom Coffee.” But if you know to catch a glance at these places you will find that all of the employees are young girls wearing bikinis or some other various type of skanky clothing. I might not think too much about that if we lived in a tropical area, or even just some place where it is WARM. But in the Pacific Northwest? It’s 40 degrees out, people!

weird tacoma #2 in a series. swimming pools.

Same deal. Why on earth would you ever have an outdoor pool here? I can’t imagine it EVER getting warm enough to actually want to swim. All they have on base is an outdoor swimming pool. It opened last week and I am pretty sure that nobody has ever gone to it since the water probably only reaches like 55 degrees on a sunny day.

weird tacoma #3 in a series. hitch-hiking signs.

The “No Hitch-hiking” signs here are hilarious. I don’t know that they are necessarily weird, but they kind of make me laugh. Instead of some kind of text saying “Do Not Pick Up Hitch-hikers” or “No Hitch-Hiking,” they have a thumbs-up sign with a red “no” symbol surrounding it. It just looks like “No Thumbs-Up.”

In other news, this past week I have sucessfully dropped a kettlebell onto my toe, fallen down the stairs and given myself my first skinned knee as an “adult.” <—shh. I was doing girl push-ups. I also attended a very un-sucessful networking event (it was basically like paying $8 for a cup of coffee). Nobody I spoke with worked for a company that was hiring (and I only spoke with two people before people were rushing out the door).

The staffing agency I went to hooked me up with a job in Gig Harbor. It’s a temporary/project type of job, but I am pretty excited about it. Gig Harbor is really quaint and quite peaceful. The office I am working in is literally on the dock where people are loading and unloading fishing nets. There is an awesome bakery/deli just a few blocks away where they make their own bread and pastries daily (50% off yesterday’s goodies).

Ben had his first flight this week and yes, you guessed it, he threw up. They were doing crazy low-level stuff through the mountains in Eastern Washington. Some of the pictures he took made me a little uneasy. . . out the front window of the cockpit looking straight onto the ground. That can’t be safe ?

Well, I started to mop the floor and that is what I am going to go finish doing. I am so easily bored.

i really need some coffee if i am going to make it through the day.

monday was sunny and beautiful, but it is wednesday and we are back to the cold, cloudy weather. it blows my mind how quickly it jumps from 69F down to the 50’s again. i’m wondering if we will ever see this “nice summer weather.”

life has been really full out here in washington. there is always something to do, hence my lack in blogging. in fact, i should be baking a cake right now for OCF, but in order to do that, i have to hunt down my recipe book out of storage (somewhere). we are starting to get really frustrated about not having our house yet. living life out of a suitcase (literally) has not been fun. in fact, we have been alternating sleeping on the floor. owning a home seems so far away when in fact we should have already moved in.

it’s not just the convience of having our furniture back that lures us up to our little tacoma house, but the location. we so look forward to being closer to downtown and enjoying the city. most everything we do “for fun” we drive up to north tacoma to do. hopefully (if i ever get a job) i will be working up in that area as well.

here’s a little update of pictures…

i went on a seattle art deco architecture tour a few weeks ago [most of these pictures are not art deco, just things i found interesting while "strolling along"].

I discovered Point Defiance Park while doing a photoshoot for a friend’s sweet baby boy. Suddenly I’m like that old obnoxious tourist with a camera.

a few notes on tacoma.

Well, first off, the reason I am sitting at home and typing away at a computer instead of enjoying the beautiful outdoors is because it is too stinkin’ cold to be Spring right now.  We had snow on Saturday morning!

A couple of raw observations about Tacoma:

1.  People fight A LOT.  I don’t know if it is just because I have been living in a tiny Texas border town for so long, but I really do not remember encountering so many fights in a public place elsewhere.  We have barely been here a month and I have run into–literally–five couples fighting in public.  I’m talking screaming, leaving your wife/girlfriend and baby on the side of the road, catfights, leaving your wife/girlfriend and baby at a bookstore. . . it’s insane.

2.  I understand the obsession with coffee.

3.  On a typical week, there are ususally one to two accidents in the general area of the commissary or BX.   I have nearly been hit twice.  It is one of the biggest commissaries in this part of the country, so it draws a lot of, um…non-active duty members from the area.  It’s seriously dangerous.  See:  South Park episode involving the Country Inn Buffet.  You know what I’m talking about.

4.  They can’t seem to go 45 days without atleast one DUI incident at McChord.  People are stupid.  I have nothing more to say about that.

A few pictures!

If you need a good laugh today, head on over to this blog post.

we made it!

…and this is how we got here.

september 28, 2007:  move out of our del rio house.   visit bill in corpus christi.

a few days later:  move in with patrick and todd at club cora.

october 5, 2007:  arrive in altus, oklahoma.  stay one night at hotel, two weeks in a dorm room on base.

october 16, 2007:  move into apartment at “apple crack” in altus, ok.

janurary 28thish, 2007:  change assignment from dover, de to tacoma, wa.

feburary 6, 2008:  move back to del rio, texas, into ashley’s apartment.

march 12, 2008:  leave del rio, visit  family in colorado.

march 18, 2008:  bekah’s car breaks down at “dead man’s pass” on a mountain in oregon (at the top of a hill, in the blowing snow.  of course.)  we spend one extra night in pendleton, oregon.

march 21, 2008: arrive in TACOMA WASHINGTON–HOME FOR THREE YEARS!!!!

As you can see, I have been living out of suitcases for a very long time.  We are VERY ready to have a home and get settled.

We have made an offer on a house in North Tacoma, which is a very nice area with parks within walking distance and only a few minutes from downtown.  The house was built in 1925 and is a definite fixer…but we are up to the challenge.  If you look at it as an investment, it certainly helps with motivation

Now we are just crossing our fingers and hoping that everything comes through for us.  You never know.

We stayed at the LaQuinta Inn by the Tacoma Dome for about ten days when we arrived, but now we have moved in with a friend from Laughlin until our closing date.

We already are thinking that we are not going to want to leave…it is so beautiful up here and there is so much to do!!

i miss a good, simple day.

That’s all I have to say today.

p.s. texas, you dissapoint me.

Aside from the beautiful sunshine, I try to like Texas in other ways.  I really do.  But she has really dissapointed me this week by voting for Clinton. 

I even made an effort to register to vote and went out to vote Obama.  I was the only person at the polls (the ballots were paper!!) around 10am. 

I’m honestly not a big fan of any of these candidates, but there’s no point in voting republican right now, and I would do anything to keep Clinton out of office.  Obama is a far better choice, IMO.  I will probably vote McCain in the general election if only for personal reasons (like, I don’t want another Clinton in office shutting down my good base options and cutting funds to the military). 

I’m so jaded by politicians I really don’t feel like voting anymore.  I still do, I just don’t feel like it.