THAT couple

So yesterday in the middle of Chilie’s, we were that couple. You know. . . the one with the SCREAMING kid. A couple of years ago, I witnessed a close friend break down and cry when her son threw a fit at a restaurant. I now know why she did it. Lea threw a full glass of water on the floor, screamed, and bit my finger so hard it swelled. I had to take her to the entrance and wait out the storm with her there. Every (yes, EVERY!!) head turned to watch us pass. She was in rare form. I didn’t mind too much that people were watching, but the instinct to leave the restaurant was strong. I just wanted to take her home and put her down for a nap. I didn’t want to ruin anyone else’s meal, either.
So the process of cutting her eye teeth is turning out to be a painful one. None of her teeth have made her this irritable. I have tried organic teething tabs, Motrin, everything, but she’s a drooling, crying, miserable mess. I am keeping her home for a bit until those suckers cut through the surface. She’s a menace to the civilized world ;)
The other day I counted up all of her words, and she has almost 20. That’s not what gets me all giddy inside, though. I suspect that she is going to love music. I call her my little tuning fork because if I hold a note, she’ll hum, match the note and make it ring. Once she hits it, she’ll stop and clap for herself. It’s our favorite dinnertime high-chair game, and she’s been doing it for a couple of months now. The other day, she started humming one of the Star Wars songs that Miles and I always whistled to her. Between that and Old Mac Donald (Eei-Yi YI!), she’s always singing. Sometimes I’ll turn down the radio volume in my car to catch her trying to sing along to the songs. For Christmas we bought her a little Bee Bop Band set and the three of us have massive jam sessions. She loved to watch her Grandpa Boo play guitar in Vermont, too. Okay, so I know that bragging gets old fast, so I’ll stop. My kid rocks! Okay, now I’m really done.
Kids can be sooo hard, but they are totally worth it

Gripes. . . Cripes!

In the middle of a move, it is easy to lose your bearings and look at the situation as a whole unit and it quickly becomes a disorganized and overwhelming mess. At this point, I lose it. I have so much trouble with quick and drastic change. I feel like a sticker and I put up a lot of resistance when I am peeled off of a place. It doesn’t make sense because I have moved like 10 times in the past five or so years. I have been told that I make the process as painful as possible for everyone involved. “Ooops. Do I?”
This is something about me that I am trying to change. I am doing mental yoga. I am becoming more flexible. I am pulling some ligaments along the way, but the effort is there.
Anyways, as the phases of this move pass along, I am becoming more comfortable with them. We are keeping Fred. He was literally impossible to find a home for and it was either keep him or take him back to the Ft Riley vet office where he will be euthanized. There was no way I was going to do that. I love the “tat”. We are going to have to teach him some manners, and I am hoping that it is possible. He gets awfully destructive when kept inside. I have found a couple of solutions, though. I just bought a ridiculously expensive litter box that looks like a bench and has a compartment that gets the litter off of their shitty little paws before they can track it in the house. This was a huge issue we took with Fred that will hopefully now be moot. Kids and dogs cannot access the litter either. Yet another awesome point. It looks nice, to boot.
As we are keeping Fred and we are only allowed 2 animals, I had to find a home for Max. He is the newest addition to the household, and he was totally unplanned sine we found him on the side of the highway. It took all of one brief phone call to place him with someone who I know will take awesome care of him. Best of all, he works for Michelle and she said he can take Max to the office. I know Max will be in good hands. It wouldn’t have been entirely fair of me to keep a 50 lb Greyhound puppy in a 900 sq ft apartment with only one lengthy walk a day, anyways. That and it will be easier to travel around Europe with just Roscoe to worry about. He’s tiny and we can drag his grumpy little ass everywhere we go.
Yesterday, Piscern housing did their walk-through. Aside from having to replace some blinds that Roscoe chewed in the midst of his separation anxiety rages, we are good to go. I was very fearful of this part, but it was all for naught. It’s over, and that’s one phase down. Hooray for the good guys. Now all I am really stressing over is how in the hell I am going to make it cross-country with an energetic toddler and two dogs. Yippy skippy. I refuse to think about the plane trip to Germany. Nope, I am NOT thinking about it.
SO now I am blabbing. To all those in Cincinnati: I will be there soon for a whole month and a half. After that, I probably won’t be home for a long time. Mrs N: We will have to get the tots together and go to LLL meetings. Brit: the Oct 16 babies need time together!!

Kansas

Saying goodbye to a place is hard. I am excited to be moving. I am sure that I will love Germany because I have never lived somewhere that I did not love. Every place has been good in its way. Thoughts of Arizona make my heart leap. Ft Drum had any number of things to do, and the fact that you had to really dig to find them made them all the more special. DC had a craziness about it that you could get lost in, and the culture there was such that any place in the world was a metro stop away.
I will miss the burnt orange hills and their sharp contrast to the blue sky which seems unusually vast here. I will miss my favorite view in the Flint Hills—the one with the tiny pond and the craggy valleys and ridgelines. I will miss my favorite Chimpanzee at the Sunset Zoo and I hope that someday I will come back, and that she’ll still be alive (she’s 50) and that she’ll kiss the glass of her enclosure for Lea. I will miss the library and my school exam proctor who has always made time in her schedule for my education. I will even miss the fact that to find a favorite store here, it takes a daylong outing because this place is not crowded and people native to Kansas generally don’t live in excess. There is no market for flashiness and hedonistic consumerism.
So I feel like I am giving Kansas a hug goodbye before I move on. Hopefully I will make it back here someday.