The Square Peg

I'm a little behind in doing this but I've been kinda busy.

Our request to change our leave date (which we asked for in case the orders didn't get here soon) was accepted. We fly out January 24th. And five months after receiving notification of our upcoming change of station, we got our orders. Now the pace picks up for us...scheduling packing shipments, shipping the truck, turning in my car (it's a lease) and deciding what goes in the suitcases and carry on bags will dominate our thoughts and direct our energies over the next 7 weeks. Those things will also be the direct cause of our stress and headaches during that time, as well as some time after.

We went to Louisiana to visit our friends for Thanksgiving. We had a great time and after having so much fun with Cheryl's girls, I am seriously petitioning God for granddaughters (just not right now).   Annaliese and Eleora played hopscotch and colored on the front porch with me and it rained during the night before we left. When Eleora woke up and saw our artwork had vanished, she told her mom our "skips" were gone. Here are a few pictures that are too cute not to share with you.

 

• the EXTREMELY hot fire at the weenie roast. It was so hot Cheryl thought I was going to walk away from the bonfire with a tan.  The roasting sticks weren't long enough and I was afraid my eyebrows were going to be singed off. (When you read that last part, I hope you read 'singed' with the j sound. If you read it with the g sound, you're probably wondering how a fire could sing my eyebrows off.)
  
• the Tea Party...it was the first tea party I've ever attended. I wish I would've had time to go buy a hat and gloves for it.
  
• the four pounds of spinach dip Cheryl and I consumed at Grandmother's house on Thursday. Well, Troy said it was 4 pounds; Cheryl and I swear it couldn't have been more than 3 - 3.5 pounds tops.
  
• Eleora's sign language/hand gestures when asking for pumpkin bread. She looked like she was snapping a pencil in half while asking, "Miss Eva, can I have a piece of pumpkin bread?"
  
• Kael's numerous reminders to Moose that the boys had to play Halo before bed time. Kael's only 7 years old but he had more kills than Moose did.
  
• Watching Home Alone in the dark and hearing the kids laugh and shriek all the way through it. Especially when Joe Pesci's character's head caught on fire.
• Trying to corral the two dogs when they were in the room with the little kids was like trying to nail Jello to a tree. I think Gabriel got knocked down and/or bumped a record number of times. To say he didn't appreciate it would be putting it mildly.
  
• The ridiculously long, wrong, King Kong trip and order at Starbucks on Black Friday night. (OK, so King Kong wasn't involved in any way, but I wanted to include another "ong" word.) I bet Troy never suggests stopping by Starbucks again. The girl at the window actually told him, "it's Black Friday and we had our butts handed to us all day long." Troy's order was the only one that was correct on the first go-round, even though all the drinks had been repeated to us correctly when going back over the order.
• Troy's one good eye - So Troy has something wrong with one of his eyes and it requires drops to be put in it. The drops cause his eye to dilate...yet he still beat Moose at golf. And read street signs from far distances. And spotted details the rest of us missed in the video game we played. All with "my one good eye". LOL

I wasn't going to participate in today's blog carnival because the nomadic lifestyle I've lived hasn't allowed me to belong to a community for more than a few years at a time. But I thought about it a lot and after looking up the definition of community, I realized living in so many different places in my 42 years formed opinions about community that I'd actually like to share with you.

Spokane, Washington - my first community as a military wife. I probably grew more in this community than the others I've lived in. This is where I discovered my desire to have a real relationship with God. It was here that I had to learn to put my big girls panties on because my mommy was about 3,000 miles away and couldn't come to my aid every time something went wrong. Drewby was born here. And it was here that I met people who weren't family, yet cared for me as though I was. On the day Moose left for his one year deployment to Korea my friend Carla drove us to the airport to drop Moose off. When we got back to her car she presented me with a gift; a cookie jar with a custom-painted lid that matched my kitchen decor. Gifts are not my primary love language (that might be why I'm not good at giving them) but something about her thoughtfulness that day really ministered to me. I've never forgotten it.

Panama Canal Zone - the first community I'm able to remember. I was 5 when I lived there. Our apartment was on the fifth floor and the Panamanian kids who lived across the street would come running over when I would walk out on the balcony to feed our dog. When the pieces of dog food would inevitably fall over the ledge, the kids would fight over them because they were hungry and their families didn't have enough food to go around. I watched kids...fight to eat my dog's food. And I knew then I wanted to feed hungry people whenever possible. It was in this community that my beliefs about ethnicity began to form and I realized skin color didn't matter because we're all the same on the inside.

Warner Robins, Georgia - If you count both times we've been stationed here, I've been in this community the longest. I love the spirit in this city and it's a great place to raise a family. I've met some pretty neat people and it's going to be hard to say good-bye to them when I leave in a few weeks. I love my neighborhood and will miss it very much. It's quiet, established, and unbelievably beautiful in the spring when the azaleas and dogwoods bloom. I walk Zoe around our block most mornings and every evening and I love the images, smells and neighbors that I pass. I will fondly think of goth girl, who has long, black hair and always dresses in black clothes and shoes and seems barely able to eek out a smile when we greet her as we pass. And beer guy and gal, who go out for their evening stroll, each of them holding their beer can, with the soft-sided cooler holding the extra beer slung over his shoulder. Sometimes their stroll is more of a stumble, but they're always friendly and always smiling. And I'll miss the cloud of lavendar I walk into when we get near John & Kim's house (yes, I actually know someone's real name!). I guess it could be fabric softener that I smell, but I've tried 'em all and none of mine have ever smelled like that. In any case, I like that smell. And I like this community.

And finally, Starbucks. What, you don't think that's a community? Well, I've got news for you, it is. And while the coffee's great, I really love going because of the wonderful mix of the community that I see there. We can go there with our young, vegetarian, non-caffeine drinking, Bible studying, atheist, pagan, gay, ultra conservative, stuffy, free-spirited hippie, old, uber liberal, tattooed, nerdy, civilian, pierced, camouflaged fellow community members and enjoy each other's company while we sip our drinks or share a smackeral of something. Everyone from the freaks to the fanatics are welcome at Starbucks. And community, at its core, is nothing if not inclusive.

Thanks for hosting, Bridget.

Several years ago when I worked day shift and Brian worked nights, we started going on a date every Saturday morning. Back then we'd drive to Starbucks in Macon (at 30 minutes away, it was the closest one) to enjoy some coffee and conversation before going to lunch. Since we were little more than passing ships during the week, this was a great chance for us to reconnect, refocus and re-energize our relationship. We'd tell each other the details of the week that got pushed by the wayside and talk about the things coming up on the horizon of life. Our boys were old enough that they didn't call us on the cell phone every 20 minutes (probably because they didn't care where we were or what we were doing) and the uninterrupted time together was heavenly.

Brian was eventually moved back to day shift but our Saturday dates had proven to be too valuable to give up. A couple years ago, my happy place opened a store in Warner Robins (I'm pretty sure my purchases pay Starbucks' electric bill.) and we changed our game plan a little: we started going to Hardees for breakfast and then to Starbucks.

We've invited Ryan and his girlfriend Sam to join us a few times and now it has turned into a regular thing. And Drew's scheduled has changed, so he's been hooking up with us too. And even though our Saturday date is bigger, louder, and more lively than when it began five years ago, it definitely still qualifies as heavenly.

Actually, it's the way Anne Morriss sees it. Anne is a Starbucks customer from New York City who describes herself as an organization builder, restless American citizen, and an optimist. Her submission is on today's coffee cup from my happy place. It says:

"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating - in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life."

From the outside of my Starbucks cup today:
Do not kiss your children so they will kiss you back but so they will kiss their children and their children's children.
Noah benShea, poet, author, philosopher

No, that's not the size of the coffee I ordered from Starbucks this morning. I wish.

It's the Spanish word for 'large', which describes the size of the mistake it was to make my jello legs get out my wonderful, amazing bed this morning.

In fact, that's all I can hear right now; the screeching of my thighs and calves...I think they're saying "we'll get you, my pretty", or something like that.