Pardon my absence.

I've been practicing being domestic. :) Monkey is home on leave so I've been trying my hand at doing this wife thing and cooking for him. Last night I made fish and brown rice, and today I am trying my hand at pumpkin cheese cake. The fish was ok. It tasted really good but was a little over done. I think I just need practice. That and a stove top that sits flat. The drip trays on the stove top in the new apt are the wrong size so the burners don't sit flat, making it pretty hard to cook anything evenly. I keep meaning to go to the office and ask them to replace them. 

The cheesecake seems to taste ok, but I'm not sure about the consistency. It has to finish chilling before I know for sure. I didn't use the right kind of pan because we only had little shallow cake pans. Well, anyway, this was the practice one. I'll be making three more, I'm sure by then I'll have it figured out. I will be going and getting a the right kind of pan before continuing with the others. 

Well, there you have it. I'm cooking stuff. haha. Go domestic Ducky!

Since I'm so Forgetfull...

The past 32 hours have been super fun. Spent about 24 hours on watch, six hours sleeping and the rest of the time helping with maintenance. Oh! I got to eat somewhere in there. Had to stand by for a buddy who had to run the PRT a little late.

Beth's Cafe this weekend was awesome! I highly recommend it. The omelet we ordered was called the Southwestern Exposure. Very good. On top of being huge. It was 16 bucks i think for the massive 12 egg version. Filled with Chile, sour cream and salsa. It was fantastic. Hard to eat at first though, the heat slowed me down a lot. You can order a 6 egg version of it if you want to. Fantastic.

So yes, my leave period got "extended". Really what that means is more that it has returned to its original length and its not that i forgot to mention it - it is in fact that I did not notice it. We have been so busy that i honestly did not realize i was signing for the original dates again. So... not so much forgetting as failing to notice on account of the fact that the past 4 weeks at work i have spent running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.

Duty this Sunday! Oh boy that has been a wild ride. The navy (or at least my command) is phenomenally skilled at changing its mind and not making a point to inform personnel promptly. I mean... see above paragraph. Up until two days ago all i knew for sure was that we were shifting births. I didn't have any confirmation on rather or not the duty section rotation was changing. If i forgot to mention this, it was for a whopping 5 hours between me finding out for sure and informing. They do not give us very straight forward answers sometimes.

As it turns out.. they were switching the duty sections around and my crew would be excluded from the rotation. This was great because it meant that i would have Sunday off. Well that all changed yesterday when my chief called down to the boat to have someone inform me that even though we were out of rotation, i was to stand-in for someone on the other crew who has mono and is out. This was after i let everyone know that i would have Sunday off and we would be able to attend. I immediately called my chief back and pleaded to him to have someone else stand by because i had made plans. He was kind enough to oblige me and gave my Sea-Dad duty that day instead. He was not happy. Sorry there Sea-Diddy.

And finally... though i would argue that the two other accusations are in fact not (entirely) my fault. Yes... I did forget to blog. Shame on Monkey... But here it is.

Love you Ducky!

There is more that has transpired though... The other crew needs three Nav-ETs (that's my rate) to go underway with them because they are short handed. They are needed for the whole patrol. They wanted a NavSup, a LanTech and a NavWatch. It so happens that of all the third classes in my division i am the ONLY one who is qualified both NavWatch and LanTech. That is in fact lucky for me. There are three other third classes in my division who have all been there longer than me and I am qualified in-rate watches further than any of them. Because of this i have the least to work on so I am NOT a likely candidate for the underway. I should be getting off-crew but this is not for sure yet.

Everyone cross your fingers for me and hope that i get to stay on land please! Prayers needed.

Thursday 5 - now with A Marine's Wife

I haven't been doing these for a while. Just been too busy busy. I keep meaning to have Monkey fill in one of these but he's also been a busy bee.

Thursday five has moved on over to Flip Flops and Combat Boots. You can fill yours in and link up over there.

Excited

Joyful

Thankful

Happy

Pumped

 

I am Excited that Monkey does not have duty this weekend and we get to start moving into the new place a few days earlier!

 

I am Joyful that it is almost Christmas. Though, I haven't wrapped one present or listened to one Christmas song. Yet.

I am Thankful that I *knock on wood* haven't gotten the gross head/chest cold that has been going around.

 

I am Happy that I get to work on a fun project at work that involves paint and fabric. My fingers are currently stained gold, and it makes me so happy. :)

I am absolutely Pumped that Monkey got his extra week of leave back!!!! Three whole weeks with my honey and I only have to work 6 of them – and in little three day spurts. Awesome possum!

Things my husband forgot to do.

1. Blog: I haven't been blogging because I've been waiting for him to make a [mostly] promised post. But, he has been busy/tired/playing WoW. (Yes, I thought he quit too.) So, I guess I will continue on my blogging way.

2. Tell me that he does not in fact have duty on the day of my family Christmas party, and in fact does not have duty this weekend at all: I've been stressing out about it for weeks... how does he forget to tell me this little nugget of info? Since I thought he was going to be gone, I kind of planned to spend much of the weekend gluing rhinestones onto my Salsa costume. Sorry honey.

It will be nice to get a head start on the packing and moving though.

3. Tell me that his leave was un-shortened: They originally had almost three weeks of leave. Then I was told that it would only be two. So, I removed that time off request from my calendar at work. He informed me last night that it would be three weeks and that he doesn't even remember when that happened. Luckily my boss is super awesome with all my many many time off changes due to good ol' Navy predictability, that he let me have the days back no problem. Thank you boss.

In other news:

Monkey and my cat are now on the same special diet. For the last year or so, Monkey has tried to maintain a more or less gluten free diet since we figured out that he seems to be sensitive to it. Recently, I read an article about cats and how the grains in most cat foods are not actually good for them and can cause all kinds of digestive problems. My cat has had symptoms similar to what they described from the day we got her. So, I have started her on a new grain free/gluten free cat food. Hope it helps her. It's sure helped Monkey. :D

And just for fun:

Last weekend Monkey and his buddy decided to float on over to Seattle to attempt to consume 5lbs of omelet and hash brown! After about a half an hour, they declared the endeavor a tie. 

That's three pounds of Omelet on top of two pounds of hashbrowns!

I think that is actually quite impressive!

What are the odds?

OK, I'm just going to whine for a second. Yes I realize that it could be worse, he could be deployed. But since he's not, I would have liked to have taken advantage of that since next year he likely will be gone. I am grateful that he is here, just that circumstances are disappointing. And I know, he's not the only one, every one in this duty section are stuck with the same crappy schedule. I guess I'm still learning about what I should and should not get my hopes up about.

What are the odds that he would end up with duty on every single holiday event (except one).

He had duty on Thanksgiving. (And had to work the next day) He had duty for his holiday party. He has duty for my family christmas get together, he has duty this weekend for a holiday party we were supposed to go to and if he didn't have leave, he would have had duty on New Years Eve. Which would have been doubly bad, because besides the fact that it's new years eve, it's also the night of my salsa performance.

Ok, I'm done. Not another word about that. (umm, probably)

It will be so great when he finally has leave and we can move into the new place and just be "us" for a while.

And speaking of the new place...

In happier news, we got the keys to the new place this weekend! (Though several hours later than expected - that's all I'll say about that. ) We spent Saturday night there on an air mattress with some hot cocoa and a fire log watching a movie on my very old laptop. Before hand we went shopping for food and some kitchen stuff but it took us so long that by the time we got back we were too pooped and not really hungry any more. So we didn't even eat dinner.

We spent Sunday getting more stuff for the kitchen. It is ridiculous how much stuff you need for a minimally functioning kitchen. Then we picked up a shower curtain and bath mat for the master bathroom. It's super cute now. The first night we had to use the guest bath to shower because we forgot to get a shower curtain and the guest bath has sliding shower doors. I actually like that shower better.

I like them!!! Especially the bowls.

For those who have a vested interest in our kitchen decor, we decided to do black and white and teal. (Dark Turquoise/Peacock blue green-ish) Here are the plates we picked out. The decision went something like this. While at Safeway "Oh look honey, I like the plates here on this end cap", "I like them too. Let's get them." So now we have these plates and bowls. To be filled in with Teal plates, also. These plates specifically.

We still need a couch and we still need lamps and nightstands, and a microwave. Yes, I totally thought there was a microwave there. There is not. We will be needing one of those!

Like I said, i am totally excited for him to finally get on leave so we can finish moving in! When we have places to sit, we will have people over. I ate every meal sitting on the counter. Which is actually quite spacious. Unlike the "walk-in" closets. *scowl* Because we're on the top level our closets get cut off with the roof line and are NOT anywhere as big as the model we were shown. They could have at least warned us. That was part of the reason we chose this place. We needed closet space. It's a darned good thing there is a second little closet in the 'changing area'. Big bummer there. And the living room doesn't work very well because the fireplace is raised so high that you can't put the TV above it. Which forces us to put the TV on the main wall and eat up all the living space with the couch. Other than that we LOVE the place. Just a couple unexpected things. Oh well, live and learn. I love the kitchen and I usually could care less about kitchens.