Food and other differences

Another quick takes on some things we have discovered about life on Guam:

1. Our life has changed in many ways since we left the continental United States. I now pay $4.50 for 3 quarts of milk. That's at the commissary. Not organic, not even fresh, but ultra-heat pasteurized.  I thought at first I was buying a gallon in a trim container, and then I read the oz’s. Ouch. 

2. I also cannot discover fresh chicken at our commissary, even though there are scrawny chickens running wild all over the place here. I'm not sure if anyone actually eats these things or gathers their eggs or keeps them just for looks.  My kids keep trying to catch the ones that slip under the fence into our area. They probably taste gamey.

3.I also am a little mystified by the fact that bananas are $1.19/lb and are shipped from South America. There are banana trees everywhere here.  We have a baby one in our back yard. My kids tell me their friend said these things are plaintains, but they look like and taste like bananas to me.

4. Mangoes are also shipped from South America, although I’m told the mangoes here are delicious.  They are out of season though. Right now the papayas are ripening, but the one we tried was not particularly sweet. The papaya we tried to transplant collapsed the other day. 

5. One last grocery note: I will not pay $2.99/lb for sweet potatoes. When I saw the $17.83 charge on the computer, I asked the checker to void them, even though it meant waiting for the manager. Later, I thought maybe I shouldn’t be so cheap. Sweet potatoes are really good for you. But are they as good as a nice bottle of wine?

6.We are still wearing t-shirts, shorts and swimming suits nearly every day. I keep seeing pictures of people on facebook wearing jackets and talking about apple picking.  None of that here.  Plaintains, anyone?

7. As far as I can tell, we do not have any deciduous trees here. I’m not sure how one could tell if it never gets cool enough for leaves to fall.  This makes it a little difficult to work on a tree identification project for school. BUT we do have a variety of palm trees. Such a variety I did not know existed. We have coconut palms with green and yellow coconuts (apparently the yellow variety is male – or female – or medicinal.). We have palms with little red things – undried dates? We have Manila palms with no fruit. We have palms that don’t have trunks. I don’t know all the kinds we have, but they are starting to grow on me since they look so pretty in a sunset photo. I'm going to have to work on getting a good shot though. 

Some other notes:

• Although we live on a small island, it can take a long time to get places you don't really want to go, like soccer practice. Rain doesn’t stop outdoor play. 
• Tile floors are great for cleaning up mud, but not for echoes. I thought hanging pictures and laying rugs would help but I think I need banners. 
• If you go snorkeling, hot dogs make great bait.  Little colorful fish swarm in from all directions. But if you don’t want to attract barricudas, use corn instead.
• You really can eat fresh yellow fin tuna raw and not get sick.
• No recycling of paper here - someone needs to seize the opportunity to develop a paper recycling plant.
• Red rice is a dish served at nearly every meal here.  I’ve heard it is colored red from a pepper powder, but it is not spicy. It’s a little extra sticky and almost tastes bready. But what we have all been loving is jasmine rice. I'm not sure what makes jasmine rice different, but it has a cleaner rice taste and is slightly stickier. Needless to say, we've been eating a lot of rice.

See Jen at www.conversiondiary.com for more. It's her anniversary, and I think updates are in store.

From the stacks

Life has settled into a routine here for the most part: rise, run, school, run around for errands and practices, eat, and then organize stuff with my husband or tend to busy work in the evenings while he works on building desks and lofts and bookshelves for the boys' room. But I broke out of that routine the last few of days and ignored a to-do list and piles of books and photos and knickknacks that need a home to indulge in escapist fiction.  I actually started to post part of this on Reading for Believers last week and pulled it down while I read more. But now I'll throw it up here, since I haven't written anything else lately. 

First: the best book by far was The Book Thief, which I did post about on Reading for Believers.  It really caused my heart to pause. It's the story of Liesel Meminger, a young German girl during WWII, who "steals" books she can barely read.  As she learns to read and learns the power of words, she also relearns how to love others after losing her little brother and being abandoned by her mother.  Even though the book was not suspenseful - it is narrated by Death who tells you what is going to happen - you don't want to stop reading because you care about each character. And Markus Zusak writes beautifully about the power of language.

The beauty of this book stood in stark contrast with the books I read right before and right afterwards that weren't nearly as redeeming. I don’t know why I persist in reading books that I don’t really like. But I devoted a substantial amount of time to finishing Anne Rice’s Feast of All Saints, because I bought it new, and I wasn’t going to let my $8 go to waste, gosh darnit. 

The story of Rice's book: I bought this lengthy novel over a year ago when we visited Faulkner House Bookstore in New Orleans, a delicious bookstore full of delights. I walked away with Faulkner’s first book Soldier’s Pay, of which I’ve read about a chapter and never finished, and this Anne Rice book. Why this cheap mass market paperback, when there were so many good books there for the choosing – lots of Faulkner, of course, but also Welty and O’Connor and Percy and the other big-name Southern Classic authors?  I guess I was in the mood for something light and wanted to read something about the city. Plus, I have to admit the title lured me in. Rice had just denounced her Catholic roots again, but the title of this book, published in 1979, seemed to presage her reversion 20 years later. Or maybe her inability to escape the Catholicity of her upbringing and life in New Orleans.

Sad to say, the book has little to do with saints and a lot to do with sinners.

The book’s story: The novel is historical fiction about free people of color, gens libre de coleur, in the late 1840’s - early 1850’s New Orleans.  The main characters are Marcel, the son of a rich white planter and a free Haitian named Cecile, his sister, his friend Richard, an undertaker’s son, and his teacher Christophe, who has just returned from Paris where he made his name with a romance novel and was free from the burdens of being colored and gay in 19^th century America. The most likable character was Annabella, the girl whom Marcel loves but who is too dark to be his wife.

You could argue that this is a bit of historical fiction, but it has way too much melodrama to be read as serious literature. It really belongs on the romance novel shelf, although the bits of historical information about the Haitian diaspora were interesting, and I did enjoy reading about life in the French Quarter prior to its becoming a tourist attraction. I almost gave up on it more than once when the tortured love affairs were dragging on and on. I couldn’t hold a good image of Marcel in my head, which is a problem since he was the main character.  And I really couldn’t get a good handle on why it was title The Feast of All Saints, other than maybe the irony of all these conflicted souls meeting up at Mass and funerals. I put this book in the giveaway pile without hesitation because I don’t see myself ever going back to read it or handing it to my kids to read. Not one sentence stood out as beautifully written, nor was there one bit of dialogue or description that stood out as particularly luminous.  Entertaining, but empty.

The other book that I haven’t finished but can’t bring myself to give up on totally is Eternal Echoes by John O’Donohue, an Irish poet whom I heard interviewed on NPR awhile ago. I was loving the interview in which he was talking about the relationship of beauty and transcendence, so when I saw this book at a rummage sale, I scooped it up. However, while it has some beautifully written lines – he is a poet after all – the more I read, the less I get out of it and the more fed up I get with the unnecessarily poetic diction.  It’s supposed to be a book of spiritual insight, and I first I was taken in by the description of the soul’s desire for a place of belonging, but the initial promise is never fulfilled. Lots of “join the dance” type drivel. It’s still sitting on the back of the toilet seat, where occasionally I take a look at it for some brief inspirational message, but I think it will soon join Rice’s book in the giveaway pile.

The other books I gobbled up were the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, which I finished in a couple of sittings. They are the kind of books you can't put down, and because they read quickly, and each chapter ends with a cliffhanger, I stayed up way too late a couple of nights thinking to myself, “just one more chapter, just one more chapter.”

I think a movie is being made based on this series. The Hunger Games is the first of a trilogy, followed by Catching Fire and Mockingjay. It's easy to see why these would make good movies: they're plot-driven, apocalyptic tales about a young girl, Katniss Everdeen, who gets drawn into a reality show-type game run by “The Capital.”  She survives to get drawn into a revolution.  There's action, suspense, hints of romance, moments of nobility. 

I wish I could love these books more. The concept: sometime in the future, most parts of the world have reverted to a more simple, impoverished existence because "The Capitol" conquered the world and divided it into districts that have distinct economies: mining, farming, orchardists, etc. Every year two teen-aged contestants are picked from each district to fight to the death in the Hunger Games.  When her younger sister is chosen in a raffle, the main character, Katniss, volunteers to take her place in the Games, even though she is her family’s main food provider.  At first I was loving this book – self-sacrifice! Familial duty! References to classical myths! Great themes for YA lit. 

But as the book goes on, some things concerned me.  My older boys already read the trilogy last spring, so I’m sorry I didn’t read the book earlier, but I think most of the implications went over their heads. For instance, the games involve violent deaths. Katniss and her co-contestant, the son of the baker who’s in love with her, are long shots to win because they are from a very poor coal mining district.  Of course, you can guess whether or not Katniss dies in the games.  That bit is not a part of the suspense. But some of the deaths of the other contestants are not pretty.  Katniss only kills one contestant directly and that is in self defense, but she is willing to kill innocent people in order to survive.  In the end, a suicide pact is threatened by Katniss and Peeta so that one will not have to kill the other.  While the baker’s son is in love with Katniss, she doesn’t have romance on her mind. There’s some kissing, but they sleep in the same cave without any suggestion of uncomfortable feelings.  

Violence in YA lit was the topic of a Wall Street Journal piece a few months ago.  The author suggested that the newer YA fiction is too explicit in its violence. Compared to The Book Thief, the amount of violence in The Hunger Games isn't especially greater or more explicit, but it seems less meaningful. The beating of the Jews in The Book Thief didn't strike me as glorified, and really I can't say I felt very squeamish about the deaths of the other contestants in The Hunger Games.  They seemed cartoonish in comparison.  

I was interested enough in what happens to Katniss that I checked out the second and third books from the library.  They were easy to finish in a couple days.  Neither the violence nor the relationship between Peeta and Katniss elevates to a concerning level. More concerning is the lack of higher ideals.  Rarely is Katniss's will to survive and defeat the Capitol articulated in terms reflective of a belief in human dignity. Rather, she just wants to live. She doesn't want to be hungry or for her family to be hungry. She doesn't want good people to die in vain. But she doesn't have any qualms about killing her enemies, even though at a few points it wasn't really clear who was her enemy. No vision is offered for what kind of society will take the place of the Capitol if it is defeated. In fact, if anything the alternative government, the rebel District 13, is just as totalitarian.

So while I enjoyed the story, and Collins’ style is engaging, although not particularly distinctive, but a few ideological quibbles prevent me from loving this one and wholeheartedly recommending it.  It took me awhile to pick up on, but finally the use of Roman names for people in the Capitol (Seneca, Octavia, Caesar), the name of the regime for the outlying area (Panem, short for Panem et circenses: bread and circuses, ie. please the masses to keep them under control), and the whole idea of fighting to the death in an arena hit me over the head with the fact that the worldview of this society is modeled after ancient Rome: a dictator, a profligate and superficial upper class, a warrior class, suicide as a higher good than death at the hands of the enemy, a lot of slaves in the outer edges of the country, and finally the use of propaganda to motivate and frighten the working class.  And fighting against Rome is the untamed nature girl, Katniss, named for a plant, her sister Primrose, Haymitch, Gale, Peeta (named for a peat bog?) So nature vs. civilization?  

That idea is kind of fun.  The action is exciting. The characters are interesting. I just wish they were fighting for a higher cause. 

So that’s the latest from here.  Has anyone else read Hunger Games or The Book Thief? They’d be great books for discussion because of some of the difficult themes.  I'm willing to reconsider my take on The Hunger Games. And maybe The Book Thief isn't quite as good as I think. But other than enjoying nostalgia for New Orleans, I can't raise my evaluation of Rice's book.

Quick Takes Moving Edition

Our stuff arrived; our boxes are unpacked. Except for some boxes of files that we keep dragging around, most of our stuff is put away, if you don’t count the piles of books waiting for shelves. It’s been 3 months since we left Mississippi. It will probably be about another month before our routine runs smoothly. Add in a couple of months prior to the move that were spent organizing and researching for the move, and you come up with about six months spent relocating.  About average.  After 9 or 11 moves, depending on if you count temporary duty orders, I thought I should make some notes on things that I should have learned by now.


1.       First of all if you think the packers are not being cautious with your stuff, you should probably speak up.  They may stuff your linens into your bookshelves, or toss your sewing machine in a box with knickknacks from your dresser, or put your crockpot on top of your game boxes, so that both your game boxes and your crockpot are broken.


2.       If you have forgotten that you own something, you probably don’t need it. Stuff is work. It seems like I had a lot more free time before all of our stuff arrived. Our first two weeks here without our boxes, I had time to hang out at the park and fiddle in the garden. Now I’m constantly shifting piles of stuff, mostly little things that don’t have a place or a purpose.  Sometimes I just want to throw everything away and start over. But almost everything has an emotional association. When you move around a lot, your stuff is what makes you feel at home when nothing about the climate or the neighborhood is familiar. It makes me happy to see pictures on our walls that used to be at my grandparents’ house.


3.       While unpacking, just keep chanting, like goes with like, like goes with like. When you gather all your pencils in one spot and see that you have enough to fill a shoebox, you probably can afford to throw some out.  When you seen that you have about 50 photo albums, you realize you probably need to develop fewer photos. Or start making photo books online because they take up less space. But then what if you need print for a project or…. I’m struggling with photo storage solutions.


4.       You can go almost 3 weeks without cleaning a new house before you start to notice rings around the faucets, handprints on the light fixtures, sticky spots on the tile, soap scum in the shower. I thought new houses might be self cleaning or at least dirt resistant by now. Why hasn’t anyone come up with a solution to keep grout dirt free? One exception to that 3 week estimation: the boys’ bathroom needs a scrub after about 2 days before the stink gets too strong.


5.       I got a little excited about getting organized and spent about $100 on bins and baskets when we first moved in. They sat in my closet waiting to be filled with stuff. Then our stuff arrived, and I realized I had plenty of baskets and bins.  Those matching organizers look so professional and clean in the decorating magazines, but how often does anyone look in my closets? The people who see my closets are people with children who have similarly arranged closets: plastic bins, cardboard boxes, toy boxes full of odds and ends. So I took back all of those organizers with an apology to the clerk for making extra work.


6.       There’s something to be said for having a system for organizing that makes it easy to unpack and put stuff away. But sometimes you have to press restart, and relocate some items. The bottom of our corner cabinet has held dishes and videos; now it holds art supplies. A shelf that had been in our office for a couple years with oversized books is working better in the boys’ room with school books and supplies. A wrought iron shelf that once held cookbooks, and then plants, works pretty well as a muddy shoe organizer on the porch.  Shoes are pretty much permanently covered with red clay mud here.  Just as in the Chicagoland area, snow rarely stopped anyone from doing what they wanted to do, here rain and mud aren’t deterrents to playing outside.


7. Although the physical work has gone relatively smoothly with this move (note to self: the movers seemed more motivated when offered a batch of chocolate cookies and plenty of Gatorade), the emotional upheaval of moving has been a little more disruptive. One minute I’m enjoying the tropics, happy about the variety of vegetation and the possibility of snorkeling and diving, looking forward to the next adventure, and the next minute, I’m frustrated by the rain, the time change for making calls, the time wasted redoing things, the difficulty of having to find new piano teachers, figure out extracurriculars, look for the best place to find bargains.  Those are just superficial things to complain about when you can’t figure out how to express the unrest caused by dislocation and disconnection.  But then I think back to those first weeks in our last locale, and remember the happiness we eventually found there. So I could complain about the wasted time, or I could let it be part of the experience. We’re here together, we’re healthy, the kids are adjusting well.  The stuff makes us feel like we’re staying and that this is home base for now.  We have much to be thankful for.


You know where to go for more: www.conversiondiary.com

What, no muumuus?

When we found out we were moving to Guam, one of the first things to cross my mind was that I needed to go shopping for new clothes. I needed a new swimsuit. I needed new flipflops. I needed a sundress. I needed a muumuu. My mother-in-law lived here in the 60s and mentioned more than once how much she loved the muumuu she found and wore all the time.

See http://normatikadesigns.blogspot.com/2010/08/muu-muu-dress.html for patterns!

So far I haven't seen any muumuus. Lots of colorful sundresses are for sale that could be said to be inspired by muumuus - loose through the body, but fitted up top. But I'm not much of a spaghetti strap wearer. 

Although I’m not a fashion trendsetter myself, I’m not immune to the feminine habit of checking out what other people are wearing. I can appreciate a pretty dress and a nice pair of shoes as well as the next lady.  I admit to falling prey to the temptation to fit in, chameleon-like. I don’t want to be the one who stands out in the crowd.

So the other night, when I had to attend my first spouses’ club event, I had my first clothing crisis since we moved.  I needed a cute muumuu to wear...  I had packed plenty of clothes, and while on the road, I even bought a few of those things: a swimsuit, new sandals, and a couple sundresses – things that said “beach living” - all on sale, of course, or from Goodwill.   

When you are living out of a suitcase, getting dressed usually is relatively easy. And since we only have one car, I haven’t been going out much. But this was one of those events that could require something dressier than shorts and a t-shirt. Choosing my attire was complicated by the fact that I had to leave early to go to a football game at a muddy field.  And since we’re new, I wasn’t sure if Guam fashion was going to be like Virginia where the wives dressed more casually or like Mississippi, where getting done up was a regular event.

Of course, a muumuu isn't really appropriate for a Saturday night dessert and coffee party.  In the back of my mind, I was remembering the advice from the 1968 Welcome to Guam magazine that my mother-in-law shared with me when we were visiting.  This magazine suggested packing gloves and hats for wives’ club functions.  No longer necessary, although I think I miss that more proscribed dress code.

From what I can tell so far, the style here is an interesting mix. When we were staying at the hotel, we were surrounded by Japanese tourists. I couldn’t get enough of checking out the Japanese women’s clothing. They have a recognizable style, but I’m not quite sure how to describe it.  Very feminine. Very lightweight, gauzy type fabrics. They wore mostly skirts or dresses in bright colors or pastels and flirty cuts – ruffles, drapes, bias cuts. Even when they wore pants or shorts, they wore them in a feminine way: body hugging styles, cute shirts and accessories. Then they layered on lightweight sweaters or scarves and leggings in bright hues without regard for other colors they were wearing. Even their shoes were multi-hued.  Since most of them appeared thin and graceful, they seemed to float as they walked. I felt like a clumsy moth around butterflies.

But down on this end of the island, there aren’t a lot of tourists. Clothes are serviceable.  At the Mass on base, the military wives are a shorts, t-shirts, and flipflops crowd. Last Sunday at the nearby Church in town, the older ladies wore a lot of polyester that looked like it had been around a few decades. And the younger ladies had on a lot of polyester that looked like it wouldn’t last more than a few weeks.   Next to flipflops, the most popular shoes were slinky high heels, paired with tight jeans - a vampy look copied even by little girls without any curves to flaunt. 

Not my style. I guess I’ll have to stand out in the crowd if we go back to Mass there.

Of course, at church no one is supposed to be noticing.  Our minds are not supposed to be on the shoes of the people going up to Communion in front of us.  I can't help but think that if we all wore muumuus, we'd hardly notice anyone's shoes. It would be like wearing a habit.

In the tourist area, I assume, one of the main pasttimes is noticing what others are wearing and planning or shopping for clothes for yourself.  Since I’m not much of a shopper, I never bought anything, but I did wonder where the Japanese women bought their clothes, because I didn’t see anything similar in the stores here.

So back to the night in question: I ended up wearing capris and a button-down shirt. Unremarkable – easy to slip out early without being noticed.  The attire of the other ladies varied from shorts and t-shirts to dressy sundresses, but no muumuus, so I shouldn’t have worried about being too casual or too dressy.  The irony is that I haven’t worn those beach-living sundresses that I bought back in Indiana. Although I thought I could recraft an identity, I just don’t feel like myself in those clothes.

I’m always a little frustrated with myself for worrying about clothing. It seems vain or lacking in humility. Why should I care as long as I’m clean and covered up? But on the other hand, we so quickly judge people based on their clothes, and here I am in another new place, wanting to make a good impression.  Maybe I can order one of those engravable circle necklaces with “Do you want to be my friend?” on it.

Happily, I’ve already met a few women whom I like in the neighborhood.  Everyone seems really friendly and welcoming. Maybe because Guam is such a small island, people are especially welcoming to newcomers. Since we’re homeschooling the younger kids again, I’m hesitant to reach out for too many opportunities to socialize anyway.  I’m glad to have the excuse to stay home, even if I don't have a muumuu to wear around the house in the hot weather.  No need to get a new outfit – just wear a friendly smile.  I’m hearing that song from Annie on the soundtrack in my mind.

In which we resume life

Moving is not good for blogs.  

We moved into our new home in the military housing community that is not far from the Navy base after only 12 days in the hotel. I feel a little guilty for how smoothly this overseas thing has gone. I keep hearing stories about months in hotels and lost shipments and trials aplenty, but so far we’ve sailed through this transition.  The housing office brought our loaner furniture, “boonie” furniture, the day we moved in and the next day our advance shipment goods were delivered.  We have beds, two tables and 8 chairs in the kitchen, two small, sturdy couches, two small, sturdy armchairs, two small, sturdy end tables, and an indestructible coffee table. The closets have shelving to organize all the clothes we brought.  The linen closet is serving as a bookshelf for all the books I sent in the advance shipment.  Everyone has one cup to use, a bowl, two plates, and a set of silverware. Housing also loaned a microwave, basic cookware and a few kitchen utensils. I could complain about the small coffeepot, but it prevents  me from overdoing the caffeine.

We’re all set for life to resume.

And slowly, a daily routine has started to take shape.

This housing community is a little like something out of Edward Scissorhands: cookie-cutter homes in two color schemes and about 4 floor plans.  We lucked into one of the larger models that has never been lived in. The walls were immaculate for about 4 hours. The flooring is all tile, which makes for deafening acoustics. And the color scheme is peaches and cream, which gives it a tropical feel, but I’m not sure how our reds and greens will coordinate. Since the paint is all mold resistant, we are not allowed to repaint, so we’ll make do.  Judging by the few houses I’ve seen inside, no one is competing for coverage in Better Homes and Gardens around here, so our hodgepodge won’t be an impediment to entertaining.

For a week we were without internet, phone or television service.  The kids played cards and rode their bikes up and down the street trolling for friends.  And they were successful. Kids are lurking everywhere. Surprisingly few play in the streets like mine; they must be entertained by their toys inside or their electronic devices.  I could hope they are reading. They show up at the playground in small bunches after school, and they sometimes scooter around the cul-de-sacs.  They show up in droves when the ice cream truck, something I thought we might escape, slugs through the neighborhood.

I spent most of the first week rearranging the garden. Since these houses are all new, the landscaping is pretty fresh also. My neighbor told me that the contractors were required to plant 35 foundation plants. Each house is a variation on the same theme. I’m not sure of the names of the tropical plants, but they are mostly vivid foliage plants.  The concept of setting out the landscaping is attractive, but what the grounds crew did was plant everything in straight lines with little regard to height or color. So I had bright green low growing flame plants behind tall reddish croton like plants.  One of our first purchases was a shovel, so I could move stuff around. The impetus behind the do it now, besides the fact that I had nothing better to do, was that the neighbor across the street is getting ready to move in a couple weeks, so she was giving away all her potted plants.  Not only was I blessed by her generosity, but I also found out that the housing authority also gives out $10 vouchers for new plants once a month. So we have planted a lemon tree and a Barbados cherry, some herbs in pots, and some colorful flowering plants in the front of the walkway.  Then my middle son brought home from some vacant lot a small banana tree and a young papaya tree. They are looking a little wilty right now, but I’m hoping they are just suffering transplant shock and will revive soon. After a hiatus from gardening at our rental home in Mississippi, I’m looking forward to seeing what we can nurse along here.

We ourselves are recovering from transplant shock, also. We’ve met the neighbors, started school, added some event s to the calendar drawn on sketch paper until our real calendar arrives with the rest of our household goods.  I am both dreading and desiring this event.  I will be happy to see our blender to make smoothies out of the bruised jungle fruit the kids bring home.  I will be happy to see our computer and printer, so I don’t have to hunch over the tiny netbook anymore. I will be happy to see our 12 cup coffee pot.  But the toys, the clutter, the random bins of stuff to keep in closets for holidays, the books with no place to sit, … they can all stay on the ship a few more weeks.

And I admit I will be happy to see our big car. I have complained about driving that hulking vehicle since we bought it 7 or 8 years ago, but I miss having seatbelts for everyone in the family when we go out.

While we’ve suffered some minor inconveniences, it’s been a pleasure to live a life with minimal belongings and responsibilities for the past couple of weeks.  The kids seem to have been more sociable with each other.  I don’t feel rushed to cook fast meals because of sports or meetings after dinner, nor obligated to make anything fancy that requires more than a stockpot or a skillet.  We’ve read more together in the evenings and haven’t had too many fights over who is cheating in Life or Clue.  I admit I have been making lists of things I want to buy for the house, mostly storage items, area rugs, and my own indestructible coffee table, but there aren’t a lot of shopping options, other than buying things like utility shelves off my neighbor as she figures out what she doesn’t want to move. I feel a little sorry I myself gave away a similar item, along with a couple cute kids’ carpets, in some move or another, but I’ll either find something to make do or make do without eventually. I’m giving myself pep talks to be ruthless in giving away more when our stuff arrives, so we can make do with less, even though my natural – or inherited – instincts are to hold onto things to prevent just such a scenario from happening again. 

I don’t want to give up the freedom of having little to dust or clean, or give in to the tyranny of a schedule full of practices and meetings.  On the other hand, I found out this week that preparation for Confirmation and First Communion start this weekend.  My two older sons will both be in Confirmation class, and the youngest son will be a First Communicant in the spring.  I had thought we might go to church out in town, but the acoustics at the nearest church and a language barrier at another parish nearby are conspiring to make the chapel on base an attractive alternative.  Add to the list of things to do, daily requests from 2/3rds of the kids to play soccer.  The oldest made the travel football squad and came home from his first away game covered in claylike mud that does not want to be removed from the synthetic fibers of the jersey even though I’ve washed it 3 times with 3 different soaps, despite the wonderful new washing machine.. (Oxyclean has been defied!)  And I admit that I am a joiner. I want to get involved in the action somehow too.

Ironically, being busy might be better for my blog, since I won’t be as tempted to while away time outside looking at the garden, walking to the park, watching the sunset.