I’m 30 years old! My birthday was this past Sunday/Mother’s Day. It was a pretty great day. The boyfriend worked, so I spent the day doing laundry and ironing clothes that got squished and wrinkled in my move. Then we went to an amazingggg dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant. Succulent, perfect lamb chops and grilled asparagus. So good.

Ironing my clothes was important because yesterday/Monday I had a job interview. It took up most of the day and I met with several different people at the company, which was unlike any interview I’ve ever had before. Usually they’re like 15 minutes with one HR person, right? It was pretty intensive. And later that evening, they called me and gave me a semi-official verbal offer for the job! Written offer forthcoming, and all of this pending some background checks. So fingers crossed I officially get the job! I’ll be making way more money than I ever have before! This is after having zero luck finding a job for more than two years in Minnesota. Four days into living here, and I have a semi-official offer of an amazing job. Yowzers. Relocating is a good, good thing!

This is the first time I’m loving with a lovahhh. So far it’s going pretty well. Probably a good sign that we’re not sick of each other yet. It’s nice though. Being able to snuggle on the couch and watch TV, having someone to talk to at home. Seeing him in his Navy uniform. :-9 Making dinner together. Even the mundane things are all new and exciting!

PS - The Avengers is awesome and yes you must go see it. We watched in 3D which was fun, but I’m sure it’s great no matter how you see it. And stay to the END of the credits!

Let’s say I’m a regular shopper of the Walgreens that’s 20 miles from my house. It’s the nearest drug store and that’s the main reason I chose it. CVS builds a store right across the street. I don’t care because I’m already a regular at Walgreens and that’s good enough for me, so I continue using Walgreens. I mean, it’s right there. 

Now let’s say CVS builds a drug store 10 miles from my house. Guess where I’m shopping? CVS!

But no. Some idiot thinks that it’s better to condense all the one types of stores in one singular place where they’re not all needed in the hopes of closing someone else down at the high risk of screwing themselves in the process, instead of building a store where it’s needed in a place that doesn’t have one.

And this business model is why I will never shop at a CVS that parks itself beside an existing Walgreens. I have no loyalty to Walgreens, per se. I just think it’s stupid to do business like that. (I would vice versa that if Walgreens parked itself beside an existing CVS.)

Edit: there you go, any other drug store that would like to do business in my town. Let Walgreens and CVS destroy each other while you build and do business in an area of town where people could use a drug store.

I hope you derps know how foolish you look by trying to “fool” people today. To say it’s not creative would be putting it mildly.

But.. other countries have already made same-sex marriage legal. We can look directly at existing examples and evidence of what exactly happens after same-sex marriage is made legal. There is no need to speculate and make baseless claims. So far, I haven’t heard of people-dog marriages or any countries being smited off the face of the planet or their people becoming endangered or extinct because there aren’t enough babies being made.

I mean, I know why a gay marriage opponent would ignore the real, live, existing examples of legal same-sex marriage in a society. But I don’t think we (the supporters) are pushing the real evidence enough. I never hear a gay marriage supporter citing information from Canada or the Netherlands on how their countries have fared since same-sex marriage was made legal.

I suppose it’ll never matter what kind of facts are presented. The homophobic bigots will always go with “what they believe”. But there must be some people on the fence for some reason who could be educated on the reality.

Perhaps I’m being too optimistic and hopeful.

It’s going to be so weird living with someone I’m “in a relationship” with. I’ve never done that before. I’m sure there will be some hassles with adapting, for both of us. But I’d like to think I’m an easy-going sort of girlfriend. I’ve already been browsing through Ikea’s website for furniture ideas (so many bookshelves!). When I go there in May, I’ll be flying in with just a couple bags. I will likely ship a few boxes of things, but it will largely be a “mini-move” without much of my things. The cats and plants will have to wait til I’m settled, have a decent job, and built up some money to go back and drive them out during a bigger move. I’m not even sure if I’ll take any of my furniture. The boyfriend has most of what we’ll need, and other things may be better if bought there. If I can do my “big move” with just a minivan of things (and cats), that would be superb.

I applied to one great company in DC, so far. I’ve been refining my resume and cover letter to be A+ quality. I think I mostly have them ironed out. I still have 2 months before I’ll even be there, so I’m not in a hurry to find a job quite yet. But it would be aces if I could have a gig lined up and waiting for me! I’ve bookmarked several companies I’m most excited about. I figure I’ll send them my info slowly, in order of my potential favorites. If nobody bites, then my standards will have to start coming down. Canned, personalityless web companies will be at the bottom of the list. Fingers crossed I can work somewhere awesome. Well, with my career luck the last 2 years, fingers crossed I can work anywhere at all. The best would be a company I could have the option of working off-site for, in the event of us moving in a few years to his next duty station. Keeping a job I’m established with would be a dream come true.

Big things ahead! I’m impatient to get started.

Edit: I also updated this site a little bit! I widened the main column and rearranged a few things. Hopefully more enjoyable to browse around.

These posts are most often inundated with comments that are all you-go-girl in sentiment. Commenters gushing that they, too, really need to unplug and just get away from it all. You are a god among men for making this discovery and I now must follow your lead.

Now, I’m so intertwined with technology that I have joked that I am “half-human/half-internet”. I work online. I play online. I check on various social sites multiple times a day. I email all the time. Instant messages. But do you know what I also do?

I read books. Every night before bed. I don’t interact with friends in person a whole lot, but I do sometimes and it’s great. I cook up new recipes. Try new things. Walk the dog. Travel every now and then. I get out. That’s called balance.

I often—and not even consciously—disconnect for a whole day at a time. Or multiple days. Does a feeling of enlightenment wash over me? Nope. Do I itch to get back on my phone or computer? Nope. Do I think I’ve found some ground-breaking new way of life independent of technology? Nope.

If you can’t integrate and find balance with technology and non-technology, then I get it. You’re addicted, there’s a problem. But don’t act all high-and-mighty and like a martyr who’s done something no one else has done, and you-need-to-try-this-new-thing-I-discovered-called-outside! It’s always been there. If someone like me, a half-human/half-internet hybrid, can unplug without issue or surprise, then you can too.

Words cannot express.

He’s been living in Italy doing the Navy sailor thing for a few years, and recently scored a gig in the Washington DC area. He’ll be spending some of his Leave with me and then moving/starting his new job in DC. And in May after my semester ends, I’m going to move there and live with him.

Words cannot express.

It still doesn’t feel real. His visit or the move. I alternate between excitement and suspicion. Suspicion that another shoe has to drop soon. There’s just no way all of this awesomeness is going to rain down upon me and flood me with joy. I am not this lucky of a person. Luck for me comes in the form of finding a quarter in the couch cushions. This is so far above and beyond my scope of possibilities of things that can actually happen that I’m like, what is the trade-off. What equally horrible thing awaits me. What is going to go Terribly Wrong and ruin it all.

But then, excitement. I am going to live with him and see him nearly every day. I am going to live with a man I am not related to for the first time ever (I will be 30 years old by then). We are going to play games and watch movies and cook dinner together all the time. When I feel the need to kiss him, I’ll actually be able to kiss him. And not have to wait 3 months. When something good happens, I’ll be able to share it with him. When I’m feeling miserable and need a hug and a cuddle, he’ll be there. When he needs me, I can actually be there for him instead of feeling helpless.

Yep, still feels like a dream.

The visit next week will be lovely. I’ll still have to keep up with school, but otherwise we can just have yay-fun-togethertime all day and night. I’ve started a list of things we can do, like seeing Woman in Black.

(I’m such a nerd, I already have a couple of Excel spreadsheets going for the move. One spreadsheet of apartment possibilities, another spreadsheet of job possibilities for me, and a spreadsheet outlining what things I want to bring with me, what will wait for a bigger move, and what I need to buy out there. Can we say “over-prepared”? You won’t be moving til May, Ang!)

Upon discovering I am terrified of taxidermy, most people’s first reaction is to laugh. And I laugh too. It’s ridiculous! It’s a crippling fear of an inanimate object that can’t possible harm you (unless it fell on you and an antler pierced your chest or something). Nonetheless, when faced with a moose head or a full-standing bear, I am left with a fight-or-flight response. I hyperventilate. I fight every urge to start making guttural noises and run from the room.

Because, you see, if someone is unfamiliar with a phobia of taxidermy, they wonder who that crazy woman is. And since no one I have confessed this phobia to has ever heard of such a thing before, that’s everyone who doesn’t know me. I have to keep it together.

The Trigger

I think I know where my phobia originated. I was always a bit squicked about taxidermy, I mean it’s an animal corpse, stuffed and made to look alive again. Other than Ed Gein, no one would dream of doing this to humans. Because it’s fucked up. But I digress. As a youngster around the age of 10 maybe, my family was on a trip in Montana, and we stopped at a little taxidermy museum. It was quite the place. This was a long time ago, so I’m relying on old memories, but I do distinctly remember the standing bears at the entrance. Because they are rigged to “pee” on people as they enter. Yes, a dead bear peed on me. Through his dead penis. On a 10 year old girl.

If you think that sparked the phobia, you would be wrong. It wasn’t until we were deep into the museum. And it’s not like a museum where there’s a dead animal there, and another one over there. This place was packed with taxidermy, with just little aisles going through the room. There were dead soulless eyes staring at you everywhere. While perhaps ill-at-ease, even this didn’t bother me too terribly much.

Among all the various forest creatures was a seated bobcat. Very cute. I remember pointing at it and telling my brother to check it out. And then it moved.

The dead animal moved. The taxidermy moved. It is dead and it stood up and started walking away. This bobcat was alive. 

You might be thinking “holy shit, a live wild bobcat, get the fuck out of there!” Nay. You see, I was already familiar with domesticated bobcats. In the backwoods frozen tundra of northern Minnesota, there was a domesticated bobcat who wandered around my neighborhood freely like your average housecat. I knew this bobcat by name (I can’t recall it now), and pet him and played with him from time to time.

The fact that it was a bobcat in this museum did not freak me out. The fact that it was alive sure as fuck did.

So you see, my worst fear has in fact happened. A taxidermy animal really did come to life in front of me.* When I see any taxidermy, in my subconscious, I fear it is going to start moving at any moment. I know, intellectually, this is not true. It is nothing more than furniture at this point. But I can’t stop the hyperventilating and the chills coursing through me when coming face to face with a bison head.

*Yes, I know the bobcat wasn’t actually taxidermy. But among the packed forest of taxidermy animals, one that moved sure created the vivid illusion that any of these things could actually spring to life at any moment.

My Continuing Self-Torture

An amusing anecdote. In New York City stands the American Museum of Natural History. A super awesome place with huge models of dinosaurs. Also housed in the AMNH is room upon room of taxidermy animals. All of them posed and in what are essentially dioramas of their natural habitats.

I took it upon myself to take the ultimate challenge for someone with a phobia of taxidermy: tour the AMNH in its entirety. And I did this on three different trips to NYC. Why? Because I would like to put this phobia to rest. The result? It still freaks me the fuck out.

The funny thing about my tours of the AMNH is that there was something that somehow made these taxidermy animals feel less threatening to me: they were behind glass. Inanimate object. No more of a real threat than furniture. Somehow felt less threatening to my phobia because they were behind glass. Because, totally, if a pride of huge lions came back to life, a sheet of glass would stop them from eating my face.

Now, don’t go thinking I was perfectly fine. I was still hyperventilating somewhat. I think the only noticeable reaction was probably my flaring nostrils. And wide terror-filled eyes. But I made myself walk slowly through all these exhibits and look at them. I was alone and no one paid me any mind. My phobia flared up when I reached the herd of elephants which were not behind glass. I still walked slowly and looked at them all.

When I was finished with the dioramas, I went to the dinosaur exhibit. I was in such an incredibly good mood to be free of my arch-nemeses (taxidermy). No, bones do not scare me. They gave me chills, but more from the awe of their massiveness.

The Exceptions

Taxidermy fish do not bother me. I have yet to see a large shark in taxidermy form, so I have no idea if that might bother me, but your average Northern will not. Also not a problem: smaller birds or mammals. I guess anything small enough that I could totally “take” in mano a mano fisticuffs. I wouldn’t want to touch any of these things, but if I see them on a shelf somewhere, they do not illicit my phobic response. Usually.

Confession

The entire time I was writing this, I had chills. At the memories of all these situations that terrified me. At the very thought of being in close proximity to taxidermy. Phobias are so stupid and defy all logic. But, what can ya do? Laugh at it, do your best to deal with it. Try not to let it run your life.

But, I will not visit your home if there is a deer head on the wall. A bearskin rug will have the opposite of a sexy effect on me.

Being a military girlfriend is not easy. I knew that, intellectually, going in to this whole situation. But it’s one of those things that you can’t understand until you’re in it. He is stationed in Europe. I am in the middle of the states. He’s a career Navy man. He’s not on deployment with a return date. He should be moving to his next location this year, but we have no idea where that might be. Could be as far as Japan or Bahrain. Could be in the states somewhere. And that’ll be for a few years. No six-to-twelve months and then we can be together again and all squishy and lovey and happy squee! Nope. The future is a complete unknown.  He won’t be all mine within 4 years or less. He could still have 7 years left in the Navy.

I mention this because so far it has made it harder to find an online “community” of people in a similar situation to mine that I could read about or commiserate with. I don’t know anyone in person who has someone in the military. There are many “milspouse” communities/blogs. Many communities for new milspouses. Even some communities for military girlfriends who are going through their lovers’ first deployment or boot camp, etc. I don’t fit into any of these. I still try to find some common ground with these bloggers, but other than a small handful in a general sense, I haven’t found any who I can really relate to.

I’m not a spouse, so I’m not a milspouse. Milspouses are often militarily (lolol) Christian and extreme-Republican. I am an atheist and have a heart. I have no children. I have no plans for marriage or children, so finding things to relate to, other than missing our men, is pretty much impossible. Some of these women are dealing with deployments to dangerous areas, so I’m pretty lucky that my sailor isn’t in that kind of danger. There are some perks they get to have with being a spouse as opposed to a girlfriend, so their struggles are different than mine.

The new military girlfriends (like myself) are not 29 and own a home and are established in a community a world away from their lover. They seem to be typically in the 18-20 year range. They’re thinking about marriage and babies. They are just embarking on adulthood at the same time as they are dealing with their lovers leaving. They are devastated at the idea of a 2-month boot camp stint (I think it’s 2 months?), whereas I’m trying to find strength in having no idea how many months or years it’ll be til I see my sailor. That’s certainly not to belittle their experience, it’s just that what we’re struggling with is very different, and doesn’t satisfy whatever I’m trying to find in not feeling alone with this.

I’ve even tried seeking out bloggers in long-distance romances (LDRs) to relate to. Mixed results. Again, it’s hard to relate completely since their lover isn’t in the military. The military throws a huge wrench into a relationship. Your schedule is your lover’s schedule which is the military’s schedule, which has no wiggle room for negotiations. You can’t be like “let’s visit in May!” and plan it out because anything could come up between now and then and dash your plans. Even planning a Skype date can be difficult. A 7-hour difference in time zone is also a factor.

I suppose what I’m saying is, are there any new military girlfriends in their late 20s with a career-military man far far away? Or someone who was that? Finding that combination in someone other than myself has been impossible.

I think a few factors have made it a little easier on me. I’ve spent the vast majority of my life single, so being alone every day isn’t any different. As a web designer, I have the kind of job that (in theory) is pretty portable, should I be able to move where my sailor is.

(I say “in theory” because jobs that let you work from home, even as a web designer, are incredibly scarce. With all the technology we have, employers still can’t wrap their heads around having remote workers. Get with the times! Grrr!)

Another factor possibly in our favor is some maturity. Would I have been able to deal with this a few years ago? Or at 18? Probably not. I have a better understanding of relationships and time and waiting for worthwhile things. The flipside to that, of course, is that time is ticking. We won’t live forever and time apart is time we’ll never get back.

Since I still can’t find any communities that I fit into, I’ve been working on outlets of my own to deal with the diffcult side of all this. I started a tumblog called Inconvenient Love. Just a place to repost things that are funny or inspirational relating to having a love that is inconvenient (whether it be long-distance or unrequited or forbidden, since there is some overlap in sentiments). Hopefully people who feel the way I do can find something there that helps or makes them feel less alone with their situation.

Another outlet? Blogging about it and sharing my story.

I suppose I should wrap this up by stating how happy I am with my sailor boyfriend! If given a choice, I’d certainly rather have him be with me, but I’ll take what I can get to be able to have him. The pros far outweigh the cons. When things get tough, I remind myself that hopefully someday we will be together on a regular basis. This will all be worth it on that day. We are ridiculously compatible and drawn to each other. It’s very rare to get along with someone so well and feel all schmoopy and squeebily, and have that someone feel the same way at the same time! (You know what I’m talking about.) I wouldn’t trade him for the sake of convenience. ♥

Ingredients:

• A bag of frozen berries (or any frozen fruit, I guess. Berries are lower in carbs, if you’re watching that.)
• 4 packets of  Weight Control Quaker Oatmeal in the Cinnamon flavor (hard to find, it’s on Amazon)
• Some sugar/Splenda or cinnamon (optional)

Instructions:

Pour the berries into a 9×9″ pan. Sprinkle some sugar/Splenda or cinnamon on it, if you want (I sometimes skip this and haven’t noticed much difference). Mix up the oatmeal with some water and olive oil until it gets some thickness to it. Spread the oatmeal over the fruit.

Bake at 350 degrees F until the berries start bubbling or the oatmeal gets dark around the edges.

Yummy yum!