MilSpouse Friday Fill-in

I have been meaning to do one of these since Wife of a Sailor started them and I’m only just now in the right place at the right time (normally Fri-Sun I try to limit my time on the old computer). I think it’s a fun idea to get to know other milspouses around the ‘sphere. So here I am, better late than never.

1. What is your spouse’s best feature? Eyes. Although I am a sucker for his hair when he grows it out (which is like, never. I fell in love with that hair, dangit)

2. Mild, Medium or Hot sauce? Medium.

3. What is the worst uniform you had to wear for a job? I guess I missed most of the hideous uniform jobs, but I hated wearing nursing whites when I was in college….but I did have to wear an ugly brown smock when I was a cashier at the Shop-Wrong, (oh, I suppose I should finally call it by its correct name since it’s defunct, poor old Shop-Rite).  I guess that wins.

4. You have invisible powers… where is the first place you would go? On tours of all the elementary schools I’m considering for my kiddo, I’d love to see how the classrooms work when no parents are visibly present (hey, that is first on my priority list these days!)

5. What’s left on your “to do” list for this summer? Going to the children’s museum, running another 10K, finishing up the sundress I’ve had on my sewing machine forever, practicing the piano so that my teacher won’t be able to tell how much I slacked off all summer (ha) and many other things that I will never actually accomplish in my summer laziness.

Random silliness

So while I have been slacking off this summer, my garden definitely has not. Soon I am going to have crookneck squash coming out of my ears. When I pulled the conjoined one out of the garden, I got all cheesy with dh and told him, “Look, it’s like us.” (gag). To which he replied, “Oh, I was thinking it looked like a squash butt.” And then we laughed like a pair of loons. Well matched, we are.

In other news, Scout (the dog) is doing fine. Thank you for all your kind words. And in the sweetest gesture ever, the guy who accidentally ran into him stopped at our house the other day with a card and a bag of doggy treats. And I was just bemoaning the state of my neighborhood, serves me right.

The dutchkid is eating up every minute of swimming lessons, this is our second session of the summer. It’s a little tedious sometimes because we’re doing daily lessons this time around (just getting up, out of bed and ready each morning cramps my summer laziness) but it’s amazing to see her progress. I find it mildly amusing that she now knows how to do a rudimentary backstroke, the breaststroke kick and is working on her crawl stroke while her mother can’t even go underwater without plugging her nose.

Oh, and I am ready for school to start. My own, mostly, but the dutchkid is ready too. Sometimes I really have to remind myself to enjoy the season we’re in at the moment. Are you ready for summer to be over or are you still savoring it?

In the category of “stupidest things

I have ever done.”

Last night I decided to do some work in our front yard. My older lab desperately wanted to come with me. He’s very well trained, thanks to my dh, and many times we have him off leash because he obeys voice commands.

I’m rationalizing, can’t you tell?

I can’t even begin to tell you how sickening the sound was. But mostly I think it was the sound of my own screaming.

He is fine. He’s limping, but the vet said we were very lucky. Thank God we live near a stop light, so the car was slowing down anyway. Thank God he practically ran into the car instead of being directly hit by it.

My neighbor said she saw a fox across the street from our house, and that’s probably why he ran out. It’s taken me about 24 hours to be able to talk about it without bursting into tears. I would have never forgiven myself if something happened to him.

So here’s my PSA for today: keep your dog on a leash when you’re in the vicinity of cars. Even if they have a gold star in the heeling department. You just. never. know.

The Bright Side

We met up with some friends this week at the farmer’s market. Which was fun… excepting that I hadn’t realized that this would be the last time we would see them together as a family, since my friend’s husband is deploying.

You can really tell that deployments seem to come in waves. My dh is leaving on a different schedule than most of the friends I have here, which is good and bad in itself. Of course I’m glad to have him home yet, but I feel guilty somehow. I would much rather suffer together. And conversely, a year from now when all their husbands are coming home, mine won’t even be close to being done. That’s hard, too.

So I thought I would join the crowd (since I’ve seen a lot of these lately) and write my own list of things I appreciate about deployment. What’s always funny to me is how similar many of them are! Here we go:

1) I GET THE iPHONE! (ok, ok, so I’ve mentioned this one just a few times before)

2) The extra money (for any civilian readers, during a deployment military pay isn’t taxed, and the service member receives extra pay. Of course these things have names like “hostile fire pay” and “family separation allowance” which I really don’t like to think about)

3) I am a night owl, and dh is a morning person/ light sleeper. I love being able to stay up until all hours of the night and do whatever I want (and relatively loudly).

4) I gleefully leave all the lights on (his pet peeve)

5) If I want to eat mac and cheese with the dutchkid for dinner or Nutella on toast no one asks me what food group that is.

6) I am really looking forward to trying out Netflix (which I’ve never done before).

7) I lose weight while under stress, and I have a good 5-10 pounds I can live without.

8 ) Vacations back home to see my family that do not involve intense negotiations on who we will have time to see.

That’s all I have on my list at the moment, but I’m sure I will add to it as it gets closer. Sadly sometimes these lists make me think of all the things I will miss, but those things can go without saying for now.

The Great School Debate

Just when I thought choosing a preschool was hard enough, now I’m mired in thoughts about kindergarten. The dutchkid has a late birthday, so she is not starting kindergarten until fall of next year. Leave it to me to worry ahead of time.

I think this has been on my mind mostly because unless I make a decision before dh leaves, I will have to figure it out on my own. The next school year will have started before he comes home. And in case you haven’t guessed by the fact that I blog, I sometimes need to talk something into the ground to process it. I just can’t see myself doing that long distance via short phone calls. So school research it is.

I graduated from a Christian school, as did my dh. So for the longest time I figured that a private school would be the route we would go. I’m still leaning strongly in that direction. BUT (you knew there was one, didn’t you)… it is looking very likely that we will be moving after her kindy year. Private education is far, far from inexpensive. I look at the price tag and wonder to myself if it would really be worth it. My cheap frugal dh definitely wonders. Would one year of a good public school be so terrible? Besides, plenty of Christian families choose to send their children to public school.

If I knew we were staying, I would in all likelihood put her in a Christian school simply for continuity. I value Christian education because ideally I want the teachers that influence the dutchkid to share the values that we have. Plus, as my mother reminded me today, I also want a community of parents that has the same values, particularly when you’re talking about parenting teenagers (aka holding them accountable and breaking up the parties). However, I’m not sure that those things come into play so much when you’re talking about a 5 year old. And there are never any guarantees, I found out today that a teacher at my former high school was just arrested for having a sexual relationship with one of his students.

There’s a public school here we’re seriously considering. It’s small, requires uniforms and parent participation, and it’s year-round. Their test scores are some of the best in my district. The kicker is that it’s not in what anyone would consider a nice neighborhood and the majority of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Which brings up some things I don’t particularly care to admit… (and I’m sure I’m going to get some outraged comments on this, but I’m trying to be honest). Like the fact that I have somehow become a private-school educated snob. As my dh sniped at me, “What, you don’t want her mixing with the peasants?” I could try to go out of district (they do “school of choice” here) but the test scores aren’t really any better, and the schools are triple the size. It seems wrong even to snobby old me to choose a school because the parents have more money.

As of right now, dh thinks we should give it a try. We could always pull her out and enroll in a private school if it was truly hideous. If the Army sees fit to let us stay here then we would probably switch her to a Christian school at some point before she reached middle school. If we move then I’ll get to make this decision all over again!

Sigh. It’s just hard. Mostly, I feel very fortunate that I have the means to choose. I know a little bit about the choices some of you have made (homeschool, Christian school, independent school) but I would love to know how you figured out that choice was right for you. Others of you I have no idea what your opinion is on the subject. What do you think?

Greetings

from the land of summer vacation. We are on our way home today… I can’t tell you how glad I am about that. Overall it was a good trip, with more moments of relaxation than I had anticipated in the rush of seeing many, many family members and friends.

Unfortunately, I have been battling some sort of cough/maybe bronchitis since we left and I am just plain weary. I think sleeping in my own bed will do me some good. Bring on the airport shuffle.

Hope you have all been well, it feels like I have a lot of catching up to do!