Planning On Prozac

Wow.

Time is slipping by like sand through my fingers.

The summer is almost over but it feels like, here, it never really even got started. We have spent most of the summer preparing for the move...or should I say, series of moves.

Dillon moved permanently, on Tuesday, the 27th, back home to Indiana with my parents. He will begin school there and probably finish out the sememster before moving again, to DC.

Noodle and I are joining him in the next 2 weeks to enroll her in school and wait for Tater to finish up his job here and return to the states as well.

.....It occurs to me here, that I haven't been very forthcoming with our plans for the near future, so here it is, in the nutshell.....

We must leave Japan in November.

Tater's new job will be in DC. But not until April. From January to March he must be in Norfolk. That leaves the kids and I in a state of limbo from November until January at the earliest, April at the latest.

So we decided to send them home to start school in Indiana. Dillon in July, so he can start football practice. Noodle and I in August, in time for her to get over jet-lag before the first day of school. Hopefully, I will come back out here at the end of October for about 3 weeks to pack up the house and say goodbye for real, and then Tater and I will head, separately, to San Diego to pick up our car and drive it across the country.

If all goes according to plan, we will buy a house in DC in early December, the kids and I will move in, and he will go to Norfolk until March...

If all goes according to plan.

So now I have just over 2 weeks to organize my life for the next 5-9 months, during which we will be living out of our suitcases. Think it can be done? Without my needing Prozac?

Annie, Day One Through Three

So my Girlfriend, Annie, made it up from Okinawa last Saturday. Tater and I drove up to Yokota to pick her up and since, we've been running all around the Kanto Plain.

Yesterday, we went to Kamakura to see the temples and Big Buddha down there. Annie needed some new pictures, and I think we got some really nice ones. We ended up walking 7 miles and were all beat last night.

Monday we went to Yokohama and shopped all around Landmark Tower and Queen's Plaza. She got new pictures of the Giant Ferris wheel and the really old ship (forget the name...).

Sunday was about 90 degrees, so we tried to make it a relax day and go to the pool, but after we got all ready and lotioned-up and headed out, we turned the corner from my street and ran headlong into the nastiest, blackest, scariest cloud we'd ever seen. But ever the optimist, despite the meager sprinkles on the windshield, we forged on and decided to eat some lunch first at Taco Bell. 'Cause SURELY that nasty black cloud wasn't coming our way... While in the Food Court, the sprinkles turned to torrents...cold torrents, which we had to sprint through to get back to the car. Then the torrents turned into pea-sized hail, which then turned into marble-sized hail by the time we got home. And the temperature was 69 degrees.

Two hours later, the sun came out, the temperature rose, and people were headed back to the pool. But not us. We had whipped up a batch of Margaritas and started cooking dinner, and heading out to the pool just didn't seem prudent any more. Regardless, we had fun anyway. Noodle, not-so-much, since she didn't have the added boost of a Margarita...

Boogers and Fillings and Flights, Oh MY!

A special entry (when I should be cooking and cleaning for Happy Hour tonight) for my Girlfriend, Bronwyn...

So. A couple of weeks ago, I got a summer cold. (Which, by the way, is an oxymoron.*) It has morphed into a sinus infection, and I have the same slime that was on Ghostbusters colonizing in my head. (Ewww.)

**Another oxymoron: Miraclesuit. If you're so big that you need a "miracle", then maybe a swimsuit's not the answer.

I'm just sayin'.

And. Yesterday I was goofing off all day long and never really ate anything, until I did a drive-by on a tube of Pringles. I ate one. ONE. And broke a cusp off a back molar. It was 4:10pm. Dental closes at 4pm. The duty dentist didn't want to deal with it and asked me to call back at 7:15 this morning. Having not eaten anything all day, I was hungry, and cranky and needed a margarita. But with all the cold involved in frozen beverages, I didn't think that was a good idea and went and got take-out mashed potatoes from Smokey's. (Again, Ewww.)

Anyway. Fastforward to 7:15am They tried to make me an appointment for NEXT MONDAY at 10:15am. OR, if I didn't like that option, I could just come into the Dental Clinic and wait around until someone cancelled an appointment and they would work me in. Well, I was starving, and bitchy, and kept saying things like, "So you want me to come in there now, and sit around until what? 10:30? 2:30? maybe 3:30? until maybe someone cancels an appointment , and then maybe someone can see me?" Do you know what her reply was?

"Well, surely someone can see you, and if not, it's no problem to take you after hours at 4."

"After hours! I tried that yesterday! They wouldn't see me!" She asked me if I knew why.

She must have sensed I was near the breaking point and suggested that I wait at home and they would call me if someone cancelled their appointment. (FYI: I live 3 (THREE) minutes away from the clinic.)

Sold! They called at 9:20, I was back home at 10:20. They made it one massive filling and I'll have to have it crowned when we get back stateside.

My girlfriend, Annie, who lives on Okinawa, has been trying to catch a MAC (civilian translation: free) flight up here for the last 2 days. She has been to her Air Terminal 3 times so far, and I'm as-I-type waiting for a call from her telling me whether or not she got on the most recent one. There's one more tomorrow morning.

Keep your fingers crossed...