Driving Ships is Not Like Riding a Bike

I'm in the beginning throes of Department Head school at the Surface Warfare Officer School (SWOS) in beautiful Newport, RI.  This is the first time in... oh... about three years that I'm actually being a SWO again, minus our brief foray in Dahlgren, Virginia playing in our imaginary combat fighting an imaginary war.  At SWOS, they instruct you in "basic" SWO skills... like driving ships.

First off, driving ships is not like riding a bike.  I may have been the GQ OOD, or one of the most reliable OOD's on my last two ships, but you don't magically remember exactly how to drive a ship the moment you return to a bridge, especially a virtual bridge.  So far, we've gotten to spend three days driving a virtual ship during a virtual transit to three homeports I've never been to in real life... which brings me back to my motto as a young Ensign:

"Whether you miss it by a meter or miss it by a mile, the important thing is that you missed it."

Unless, of course, you're being evaluated by a civilian mariner.  In that case, you'll fail.

At least, though I was lucky enough to not be in one of the other groups who failed on the "real" evaluated exercise.  One classmate summarized what went wrong succinctly, "It was the softest grounding I've ever seen.  So soft in  fact, there was water under the keel."

So no matter what anyone else tells you, driving ships is NOT like riding a bike.

Adult Abandonment Okay, Child Abandonment Not So Much

Abandoning my husband on a regular basis was acceptable.  After all, he was an adult and just reverted to being a bachelor (minus the strip parties or dating) when I deployed or was underway.  This meant that he could walk around all day in his underwear and eat meals consisting of cereal, instant noodles, or pizza.  And compared to other spouses, his spending basically dropped to $20 a month.  It was a great deal!  All he had to do was clean up the pizza boxes before I got home.

But then I had kids.  And suddenly, it wasn't the same as abandoning just their Dad.  Now I abandoned them with their Dad... which meant they ate cereal, instant noodles, pizza, lunch meat, cottage cheese, and yogurt.  Just kidding.  That's what I feed them when Dad leaves us occasionally.

It has become harder to leave.  In fact, it has become so hard that while I was stationed at Dahlgren, VA for three months for school, I decided to drive nearly everyday between Annapolis and Dahlgren.  This also had to do with the fact that there was very little to do in Dahlgren.  (For those of you who are lucky enough to never have been stationed there, the main hang out spots are the local Italian restaurant that acts like the bar and the new Wal-Mart.)  Keep in mind that it was an hour and a half commute each way.  I loved my kids so much that I spent three hours in a car everyday just so I could eat dinner with them and tuck them into bed at night.  Because my kids are little night owls, it meant that I would usually get to spend an hour with them awake for every hour that I spent in a car.  Fortunately, there was another officer in my class who was in the same situation so we were able to split the mileage on our cars...

Now that I am up in Newport, RI completing six months of department head school, it's been harder.  After all, there's no way for me to come home every night for dinner and bedtime.  Instead, I'm racking up the airline miles on Southwest.  But every mile or minute spent in the airport is worth it for another minute playing, tickling, hugging, snuggling them.  It was worth the hundreds of dollars in the roundtrip ticket to watch Owen's face as he watched The Lion King for the first time or Anduin falling asleep against me after our shower before I could even finish drying her off.


But let's be honest.  Had it just been Niles...  I probably would have abandoned him.  After all, adult abandonment is okay, child(ren) abandonment is not.

Single Again (Sort of)

Niles:  Just because you are by yourself up in Newport, it doesn't mean you are completely single and have to go hit the clubs.

Me: Of course not.  I don't even know what I would do in a club.

***    ****   ***

And no kidding, not less than five hours later, I find myself in the Boom Boom Room in Newport.  First off, let me explain.  I didn't really intend for that to happen.  I had originally thought that my friends and I were going to go to dinner and then a movie.  Or at least, that's what I told Niles.  But somehow after hitting a bar, we decided to go to the Boom Boom Room.

For those of you (un)lucky enough to never have gone, let me set the scene for you.  It's the most bottom level in a very nice looking restaurant (white tablecloths, candles, wine glasses, coat check girl, nautical/Caribbean music playing upstairs, the type of place you wouldn't feel uncomfortable taking your grandmother for her 70th birthday).  Sure, there appears to be a lot of men who at first glance look like they're taking their daughters out... only for us to discover they're their wives...  Or maybe a lot of "cougars" out on the town, but in general, it was a much classier place on the upstairs.

And then you go downstairs to the Boom Boom Room.  It's painted in garish red and black stripes on the walls, where it's just lit enough that you can see the paint on the walls.  There is a rather large bouncer constantly checking unguraded drinks with a flashlight.  Despite it being thirty degrees outside, there are still plenty of twenty-somethings dressed like they just came from the Jersey Shore.  This is the closest Newport has to a club.  And despite the fact the dance floor is the size of our kitchen floor in the tiny historical house I am staying with a friend, there are maybe thirty people jammed on it dancing to club music.  (Side note: It took me a solid two hours after leaving the club for my hearing to return.  Made me miss the Hearing Conservation Program.)

So my next confession: Even when I was young and single (or maybe just not married since I've been dating Niles forever), I never felt wholly comfortable in a club.  But as a mom of two dressed in a daytime sweater dress, I felt especially uncool.  Maybe I needed to wear sunglasses at night like a couple of kids, or maybe I needed to find a geriatric husband, or maybe I needed to be a young bride dancing her wedding night away without her groom, to be fully comfortable hitting the "club".  

Or maybe I would never be.

But it was fun.

And I still have five months and three weeks to try to be comfortable at the Boom Boom Room.

Mommy Hair is Really SWO Hair...

Since I've had to turn in my laptop, I've been without a real keyboard which has cut down significantly on my ability to write entries so I know I'm pretty behind.  But for now, here's a short musing and revelation I have reached recently:

"Mommy hair" is really "SWO hair".

This is what I mean.  After what seems like four ridiculously long years, I was finally able to grow out my short bob to pretty, wavy, down to the middle of my back hair.  It's nice, thick, luxurious, and has the capacity to look like Victoria's Secret runway model/artfully toussled "bedhead" when it's down.  But that's the problem, as many new moms of young kids, you never wear it down.  If it's down, it's more likely to be pulled, yanked, or get covered by whatever food your child now flinging. Recently, Owen and Anduin have used it as a handhold (!) while trying to climb me.  With that being said, I always wear it up and out of the way, usually in a nice little bun...

Which is exactly how I wear my hair as a SWO while in uniform.

Arrgh.

So I've been debating about cutting my hair short (just like any new mom does) and basically any female SWO who has actually tried to calculate how much more sleep she could have gotten on a deployment if she didn't have to spend those additional minutes of putting her hair every time she took a nap (or slept, but really four or five hours is not a night of sleep, it's a long-ish nap).  It's cute, it's low maintenance, it's...

Exactly what new moms and female SWOs do.

Arrgh.  Which is exactly what I do NOT want to do.

So next time you see me on a ship with bags under my eyes, it's because of my vanity for my long hair.  And I'll do my best to enjoy it for the five minutes a day that I wear it down (usually right before I go to sleep and immediately upon waking up). 

Owen - The Spice Ninja

By all indications, Owen will grow up be a chef... a chef who is not afraid of seasoning, spices, and flavor.  He has long pulled a chair up to the stove to cook with Niles and me.  At this point, we're just trying to make sure he's entertained enough to not catch himself (or anything else) on fire.  It was a sad moment when I realized he DID know how to turn on the gas burners.

Once he's got his pot of "food" (meaning extra scraps of what I'm cooking minus raw meat) "cooking" (meaning he's stirring it with a large wooden spoon, rubber spatula, whisk, or his chosen culinary tool), he usually will then push the bar stool over to the spice drawer to choose appropriate seasonings.

Unfortunately, his favorite spices to add seem to be: red curry, onion powder, and garlic powder.  And he only knows one amount: half of the container or whenever I stop him, whichever happens first.  Other than going through an outrageous amount of these seasonings, the main problem is this:

He' s a spice ninja.

He'll add these items to your food when you are not expecting it.  It's one thing for him to season foods under my supervision.  It's quite another to do it when we're not watching.  Beware of leaving open containers of food on the counter or items bubbling away on the stove at our house.

True story: I was putting away leftover curried beef with spinach and rice into a tupperware container, turned my back to take care of something, and then popped the lid back on.  The next day, I wondered why the normally sweet curry burned the roof of my mouth.  Then I realized, I had been a victim of Owen the Spice Ninja.

Other victims of the Spice Ninja include: two separate occasions of boxed macaroni and cheese, scrambled eggs, stir-frys, pasta with (now) garlic sauce, (now) garlic mashed potatoes.

So in case you have a spice ninja on your hands, here's my best advice:

- give up trying to get the seasoning out of the dish.  Powders are impossible to remove
- adding sour cream and whole milk to heavily curried macaroni and cheese makes it a creamy, spicy, Indian influenced dish
- adding sweetness (honey, sugar) will help cut through some of the heat
- adding more butter to overly garlic/oniony flavored items makes it seem almost intentional

Otherwise, lock up your spice drawer while you still can.

Owen the Spice Ninja strikes Niles' dry rub

The Law of Inertia (and small children)

Okay, so I have just enough physics education to be dangerous.  The Law of Inertia, when applied to small children, every parent though is familiar with even if they don't recognize it in those terms.  I'm just going to plagiarize the rules of physics to put it further into words. 

The Law of Inertia according to Wikipedia:
"In common usage the term "inertia" may refer to an object's "amount of resistance to change in velocity" (which is quantified by its mass), or sometimes to its momentum, depending on the context."

Here's the equation for momentum:
p = mv

Now tailored for small children:
where p equals your ability to actually get your kids out the door by a certain time
where m = the amount of resistance your child provides by taking thirty times as long to do something that normally takes them two seconds or the ability to break down into an unexpected (completely unnecessary) tantrum
and where v = the speed you actually need to get out the door to make some deadline or appointment

And yes, the relationship is inversely proportional... Meaning the sooner you need to actually get out the door (smaller v), the harder your children makes it for you to get out the door on time (gigantic m).

And yes, generally, p is constant, meaning:
1. If it doesn't matter, you'll get out the door with little mess and probably on time.
2. If you are going to be embarrassed by being that parent who shows up twenty minutes late for appointment and throws the entire day's worth of appointments into a tizzy, you're never going to make it there on time.

So in the end, I salute any and all parents who make it to appointments on time (or even somehow early!) with their kids.

The Great Cookie Heist of November 2012

There is a reason why when I leave to go to work, I kiss the kids and tell them, "Don't cause too much chaos and destruction."  They're incredibly smart... and devious... and have a terrible sweet tooth.  The last part is really my doing.  So a couple of weeks ago, the Great Cookie Heist of 2012 happened...  I can only imagine this is what went through their minds:

Owen: Mom gone out of country, Dad distracted by IPAD.  Check.

Anduin: I'll continue to lull Dad into a further sense of false security by playing nearby and making obnoxiously loud, happy baby sounds while playing noisily with my toys.

Owen: Hmm...  The only chair that can reach the upper cabinets where Dad's stashed the boxes of Girl Scout Cookies is the bar stool...

Owen moves one of the kitchen bar stools to the upper pantry.  He climbs on top and carefully opens the upper cabinet.  He then proceeds to search amongst the boxes of dry goods...

Owen: Hmm....  Tagalongs are in the red box...  That's just a box of oatmeal Mom keeps trying to feed me...  A-ha!  Samoas!  Chocolate drizzled, caramel coated coconut goodness in the purple box!  That's the one.

Owen grabs the box, proceeds to climb down the bar stool, and wanders over to the living room carpet where Anduin's playing loudly and happily.  He then proceeds to open the box, open the plastic wrapping, and dump the entire contents of the box of Girl Scout cookies in front of Anduin.  Anduin squeals happily as she and her brother hurriedly stuff as many Samoas as they can into their mouths before Dad notices.

Dad only notices after half the box is gone.

And now I know why there were no Samoas waiting for me when I got back...

At least the kids are sharing.