July 2014 – robinchartier

Since you’ve been gone . . .

Living overseas for the past 3.5 years has left me in a bit of a pop-culture vacuum. Thanks to the internet I still have some cultural literacy, but certain events have escaped my attention. Like the whole Casey Anthony trial. I hear it was a thing, like people actually watched it on TV, OJ Style. Over here? Nothing. I think I saw a headline that she was found not guilty. Barely a blip on my radar.

Or my recent discovery, the movie Pitch Perfect. I came across it last week while flipping channels on the TV and then watched it a bazillion times thinking I had found the next Breakfast Club only to have everyone I told about it say, “Oh yeah. That’s so 2012.” I googled it. Sure enough. And they’re already filming a sequel. Better late than never I guess.

Anyway, it’s been our movie of the summer — ok, of the past week until the TV remote went missing and the DVR remote broke right before Eid so we haven’t been able to watch TV (no one works over Eid). Yes, it’s been that kind of summer.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s not kid appropriate. There is innuendo right and left and it’s about college a’cappella groups in competition so yeah, cute, but not for kids. Except mine have seen it. And can quote it. Let’s pretend my four year old didn’t ask what a “slut” was. But it’s hilarious and she stays up until midnight watching whatever I watch so when else am I supposed to get quality “me time”?

I figure if I survived Annie (watching it as an adult I was horrified by Ms Hannigan’s lecherous ways, not to mention the overt alcoholism I overlooked as a kid) or Grease (Greased Lightning lyrics anyone?!) then hopefully she’ll remember the movie for the cute singing and not for the herpes.

Because of this scene, my kids have been singing Since You’ve Been Gone (and mimicking various parts of the auditions) and it made me think of all the things that have happened since Josh has been gone. He asked me yesterday about the book club that I wrote about in a previous blog post, “I didn’t know you were in a book club . . .” Yep, because that happened since you’ve been gone.

Since you’ve been gone . . .

one child turned 4, another turned 10 and the cat turned one.

I coordinated the summer sunday school teaching roster, taught twice myself and am now responsible for the fall schedule

the boys have gotten 5 new T-shirts for the 5 different sports they’ve played at camp (no need to buy new clothes for school!)

Camille has asked for ice cream from the Baskin Robbins on base exactly 3,416 times and gotten it twice.

the car registration expired. The car insurance expired. The base pass expired.

my friends who left the island to go back to the US for summer vacation have now retuned.

your son has been working 25 hours a week and has more money in his account than I do.

Ramadan 2014 has come and gone.

the base has been raising the temperatures in the common areas to “save energy.”

I’ve sweated enough to fill our pool twice over (see above point about saving energy).

Calvin has gotten braces and already been back to the orthodontist for a broken wire.

we’ve been staying up late and sleeping in until 11.

the dog has been just as nutty as always.

we’ve missed you like we always do.

Arabian Nights

I had this title in mind for a post about our mid-Ramadan trip to the waterpark (at night since that’s when things are open during the month of Ramadan), but I’m trying to stay current and caught up on life so I’ll hopefully get to that one later this week and label it Part 2.

This is our 4th Ramadan and the least frustrating one yet. I think because I’ve given up trying to make Ramadan into something else. I didn’t even try to get anything accomplished (other than Calvin’s braces, which reinforced the idea of “don’t try to do anything during Ramadan”). The boys have had sports camps on base every day so I’m there for at least 2 hours while they run around the gym playing dodgeball, basketball, soccer or floor hockey and Camille and I have lunch, shop in the NEX, and hang out with the other refugee wives who are killing time with nowhere else to go. It’s been a great time to meet new people and get to know old friends better. Our kids eat Taco Bell tacos, we sip iced tea and cokes (which we can’t do if we’re off base unless we’re at home), and stay out of the heat. By the time the kids are done, I’ve had my human contact for the day and even feel mildly productive since I’ve gotten us all out of the house so I head home satisfied and spend the rest of the afternoon/evening reading, knitting and watching TV guilt free.

The other great thing about this Ramadan is the boys started going to the park near our house in the evenings to practice soccer and basketball. While there, they made some friends from the neighborhood and now the boys either plan to meet each other at the park at a particular time or our doorbell rings and it’s a group of kids asking for Carter and Caleb to come play.

This sight makes me happy. It only took 2 years.

It’s super hot and sweaty out. Dripping weather. We lasted less than 30 minutes. The boys often stay for 2 hours and come home red-faced and panting.

While the younger boys are playing and the girl is swinging, Calvin is playing basketball with about 20 Filipino men. Seriously. They play every evening and I told Calvin that if he wanted a shot at making the school basketball team he needed to be playing and practicing every day. One day he got up the nerve to join in and he’s been playing about 3 to 4 nights a week for the past month.

He and a friend are waiting for “next” though it’s a bit frustrating for them at times because the way this group plays pickup isn’t always logical or orderly. Sometimes the people just arriving get automatic next, other times times it’s Filipinos only, and sometimes they have no problem getting into the game. I told him to keep trying and as he plays more often and gets better (and taller!) he’ll be in high demand.

Overall, it’s been a very successful Ramadan for all of us.

This is my Ramadan victory tea. Our month was up on Sunday night so Eid Mubarak and happy drinking!

My map

I had to pick up more of my medicine (Zoloft) yesterday. It’s kind of a pain to keep that sucker refilled. It seems as soon as I get a new month of pills, it’s practically time to to phone
in the refill and then I have to find the bottle with the phone number for the base pharmacy and whoops, I’m out of refills and I have to make an appointment to
see a doctor who doesn’t know me so they can have me fill out the
“how depressed are you?” form which shows that I’m clearly not
depressed at all because, guess what? The medicine works! Then the
doctor inputs the magic permission to keep me stocked up for another
few months. Five minutes in the office in exchange for another 6 months of sanity. God Bless the rare breed of doctor who gives me more than
6 months (refilled 30 days at a time) in-between visits. I’ve been
taking it for 9 years, you’d think I could get a break.

I started thinking about all this because a friend recently asked me, “Do you have to be on it for the rest of your life?”

Do I have to be? No.

Could I? Sure.

Will I? I’m undecided . . .

So what does this have to do with a
map? I’m in a reading group with other writers where we read books about writing and discuss them. In one book the author, talking about antidepressants, said, “when we drug ourselves to blot out our soul’s call . . .” meaning that that a true artist/writer/creative is most effective only in an unaltered state. You know, the old myth that the tortured artist creates the most beautiful work out of his or her pain. My friend disagreed with his assessment citing several
people she knew who wouldn’t be functional in any practical way,
not to mention creative way if not for medication. (Yes ma’am! That’s me.) I would be one of those people. In those days I could barely scribble prayers on scraps of paper. Stringing together thoughts and ideas for an audience would be unimaginable, partly because I couldn’t sit down for more than 5 minutes at a time without feeling like I was going to jump out of my skin and partly because I couldn’t think about anything beyond the racing thoughts inside my head. Taking medicine, to use the words of the author, gave my soul its voice.

I’m doing great right now so technically I could stop taking medicine (gradually decreasing my dosage until it’s out of my system completely). That’s where the map analogy comes in. I don’t have a
good natural sense of direction. If I’m in familiar territory, I can
navigate with ease, never getting lost, and never think about looking at a map. But drop me into a strange neighborhood and I get so turned around I
might never find my way out. It’s the same thing with my brain. When
things are good and all is normal I can cruise along medication free,
but if I hit a few bumps in the road, my brain gets lost and can’t
find its way back to normal.

The decision for me to continue medication is like traveling with a GPS system. I don’t always need it, but it keeps me
on track so I don’t get lost. Not everyone needs a GPS. I clearly do, both literally and figuratively. Sure, I could wait until I get lost and then pull out the map to try and get back on track, but usually by that time I’m pretty far off course and it takes much longer to get back on the right roads. I save my entire family a lot of time, sorrow, and frustration by not getting lost in the first place.

I talk about my brain on drugs (any questions?) as often as I can because I know the horror of being lost and not having a map and not knowing a map even existed for the places I found myself. Even today, 10 years later, I hear things every now and then from other Christians that might make me second guess my decision to take “happy pills” if I didn’t know better and hadn’t experienced it for myself. I’m thankful that I’m confident and I’ll keep talking about my experience even when I’m sick of hearing myself talk about the subject because some people out there need maps and think there’s something wrong with them because other people don’t need maps. Well, there is something wrong with us, but with a map to get back on track, you’ll hardly remember you were ever lost.

Independence

I’ve figured out the secret to raising independent kids — have more
children than you can reasonably manage on your own and then you have no
choice but to make them do things for themselves. Sink or swim! The kids are
getting loads of practice this summer. Yesterday I made Calvin call
the orthodontist because the rubberbands for his braces were too big
and kept popping off. (Yes, he got braces. I keep meaning to write a post about that experience.) I had reached my limit of doctors, dentists,
orthodontists, and receptionists so I gave him the business card and
told him to figure it out. The receptionist said he could come in on a particular afternoon, but to double check that he was putting them on the correct brackets. It took Calvin a mirror and about 5 minutes to figure out that he had been trying to loop them around a bracket that didn’t have a hook. Yay for self sufficiency!

I also make the two younger boys walk themselves to and
from sports camp on base because it’s way too hot to be walking around outside (please ignore the fact that they are walking outside) and even though they are technically supposed to be signed in and
out, Carter is 12 and he can handle walking his brother back and
forth. (I did get permission from the director on the first day so it’s not like I’m completely neglectful.) Besides, one day Camille and I started walking over to the gym
to meet them and 100 yards in Camille put her foot down and declared
it was “too hot to walk!” so we retreated to the air conditioned
halls of the main base building and sipped our drinks while we waited for the boys to arrive, all hot and sweaty.

The other night Carter wanted shwarma for dinner so I
made him find the phone number and call for delivery. I’ve also adopted an “every man for himself” approach to dinner since Josh is gone. They’re happy eating cereal, apples, and bagels and cream cheese (When the Paleo is away, the carbs come out to play!).

When we go to base
for lunch they all want different things from the food court so I’ve started handing over my debit card and tell them to go order what they want and sign their
names to the receipt. It saves me from having to stand in 3 different food lines when I could be sitting down with my lunch and an iced tea. Right before Josh left they all got their own bank accounts with their own debit cards so they can even pay for their own food if I’m not buying snacks that day and they don’t want to wait the 10 minutes to drive home where they can get lunch for free.

And when they have places to be? They better set
their alarm clocks and let me know when they want to leave. Bedtimes?
Ain’t nobody got time for that. I told them they should go to bed at midnight and said “Adios,” to them an hour ago.

Really, it just takes a bit of ingenuity and a fair helping of laziness and you can even teach a 4 year old how to buy her own bottle of water or her own Taco Bell combo meal (the #3 with 3 tacos and mild sauce).

Second Class Citizen, part 2

Not that this is really putting a cramp in my social life or anything, but it’s the principle of the matter . . .

On base, alcohol is sold in the liquor store and in the grocery store, but it’s not as easy as going in, selecting your bottles, and plunking some money down on the counter. Alcohol purchases are limited using a points system, with individuals getting a certain amount of points per month, based on rank. I think a 6 pack of beer is 1 point, a bottle of vodka or tequila is 5 points, etc. I think as a Major Josh gets 25 points per month and as his dependent I get another 25. (At those limits, why bother having a points system anyway?!) He might get more than that, but I’ve never bothered to keep track because we don’t go through that much tequila and triple sec in any given month. More like a bottle every few months and a bottle of wine here or there.

Besides, using the points is a pain because you go through the checkout line, show your ID and then they have to leave the register to go look your name up in a different computer system to verify and deduct your points all while holding up the people in the line behind you. I don’t do things that are a pain so I don’t ever buy alcohol. Today I was standing in line behind a sailor who had just arrived on the island who was trying to buy a 6 pack of beer. The cashier had to tell him that since he hadn’t registered for the points system yet he wasn’t allowed to purchase alcohol. Poor guy. And then I realized that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t purchase alcohol either since my ID isn’t registered in the system. It requires a copy of your orders and the permission expires when your orders expire. Since we’ve extended, we’re on new orders. I guess Ramadan is a dry month for me after all.

I’m 40 years old, responsible for the lives of 4 humans and 2 animals while my husband is deployed to another foreign country while we’re here in this foreign country, but I can’t even buy a wine cooler. (Yes, I know technically I could jump through hoops to get into the system again, but it’s funnier this way.)