minuss

Aloha 'Oe

We had a layover at San Francisco this afternoon on our way from Honolulu to San Diego.  It was about 3pm Pacific time and I turned to Zac and said, "It's no wonder I'm hungry, it's noon back home."  Zac looked at me for a moment and then I realized that Hawaii isn't our "home" anymore.  It gave me a lump in my throat, but I kept it together.  

Tonight we're crashed out in a Days Inn near the San Diego airport.  We're getting up tomorrow morning to meet with our realtor to go look at houses for a few hours in the morning and then tomorrow afternoon we're on a plane, heading to Minneapolis.  We'll spend the weekend there and then my father, Lincoln, Zac and I will drive down to Nebraska.  It will be good to see our families.  Zac and I were talking about it and we think the last time we saw our families was last November/December.  It doesn't seem like it has been a year, but it very well could be.  Time seems to fly by.

I'm pretty much running on fumes at this point.  It has been a week filled with restless sleep and poor eating habits.  I've got a nagging headache, knots in my neck and shoulders, recurrent nausea and an over-all sense of being stressed to the max.  (No, I'm not pregnant.)  Tonight is the first night that I'm thinking that I might be able to get a decent night's sleep.  The sleep deprivation really started on Sunday night, knowing that in the morning the moving company would be there to pack us out.  

Monday morning the movers arrived around 8:30.  There were four of them and the lead mover, "T", did a quick walk-through with us to see what he and his guys were working with.  He was a little stunned to see that we didn't have a dining room set or a couch.  Our dining room set had been deteriorating over the years to the point where there were only three remaining chairs and the legs were barely keeping the thing up.  We decided that it was okay to get rid of it.  We sold our couch to some friends of ours.  We liked our couch, but in hindsight we would have picked something different.  We got a few good years out of it and we know the new owners will enjoy falling asleep on it as much as we did.

After T did his walk-through he told that even though we were scheduled for a two-day pack out that his crew could easily pack us up in one day.  We told him that we would like that as it would give us a little more time to clean the house and give our remaining food away.  During the packing , there were a few closets in the house that I affixed "Please do not pack" signs to.  Movers are notorious for packing everything they find.  Everything.  I have heard more than one story where they've packed up garbage cans - with the garbage still in them.  That must have smelled terrific two months down the road when the families opened them up.  I heard from another family that the movers started wrapping up a small dog kennel before they realized that the dog was actually inside of it.  So in the interest of good communication, I made signs to protect our stuff.  We had our packed luggage that needed to stay with us, plus some food in the pantry.  Apparently my signs did the job as everything that I marked stayed put.

They started at 8:30 and they were done by 3:30, which was really quite remarkable.  Then it was just Zac, me and the dogs left in a very naked house.  We spent a couple of hours cleaning the upstairs and then borrowed an air mattress from a friend to sleep on.  The Navy will actually pay for part of a hotel so those last few nights you have a place to stay, but almost all the hotels on Oahu are down in Waikiki and we didn't want to be driving back and forth getting the house cleaned out.  Looking back, we would have checked out of housing a couple of days earlier and stayed in the hotel for a night or two before leaving.  That would have meant our last couple of days in Hawaii would have been relaxing and enjoying paradise instead of vacuuming, mopping and running errands.  Eh, live and learn.  Monday night I was relieved that the pack out was done, but I knew we still had a lot to do.

Tuesday Zac and I cleaned the house some more and ran a few moving-out errands like turning in the cable box.  We decided that we were going to do a walk-away, where we just pay the flat fee to the housing company to clean the place when we leave, but there were still some things that needed to be done to get it up to a walk-away standard.  We also spent Tuesday distributing food from the pantry and fridge to our friends.  Food is so expensive in Hawaii that you really don't want to waste anything.  A pound of butter cost almost $3.50 at the commissary and it can be more than $5 at regular grocers. You don't waste $5 butter.  We also had to pack all of the bags we were going to be taking with us on the plane.  We were allowed four free bags per person since we were traveling on active duty PCS orders.  Since we may be living out of these bags for a couple of months, we wanted to make sure we had plenty of stuff with us.  A tired Zac

Wednesday morning we had to take the dogs over to our friend's house so we could have the house empty for the final inspection with the housing company.  They said that they would be there at some point between 8-noon.  It's really, really, really boring sitting in an empty house waiting for someone.  Finally the inspector arrived at 9:45.  We passed, headed over to the office to pay our final bill, and ran to the post office to mail some last packages back to the mainland.  Then we headed up to a different friend's house to drop off all of our luggage.  We were going to spend the night at her house so she could drive us to the airport the next morning.  Next we went to the harbor to drop off the car for shipment.  Then back to our friend's.  *sigh*  So much running around.  We took showers and hung out at her house for a couple of hours, trying to unwind.  We went to dinner with a group of friends one last time and crawled into bed, knowing that we'd have to be up at 4:15 the next morning to get to the airport on time.

Another was another restless, sleepless night but Thursday morning found us watching the sun rise as we took off from Honolulu International airport.  I couldn't help it - tears spilled out as I watched the island get smaller.  I loved my time on the island.  Four years ago, I never would have thought I would live in a place like Hawaii.  I never would have thought that I would have become a scuba diver and swim with manta rays and sea turtles.  I never would have thought I'd look at the stars from the top of a volcano.  I never would have thought I'd live close enough to Australia to make it a reasonable vacation destination.  I never would have thought I'd eat sushi and like it.  (Well, some of it.)  I never would have thought I would love the beach as much as I do.  As excited as I am about our new adventures, I was sad to be leaving.

I slept on and off on the flight to San Francisco, and then San Diego, but I'm still pretty wiped out.  I'm relieved that most of the heavy lifting is done at this point.  The purpose of the next three weeks is to relax and enjoy the company of our families.  I'm going to try and take this opportunity to de-stress.  Yes, I still have to get our dogs from Honolulu to San Diego, but I'm lucky that I've got great friends back on Oahu that are able to help me out with that.  It was sad to say goodbye to the pooches yesterday, but I know that I'll get to deal with all their dog hair soon enough.

And now, even though it's only 7:40pm back "home", it's time for bed.  Here's hoping for a restful night.

Loser induced anxiety

Zac and I were watching the Biggest Loser on tv the other night.  As I was watching the contestants working out and talking about nutrition, I could actually feel my stress level rise.  The next five weeks are going to be filled with socializing, eating out, alcohol, big meals with family and traveling.  Plus we're going to rarely be near a gym, not that we'd really have any time to go to one even if we were.  I hate this feeling of dread that's welling up inside me.

Zac and I try to be healthy.  I like to think we succeed more than we fail.  We try to eat balanced meals, we like to cook at home, we don't eat out too often, we try to exercise regularly and we have spent time learning about exercise and nutrition to help us make good choices.  Of course we're not militant about things - cheesecake is still Zac's birthday desert of choice and I'm never, ever going to turn down a glass of wine - but we're finding that as each year passes keeping those extra couple of pounds off is a little more work.

Part of Zac's job is to be physically fit.  Physical training (PT) is incorporated into part of his work day.  But even without command-led PT, Zac would be more dedicated to working out than I am.  He's plenty happy to go for a run or hit the gym.  Me?  I need someone to push me.  For awhile I had a workout buddy in  Bernadette.  Bernadette is a personal trainer so she had plenty of knowledge of what we should do each day and her personality made it fun to be at the gym, despite being sweaty and stinky and gross.  She'd tell me what to do and I'd do it.  When Bernadette and Ken moved I was lost as to what I should do at the gym.  I felt self-conscious going by myself.  I took a long break from the gym and just resigned myself to running as my primary (i.e. sole) form of exercise.  (I still hate running.  But that's for another time.)

I was in a rut and finally decided to call up one of Bernadette's personal trainer friends up at the gym where Bernadette used to work.  (Schofield - the Army base up the hill from where we live.)  I signed up for 11 sessions.  And then 11 more.  And then 11 more.  I would go once a week, so that's almost nine months of having a trainer.  And honestly?  I loved it.  I love the strength training.  I love how she'd mix in weights, TRX, Crossfit and other sorts of functional exercise.  I love not having to think about creating a workout and just following orders.  I love being challenged, knowing that I would have picked up a 15lb weight when she hands me a 20lb.  I love pushing out those last few reps, knowing that I would have stopped at 15 but I don't want to fail in front of my trainer so I push out the last five to get to 20.  That's just my mental make up - I won't (can't?) push myself when it comes to exercise.

My personal trainer up at Schofield gave me an awesome rate for our sessions and I highly doubt I'll find anything even close to that in San Diego.  I also don't know what gym I'll be going to.  Military gyms are free for me, but if we end up living 15-20 miles from one I'm not sure I'm going to get off my butt and go.  Paying for a gym membership might end up being the way I go, if it means that the gym just down the street.  But then again, I don't want to pay for a gym membership and then end up standing there in the middle of things, trying to figure out what the heck I need to be doing, getting frustrated and eventually giving up to go home.  You would think after months and months of working out with someone that I'd have a good idea of what to do.  You would be wrong.  I get that you're supposed to do legs, core, back (upper and lower), shoulders, biceps and triceps.  But so many of the exercises we did incorporated multiple muscle groups that I never really was sure if exercise X was an arm exercise or a core exercise.  And exercise Y?  Yeah, that could have been legs, but it could have been arms too.  With my luck I'd end up accidentally doing 10 arm exercises and only two legs.

I don't know why this is so hard for me, or why it causes me so much stress.  I guess I'll just always be one of those people that has to dish out money to have someone tell me what to do.  And frankly, if it keeps me going to the gym and keeps me in shape, it's money well spent.  But these next few weeks are going to be tough.  There's no doubt about that.  I'm just hoping that I'll still fit into my jeans when we pull into San Diego.