Starting with the present

Isak is having a sleepover at Niki’s while Anja is at her second swim meet - her first pentathlon - while I’m at home, catching up on some sleep and rest.  While I feel bad for not being at her meet, after her last meet coupled with the last few weeks of work, I’m beat.  And I have a birthday party to go to today that involves driving an hour each way and as tired as I was, that would probably have been a dangerous prospect if I hadn’t gotten more sleep.

So yeah, work.  I’ve settled into work and am enjoying it very much.  I work with a great group of people, I’m getting involved with the ship, and I finally feel like this is why I reenlisted.  That said, everything is not roses:  my day is extremely long - I’m up at 3:45, out of the house by 4:30 for a 20 minute drive to the base and a 2 hour ferry ride to the ship.  We work our butts off until 3:30, when I do the ferry and drive back home, finishing my day around 6:00pm.  And those hours in between are crazy busy, and while I do like the pace, sometimes it’s frustrating because there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done.  My job is one thing; I can handle the stuff in the office just fine.  It’s that we’re in the shipyard getting lots of repairs, upgrades, etc. and we’re trying to get ready to get OUT of the shipyards and go back out to sea.  That involves lots of training, meetings, drills, exams, and what is probably the most frustrating is the attitude of many of the people on the ship.

I’ve been disappointed with my peers.  There are a handful of very strong ones who have good attitudes and are willing to help other people out, but for every one of them there are 10 people who are lazy, negative, and some bordering on incompetent.  Them’s fightin’ words, I know, but really…more than once, I have been astounded by some of the things I’ve seen and/or heard.

Anyway…I’m finally getting into my own groove and as long as I’m surrounded by positive influences, I do enjoy myself.  I’m finally meeting people, making some friends, settling in and making the ship my second home.  It’s not quite as nice as our beautiful house that we finally moved into, but…it’ll do.

And since we’re at the present, here are yesterday’s Halloween costumes.  Anja wanted to be Coraline, but no one seemed to sell a yellow rain slicker or yellow galoshes in her size, so we made do with what we had and what we could find.  Isak was a Croc-footed Ninja, having left his black shoes at his friend’s house the night before.  How he got home, I can’t figure out, except that he is a Ninja, you know.

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