the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

and nothing's packed

The laundry probably won't even be finished by morning. I wonder how we ever accomplish anything, really. We have a habit of waiting for things to do themselves, and that only really works with cleaning cats.

I was up late last night enjoying life with Travis. (Mich went to bed early on the pretense that she had to work today or some such silliness.) Travis and I were breaking in our new game: Pentago, a Swedish strategy game. I kept winning, though, so I knew something was desperately wrong. I accused Travis of losing just to make me feel better about myself, but he insisted he was just drunk.*

* This information didn't diminish my thrill of winning.

After a couple of hours, we  descended to The Grotto (TM) and watched some movies. They were cheesy sci-fi ones, but without Mystery Science Theatre 3000 commentary. We had to create our own, which we did at intervals when there was a lull in our conversation. We didn't know what was going on with the movies, really. We were too busy chatting and giving each other backrubs.

Do other families do backrubs like ours does? I seriously doubt it. Every time our family is gathered for any reason, backs will be rubbed and usually popped.* We sometimes do this assembly-line fashion.

* Chiropractors call this "adjustment," I think. I'm not that good. I just pop stuff.

So it was par for the course to trade backrubs with Travis. We don't always do this while we watch movies, but my back has been giving me fits lately, so I bartered my services.

I fell asleep in the theatre room and didn't wake until this morning when Mich came down to see if I was dead. I came up to the kitchen then, had a cup of coffee, took a bath, then went back to bed with cats all over me. This is why I didn't get rolling on my errands until after noon.

My errands involve outprocessing stuff and picking up my mess dress.

The mess dress requires a bit of explanation. I don't believe I've ever brought it up on my blog. This is probably because I've only worn it once: a couple of days before I was commissioned. My parents and brother drove to Montgomery, Alabama to be there for my commissioning, and we had a wing dining-out, which I wore my mess dress to.

I bet you're even more confused now. Lessee. A dining-out is a "wing-ding" where you wear your mess dress (the formal uniform - think tuxedo). With a dining-out, you can bring family (as opposed to a dining-in, where only unit members are allowed. These wing-dings almost always come with specific rules that are broken at your peril. For example, you may have to make all comments in rhyming couplets. Or instead of clapping, bang your spoon on the table. Stuff like that. If you break those rules, you get sent to the grog bowl.

What with the changing times and all, we no longer have a single grog bowl, which is (traditionally) filled with the most revolting alcoholic concoction you can imagine, sometimes in somebody's discarded fish tank, and maybe with a bunch of soggy Goldfish crackers floating in it. All these functions offer a non-alcoholic bowl of yuckiness, too.

If you get sent to the grog bowl (for any infraction, real or perceived--justice is not the point of the exercise), you march up to the grog (in mess dress, which in my case, involves heels), probably squaring corners. You salute the grog (one of the functions I attended required a Star Trek salute), serve yourself a glass, throw it back, then invert the glass over your head to prove it's empty. Then you march back to your seat, squaring corners. If you screw up, you get sent back to the grog.

If you've done the math already, you can see that the grog is a losing proposition.

Anyway. I wore my first mess dress then. I've not had occasion to wear it since, because I pointedly avoid formal functions like I would avoid the Black Death. Or Hanta virus. And so it was that I outgrew* my first mess dress and had to purchase a new skirt. Much to my delight, they had changed the design.

* I got fat.

The old skirt (floor length) was fitted and had a slit almost up to the knee on the left side. Yes, it was breathtaking (to look at and to wear), and yes, I had to practice walking for hours before I could avoid pitching forward when I walked.

Oh. I walk, as my mother told me many years ago, "like a boxer." I never knew if she meant a prize fighter or a dog, but I guess it's immaterial, as neither sounds very complimentary. Let's just say I have an athletic stride and leave it at that. When one is wearing a fitted skirt (slitted or not), one must perforce take tiny steps. Which I don't. So I had to teach myself how to take 12-inch strides. Otherwise, I would trip over my own clothing, which isn't very sexy.

The new skirt lost the slit. It's a bit fuller, too. So...I had to buy a new one anyway, right? Their sizes have grown, too. My new one is a size 12, and it's a bit loose. The old one was a size 14, and I probably couldn't get one leg into it now if I tried.

So I picked up this ensemble from the cleaners.

The weather today was fantastic, by the way, and by "fantastic" I mean eerily beautiful. We had soupy fog and everything was coated with ice. Just everywhere. Except here at the house (which is truly odd, considering that I live at 7500 feet and usually have more of any "bad" weather than anyone in the Springs does). So I left the house, where there was nothing out of the ordinary to indicate that perhaps I should wear a parka and Charles Bronson hat. I wore a teeshirt and open long-sleeved button-down. About three miles out, I drove into the frost fog.

Thankfully, the roads were in good shape.

The mess dress, by the way, is my attire for my Marine's wedding. He and his fiancee are tying the knot in Atlanta on New Year's Eve. Marines have a thing for Air Force women (and yeah, we have a thing for them), so I figured the least I could do, since I'm too cheap to buy a gift, was show up in uniform. Now I've got all the bling back on the outfit--I had to take the bling off it so I could have the uniform cleaned, but I've also earned a whole 'nother row of medals since then, so there was need to rework it, anyhow--and I think it'll look cool.

Incidentally: shoulderboards for the Air Force mess dress: $48.

And I don't know if it's proper to embed two colons like that, but I'm doing it anyway. That's just the sort of rogue I am.

I'd tried yesterday to make an appointment with the dental clinic for my final outprocessing. I'm weird here, too, of course. Since I'm an AFIT student who goes to school in Boulder, am assigned to Buckley (in Denver) and live in Colorado Springs, I hand-carry my medical/dental records and usually am seen at the Academy. This is enough to confuse the front desk folks. But add to this that I have to go through special physicals and such because I'm going overseas (who knew). I need a medical and dental "overseas clearance," it seems. So everybody's confused about whether the doc needs to look in my mouth again soon, since I just went to see him in October. The answer--which I apparently had to appear in person to work out--is yes.

*sigh* ok.

I popped into the clinic to visit immunizations, because they have to sign off on a special memo. They're short-staffed right now, and I was dealing with a Staff Sergeant who was gamefully trying to do everything himself. He said I needed to visit Public Health on the second floor and they'd tell me what shots I need for Turkey. This is an indication of just how spirit-broken I am: instead of simply asking him to call them (duh), I dutifully walked back through the building and went up to their offices which...were closed until Monday for an "official function." So I went back to see him and explained this. He rolled his eyes and walked into the back room for a while. Then he came back. He looked serious. He said, "Bad news. Brace yourself. You need five shots."

I said, "Not anthrax. Please."

He said, "I'm afraid so. Please have a seat, Ma'am, and I'll get to you as soon as I can."

I sat down. I was wondering if he'd called one of them. I thought: Shit. What was I thinking to come in for my shots just before I go on leave? And anthrax, too. My god. I'm also thinking How many pushups can I do? (The trick to surviving anthrax shots with minimal pain is to get them and immediately drop and do pushups unto exhaustion. Trust me here.)

He opened another door and called for me. I crossed myself and walked in after him. He walked up with a needle and said, "You only need the second Hep B shot. But I couldn't resist getting you worked up. There was a cadet behind you, and I wanted to scare him."

I said, "That was mean. I'm impressed."

He was about to stick me and I said, "Can I scream?"

He said, "Of course."

So I screamed.

He said, "You shouldn't do that when I'm about to poke you. I might miss."

It hurt, too. I pointed out that he wasn't supposed to inject the syrum into my bone; the muscle was fine. Seriously.

But I got a cool shiny sparkly band-aid out of it. So...ok.

I did a couple of other errands--all in the frosty fog--then came home. Again, I drove out of the fog and into sunshine about three miles from the house. This is being a very, very strange winter for us indeed.

So. We're off for Louisiana tomorrow, after we pack and load the car. Here's the schedule, in case you're one of the potential victims of our whirlwind tour or if you're just a stalker:

24 December: Plain Dealing, Louisiana. Grannie's house for an amazing meal and a white elephant gift-giving session.

25 December: Onalaska, Texas. Stopping in to see Wayne* and Jeannie and the kids.