Calm Before the Storm; or, Life in Limbo

So we are going to Spain. . . 

but we don't know when 

because we don't have orders

because the government needs to pass a budget to fund our travel

and without orders we can't arrange for a pack out of our house hold goods

or make travel arrangements to see friends and family in the US before our big move

and we can't make arrangements for temporary housing while we are waiting to find the right place for us. 

And this is life when you work for the government. 

So I am very excited about our move, but I guess it will get real once we have actual orders and can get this great big ball rolling. 

In the meanwhile. . . 

I am purging starting with my books (hardest thing for me to weed)

and going through clothes to give away (who needs 7 pairs of flip flops or 10 swimsuits in Spain?) 

or thinking about what I need to do for a new life with new electrical currents. 

Yes, I am thinking about electricity. Obsessing over it, actually.

None of our electrical appliances and gadgets will work if they are 110V without a transformer, which is this obnoxious little box you have to keep around to plug said electrical gadgets into. 

I know I want to keep my Vitamix and my stand up mixer because I use both of them more than any other appliances, but what about everything else? 

Is is worth dragging a waffle maker and toaster, an electric razor and hair dryer, hair straighteners and curling irons, and my beloved Clarisonic (that thing takes 5 years off your face, I swear---and no, I'm not getting a kickback to endorse it)?

I can live without an iron because, well, I don't iron. About 3 years ago, I pulled out the ironing board and the iron, filled it with distilled water and waited for it to get good and steamy, and my bewildered then-8 year old said, "Mom, WHAT are you doing?" I explained I was ironing. He said he had never seen an iron. 

True story.

There's the coffee pot. The stand up fan. There are lamps. Clock radios. Cordless telephones (do people even have phones in their homes in Spain?). 

So much to think about, and it's mostly electricity. 


Most of the rest is easy. I'll get the youngest in on clearing out books, toys, and clothes, and will probably have to bribe him with promises of iTunes cards or graphic novels to keep him motivated. 

Because I can't focus on realty listings (we will live off base, thank you sweetbabyJesus) and buying a car (because our GTMO specials just won't get it in Spain), I am focusing on minutia. The minutia of the week is electrical voltage. I've become obsessed with flipping over everything in the house and seeing what voltage it has. So far, we will be selling and giving away a lot of things. But that's okay. 

One of my first posts about life here was about digging up plants out of a random stranger's yard. His words of wisdom to me were this: 
"You come here with nothing, you leave with nothing. Make sure you give everything you can away when you leave the island. It's the GTMO way. And it's just stuff---you can't take it with you when you die."

When we evacuated (and I really thought my husband, who was left behind, was going to die---but that's a whole other story I will probably never write), I took the following in a small carry-on: two almost 100 year old pictures of my grandfather and my husband's grandfather, both wrapped in my favorite scarf from my first trip to France; my (first! signed! Canadian!) edition of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale and a copy of a book written from a man from my home town, Mr. Thomas Jefferson Young, which I gave to my parents; the Morgan dollar my grandfather gave me as a little girl that I brought with me on my maiden voyage to GTMO as a good luck charm; a small envelope of baby pictures of our oldest, which were all from film, and a handful of pictures of my grandparents, mostly in b & w and from years and years before I entered this world; a canister of every SD card and jump drive I could find in the house; the diamond drop necklace my grandparents gave me when I graduated college---the stone had been an earring my grandfather gave my grandmother for their 25th anniversary---my sister has the other one that she, too, got when she graduated college; a small picture I painted of my youngest kid on the beach and the only thing I've painted that I've truly, really liked; my stuffed rabbit named Elizabeth (after my sister---it's her middle name) that I've had since I was 4 and has been to camps, college, and even Mexico; my husband's grandfather Harvey's bible; and other than my computer/iPad, a few days worth of clothes. I didn't come close to the 40 lb limit.

Everything else was replaceable. It made me realize---it's all stuff.  

My Papaw George's gift to me---and his handwriting---
makes this worth much more than face value.
It's become a good luck charm over the years.
I will carry it with me on our trip to Spain. 

If we get to Spain with useless electrical devices or too many flip flops, we'll figure it out. That being said---I'm looking forward to a smaller load than our arrival here (all those crates!) and can't wait to tread lighter and trade in more things for life experiences. 

Riding the Storm Out; or, Bitter or Better, Whatever

In a nervous frenzy, I originally wrote this entry a couple of weeks ago, as Hurricane Matthew was bearing down on GTMO. I had no idea what was going to happen, and I will start at the end of my first draft: 

"So I'm worried about our surrounding islands and those people. I'm worried about the sea life that is finally recovering from our last hurricane. I'm worried about our iguanas and tarantulas and all sorts of lizards. I'm worried about our boas. I'm even worried about the annoying banana rats that eat my plants. (And my plants---I'm sad about the possibility of losing my plants that I love so much).

And the irony: we FINALLY got cell phones that can call the US, and a hurricane will probably take out those towers. We FINALLY got high-speed internet, and we are all holding our breaths that the cable from the US to GTMO doesn't break with this hurricane.

But I will say it again and again----we are being evacuated. We will be okay. Our family will be safe."

Oh, oh the irony.

I was right about a few things. The sea life didn't take a big hit, and the animals are okay. Our house is fine. The cell towers were left standing, and the internet is still working. GTMO is still on track for its slow and arduous journey into the 21st century.

But that last part----our family will be safe----really hurts to read, because things did NOT go as planned with our evacuation.

What to know about hurricane season: we keep a hurricane kit handy and update it often---lanterns and flashlights and candles, batteries for everything, a radio, and lots of water and non-perishable food. Since we moved here, we have always had a plan of where to be and what to do if/when it hits, and in the past, we have felt confident that we will be safe.

And this wasn't my first time through a hurricane here---I was here less than a week when Hurricane Sandy hit in October 2012. That was my trial by fire to life on GTMO.

With Hurricane Matthew bearing down, we came to this frightening conclusion: everything we own is here in this house.

When news of an eminent evacuation came, here was the quandary: if you have to choose your most precious belongings to fit in a suitcase (with a 40 lb limit), what would you pack?

We have military paperwork (including my stupid LES paperwork----my DoDDS friends will understand that one). We have passports, birth certificates, social security cards. We have other important paperwork. I wasn't even worried about clothes. But how do you pack non-replaceable baby pictures, things you got from your grandparents, and a crazy, big book collection?

In my suitcase, I packed a couple of books, some old family photographs, flash drives, jewelry, and a few sentimental items. I didn't even have 1/4 of the suitcase packed, because it was honestly so overwhelming.

But what I never, ever dreamed was that my entire family wouldn't make it off island.

We waited up Saturday night for the call to show up to evacuate, but it never came.

Then I got a frantic phone call on Sunday morning from a colleague that, in essence, said, "get your ass down here right now because they are taking the last of the evacuees."

We crammed into an auditorium and were told to move towards the front and would be loading from the front of the auditorium.

That didn't work out so well, as people came in and sat whatever they wanted, and those of us who had been there a long time watched people who were just walking in the door get chosen to check in to catch a flight.

People with pets were ushered to the front of the line and left hundreds of us sitting there wondering if there was going to be room for the rest of us.

Then the CO came in and announced that there was only one plane left, and with over 200 people left and only about 130 seats, he needed volunteers to stay on island.

To stay on island. With a Category 4 hurricane coming straight for GTMO. That's like Katrina in 2005.

Panic ensued. I'm not going to lie; I started crying and didn't stop until long after we got to the U.S.

We were told that we could choose one parent to go on the flight.

Then our children were lined up by age and we were told that children 10 and under would probably make the flight.

Probably. 

My husband insisted that I go with the kids, so I started bawling. Did I mention the Cat 4 hurricane headed straight for us? Or the fact that we were never called to show up for the evacuation? Or that people with pets got priority over everyone else on the last 2 flights? Disorder and chaos and poor planning all at one time.

At this point I realized that a) my husband could very well die and b) we should have packed our damn taxidermied squirrel in a cat carrier so we could also jump the line and get on board as a family.

My youngest and I made the cut, and it was touch-and-go as to whether my 18 year old would make the flight.

This would be the point that I had a panic attack on the floor and freaked out whoever was making these seemingly arbitrary decisions about who got to go and who got to stay *just enough* that he got to go with me.

But my husband had to stay.

At this point, I didn't care about our lifetime of stuff. Call me fatalistic (or a realist---we did have family members lose a house in Katrina, after all, but at least could evacuate to save their lives). All I could think is, I could lose my husband. My kids could lose their father. I could lose colleagues---not only friends, but teachers who have been wonderful mentors to my two children. Neighbors we've grown to love, the wonderful foreign nationals who I've played soccer with and who have watched my youngest son after school, who do many thankless jobs on base and have spent countless hours working on our cars and have become our friends in the process. How could this happen? We are non-essential civilian personnel. Why didn't they send enough planes?

I watched many, many of my colleagues leave the auditorium dejected. I worried about them and cried a little for their safety. After watching several of my teenage students not make what I thought was the last ferry to the airport, I cried some more (there should be violin music playing in the background by this point in the story), until the last ferry to the airport turned around in the middle of the Bay and went back to pick them up. Several of these kids I've known the four years we've lived here, and almost all of them I've taught. Not knowing what was going to happen next made it heartbreaking that they almost got left on island.

Ever flown 4 1/2 hours on a C130? Fun times. 

************
Flash forward. I didn't sleep more than 2-3 hours at a time until Matthew had passed GTMO on Tuesday, and tragically, at the last minute it took a turn to the right and decimated a small town about 40 miles east of us instead of our base.

We were lucky. Very, very lucky.

My husband and our wonderful neighbors bunkered down in one of their houses (rated for a Cat 2, by the way), and they bonded over their terrifying experience of waiting for a potential catastrophe.

For my family, it was not a vacation. Maybe we should have tried more to enjoy our freedom from base, but it just felt wrong celebrating when so many people we cared about were stuck in the path of a hurricane.

And full disclosure---instead of waiting for the news about the hurricane from Pensacola, I got in my rental car with the boys and drove a few hours to MS. I needed to be home. We stayed 2 days and I got to see my grandmother, who had turned 92 just a few days before we got there. We haven't seen her in over a year. I needed time to be with my family and felt a million times better. And yes, we ate out a few times in Pensacola and the kids had fun hanging out with each other and not worrying about school. The kids needed to be kids and forget about why they were there. But for many of us who had left friends and family behind, it was a bittersweet feeling---we are finally off island, but were wanting to be back with the people we love.

Some of my amazing GTMO friends were also there for me in Pensacola, knowing how worried I was about my husband and alternating between distracting me and comforting me. I didn't realize until I got there that I have both a high school and college friends living in Pensacola, and I got to reconnect with a couple of friends the 10 days we were there. You really do get to know who your friends are in times of crisis.

We joke about this place being Hotel California (you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave), but this just hit too close to home.

I'm not amused by that joke anymore. I hate the feeling of having no control, and as much as I want to live in the present, feeling like I'm literally STUCK here is a horrible feeling.

okay, so I'm not TOTALLY biter. There is some humor to be found in being stuck in this crazy place. 

So this is me after mulling around my feelings for 2 weeks. I wish I could be more upbeat and all "I'm so happy we all survived!" Maybe that will come in time. All I can say is yes, we were lucky. 

I keep seeing people posting the saying, "Life can make you bitter or better. Choose better." With time, hopefully I'll see something positive out of this experience other than we all lived and should be thankful, poor planning be dammed. For now, though, I can't think about the present state of this place, and I choose to be pragmatic (and maybe a little cynical), and focus on the future. The Evacuation Debacle of 2016 makes me happier than ever to be back with my entire little family, and makes me more determined than ever that I WILL live somewhere a little less confining and with the freedom to move about (and out of harm's way), if I choose.

Blustery Days of Our Lives; or, Sands Through an Hourglass

In the words of Pooh, it was a "rather blustery day." Make that two or three of them.

For a few days, we were at what's known as "COR III" for hurricane readiness. COR III this time around meant we were not in the direct line of the projected hurricane, but we got a tremendous amount of wind and rain. 

Watching hurricanes is always in the back of our minds since we got here; after all, Hurricane Sandy hit a few days after I arrived. 

According to Weather Underground, in September we got 0.41 inches of rain. August we got 0.8 inches, and July, 0.26". And on and on. You get the picture. For the last year, the forecast has been: arid, dusty, with a rather miserable amount of humidity. Two days before the storms hit, the heat index was 104º.

Then we got our first measurable rainfall in over a year. It was exciting. The kids at school literally jumped out of their seats and to the door before I could say anything. One student pointed and kept stammering, "Whhhhaaaat is thaaat?" I am serious. That stuff falling from the sky is rain, y'all! Everyone driving Jeeps, the unofficial vehicle of GTMO, realized that they were going to have a very wet ride home. Roads and sidewalks were temporarily flooded, the ceiling in my classroom started leaking, and sandbags were out. I'm happy about the change in temperature, but I can do without the howling wind and sideways rain.

Sirens go off and we get base-wide announcements on a PA system, or as most people here call it, "The Big Voice." The problem is you can't understand it. At neither work nor home can I actually hear it for the pouring rain. It's like Charlie Brown's teacher: Wuh Wah Wah wuh wuh wah.  Like so much here, you depend on word of mouth. People are very dependable about letting everyone know what's going on. 

Preparations included moving potted plants and anything else that can fly around the backyard onto the back porch and taking the bottles off of the bottle tree. My sweet little trees I transplanted from our Nob Hill house, including 2 that were from a cutting of the Truffula Tree, are now blown almost completely down. I'm going to wait until the rain passes to stake them back down again. 

Now for the aftermath---I'll put the bottles back out and stake up the tree when it's a little drier out.
The Commissary has been out of any edible produce for four days now. Supposedly we'll get some tomorrow. My son's SAT test this weekend has been put on indefinite hold; he couldn't take it Saturday because they couldn't unpack the barge container that housed the tests due to rain; Saturday they didn't unpack it due to wind, so he couldn't take it on Sunday, either. Now he is at the mercy of College Board as to if he can take it at all in October, or just scratch that and take it for November's test day (hopefully). Life is complicated when you are isolated and have freaky weather.

We did go for a ride around base, and stopped at Ferry Landing. Here is is, April 2013:

The sidewalk above has at regular intervals three stairs that go to the sand.

Or at least it did have sand. Here is one of the staircases this morning:

And here is Ferry Landing. Lots of big rocks, but no beach whatsoever:

They will bring sand back in, just like they did with Hurricane Sandy, and all will be normal (or as "normal" as you can be in a place where the beach washes away).

Today marks 3 years that we announced to everyone that we were moving to Cuba. It's been a crazy, wild ride. I didn't dream I'd live somewhere where keeping a hurricane kit is normal, or running out of basic food items is normal. I didn't think I'd be chasing iguanas or tarantulas at work, or dodging huge rodents in the road at night. It's been in many ways a new life, one of frustrations and joys, disappointments and life-long friendships. The one thing it's never been is boring. 

Rainy Days and Mondays; or, The Map of Lost Mail is here!!

After many months of a drought, and restrictions on all water usage resulting in a yard that is an oh-so-attractive shade of dirt brown (because that's all there is---dirt), I'm happy to see rain the last few days. In fact, it's sort of like our rainy season here (okay, it's actually called hurricane season, but that tends to freak people out).

Pedro the Yard Chicken stopped by to pose in the dirt. 

We do have our "hurricane kit" all ready to go---lots of gallons of water, flashlights and batteries, canned and boxed goods. I have to admit, though, that the most exciting offering for hurricane kits is this product, which I believe is essential to any household facing the uncertainty of the season that is upon us:

It's kind of beautiful, isn't it? 

You don't realize how sunny and beautiful it is living in eternal summer until you have a few rain soaked days thrown in. You also haven't lived until your internet goes out every time it rains. At least we have power this time.

It wasn't all bad today; I did manage to FINALLY get a long-awaited package.

Living on a military base overseas means that your mail is sent to either an APO (Army & Air Force Post Office) or, in the case of the Navy, an FPO (Fleet Post Office). Our mail first goes to a sorting facility---at one time it was in New York, but now it's Chicago---and then goes to our tiny local post office, which doesn't have any actual mail boxes for its customers. When you send mail to me, it goes to the post office, and then someone from work has to pick it up and deliver it to my office mail box. The entire base works this way. The mail is only flown in two days a week now, so mail delivery day is exciting business around here.  Sometimes we get packages, which is for many of us, our connection to life's many necessities you can't find here, and if the sender happens to be my mom, the package is packed with Zero candy bars.

I don't know if you are familiar with Zero bars, but you should be. Hershey describes them as a "unique combination of caramel, peanut and almond nougat covered with delicious white fudge." You may know them as the white candy bar in the ugly silver wrapper. Don't let the ugly wrapper fool you. The Zero bar is, along with purple speckled butterbeans, bacon, and red Skittles, one of life's perfect foods.

A long-awaited package makes even the most dreary, rainy Monday seem a little nicer.

While visiting Mississippi in July, the first thing we did was find some sporting goods stores so we could buy the kids baseball gloves that fit. Our oldest had outgrown his little league glove, which we could have passed down to the youngest, except Boy #1 is a leftie and Boy #2 isn't. So onward we went, hitting several stores in Hattiesburg until we found two nice gloves that will hopefully serve the kids well for softball and baseball season.

Somehow in the frenzy of packing, the gloves got left at my parents, but never fear---my mom went down to the local P.O. a couple of days later and sent them (along with some Zero bars) via Priority Mail to Cuba.

I should also mention that Priority Mail still takes 3-4 weeks to get here from the States. I can't really tell if it's worth paying more to send anything that method, because once the mail hits the sorting facility in Chicago, it can't be traced.

And that can be a problem.

Gloves left Mississippi on July 19. Gloves hit the sorting facility in Chicago on July 21.

Gloves got to Cuba on September 9.

Gloves took a detour along the way

to APO 09833.

Not FPO 09593.

This would be Sharm El Sheik, Egypt.

Oops.

I have started a map to mark all the exotic and interesting places my mail has accidentally traveled while I'm stuck here in Hotel California land ("You can check any time you like, but you can never leave").

It's actually a positive thing that we've had such misfortune, since I managed to spend most of my high school World History classes doodling on my Trapper Keeper and daydreaming about Rick Springfield. Now I have motivation to break out a map and play Where In the World was My Lost Mail. If we've managed to have mail go to Muscat, Oman; Madrid, Spain;  Livorno, Italy; and Sharm El Sheik, Egypt in only 10 months, we'll have many, many more interesting locations for our Map of Lost Mail before we leave Cuba.

And in case you are wondering, Zero bars that have traveled through three countries and are a little melted still taste delicious.

The birds and the bees (or an iguana); or, I'm still here

As a young child, my sister Susan would, without any hesitation, tell you that her favorite bird was the buzzard. Not a mockingbird (the Mississippi state bird), a parrot (mom's African Grey Rhett killed all love of parrots for us), or a blue bird (my favorite---thanks to a little Bukowski poem). Nope, she was unabashed in her love of the buzzard. Some people call it a turkey vulture----I call it a buzzard.
Here in Gitmo, there are tons of buzzards everywhere. My first few mornings here, I was greeted by two rather ominous looking ones perched on the lamp post across from my house. It took a few days, but I finally got used to them.
Then Sandy came, and just like that, they are gone. Never thought I'd say this, but I hope the buzzards are okay.
I kind of miss them.
I have often thought this place looks like Kauai, Hawaii---wild vegetation and lots of undeveloped land. It is beautiful. The only exception is there are no hens running around or roosters crowing all hours of the day and night.
Well, except for a pair I saw the day after the hurricane, taking their time crossing the road (and no, I don't know why the chicken crossed the road). I haven't seen them since---think my favorite buzzard pair has been reincarnated as a rooster/hen? It would be an improvement. . .
Then there are the spectacular hummingbirds outside the den window, loving all over the bright red hibiscus.
No pictures of birds (or bees---almost stepped on one of those this morning), but I did manage to get a picture of an iguana.

As for the hurricane---I'm not even sure what category it was, but my house is, indeed, hurricane-proof. Other than the one and only big tree in the yard that is now at a 30 degree angle, everything is fine. There were some large trees uprooted, a few houses and buildings damaged, and some structures on the beach and the ferry landing didn't fare well. But this place is well prepared for hurricanes---the Commissary went into hurricane mode the day of, with water, flashlights, non-perishables, and even generators replacing usual end-cap merchandise---and you wouldn't believe how fast different crews got the power up and running, the roads cleared, the commissary and restaurants open, and we even had school on Friday. I can't complain at all. My short-lived addiction to cable television is over since it's still out thanks to Sandy, but I can access the base news, and that's all I really need. Plus I did finally dig into that stack of neglected library books. Why am I just now reading Cassandra Clare?
Kids/husband/doggie will be here on Tuesday! I can't wait!!!

Baching it; or, that one time I was in Cuba for a hurricane

It's been a long time since I've been bach-ing it. The exciting Bachelor Life when you don't have a phone or internet consists of watching lots and lots of mindless tv (I do have cable! And HBO!). I usually watch 2-3 hours a week on average, but now I am completely absorbed in the world of television. Cartoons, talk shows, the news, sit-coms, I watch it all. I watched a Tyler Perry movie last night, not because it was good (if you've seen one, you've seen them all), but because it was more exciting than laundry. While all of America was watching the last presidential debate, I was watching "Rosemary's Baby" for the 100th time. It was on the Armed Forces Network. Of course. What else would you expect during the debates???

On a more exciting note, it's hurricane season, y'all.

Whoopie!

Sometime in the next 24 hours, a hurricane named Sandy is coming this way. (I keep having visions of John Travolta singing in Grease when I hear that name---"Sandy, can't you see, I'm in misery").

Jim Cantore has NOT shown up, so I'm not too worried. Neither are the people who have been here a while. Sure, I bought my hurricane-kit supplies (flashlight, water, food, etc), and I'm not stoo-pid, so I will be taking precautions, not doing anything crazy, etc. I've done this before, and it is what it is. And as an extra bonus, our house is in a newer complex and it is "hurricane proof," so we don't evacuate. (Those of you who have actually lived through a hurricane can stop laughing now, since there really isn't such a thing).

I am sad to think that The Most Interesting Man in the World will probably not make it to the NEX tomorrow (see my previous post if you have no clue). I have picked out several good library books, I have extra batteries in case of power failure and I have to read by flashlight, and I have managed to meet more neighbors in less than a week than in 10 years of Texas, so I do have people I can hang out with once it (literally) blows over. School's out tomorrow, but we are slated to come back on Friday.


And that's how they do hurricanes here in Cuba.