Checking in...

Hey! What have I been up to, you must be wondering. Well, certainly not blogging. Actually, we've been rather busy with preschool. Poppy started the 3s class in December and loves it. It's a play-centered, parent participation/co-op sort of thing, so I work in the classroom a few times a month.

Olive turned one in February and is now quite the toddler, complete with tea parties, high-fives and escape attempts.

Do excuse my lack of interesting subject matter- it's the end of a patrol and my brain is mush. Nathan loves what he does, but sometimes I find myself being a whiny boat wife and wishing for a *gasp* land unit. Okay, maybe not a land unit, but maybe a 378 so we can have a little more consistency. He did save a manatee, though, so it's not all floating around and making pancakes. And he gets to go to Cuba all the darn time. I'm so jealous.

Stop the madness!

Olive stood up, unsupported, for like, a minute just now.

Yikes.

Um, I signed up for a baby, people. A BABY.

Babies do not stand up by themselves.



In other news, I'm knitting again. I knit that nifty diaper cover in the picture. Because it's 1930 and woolens are all the rage. Hey, it's waterproof!

Evacuating Ike was okay. (See Flickr...) But I don't want to do it weekly until November, so please tell the universe to stop now.

I'm so tired from being smashed in the back seat for 8 hours, playing referee, food source, entertainer and sardine.

I'm just done.

Uh-Oh!

auughhh!

Was that a gecko or a cockroach running across the floor? I went into the guest bedroom to turn off the playstation, and I saw something big run from the bed to under the TV... It was fast and looked wiggly, so I think it was a gecko, but if it was a cockroach and it was that big and fast, I don't think I'll be able to go to sleep!

Back home, the high is 58 degrees and there are no weird bugs or indoor lizards, unless you could the cheesy lounge variety that still populates San Francisco in spite of the fact that wearing a leopard cowboy hat is not, nor ever has been cool.

Not that I'm homesick. I just don't think I should have to coexist indoors with creepy crawlies. Key West is one human family, not one family of weird humans and various insects and reptiles.

I'm not mad at the gecko; quite the opposite. Homie eats the bugs for me. But I just wish they wouldn't take me by surprise. I'd hate to squeal and wake up the babies.

Goodbye, Dinah, Goodbye...

I've officially fallen down the rabbit hole.

Where is old Katie? The one who doesn't ask for mopping advice on spouse forums? Why doesn't my husband belong to a spouse forum? How does he balance working and being a husband?

Oh, right. Here I am. I don't have to like mopping.

I moved the last entry I wrote
to the other blog, because it's more Flaubert than Proust. That is to say, more life in general than my life in particular.
That is definitely not to say I'm Proustian or even Flaubertian (although we've all got our gripes about Flaubert, n'est-ce pas?)

Hot damn, that was real pretentious-like.

What I wanted to write about pertaining to my life was my delicious dinner.

This evening was a terrible time to have a dead camera battery, but I made risotto with asparagus and yellow squash. Except I took half the mirepoix and sauteed it in a beurre blanc with the asparagus tips and squash. It was really hard not to eat it before I threw it in the final stages of risotto.

And then I made mochi for dessert. A box of Mochiko rice flour, 2 cups of sugar, 6 teaspoons of cocoa powder, 3 cups of water, and a quick chill later, my very own sticky, glutenous Asian dessert.

Heaven.

Like tea and madeleines. Memories of mochi and risotto flood back from all directions. Well, mostly recent memories of mochi. Lots of them. Mmm. Mochi.

Welcome to Key West... why are you all wearing obscene t-shirts?

We made it. 18 months in Honolulu, 2 months back home, and now we've been in Key West for 2 weeks.

It's very small.

The road out is very long.

Will the architecture alone sustain us? The people are nice, but nobody has kids.

We'll be able to save money, since the only stores here (where we would shop) are Banana Republic and American Apparel. But we might come out looking like we're going on safari on some futuristic 70s disco planet.

The beach is grassy, but the Cuban food is good. There are strange birds everywhere.

Our house will be ready tomorrow, and we'll finally be home, at least for the next 2 years.

Today, though, Home still feels like Hawaii.

Re-Blogging: the catch-up

My last entry had me lamenting the state of Midwifery at the MTF. Here's my update: I said screw 'em and had my baby at home.

That was big time.

Vindicating, healing, empowering, big time.

That was in February.

So this:



became this:



Which in turn became this:




And is now this:




There you have it. Olive. See what happens when you have a baby on a whim?

Fired!

My midwife fired me. Apparently a vbac delivery is not included in the Department Of Defense "Uncomplicated Pregnancy" guidelines. I didn't realize that my body was subject to DOD guidelines, partially because the Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security. That's okay, though. I'm going in with an extensive birth plan, and a t-shirt that says "my doula has my back." Ironically, I was reassigned to a Nurse Practitioner who used to be a midwife. That's just dumb. What's even dumber is that when I go in to give birth, I can call the midwife to deliver the baby. I don't have to have an OB or an NP. It's just that the DOD won't let a midwife do my prenatal care. Prenatal care, by the way, consists of weighing me and asking me if I have any questions. Duh.

In other news, I watched every episode of Flight of the Conchords, and some twice. That is the best show ever.

Yay babies!

Since I've told almost everyone by now... I'm pregnant! We started trying when Nathan got back from his last patrol, and got pregnant right away! I'm around 8 weeks now. I've got Hyperemesis Gravidarum, which sucks, but I just got my medication changed, so hopefully I'll be nausea-free starting tomorrow. I just got into the midwife program at Tripler, which is very exciting news. They only take 15 patients per month, and can you imagine how many military wives get pregnant in any given month here on the island? I'll bet the number is in the hundreds.

So huzzah for intentional pregnancy. This will be our second and last, in order to remain a compact family unit able to pick up and vacation in France without too much trouble. Now... will it be an Oliver or an Ivy?

The mystery baby is due February 13th. Mark your calendars!!

I have a secret

Yep. A big, huge secret.

But I'm going to wait a little while to say what it is.

weeeeeee!

So I know these are camera phone pictures and they're blurry and of poor quality, but I would just like to announce that we are having homemade pizza every night, forever, from now on.

As Nathan was taking the pizzas out of the oven he said, "if we had a food porn blog, these would totally constitute an entry."

Here's to delicious pizza. Poppy's has her favorite topping, zucchini.

Coming home

Poppy and I will be arriving in San Jose at 8:55 PM.

Didn't you miss this?

My house is almost all put together. It only took me forever. A month and a half.

Good thing, too, because I'm having the Coast Guard Wife Mafia over for tea sandwiches on Thursday. I'll put the place together, but only if 17 kids will come and pull everything apart.

I'm happy to have friends. They make cleaning the house worthwhile.

Jarvis who?

Here's the Jarvis that Nathan gets to travel around with.




But you know he'd really rather travel with this one...

Malasadas

That's a malasada. Like a a beignet, but Portuguese/Hawaiian instead of French/Canadian/Creole. Yum.



Poppy can say 2 big words. The first is "dinosaur", the second is "malasada." She likes the chocolate ones.

You know you want to make some at home. Because you can only get them in Hawaii.

Malasadas
Recipe courtesy Chef Leonard Rego, Leonard's Bakery - Hawaii



2 teaspoon dry active yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon sugar plus 1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs, well beaten
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
Vegetable oil, for frying
Cinnamon-sugar for coating (about 1/4 cup sugar mixed with cinnamon to taste)
In a medium bowl, combine the yeast with 1/4 cup lukewarm water and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Mix until the yeast dissolves then set aside for 5 minutes. Stir in the milk, vanilla, eggs, and butter and reserve.
In a large bowl, mix the flour with 11/3 cup sugar, salt, and nutmeg. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Pour the yeast and milk mixture into the well. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry, forming a soft, smooth dough. Cover the dough with a clean towel and set aside to rise in a warm place until dough doubles in size, about 1 hour.

Punch the dough down, then with oiled fingers, pinch off pieces about the size golf balls. Place the dough balls on greased baking sheets. Cover the malasadas with a clean towel and set aside to rise in a warm place for about 15 minutes.

In a heavy, high-sided pot, heat a bout 2 inches of oil over medium-high until the oil reaches 325 degrees F. Working in small batches, fry the malasadas until they are uniformly golden brown, 7 to 10 minutes per batch. Drain the malasadas on a plate lined with paper towels just until they are cool enough to handle then roll them in cinnamon sugar and serve.




Recipe Summary
Difficulty: Expert
Prep Time: 25 minutes
Inactive Prep Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Yield: 24 servings

I didn't even have to use my AK

We're so domestic.

I made real dinner tonight, albeit a vegan one. What's more, we (the family) went to the garden store and bought all manner of herbs and vegetables for our kitchen garden. It's odd that you can't really get a wide variety of fresh herbs in hawaii. We've taken it upon ourselves to grow our own.

In contrast to all that domesticity and earth-loving normalcy, sometimes I have shocking reminders that I live on an Army base. Like the flag-draped coffin I saw hanging out of the back of a pickup truck yesterday. A pickup truck in the middle of a lawn, while people in desert camo walked around casually with guns. Pepsis. Bags of Funyuns. Like there wasn't a dead body right in front of them. If I had my camera on me, I would have taken a picture, because it was surreal. I almost went back to the house to get it, but I'm no photojournalist. If the US government won't let photos of coffins be published, what would happen if I published something so private?

Somebody would probably call the spy hotline on me.

Sometimes you don't need to make a statement. Sometimes the issue speaks for itself, and everyone can see.

And sometimes being different feels safe. A vegetarian coastie family has better odds of survival. Although, I suppose we could be hit by lightning or something.

Hukilau Beach

We went to a Mormon beach today. Thankfully it was deserted, but still, a MORMON beach? Guess what. It's closed on Sundays. But it's got an interesting history. It's where the Hukilaus used to take place (before the government started taxing them and they stopped.) A hukilau is a big, communal fish-haul. Everybody hangs out and catches fish on the shore with nets.

Across from the beach is Goat Island. It's a short wade, but I wasn't about to attempt it alone but for my toddler during winter (which is rough sea season). Maybe in the summer when I've got company.

I kept looking out at the beach thinking "ooh, Lost is on tonight."

Click on the little picture of Poppy. It's a video.

photobooth

Why, new macbook? Why did you come with photobooth? What a time waster.