Our friend Bernie took the girls with her to Oregon to meet her daughter and grandchildren. She told me that she was going to take the girls so that hubby and I could spend some time alone. We haven’t been alone without kids in — forever. We don’t even know how to act without a child following us around or banging on the bathroom door or making a mess with her toys in the living room.

What did we do today? You’d think we’d do something romantic like — ok, who am I kidding? We don’t even know how to be romantic anymore. What we did was cut down an almond tree that was making a mess in the driveway. The tree was diseased and the nuts falling all over the place was driving me nuts. Hubby decided to use this time without Kamalani to do some yardwork and he thought it would be sorta romantic if I were outside with him doing yardwork. He had a chair for me under the shade of the stupid nut tree with a pair of pruners so that I could cut off all the thin branches to make it easier to toss into the trash bag. I broke my fingernail, my thumb is tender from squeezing the pruner, my shoulder hurts. This isn’t what I had in mind when I said I wanted to take a crack at gardening. I was thinking more in terms of a sun hat and cute little gardener gloves and a bed of pretty flowers. This is NOT the gardening thingy I signed up for.

We have half of the tree cut down and he said we can work on the other half tomorrow. Oh joy. So much for a nice quiet weekend without the kiddos.

After spending the night at the Navy Lodge in Bangor, we drove to Fife to get our Van that had arrived and was ready for pick-up. We did all the paperwork then drove it down to McChord Air Force Base to park it while we were in Oregon. When we arrived at the Terminal, we read a sign that said only authorized patrons were allowed to park in the long term parking lot and the car needed a parking permit that was issued by the Terminal staff. So hubby went into the terminal and put himself on the waitlist for a flight to Hawaii, they issued him a parking permit, he stuck it on the dashboard of the van and we left the car parked there over the weekend while we drove down to Oregon. (more…)

Last week Thursday, I drove down to Bangor to meet hubby and also to pick him up since it was his last official day in the Navy. After 28 long years of military service, it’s finally over.

Since I’ve never driven down to Bangor before, I kept asking everyone if it was easy to find. I always get antsy and anxious when I’m going to drive somewhere unfamiliar to me. I spent the previous days mapping out my route, purchasing ferry tickets and just getting prepared for the trip. I loved the drive through Port Townsend and neighboring small towns on the way there. We saw old buildings, tons of livestock and even buffalos. How cool was that?

When we got there, the first thing we did after picking hubby up was getting our new ID cards that shows we are now retired. I looked at Meg’s ID and told her the “RET” on her ID card stood for RETARDED and the “RET” on our cards stood for RETIRED. She’s so retarded that she asked to see if that’s what it really said on our ID cards.

It was nice seeing hubby again after not seeing him for a few weeks. Kamalani stuck to him like fly on sh.. You get the picture, don’t you? She wouldn’t leave his side. He took her grocery shopping then to the NEX and she suckered him into buying more toys. We went out to dinner then went back to the Navy Lodge to take our showers and went to bed. It was such a long day and an even longer career that finally came to an end.