"For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I was at work today, I realized that I said "ya'll" to my new co-worker just 5 minutes shy of explaining how to pronounce "E Komo Mai" (Welcome in Hawaiian) and talking about my growing up in Baltimore. Then on the ride home today, my iPhone music shuffle picked up a previously abandoned Muse song added to my collection years ago by an ex-boyfriend I haven't talked to in forever. I was never into Muse. At all. And suddenly I liked this song. And the others from its album.

It got me thinking about how I've changed in the almost 7 months since I've moved to Hawaii. I decided my list was long enough to warrant being written down (and laughed at). So here it is:

 Things I’ve Lost since Hawaii:

• One less non-broken bone. (I broke my toe last month when my sister came to visit. I was unsure if I really did at the time but a month later it’s still sore so I think that is a yes. Not a big deal, but I’ve never really broken anything before. There goes that winning point in the  “Never Have I Ever” game.)
• My single status…er, well engaged status. 
• My last name
• My Maryland license (I do miss that little blue crab on it but my huge rainbow is pretty awesome.)
• My tolerance for cold weather (I freeze when I walk in air condition now. I took two sweaters with me to breakfast this morning because I was shaking the second I walked in the door!)
• My stereotype of military life & wives
• My need to wear socks ever again (Long live flipflops.)
• My car (Still heave a little sigh every time a silver Toyota Echo with all 4 missing hubcaps drives by.)
• A few checked off items on my life goals list (Get Married, Drink Champagne on an Airplane, Get a Drivers License from Another State, Visit Hawaii- that was number 2 on my list!
• Contact with a few people I probably wasn’t meant to stay in touch with anyway (…so no real loss there.)
• Any desire EVER to waitress again. (In fact I’m considering gouging my eyes out with forks before doing so again. I still have nightmares from my one evening spent working in Outback where the words “NEVER AGAIN!!” echoed through my mind all night like a crazy person.)
• Any sense of consistent dialect (I still say, “hon” from Baltimore, “ya’ll” from Charleston, and now end every sentence with “yah?” from Hawaiian pidgin. Plus I really like to say “Aloha!” )
• Two bank accounts. (No Bank of America’s or Baltimore County Credit Unions here.)
• My white pasty complexion and dry skin (Don’t miss either ONE bit!)
• My previous favorite necklace (A mother of pearl four leaf clover I paid a quarter for at a flea market when I was 10 and a horse-shoe charm with “Good luck” written in it I bought for myself when I moved out of my mom’s house officially for the first time…come to think of it that’s probably not good luck.)
• 2 Tupperware lids. (No clue where they went. Wonder if you can order that specifically….Hmm.)
  

Things I’ve gained since Hawaii:

• A wedding band
• A husband (!!!)
• A boatload (literally) of friends
• A tan J
• Greta (My “new” car…a ’99 beat-up aqua-colored Toyota Corolla who acts kind of fussy sometimes and likes to tease me by putting on her Check Engine light every 3 weeks or so but still kinda feels like a caring, worried Grandma.)
• One more state added to my roster of states visited (Now at 44!)
• A HOUSE of our own!
• An insatiable desire to bake cupcakes frequently (And an even more house-wifey obsession for cute little aprons. I think I used to watch Girls Next Door to often- you know how Holly always dressed up for doing silly little things? Totally becoming me.)
• An appreciation for always having lived on Eastern Standard Time….and an anger for when companies on EST call me at 2am.
• 14 new bikinis
• A passion for non-profit work & at least for now a job that makes me pretty happy
• A big expensive white dress
• Occasional awesome care packages from Mom (Which ALWAYS contain about 15-25 dog treat coupons which show me where her loyalty really lies.)
• A new pen pal- my sister!
• A new language (Well, not completely, but I do know a LOT of words now. Plus, ever since moving here I made myself say every single street name in Hawaiian out loud to practice and I have a real knack for Hawaiian pronunciation now I think….although I did JUST learn how to pronounce my street name after 6 months of saying it wrong. Oops.)
• An amazing new ability to “man up” and handle tools. (I’ve hung pictures, drilled, and even assembled a TV stand…in only 4 hours….um.)
• A new love for red wine. I currently have 5 opened bottles. (Sorry, Mom.)
• A newfound appreciation for military wives (and kids)
• A longing for Charleston I didn’t know I had.
• An herb garden (Which reminds me…I’m having fresh eggplant for dinner tonight!)
• An underlying fear of tsunamis (following “The Tsunami That Wasn’t” back in February. I still keep meaning to buy a tshirt that says I survived the February 27th Tsunami.)
  

My Constants:

• My dog Maggie. (Don’t know how I’d survive deployment without that dog. The neighbors seriously must think I’m nuts. I raced her down my street back to our house the other day, the whole while yelling at her like I would to a person: “I’m going to beat you. I’m almost there. Ha! In your face!” I did beat her but it was close. …Only to see my neighbor across the street outside looking at me and smiling awkwardly. Ooops.)
• My family.
• My hair color.
• My love for beaches….actually that has definitely increased with the overabundance of clear, turquoise waters and white sand beaches, and trade winds that keep the weather perfectly balanced….(Sorry. ;)  )
• My silver palmetto palm tree necklace I got at Rainbow Street Market in downtown Charleston that I pretty much wear all the time.
• My phone number. (I’ve had it since I was 17. 410 forever, baby. Although I am forcing Nick to convert from his 314 St Louis area code. Sorry, Nick.)
• My slight obsession with photography. (Only now it’s developed into an obsession with iPhone photography apps.)
• My appreciation for Maryland crabcakes, cream of crab soup, and Old Bay. (If someone tells you Old Bay does not go with everything they are WRONG!)
• My love for Nick…I take that back. That’s definitely changed. I only miss him and love him more every day.

You have to let go of some things to make room for others…but in the case of my two missing Tupperware lids I’m not entirely sure that’s true. But for the most part change has been good to me.

I couldn’t be a more happily married woman. Unless Nick was home from deployment but I’m taking one day at a time. And twice in the past two weeks I have had comments from two different people that couldn’t believe my age. Not that I’m old by any means but it was nice they thought I was a college kid.

Enough reflections. I need to go race my dog around the block. Aloha! ;)

I am officially a Hawaiian "kama'aina" (local) resident.
It's been a process the last few weeks to get the marriage license and gradually get everything changed over to my new name. I was waiting to get my marriage license so that I could just change my name at the same time I got my drivers license.

I also knew there was a written test involved with getting my new license (even if you're transferring from another state!) and I wanted to study up first. Turns out I probably tried too hard but I am still glad I studied a bit- there were a couple of Hawaii specific questions on the multiple choice test. For example, I now know that you can leave a child in a car here for up to five minutes, regardless of age...even though that probably doesn't like the best decision.

It's been a crazy week too.

I started two jobs! Then I broke up with one....Let me start over.
I got a job at a restaurant in Kapolei, pretty close to where I live, right before the wedding. I didn't think much of it- I've gotten so used to picking up restaurant jobs wherever I go. It's not that I haven't been trying to find something more stable- I definitely have. But right before I was supposed to start it hit me that I was once again going to drown in the restaurant business.

I'll be super honest with you. I'm not a great waitress. I'm actually probably pretty bad. BUT I'm nice. And I feel horrible when I do forget stuff (which happens frequently- I need to write EVERYthing down). And I've worked in restaurants for 4 years so I know how they run now. All those things help make up for being so bad at it. I'm usually good with keeping a pretty positive attitude with doing any job. But the idea of waitressing yet again was starting to depress me.

I worked one night of training. The day I was scheduled to come in next I finally called them and said it wasn't going to work out. I felt horrible, but I'd feel even worse working there.

I'm glad I made the decision to break up with them..I got called back from the temp agency about some open positions and interviewed the next day. I was supposed to have two interviews but just loved the first one so much I knew it was the right decision.

I actually start tomorrow as admin at a non-profit org in downtown Honolulu. It's only part-time but I really think I'm going to enjoy being there and I feel really confident about being able to do the job well....better than waitressing!

You know, on a slightly different subject, I sometimes can go a lot of the day working around the house, or job-hunting online, or just doing little normal things, but then I look outside and see the gorgeous blue skies and white puffy clouds and perfect weather and am reminded of how LUCKY I am to be here. It's incredible.

It's a bit discouraging to think of ever living anywhere ever again that will live up to these standards. And it makes me laugh to think how much I loved going to Ocean City, Maryland all the time...3 hours away from home with its dark, cold water. Now, granted, the awesome thing about OC was that it was a tradition to go there so you became familiar with the places, the people. It was a Maryland thing.

It's amazing living within 15 minutes of two really gorgeous beaches and within an hour of so many beaches I couldn't even count....with clear, turquoise water and clean sand. There's no distinct smell in the air. I got so used to smelling exhaust all the time in Maryland. There's always a wonderful breeze here to help cool you off. And the water is always the perfect temperature. It's just incredible. I feel so lucky. There are so many cool places to go here. The possibilities are nearly endless. Nick and I took a trip along the west side of Oahu a few weeks ago. Then the next day we drove along the east coast of the island and up to some really cool spots along North Shore. Matsumoto's Shave Ice was one of the places I was so excited to go to. The lines for it are incredible. It's world famous. In fact, Adam Sandler even wore a Matusmoto's t-shirt in 50 First Dates .

This weekend was a complete beach weekend. I literally just spent most of yesterday and a lot of today lying on the beach reading a book and taking a dip when I got too hot. Of course being here has its downsides. Nick isn't here now. I haven't talked to him in a week. And even more unfortunately, I can't talk about him- when he's leaving, when he's returning, where he is going. I can only say that he's gone. That little thought is the nagging thing in my head that reminds me everything isn't perfect.

Yet still, I have already made such amazing friends. I didn't expect that at all actually. I was nervous about Navy life and making friends. I was afraid that it would be like a sorority. I was in a sorority and while I was in it, I believed everything the sorority taught us about sisterhood and about friendship. Sure, I wasn't best friends with everyone but you were still friendly with everyone regardless. I found out after I got out that everything I believed in wasn't real. Most of these people weren't really my friends. The idea of suddenly being part of a group where suddenly everyone is nice to you reminded me of that experience.

But the Navy wives are different. I love how we all truly have something in common that cannot be faked- our love for our husbands. That brings a certain realistic approach to everything we do, I think. And I love how we've all been brought together. All of our stories are so different and most of never thought we would end up as military wives, nonetheless living in Hawaii. They're amazing women I'm glad I've gotten to know and it really makes me optimistic about being here and about the whole experience of being married to a Navy guy.

Okay...enough seriousness. How cool is it I have an awesome rainbow on my ID now? ;)

Today was the first full day of training- and a double at that.

The people seem nice. But the BEST part...the break between doubles is about 2-3 hrs long. Not quite long enough to go home and do anything....but long enough to drive around the corner to my new favorite cafe: Spoons Coffee Cafe.

Amazing food and coffee. And super yummy lattes. With pretty designs....I think I could live with this....

My first day of work was today..It was really just filling out paperwork and getting the lowdown.

I think I'm going to like it there. I'm almost sad I won't be there longer because it seems like the kind of restaurant that will work well. The food is good and it's in a great price range to make money- even the lunch schedule. Plus they have amazing cream of crab soup. Yum.

I also found out I get a free soup, salad, or sandwich for a meal for each shift I work. Or 50% off a menu item. Not too shabby.

And this new brunch/latte place I discovered last week is apparently only 3 minutes away. Uh oh.

I have about 9 training shifts before I can actually serve. And that doesn't include the final test of waiting on a manager. If I don't pass that I have to train another week. :(  So I need to do well! I asked my manager to put me on the schedule as much as possible so I work every day this week until Sunday, starting with a double tomorrow.

Should be a fun week! Hopefully I can get through it and start serving asap...before I have more bills due!

Today was day two of job hunting. Yesterday I hit the Hunt Valley area where I used to live. I didn't know offhand if any particular places were hiring though. I didn't have the best of luck but had a few leads in.

Today I hit downtown Baltimore. One of the places I really wanted to apply to didn't accept applications yesterday, so I thought by doing it today it would cover that place too. Good thing- they were the second place I applied and they hired me!

They were probably one of my top two or three choices too. An upscale restaurant which will look good on my resume and hopefully make me some money. It will be full time, and they already know which days I need off for the holidays and approved them. I think this will work out well. It's also fulltime. I really hope to make some money working my butt off since Nick's not around.

Since I can't really let the new job know I'll be leaving in February I'm going to leave the name out of this blog. Those of you who know me know where I will be working though. I hate to be dishonest but I don't know another way to do this...Guess that's the military life. Thank God we'll be in Hawaii for three years.

Training starts at the new place on Sunday. Which is awesome because it gives me the rest of the week to enjoy being off and to not stress about not having a job/not working. I already have brunch lined up tomorrow with a friend and lunch on Thursday. I'm going to enjoy my mini-vacation. :)

The ironic thing is I finally sat down to update my blog yesterday after a few CRAZY long days in a row of moving and I entitled the blog Murphy. It was supposed to be about how Murphy's Law really took effect with our move. Twenty five minutes into typing my computer shut down to update and kicked me out of Firefox causing me to lose everything I'd just typed....Murphy's Law?

So last week was crazy. On top of the movers coming and everything being hectic with having them there packing, trying to separate everything we need for the next three months before we move to Hawaii, I also worked pretty full days on Monday, Tuesday, and even Wednesday, the day we actually left Charleston.

I ended up not having any problems with the movers only taking certain stuff. In fact, as I look for things I am realizing I forgot to put aside some things I really wanted to...like that pair of snow boots I bought last year that I have only worn twice and was looking forward to wearing here over the next three months. I'm sure they'll get tons of use in Hawaii. On an island. Haha.

Back to moving day. Wednesday we slept on the floor on a sleeping bag in the living room. At 4am I woke up because I heard Maggie making gulping noises. Sure enough I got up and turned the light on in time to see her vomiting on the carpet. I managed to get her over to the hardwood floor before she went again. Then she calmed down a little bit. At 4:45 and 5;15 she started getting sick again.

We already had our alarms set to go off at 5am. I never went back to sleep when Maggie started getting sick. On top of that, I woke up at 1am earlier and couldn't get back to sleep for an hour. So I basically got up at 3am that day. And went like 26 hours without sleep. Sooooo fun.

Maggie kept getting sick all day. I wasn't planning on feeding her or giving her water anyway to help keep her from getting sick in the car. Throughout the day Nick barricaded poor Maggie in the kitchen (on a clean-upable hard wood floor as opposed to the carpet which we were steam vacuuming so it could be inspected that day).

We left at 5:30ish pm to get on our way to Baltimore. I thought it was going to be more dramatic driving over the bridge one last time and seeing everything a last time- instead I was too distracted worrying about Maggie. She got sick again not even two minutes into the drive. Thank goodness I put down a shower curtain, her seat cover, and three towels on top of that JUST to make sure. Thank goodness.

Basically it was a pretty miserable and long trip. Maggie was just miserable. Even with Benadryl to calm her down. The last two hours I had the light on in the car watching her and she was gulping down trying not to be sick and almost falling over nodding off.

We got into Baltimore and arrived at my mom's house at 4:30am and didn't get to sleep until 5:30/6am. Maggie was sooo happy when I let her into the yard. Immediately her tail and ears went up. After being sick for 24 hours she wasn't sick anymore.

Today's Sunday so I've been in Baltimore since essentially Thursday morning. I got to have dinner and do pumpkin carving (my first time!) with my sister and her family and with Nick on Thursday night- after basically sleeping until 5pm. Friday we had dinner with my parents. Saturday for Halloween we dressed up as Bill and Sookie from True Blood and went downtown to Fells Point to see all the costumes. This morning Nick left for Connecticut.

Definitely a lot harder to say goodbye to him today after a year of living together than it ever was last year when he was stationed in Panama City and I didn't see him for nearly 3 months. I can't even imagine what April will be like when gets deployed for 6 months.

The nice thing is I will definitely see Nick for Thanksgiving weekend. Since it's only about a 5 hour trip (hopefully with not too much traffic) he will be coming down for that weekend to spend it with my family. We had such an awesome Thanksgiving together last year. Neither of us went home so we did our own little Thanksgiving with turkey, biscuits, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc. I made everything and we just hung out in sweat pants and made cocktails, ate, and watched 80's movies all day- I specifically remember Little Monsters with Fred Savage and Ben Savage. It sucks not to be able to have our own Thanksgiving again this year, but then again it will be awesome to have him here for our family Thanksgiving since he won't be here for Christmas.

I digress.

As of right now I am unemployed and freaking out a teeny bit.

I started Craigslisting tonight and am going to get up earlyish tomorrow to Craigslist some more, make some lists of local restaurants, and hit as many as possible to apply. Hopefully I won't have to resort to a restaurant that's too far away from home. I'm just crossing my fingers that I can find something quickly. I guess if I don't find something by the end of this week I'll just go to the downtown Hooters and try to work there again. Guess we'll see.

The nice thing will be not having a schedule this week- I'll get to meet up with some people I haven't seen in a while. So excited to see my best friend Erin tomorrow night for the first time in six months! And hopefully a bunch more people soon too.

Alright- up early tomorrow to job hunt....and try to figure out which clothes I have and which ones I forgot and actually somewhat organize the room I'm staying in at my parents. Ahhh, crossing fingers for that job.

I am stressed to no end.

We finally got an answer from the moving company- they're coming next Monday, which was our first choice in dates. So that's good at least. The bad news is that a surveyor is coming out first to look through our stuff and take inventory.

My friend Ali said when she and her boyfriend Matt moved from WV a surveyor came out and took inventory, and since they weren't married, they carefully avoided her things and only took things that were obviously a guy's or gender neutral. When she packed her stuff into storage last week she told me no surveyor came so they took everything. Now that I know a surveyor is coming, and Nick and I aren't married so the Navy is not really responsible for my stuff, my life is getting sucked into vacuum packed bags.

First it was more of a nice compact organization method. Now that it makes a difference from what I'm going to be struggling to fit into my car for my trip back to MD next week and then have to ship with my own money to Hawaii in February...well, I bought 8 more jumbo and x-large vacuum pack bags today. I'm avoiding putting pink things in eye view (why don't they make NON see through vacuum pack bags???) and deliberately putting Navy shirts and guy colored things on the tops and sides of the bags as much as possible.

I'm also majorly stressing about job hunting when I get back. The unfortunate thing about job hunting for restaurants is that you really can't apply ahead of time. Most require you to apply in person. So there isn't a lot of prep work involved other than making lists. Ahh, I wish I could be more prepared. I just have to believe it won't be a problem when I get back. Hopefully. Like I said, worse comes to worse I guess I can always go back to Hooters.

The one good thing about today is that I did some househunting online and actually saved about 13 properties. Five of them Nick and I really liked- I had two favorites. I'm looking at an area called Ewa Beach which is pretty close to Pearl Harbor. Turns out the area Kailua I was looking into before is pretty ridiculously expensive. I actually think it's where a lot of the stars and stuff live- many of the homes are listed in the multiple million dollar range.

We actually found some great 3 BR detatched houses in Ewa Beach for decent (for Hawaii) prices. Nick is emailing our agent tonight to find out more info about them. Some of them say they have central air and some don't, for example-which doesn't mean they don't have central air but it might not be listed. Not really feeling the loud window units. Although I don't know how much it costs to install central air so I suppose if we found something we really loved that's always an option.

Those are my major things I'm stressing about at the moment: moving, jobs, and houses. Those are prety big things. God, I wish I could just fast-forward to halfway through February when I'm already in Hawaii and in a house. Although jobhunting would still be an issue.

I just can't wait to get settled in there. Don't even get me started on booking the flight. I'm going to have to call the airlines since the dog will be flying with me. Oh Lord. One day at a time.

This week I'm crazy busy with work, which is good since the restaurant I work in has been slow. I really need to make it back up.
I started getting phone calls for the job applications I put in last week for a supplementary restaurant job here in Charleston- before I found out about Hawaii.

Everything pretty much changed once I found out about HI though. I definitely don't need a job here anymore.
Everything just became quite clear with what needed to be done.

I'm just hoping it won't be too hard to find a job when I get back to Baltimore for those 3 months. I'm hoping to use connections from my old restaurant, Hooters in Towson, MD, to work at the downtown Baltimore location (which is a lot busier than the one I used to work at- and I really want to make some money while I'm there and work as much as possible).

And on another cool note, my old manager at the Towson, MD Hooters (where I worked for 2 years)- the one that actually hired me on the spot- used to work at the location in Honolulu. She said to send her a message when it gets close to moving and she will talk to the Hooters of Honolulu for me about getting a job when I first move there.

Some might laugh at the idea of working at Hooters. It was actually my first restaurant job- and while no one else at the time called me back for a position when I needed one right away. I had just had a really bad breakup and had already put in notice at my old job- expecting to start a new job the next week when I found out the new job was a pyramid scheme- so I had like 2 days of work left and no job line up. So I figured I would do Hooters for a month or two until I found something else. And it ended up being a blast. It was decent money and the people were awesome. No one was gross there- in fact, our regulars were very protective there and if anyone tried to get out of line, they were there to step in. Did I mention one of them was a cop?

Hooters founded my restaurant background. Granted I have had a couple since then and my current cafe I have worked at for nearly a year but I was at Hooters for two full years. And it's awesome that I can still make connections with it- like getting a job hopefully right away when I move back to Baltimore and when I move to Hawaii.

Not that that's what I want to keep doing by any means. But three months in MD isn't enough to find a real job- if I find another restaurant that makes more, then I'd happily take it. Either way, restaurants are always good quick money when you need to make it.

I don't ever want to continue being a 20-something Hooters girl surrounded my 18 and 19 year olds. At some point it's gotta go. But for now I think I'm still okay. Although I feel like I should work out a bit before putting on those orange dolphin shorts again!  And maybe brush up on my hula-hooping skills.... ;)