Gossip Girl

Well, we’ve had our furniture for about a week now and we’re almost completely unpacked. We’ve repurposed a lot of our furniture to save money on buying new stuff. Our corner desk is now a corner television stand. Alan added shelves for the DVD player and Playstation and today I’m going to prime and paint a deep dark brown that will (hopefully) match the other furniture in the living room which can almost all be called espresso or black-brown, if you want to be boring about it. Then I’m going to cover the back and sides either with bamboo or fabric panels to hide the cords and general ugliness. The low dresser that we used to have the TV on is now doing service as a credenza in the dining room and holding the good china, silverware, and crystal. The butcher block from the kitchen is also now in the dining room, creating a wonderful display stand for my great-grandmother’s silver tea service, which Buffy gave me as a wedding present. I’m going to paint that as well, and probably do the same thing with fabric/bamboo so that I can use the shelves for more storage. For a desk I’m using my mother’s old trunk. I’m going to get a piece of wood to raise the surface and probably a hutch for organization, but I’ll still end up saving a couple hundred dollars on a new desk, and at least I can pack the trunk with unused stuff. The second bedroom has been turned into a hobby room. The keyboard is spread across two folding tray tables and the sewing machine is on another. Alan took boards we already had and cut them down to use as shelves in the standing closets we used for our clothes back in Milford. Those have become gear and craft closets. All of that will eventually have to change seeing as how I want to have a child at some point in the near future, but for now it’s pretty awesome. I bought a low stackable shelving unit that we’re going to add legs to to create a bench for the front hall and we’re going to get a table from Ikea to make a cover for the litter box. We also need a coat rack, but that can wait until the weather actually warrants coats. We’re also going to replace the bookshelf with a larger bookshelf system, since it seems very unlikely our book collection will get any smaller and this shelf is already bursting at the seams. I think we’d eventually like to get a small grill and a bistro table and chairs for the patio. Our bikes are out there now, but they’ll move to the front porch. Alan was worried about them getting stolen, but our downstairs neighbor leaves his bike out all the time, as do a number of other tenants.

In other, slightly more interesting news, Alan’s first unit ball is coming up very soon. I knew they’d have one, but I never expected it to be so soon! So I took the car yesterday and spent the morning at the Chapel Hills Mall, which is on the north end of Academy Blvd, near (you guessed it) the Air Force Academy. There’s actually another mall on the same road, but closer to the south central part of town. I actually found a dress at JC Penney, which is the first store I tried, but I still went to all the other department stores, just to be sure there wasn’t something better. This is the dress, should you care to see it. Thank goodness for post-prom clearance sales. It’s simple and tasteful and I don’t particularly care if anyone else is wearing the same dress. The ball is on the 23rd so I didn’t have a lot of time to shop or even for the luxury of alterations. Fortunately, the juniors department doesn’t require much alteration. This actually fits pretty perfectly with my corset underneath. It’s shorter than I’d like, but I also managed to find a pair of very pretty flats at DSW, along with a small evening bag. At the very least, I won’t be the subject of gossip because of my clothes.

I am a little nervous about the level of gossip and general cattiness I may encounter. Army wives don’t exactly have the best reputation when it comes to that sort of thing. Alan was adamant that I not get a bright colored dress because the girls who wear bright colors get talked about. So do the girls who wear short skirts. And the girls who wear something a little too revealing. I’ve read through some forums on the etiquette of these things and there are a lot of "unwritten" rules. Some say that it’s okay to wear shorter skirts because lots do, but in the same post a wife whose been to lots of these things will say that these girls are looked down on and it reflects on their husbands/boyfriends. One person will say that everyone gets pretty wasted, and another will say that you shouldn’t really drink. My own opinion is that I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself or Alan, so my intention is towards more temperate behavior. I suppose there’s a line that must be found between loosening up enough to have fun without coming off as a party girl and being reserved enough to avoid stupidity without seeming stuck-up. At any rate, I’m looking forward to meeting some new people. Maybe I won’t feel so isolated if I have other Army wives to talk to.

By the by, it’s pretty easy to spot the Army wives. They’re usually the ones who look younger than me and have babies that they push around the mall in packs. Alan tells me that there are guys younger than him in his outfit that are one their second or even third marriages. That’s crazy to me! Do they just meet and get married? Can’t they just date?  Sorry, had to get that out there.

Other than a little nervousness, life continues pretty quiet here in the Springs. Alan and I went to Cave of the Winds and Garden of the Gods. I got a sunburn on my shoulders and back, so now I have some crazy tan lines that I have no way of fixing because I don’t have a bathing suit to go lay out on the pool deck. Ugh. The shoulders don’t look so bad because there’s no sharp line, but my back has lines from my backpack and racer back bra straps. Fun fun fun.

And what’s with all the anti-Meth billboards out here? I didn’t realize it was such a major drug. I mean, in the east, the drugs of choice for teenagers are alcohol and marijuana, with the occasional ecstasy or acid experiment thrown in. I know one or two people that were rumored to be involved in more serious stuff, but these were by and large people who already had some serious issues and it was mostly just a matter of time. Apparently the western half of the country has a meth problem, and it’s hardly in my consciousness as anything more than a joking cultural reference ("twitching like a bunny on meth"). The billboards are pretty disturbing too. They’d certainly work on me. LOL… not that I’m a high-risk group.

Anyway, the dishwasher has finished so I can now go take a shower and get dressed. Start my day sort of thing. ^_^

~Liz