Bug's Oven: Yeah, it was 72 here today.

So, we're here! We've been here. It's been over a week. Two weeks, actually, tomorrow.

I don't even know where to begin. I am quite behind in updating, so rest-assured, none of this will be in order.

Facts, perhaps, first. The house. It's not bad. They put in new carpet before we arrived. Although it's not terribly fancy carpet and has already become permanently smooshed by the kitchen despite frequent vacuuming, it does not have any one else's stuff stuck in it.

The countertops in the kitchen were gross, so I complained about it. Two days later, the countertops were refinished. I also felt that the floor in the kitchen was disgusting, so the cleaning ladies came out again to scrub it with a dog-sized brillo pad. It's nice to have such maintenance services. Granted, it's expensive to live here, but you get what you pay for. For some things.

The total square footage is about the same as our house in SLP, but with a different layout, and no basement. The kitchen is quite large, and has room for a *real* dining room table. There's more cupboard space than I know what to do with, and we actually have A PANTRY. OMG. And my mixer gets to live up on the counter, and it's not even in the way.

We had to buy a washer and dryer, which was a pain in the ass, and a large expense that we were not anticipating. Add on to that the new mattress and new (gigantic but absolutely perfect in every way) couch, and I'm surprised my Visa hasn't melted yet.

We have TWO bathrooms. Matt can poop and I can take a shower without a gas mask.

We have a real, honest-to-goodness LINEN CLOSET that I don't also have to share with all of my makeup and hair products and all of our first-aid equipment.

There's an enclosed concrete patio off of the kitchen, and a playground five steps from that.

Except it has sand, which we're currently not a big fan of.

We can see San Diego Bay from every window in the house. The unfortunate thing is that every single one of them faces east, which means that with the current angle of the sun (I am being optimistic about this) the house gets quite dark in the afternoon.

The dog has to be taken out on a leash every time he wants to go outside. This is a pain in the ass. There are a lot of dogs in the neighborhood ("neighborhood") and he's into exploring. Which is annoying. Just pee and let's go inside already. For the sixth time this hour.

The beach (ocean side) is a ten minute walk from our house.

We live on what the "locals" call "The Strand." This is the skinny part of Coronado. Technically an isthmus? Who knows. The big, fat island-shaped northern part of Coronado is known as "The Village." It's teeming with tourists, which is kind of annoying. I have no idea if we're in the middle of the busy tourist season, or if it's going to get worse some other part of the year. We have to drive through The Village to get to the bridge, which takes you across to San Diego. (Yes, you can technically drive south instead and back up and around, but that takes even longer). Getting through The Village can take upward of 20 minutes, and I'm not sure if it's even three miles. Those visiting have no idea where they're going, which makes the 25-30 mph speed limit even more excruciating.

If you live in The Village, and you're not a tourist or you're not in the Navy, you are either a) a fabulously wealthy retiree of some kind or b) younger than a retiree but still fabulously wealthy. Isn't putting a Coronado license plate frame on your BMW a bit redundant? I don't know what these people do, but perhaps I should just let it go, since we are in Southern California.

The Coronado library has toddler story time every Tuesday and Friday. Earlier this week I saw a sign outside the library that stated Tuesday there would be a Hanukkah party. I couldn't wait to go! A Hanukkah party!

I wasn't sure how many people would be there, since there don't seem to be a lot of Jews on Coronado, or a lot of people sympathetic to the Jews. And I was right. There were a whole gaggle of moms (who put the Edina moms to shame, btw) full of Marc Jacobs and LV. And their daughters were either in Christmas pageant outfits (the hair bows!) or in Gymboree like it was their job. And they were all chittering amongst themselves (with a distain they perhaps did not care about hiding) about how this week's story time was combined (normally it's the little kids first, then an older kid second session) for the "Hanukkah party? Or something?" Clearly these people knew nothing of the Hanukkah party (there was a sign!! Was the person you hired to read signs for you off today?) or the holiday itself. And their older Hispanic nannies were of no help, either. You'd have thought I was a porcupine with how hard I was bristling looking and listening to these people (and it's obvious the library employees are equally bothered by the way they treated me when I asked a question).

It was finally time to walk in. There was a semi-circle of chairs for the adults, and a whole lot of little carpet squares on the floor. Obviously the children were to pick a carpet square to sit on. Bug decided to pick up three and move/throw them around at other children.

HERE, DO YOU WANT THIS ONE? ON YOUR FACE?

I finally tried to get her to sit (which she never does, unless it involves bracelets) and then she threw the snack cup. I felt like I was now The Mom With The Kid That's Ruining The Moment For Everyone Else. For some reason, every other child in that room, regardless of age (I would guess six months to ten years -- school was on break) sat quietly, and without commotion. Bug walked up to three different moms and announced HI in her loudest voice, then kept pointing at a little girl dressed rather tomboy-ish and saying "BOY BOY BOY." When the librarian started demonstrating the dreidel, Bug walked right up to the front of the room and tried to pick it up off the floor. I had completely given up at this point, btw. I knew I already didn't fit in, so why even try to care now?

No, I'm not kidding, she was the only one not sitting. There are fifty more kids to her right, out of frame, SITTING NICELY.

The women to my left seemed like they might be Jewish. I couldn't be sure. They were talking like they knew what a latke was, so I thought I might go in with a question: Where the HELL does one buy a challah around here?

She informed me she moved here from Miami, which you and I both know has challah on every corner. As I suspected, I'd have to go north, but not necessarily to La Jolla. She was nice enough to write down three bakeries on a piece of paper for me, but there was no further attempt at conversation or friendship beyond that. (Do I sound like a crazy person, complaining about no attempt at friendship? Perhaps. Maybe in Minnesota we just do The Small Talk more often, even when we don't give two shits.)

Which I suppose brings me nicely to my next point about trying to meet people. The folks who live around us are a bit creepy and weird. They are your typical military families, I suppose. Women who don't necessarily take care of themselves, look like they were pregnant at 18, etc etc. I'm living in the middle of it, so I'm allowed to comment on the stereotype, mmkay? The kids are the playground are WEEEEEEIRD. I was subjected to a 30 minute conversation about the TV show Terra Nova (which I have never watched) by one child, while another coughed what I SWEAR was TB all over me while mom distractedly said 150 feet away, "cover your mouth, DeSean." Cough. COUGH. (I do have to say that a group of kids were playing on Saturday and all of a sudden another appeared from a nearby house with two Christmas cookies on a paper towel and walked toward us on the playground and asked us if Bug could have one. It was a super sweet gesture, and the candy cane was misshaped enough to make me think he possibly baked them himself. I let her take one even though my insides were screaming NO, YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE THAT HAS BEEN and let her take a bite. Then we turned her around away from the kid and I frantically took a gigantic bite myself because I figured if she gets sick, so will I. But it tasted like Pillsbury dough from the roll and so far we're both still here.)

Basically we're somewhere in the middle, Coronado people-wise. We don't fit in with our neighbors (who so far have been asshole-ish, and who I've already personally asked at 10:00 PM to turn down their Call of Duty game) and we don't fit in with the other assholes farther north on the island. I'm OK with it right now, because this is a half mile from my house:

Basie has been on more walks in these last two weeks than in the last five months, combined.

I don't know that we'll stay here the whole three years (it's also annoyingly far away from almost everything and/or we were so spoiled in SLP where you could get to ANYTHING in less than ten minutes) but it's a fine place to be right now while we get our bearings.

He loves the beach.

So far we've met a few people from the band. A lot of people are on vacation right now, so Matt hasn't been meeting that many people at work, and the nighttime dinner socializing is limited to who is in town. The ones we've met have been nice, but I can't help but think most of them are spoiled brats. We are SO unique in that we had "civilian" careers before Matt decided to join the Navy. The majority either entered right out of high school (seven or so years ago the admission standards were much lower than they are now -- most entering now have at least bachelor's degrees if not master's degrees) or entered immediately after college. Matt and I just have such a different perspective on things. These folks take for granted the very things that prompted us to pursue this. They have no idea what it's like to pay for health insurance. Or child care. Or to work a 40+ hour work week. One commented tonight that he didn't want to get sent overseas because those bands work so much more. You see, he seems to enjoy his "show up for three hours and call it a day" schedule they have here. They came right out of college to this, and they still act like it's college. This is annoying to me. But we've only met a few, and even if there are more, I will be nice. Because I play just as much of a role in the promotion game as Matt does ... it does us no good for me to be the bitchy, unfriendly wife. So I pretend. And hope that I make a real friend at some point.

It's weird to be back to double-parenting. It's been a hard transition for me. But I'll figure it out.

And then randomly, just because it's also on my mind:

I'd like to work for the financial benefit, but there aren't a lot of places hiring right now part-time (I have no interest right now in pursuing another full-time corporate job). And we have no child care. The wait list for base child care is upward of a year. We're also in this goofy catch-22 (or catch-22,000?). It comes in a few forms. A: We have only one car. If I worked, we'd probably need a second one. So my income would have to offset not only child care, but also a second vehicle. And still make it worthwhile (i.e. more than a $20 ahead every two weeks). B: As I mentioned before, I don't know that I want to live where we're living the whole time. I want to live by Balboa Park. It's expensive. I'd need to start working. So in addition to the issues of A, part of why I want to live by the park is because I want to go/walk to the park, all the time, but if I'm working full-time, I have considerably less daytime to spend at said park, etc etc.

And now we're at the present day. This weekend was fun. Matt was off Friday and is off again tomorrow. We unpacked more of Bug's toys last night (her shopping cart, her Little Tikes house, etc) and put them in the living room. This morning she was MUCH more interested in pushing Lulu around in the shopping cart than she was opening any new presents.

We tried hiking today at Mission Trails Regional Park, but it was a disaster (see: The Daily Bug). I also hated it because the trail was PACKED. Seriously, it was like navigating MOA on a rainy Saturday. So we aborted that plan and went to Balboa instead. Have I mentioned recently how much I love Balboa?