It’s a process

Going a month in Pooh’s Hundred-Acre Sandbox, and life’s pretty easy. That sounds weird, I know, what being in a war-torn country and all, but I really feel that I’m in an insulated bit of it.

But settling in is a process. So far, I feel like I’ve yet to start my job. Technically, my job is to substitute for other people when they go on leave, and the leave rotation really hasn’t kicked in yet. In a month it will be nonstop action. Tomorrow, not so much.

But as soon as the bell rings, I’ll super busy. I’m just tired of waiting for it.

Come to think of it, I have heard bells, though. We’ve had what I think were small kitchen fires in the last two weeks and when one happened in my building – oh my God, the bell. The fire alarm is not eight feet from my desk and it scared the bejesus out of me.

Anyway, I’m just trying to be patient and find stuff to do while I’m waiting for the job to really kick in. By my estimates, that would be mid-November at the latest.

In the meantime, I’m waiting on more to settle down, like my weight! It’s hard to get used to the abundance of food, and to pace yourself accordingly.

As happened between my first two posts, I gained weight in the U.S. Once in [insert name of country here], though, I got back on the treadmill and weight came off again. A month into it, that has not been the case here. It’s still creeping up.

The thing is, if you look at what I’m eating, it’s not much. I’ve had multiple people comment on my lunch, saying it’s barely enough. In general, it’s soup, rice/broccoli/mashed potatoes/some other little side dish and a piece of unbuttered cornbread.

I have to stop here to mention that the soup is fantastic. I’ve yet to have a soup that I’d deem subpar, although I have noticed the chicken noodle in one building is superior to one served in a different building. They’re both excellent, but one uses spaghetti noodles and one uses one of the curly noodles. I like the curly more. Anyway, I’ve had Indian Dahl, minestrone, vegetable, chicken vegetable, beef noodle, roasted pepper (oh, the roasted pepper!), turkey and rice, chicken and rice, and seafood bisque. Seriously, one day last week I had three different soups, one for lunch and two for dinner.

So I’m eating a lot of soup. That shouldn’t pack on pounds, right? But I feel like I’ve continually gained since I arrived. It’s hard not to, but I swear I’m being conscious about what I eat. (Although, I admit, after skipping any sort of dessert for a week and then getting on the scale and hitting a new high for the decade, I caved and ate Ben & Jerry’s because it just doesn’t seem to matter.)

Now I am wondering if it’s because I’ve always bought food on the local market and now I am back to eating food that’s been processed in the U.S. I noticed this in Morocco, when I are basically rice, macaroni and popcorn for meals. People would tell me I was losing weight and what was I eating, and I was thinking pretty much just carbs. But the food wasn’t as processed as it was in the United States. Same with Turkey and China.

So now I have to figure it out. This past weekend, I didn’t drink anything except water and unsweet tea, with the exception, as planned, as an end-of-weekend soft drink. I’ve been trying to figure out where the intake has been coming from, and all I have been able to figure is the drinks. There’s tea and lemonade, and even though I mix the sweet and unsweet teas together, in Istanbul I always did stevia sweet tea. The lemonade is just super sweet, too, and there’s only cucumber water to dilute tit.

And I’m doing fitness classes up the wazoo. It’s just baffling me, but I guess, like the job itself, everything will kick in at some point. It’s all a process, right?

At sea in the sandbox

Happy first three-day weekend! It’s kind of like being on a cruise that’s at sea. There are a whole bunch of scheduled stuff going on, but no real purpose, like, you know, a job.  Me, I need that dock so I can go aboard and take in the sights. Day three of the three-day holiday has been pretty darn boring.

I hadn’t really counted on three-day weekends anyway, so this was kind of a surprise. Most people here work six or seven days a week. At some point, I probably will, too, but my job is to stopgap people and right now everyone’s here so there’s no need to stopgap.

So, this non-docking cruise ship in a sandbox is one, right now, of routine, but man oh man, the routines you can build. Fridays, which are our Saturdays, are the most packed but Thursday nights (our Friday nights) are packed.

I went directly to the gym after work to hit the rowing machine for a half an hour before abs class, then agreed to kickball before I realized kickball was immediately following abs class. I had penciled in eating for that hour, since Bible study started right after that. Instead, I darted off to grab some Froot Loops (Marriott got me addicted) as a meal for during Bible study. Not exactly healthy, but compact with little cleanup.

There’s not a lot of retail therapy in this sandy version of Pooh’s One Hundred Acre Wood. We have two little stores with stuff like cleaning products and toiletries (but no vitamins) and another with a different variation of that, plus booze. The first one also has a limited supply of random things with “Baghdad Embassy” on it, though as of yet I haven’t seen any clothing I need.

After an attempt to run outside, though, I did cave and buy a $13 ball cap to run in. I have one, but it’s orange and since some of my running stuff is blue, I just can’t mix those. I got a tan one with a U.S. flag. No “Baghdad” on it anywhere.

One of my major goals this weekend was go buy a shower curtain liner, which is something not offered in any of the little stores. But Wal-Mart and Target deliver, so why not, right? I figured I’d pick up a few other little things. Well, this turned out to be waaaaaay harder than it should have been. Apparently a shower curtain liner is somehow too dangerous, or something, to go through the diplomatic pouch, which is how I get mail.

I tried various combinations of stuff to try to land on some safe-enough version of a shower curtain liner (seriously) and came up empty until one certain combination from Target. As a RedCard holder, this was perfect, until the automated system refused to acknowledge my new address. Now, the addresses are pretty standard, and it basically just changed one set of four numbers to a new set of four numbers and then switched a box number. The ZIP code changed two digits.  When I went to change it, though, no matter how I put it in, the system insisted I had entered an invalid address for some city in Jersey that I’ve never even visited, let alone gotten mail in.

After three calls to Target directly, I gave it up and hit up Amazon. I hadn’t tried it before because I tend to wind up with a lot of stuff that’s deemed unable to be sent to the dip pouch, like books. But it let me send the shower curtain, although not the vitamins. Win some, lose some. I topped it off with enough “I’d have bought it eventually anyway” stuff to qualify for free shipping (Thanks, Eric Church!) and will hope for the best. I’ve no idea how long it takes to get Amazon stuff here.

Mostly what I’ve done this weekend – besides agonize over the Noles, how awful was that? – has been to edit a friend’s doctoral thesis. Originally it was due in April, so when I got it in August I sat it on the back burner until I arrived. Then he turned in the first draft, and I guess it was so clean they said he could turn it in a semester early, or Oct. 15, to get his doctorate early. Yikes! We cranked it up and, hopefully, it’s almost done. Either way, it’s in his court at the moment; I sent up my latest version yesterday and am awaiting two things before I can send up what it, hopefully, the final version.

The stepped-up timeline will be a coup for me, because as much as I’ve jumped in feet-first here, I’ve held off on a few things that I planned on doing after the paper. If it’s done by the end of October, that’s all the earlier I can get going on the other stuff.

As I’ve said, there’s a full slate of stuff you can do, both formal and information, regular and one-time. The kickball, for example, is as a warm-up for a tournament that’s coming up. I don’t think it’s an ongoing thing. (We also have a Balls of Steel Ping Pong tournament coming up, too.)

And if you don’t see it on the calendar, you can find a space and stick it on yourself. And that’s what I hope to do with guitar. I bought a little one in Istanbul with the hope of figuring out how to pick it, but wanted to wait until the paper was done. Not only does it look like I will have the time before April, but I’ve already found someone else who also has a guitar but no clue.

How, exactly, I’m going to fit it in is an unknown; this long weekend notwithstanding, I’m unbelievably busy with stuff, and I keep taking on more. This week, I added tae kwon do (hi Riley!) to my list of things I want to try, which is taught by one of the salsa guys.

I don’t think the salsa guys recognize me as a lost cause just yet. So very optimistic, they seem think that one day I will suddenly become coordinated and graceful. As I’ve been me for almost five decades, I’m not as optimistic, but I’m willing to humor them by joining the other classes they seem to think will turn me into a swan. I enjoy the step classes, but after each class I apologize to the instructor for sucking so bad. At this point in the game, I’m too scared to even step across the little stair thing for fear I twist/sprain/break my ankle. I stick to the up-and-down on just the one side. It’s kind of repetitious, but I haven’t turned any body parts bruise blue yet.

Abs class is pretty much ditto. Due to the shoulder surgery (or so I tell myself), I just can’t do a side plank, and some of those other moves just don’t mesh with rehab, either. Sometimes I find myself having to modify the modified version. Between shoulder and foot, the left side of my body doesn’t work every well.