What? It's been a week??

I kinda just left y'all hangin', didn't I??

I finally got done with that little area at work that I was working in last week.  YESTERDAY I got done.  Took me 5 1/2 days.  I'm trying really hard not to be tough on myself but I can't help it.  That's what I do.  No way should that have taken that long.  Granted, it was 27 clamps going all whichaway, some with spacers and some without, and pretty much every other thing (jacks, plugs, wire splicing, a switch, teflon tape, lockwire) that we do on those planes so it was great practice to do all that in one area but still, my goal is to get that job down to two days.  IF I ever get that one assigned to me again.  And I kinda hope I don't.  Not for a while.  Like March.

Today I started further down toward the nose, in another spot nobody seems to want to do and I don't blame them.   Mostly clamps again with some ground wires and jacks thrown in but the area.  Oh, dear Lord, the AREA.  Again, HOLE.  And this time, there are only three panels to work with so most of what you do is in the dark, you can't see what you're doing, much less see where your hand, the bolt and your air rachet are going.  But I will get it done!!  Might be next week but I will get it done!!  :)

I can figure a mortgage payment in my head, escrow and taxes included.  You wanna go 30 years or 40??  I can process a loan in record time, close one in less than 10 minutes and have the deed filed at the courthouse by 5:00.  But I cannot for the life of me close a dang clamp once it's around that wiring harness!!  

I'mma get there, though.  'Cause I've got my mama's gutsy tenacity and my daddy's ability to figure things out and I'm determined to learn this stuff, get stronger and kick that Eagle's butt into submission!

Speaking of getting stronger, I already am!  Larry kept squeezing my arms last weekend, in awe of the new muscle he felt in there.

It's a totally different world out there.  I'm really having to get used to the freedom we have to do our job, nobody rushes you or breathes down your neck to see that it's done and we don't even work a whole two hours without having a break or lunch or time to go home.  That's definitely different.  The days go by really fast now.  No more watching a clock for me!

This job is what I wanted, it's what I prayed for and my prayers were answered.  I may not be doing what I went to school for and I may not know my head from a hole in the ground out there but I DO know that there are blessings in disguise all around us, every day.  We just have to see them for what they are.  

Those aggravating, blankety-blank clamps are my blessing in disguise.  I can't believe I just typed that.

Just waaaaaah

I've spent the past two days in a hole.  A hot, hateful little hole.  The nose gear well in the lower fuselage.  Without a doubt, the most challenging thing I've done yet on that F-15.  

I'm short.  I've always been short.  I can't help it.  I'm clamping way up inside the nose gear well and I cannot reach stuff.  I stand on a small maintenance stand and still can't quite reach where I need to.  I could straddle the two platforms there that separate the left and right sides of the plane (and I have done that) but that's not really safe.  There's hydraulic fluid all around and a foot could easily slip.  Today, I questioned for the first time if I'm really cut out for this job.  I'm absolutely convinced that Satan himself designed the F-15.  No joke.

Everything is a pain in the butt.  Everything is in tight, stupid little places that you can't get to.  I hope that with time, this stuff will get easier for me but for now, what do I do??  You're talking about a girl who, until six weeks ago, had never even heard of a clamp much less put one ON something and the only tool experience I had was using a hammer and a cordless screwdriver to hang pretty pictures on my walls and hex keys to put my IKEA furniture together. 

Air rachet?  What the hell is that?  5/16 socket??  Are you kidding me?  And I'd never turned a wrench IN MY LIFE.

I have now, though.  It might not be Cadillac style but I'm doing it.

Oh, and did I mention that this little hole I'm tiptoeing up into is HOT??  Oh, good Lord, it's hot.  No air circulating up in there at all.  I have fans blowing right on me and my feet and legs are nice and cool but my head is a hot sweaty mess and the bump cap just makes it worse.

Waaaaah.  I intend to get that crap done ASAP so I can get out of there.  Hopefully by Friday.  Thank goodness I'm short and my husband is tall.  Standing on my tiptoes for 24 years to kiss him has made my calf muscles strong and well-defined.  I be needin' them calf muscles this week.
 
But my hair.  MY HAIR.  Ugh.  I know this, too, is something I'm just going to have to get over.  I'll probably get a cute short little cut this summer because it's already so hot out there.  And I'm sure I'll be buying stock in dry shampoo by fall.  I've been using this and it works pretty good.  Although it works better when I just spray some into my hand and rub it into my hair than spray it directly on my hair like the directions say.  Whatever works, right??  I remember dry shampoo from back in the day.  It was called Psssssst and it worked great in a pinch.  I used it a few times when I was a teenager in the summertime.  My hair is so fine and oily and blah that I wash it twice a day.  Always have.  So you can see how I'm hating the bump cap hot sweaty mess of it all.

This, too, shall pass.  I believe the Lord put me in that hangar for a reason and I know that He has a plan for me.  But I also believe that just as soon as I fulfill my co-op obligation to the base, I am outta there.  I'mma find me a job with some AC!  Larry doesn't call me his princess for nothin'.

"Love means never having to say you're sorry.

However, it is with sincere regret that I must now kill all of you." -- Barnabas Collins to a group of hippies (or "unshaven young people" as he called them)

Bwah!  

FINALLY, I got to see Dark Shadows today.  I loved it.  But, of course, I think Johnny Depp's the greatest thing since biscuits and gravy so I'm just a little biased.  It was cool to see a vampire do what vampires do.  Kill people.  No, Barnabas did not sparkle in the sunlight.  He sizzled.

And I especially enjoyed the fact that Barnabas was at last freed from his 200-year-old grave in 1972.  I loved the music, the VW vans, the hippies, the shag carpet, the lava lamps.   Definitely my kind of movie. 

Here's the trailer!

The Southern Belle's Handbook

I finally finished this book today.  I've been reading it at work, at break and after lunch.  Gosh, I bet I've had it six years.  I just couldn't get into it before and so it sat, on my bookshelf, waiting for another chance.

It got that chance about a month ago.  I decided to try it again.  I really like the cover.  :)  Don't judge a book, right??  Well, for this one, you can.  Sissy LeBlanc would definitely have red toenails and soak in a pink tub.  

I can't even tell you how much I enjoyed this book!!  Sissy is "the sexiest, wildest girl to ever live in Gentry, Louisiana" but she's also the most restless, the most fed up.  The book starts in 1956 and Sissy, a bored housewife and mother, is considering killing herself with aspirins and Coca Cola.  Then HE shows up.  Parker Davidson, her high school sweetheart, who left town fourteen years ago after a pretty big misunderstanding.  I'm sure you remember how that was.  Lots of misunderstandings in high school!

This story is hilarious, sexy and takes a wicked little turn that you don't even see coming.  I loved that!!

Sissy has a book of "rules" that she writes as she goes.  The Southern Belle's Handbook.  Rules like #92 A smart girl lets a man take full credit for doing exactly what she wants him to do.  Or #48 It's okay for a woman to know her place, she just shouldn't stay there.  Or my personal favorite, Rule #10 A girl can stand just so much virtue.  :)

 
When I first bought the book, Larry wrote to the author, Loraine Despres, for an autograph for me.  She sent me Sissy's handbook!!

And this is what she wrote inside.  


Rule #106 Forget his stomach.  The best way to keep a man happy is to become his cheerleader.


Gimme an L!!  :)

Four dead in Ohio

42 years ago today, on May 4, 1970, four unarmed students were killed and nine others were wounded by National Guardsmen who fired shots into a peaceful anti-war rally protesting President Nixon's decision to invade Cambodia.  A massacre that became known as simply "Kent State".

Four innocent kids murdered.  Just because they were tired of seeing their brothers, their cousins, their neighbors, their friends, their classmates go off to fight in that horrendous war and not come back home.  So sad.

RIP Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, Allison Krause and William Schroeder.

Fill in the blank Friday!

My bedtime routine includes a bubble bath, packing my lunch and backpack for work the next day and playing Words With Friends on Facebook.  Unless it's the weekend and then I get wild and crazy and watch a movie. :)

I am already in my jammies (and have been since about 2:00 this afternoon!).

I can't stand yogurt because it tastes like sour milk to me, clabber as I call it, and the texture is just gross.  But I love sour cream, cottage cheese and cream cheese.  Weird. 

My idea of relaxation would be spending a week at the beach doing absolutely nothing.  No sightseeing, no restaurant-hopping, no shopping, just laying in the sand, well protected from the sun, reading a hot, hilarious cowboy romance like this one and doing NO OTHER THING.

If I had an extra $50, I would buy a used record player and an old Joan Baez album.

The best thing about having a bloggy friend is meeting her!

A recipe I have been dying to try is Trisha's Country Quiche!

 
Happy Weekend!

Eagle bites

That Eagle did not want me messin' with him today.  He didn't want me taking out his old wiring, his old clamps and his old plugs.

I tried to explain to him that it was for his own good and that he would be able to fly so much faster with new wiring.

He was having none of that right there.

He screeeeeeched and he hissed and he even cussed me once.

And he bit me.  And he scratched me with his claws.

But we shall be BFFs in no time, I just know it!  :)