The Final Countdown

I think I’m just barely recovering from the whirlwind that was our Christmas break. We went to Utah, then Cabo, then back to Utah, then Virginia for Christmas, Georgia for our anniversary, back to Virginia to watch our two nieces, then back to Grenada. Oh, and throw in a few daytrips to DC for good measure. We slept in 7 different beds over a 5 week period. It seems only fitting that this hectic break was the bookend to one of our most hectic years. 2015 was a doozy. Billy and I were in different countries for 88 days in 2015. I can’t tell you how excited I am to never do that again. It's been wonderful to both stay in one place for a full term.

We are now in our last term here in Grenada. We’ll be leaving this place for good at the end of May--2 short months. I’ve been trying my hardest to sabotage Billy’s studying plans because how great would it be if he failed this term and we stayed a little longer? Someone should really put me in the running for world’s best wife. We have a lot of friends out here whose wives will go home for various reasons for a couple of weeks, and they always ask Billy (since I had to be gone so much last year), “how do you do it with her gone, man?” And he always answers,“It’s actually really nice, you’ll love the freedom!”*** In response to this, the other guy usually backs up and washes his hands of being involved with our dysfunctional relationship.

***Billy wants me to point out that he never actually said this and I'm exaggerating. When I'm gone, he really does miss me, even if he does get better grades.

Most of the other wives out here wake up early to cook breakfast and pack their husband a lunch, and have a hot dinner made every night, so it really would be hard to survive without them. I’m trying to figure out how to get myself a wife like that. My philosophy in wifery is that popular saying--“If you can make a man some toast, you’ll feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to toast, you’ll feed him for a lifetime.” I make some damn good toast, but every once in a while, I’ll let Billy practice his cooking skills. Or else he’ll probably starve.

In all seriousness, I really have such anxiety about leaving Grenada. The lifestyle here is so much slower and laid back, and I’m really worried about being sucked back into the materialism that had such a strong hold on me in Utah. I was all about accumulating stuff and clothes. And now I want to have as little “stuff” as possible.  Until moving here, I never realized how owning everything that I wanted (instead of what I needed) was really weighing me down. It’s the best how all the wives here show up to a function all sweaty with frizzy hair in gym clothes or a swimsuit, and it’s completely normal.  

And don’t even mention makeup—there’s really no point. Some of us will put some mascara and blush on for church, but then usually regret it after the first hour as we’re dripping with sweat and fanning our armpits. One time, I made the mistake of putting some eyebrow gel on for church and by the end of the meetings, my eyebrows extended down to my cheeks. I don’t even have a blow dryer, flat iron, or curling iron down here. I took them home after our first term. I curled my hair once for Billy’s white coat ceremony, and by the time we walked down to the bus stop—an 8-minute walk—the curls were gone and I was seriously contemplating shaving my head to get the heat off my neck. 

I hope it’s always mind-blowing to me that there are inventions like garbage disposals and dishwashers. And can we talk about how amazing dryers are? We did so much laundry while we were in Virginia, just because we could do more than one load in a day. Billy and I just kept crazily throwing more loads in with big grins on our faces. And our clothes were so soft and smelled so good and they actually fit me! When I went to Utah in October, I weighed myself and realized that I had lost 20 pounds from taking up running. I was shocked. I knew my clothes were all loose on me, but they were always getting looser and more stretched out before that because they were never getting shrunk in the dryer. Why, thank you dear Fitbit, don’t mind if I do.

Reflecting back on these two years, I kind of see this time in my life like a mission (but so much better because I can swim and swear and not have to work or be nice to people). I obviously would not qualify to be a missionary, but what I mean is that no one can understand the experience unless they’ve gone through it too. Whenever I go home to visit, I just want to talk about Grenada and how awesome and sucky it is at the same time—and then I realize that people are just being polite when they listen to me venting about how there wasn’t butter on the island for a few weeks because—newsflash—nobody cares, Tori! It’s kind of like how you try and listen and stay interested when a returned missionary is going on about this one person they taught, but really you don’t care, and you just wish they would move on with their life already. Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, I’m really scared to go back to America and to have this time in our lives only be a fond memory. I’m not ready! I’ll probably have to un-follow all my friends out here because I can see myself getting seriously depressed when they post pictures on the beach or at the pool or hanging out with turtles. And then I’ll have to deal with it by going to Chipotle and Target, but those places can never replace Grenada. Thinking of getting on the plane and knowing that we might not ever return is making me tear up right now. Ideally, we'll return one day to show our kids where we lived and to visit our friends here. But getting out here costs about as much as going to Europe and we've already done almost everything on the island. But, who knows?

It’s so hard to describe the lifestyle out here—I know everyone hates my guts when I complain about how hard it can be, because I live in freaking paradise. And I’m an asshole, so I love rubbing it in people’s faces. But, in reality, I’m not at a resort all day long. I have to actually do normal living things out here. 

Like:

·      Clean bat poop off my porch walls in the blazing heat.

·      Sweep my floor five times a day—except I now own a vacuum that I smuggled into the country which is my most favorite possession in the entire world!

·      Deal with immigration (they make me cry every time) and really bad customer service from every single business here.  Do you remember that “You Had One Job” Buzzfeed list? This one. It would be really funny if it weren’t so applicable to every customer service experience I’ve had here.

·      Grocery shopping with a scooter is a little difficult/giving me scoliosis.

Not to mention:

·      Running the AC is expensive, but luckily our apartment is 600 square feet (if I’m being generous). And we are really rich in love.

·      Having to hang dry all our clothes, and our towels get extra crispy and smell like onions after I use them twice.

·      We can’t leave dishes in the sink or crumbs on the counter or else: ANTS.

·      Mosquito bites are a daily occurrence, but luckily we haven’t gotten dengue or chikingunya or zika YET.

·      Groceries are really expensive because everything is imported.

·      All of our electronics are fried and won’t hold a charge from the crazy electric current here.

·      Our bed is the size of an American full bed—if that.

·      We have pregnant friends that have to leave us because of freaking Zika.

·      My eyebrows are never properly groomed, because the lighting is so bad in our apartment—I’ve even plucked them in the school bathroom before.

·      We don’t get very many channels, and so we’ve actually started to kind of like Two and a Half Men and Big Bang Theory. So embarrassing. 

·      The stench that my armpits produce out here is unfathomable.

·      People don’t realize that I don’t have a phone number anymore. Sorry to the guy who has my old cell number—I’m just really popular. But you seemed pretty nice when Billy accidentally FaceTimed you. The guy who has Billy's old number, on the other hand, is a douche. When held hostage in a group text about my sister's labor, he did not understand the beauty of dilating cervixes and instead protested that he didn't know why he was in the text. Which my family ignored, because they've come to expect my sarcastic commentary. My bad!

·      Amazon doesn’t ship here.

·      You have to drink your drink at restaurants super fast or else the ice will melt and it will water it down. Good luck trying to find fountain drinks anywhere!

·      I don’t see my husband very often.

But, so as not to be a total downer:

·      We’ve never had a centipede in our apartment.

·      Since we run the AC all the time, we’ve never had a problem with mold.

·      I’m not scared of a terrorist attack out here.

·      Yes our apartment is tiny, but we always have running water, and if it hasn’t rained too much, it even gets pretty hot.

·      We have the best view of sunsets over the water from our porch.

·      Our ghetto scooter has never gone out when we needed it.

·      Washing dishes by hand is a pain, but I read that people who don’t own dishwashers are healthier/less likely to develop allergies because they are allowing more bacteria into their bodies and building their immune system. Yum.

·      Our favorite beach is a 15-minute walk from our house.

·      We got attacked by sand fleas our first month here, so daily mosquito bites seem like nothing in comparison.

·      Our 2 lizard roommates eat most of the bugs.

·      We’ve only lost electricity twice.

·      Thanks to Hola, we can watch Netflix and Hulu all day long. (Although Netflix is getting smarter, and so I just have to put up with Spanish subtitles while watching Anatomia de Grey). 

·     We've had so many friends and family come to see us, with more to come! If we were in Iowa, I don't think we would have any visitors. 

·      I’m not able to work here, which means that I was able to branch out and start my master’s degree in accounting. That probably never would have happened if we were anywhere else. 

·      We’re in major debt, but feel so privileged that someone will even loan us money to live on and to further our education—and the money we get is way more than most people in the world lives off of. Thanks, Obama. But really.

·      We got to see Jurassic World the day before it came out in the US.

·      We live in a time where we can easily talk to and see friends and family back home.

·      Local mangoes and avocados and bananas are amazeballs.

·      When Billy gets some free time, we don’t have to go anywhere for a relaxing vacation, because we live in the Caribbean. We just barely went snorkeling on Billy’s dinner break.

·      Butter melts super fast.

If you got through this whole list, you’re probably thinking, “Tori, didn’t you already say you realize that nobody cares?” Why, yes. Yes I did. I'll miss you, Grenada.

The East vs. The West

Billy has always been baffled how I know so much about US history, and I owe it all to growing up in Virginia. I had fieldtrips to Gettysburg and Jamestown and slave plantations while he had fieldtrips to This is the Place park and the Utah state capitol. Not that one is better than the other, but Virginian history is much more tied up with American history. My dad worked in DC, and so when I went to visit my Dad at work, we’d stop by the White House or US Capitol building or the National Mall. My dad’s fancy pants friends let my family take a tour of the west wing of the White House. NBD.

My grandmother--or Gee Gee, as we call her--lived in Williamsburg up until she passed, and went to church at the Bruton Parish church on Duke of Gloucester street. It was built in 1683 (just a taaaad bit earlier than Utah churches). It’s also where George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson were known to attend church. Not that I’m name-dropping or anything. We even lived in an old log cabin that was around during the Civil War. My mom suspects our home was where Stonewall Jackson spent the night with his troops after a battle. He’s probably the ghost that haunted that old cabin too. Not that I jump to conclusions or anything. Even where we vacationed every year in the Outer Banks is where some conspiracy theorists think Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony disappeared to. No offense Utahns, but learning about Jeremiah Johnson and all those pesky seagulls just isn’t as exciting to me.

When I first moved to Utah in 5^th grade, we were doing the Hope of America pageant and learning all the annoyingly cheerful songs. I remember hating all of the songs, but especially the Utah song. I even refused to sing it during our practices and was fully prepared to tell my teacher that I wasn’t singing because I wasn’t from Utah and didn’t feel any sort of allegiance to it. Which didn’t even matter because my teacher never asked. As I was trying to make friends, I bragged to my classmates that I was related to Pocahontas—as 5^th graders do. (In full disclosure, my great grandmother claimed the relation, but once my mom got into genealogy, she hasn’t been able to find the connection). This was a rather unimpressive claim to fame as the kids in my class all thought that Pocahontas was nothing but a cartoon character and wasn’t I so sweet for thinking she was real? This moment was the first time in my life that my jaw literally dropped. And probably the exact same moment that I became prejudiced against the Utah school system. *For anyone reading this, Pocahontas was a real person/child bride even though Disney didn’t exactly get the story right* To be completely fair, kids who grew up in Utah probably know way more than I do about the Louisiana purchase, the gold rush, and the Mormon pioneers (although the pioneer part is probably more from all their ancestors and church than actual school).

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve come to develop a love for Utah and its raw beauty. And I claim Utah as my home since I lived there for 15 years and married a Utahn. But all of this is a long-winded way of saying that Billy doesn’t know crap about US history. I love him to death and he knows every name of every vein, bone, muscle, or fluid in the body. He’s just not a history buff like I am.

So, when we went in to explore DC on our own over the last half of our Christmas break, it was really exciting for me to try and brainwash him. He’s been to DC before when we came out for my sister’s wedding, but my Dad only took us on a condensed tour a few hours before Billy’s flight left back to Utah. So, this time we really got to pick and choose just what we wanted to do. We saw the White House and I pointed out the security booth where I went in to eat lunch at the White House mess last year. And I told him the trick to knowing whether the President is at the White House or not. We also tried to pick out where the snipers were hiding, because we’re 5 years old. We visited Arlington National Cemetery where my Granddad and Gee Gee are buried. We hadn’t been able to visit my Gee Gee’s grave since she passed last year. And Billy had never visited my Granddad’s grave. It was really special to share that experience with him. My granddad died when I was very young, but from the stories I’ve heard, I still feel very close to him. And my Gee Gee loved Billy because he taught me how to golf. And because he has a way with older women. We were also able to meet up for lunch with a friend who we met in Grenada. He introduced us to Union Market and we chatted about missing Grenada and how great DC is. My dad is so into the political/historical stuff in DC that I’ve missed out on the awesome food experience there, so I’m glad a real local could show us. In the two days we went to DC, we also visited the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the Air and Space museum, and the Holocaust Museum.

Pictures of victims of the Holocaust

I had never been to the Holocaust Museum before, because I was too young when I lived there. I’ve always been fascinated by the Holocaust. In high school, I did a research project on Adolf Hitler because I was so baffled by how he rose to power and became such an awful person. That was probably the first time the NSA flagged me, and then my Google search history has continued the need for my monitoring. Going through the Holocaust museum, I was prepared to be sad, but I didn’t realize how much I would learn. In school, they never mentioned the fact that the US didn’t really do anything about the Holocaust. We didn’t do anything when we should have. We let it happen. We were so worried about Jews taking our jobs and ruining our economy that we let millions of Jews be tortured and slaughtered. What a shameful time in American history. Since going to the museum, I’ve read Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, and Night by Elie Wiesel (I know, I can’t believe I hadn’t read them before now either).

4,000 shoes on display in the Holocaust Museum. When troops liberate the concentration camps, there were very few living prisoners, but hundreds of thousands of shoes in huge piles. The Nazis valued the leather from shoes more than they valued a Jewish life. 

I also was able to show Billy the house I grew up in. He had seen it before without me—the men all went to see it while the women were having a brunch on my sister, Erin’s wedding day. I hadn’t been back myself since my Dad was sworn in as a judge when I was 14. Re-experiencing things as an adult is so strange. Going back to my childhood home, I didn’t realize how far away from civilization we lived. Or how crazy it was of my parents to buy a tiny log cabin on the mountainside in Virginia with 4 children while my mom was 8 months pregnant with me. And the cabin only had baseboard heating. I also discovered that the huge hill that I used to sled down and be so exhausted while climbing back up, was actually pretty tiny. And to see how far away the house actually was from the Taylorstown General Store where my 8-year old self would walk with my 3-year old sister to get candy ALONE.

While staying at my parent’s house, Billy even got to experience a Lucketts dump run. My parent’s home in Waterford is outside the trash service boundaries and so every Saturday, they take all of their trash to Luckett’s Elementary School where they collect trash and take it to the dump for you. This is the same place we took our trash when we lived in Taylorstown. Every Saturday, my dad and I would go together to take the trash to the dump and then get bagels for breakfast. When Tanne got old enough, she’d come too. It was on one of these Saturday morning trash runs that my dad made Tanne cover her ears and told me that we might be moving to Utah. Tanne couldn’t know because she would blab to my older siblings, and my parents didn’t want to worry them with it until it was a sure thing. It was cool to be able to share those memories with Billy while we were better able to visualize them. And we both agreed that my parents are crazy and we are never commuting that far.

The house I grew up in. When my parents first bought it, it was only that log cabin on the side.

All of these excursions are part of my grand master plan to have my western boy develop a love for the East. I don’t know how successful my scheme has been, but the process has made me miss the East more than ever. We recently told Billy’s school our top 3 choices of areas we would want to live in for his clinical years. We get a lot of questions about this part—but to try and clear it up: this is NOT for his residency. He still has two more years of medical school which are the clinical rotations. Up until now, he has been in typical classes with lectures and labs and tests and studying.  But come August, he will be working and learning in actual hospitals in the US. This is where he’ll be exposed to a lot of different specialties which will help him to decide which specialty he wants to do. Then, in the winter of 2018, he’ll need to pick a specialty and start applying for residencies. Med school is a whole lot of studying, applying, interviewing, test-taking, and some more studying. And if you come from a Caribbean medical school, it’s a whole lot of moving. We put our top 3 choices for clinical rotations as 1) Reno, NV; 2) Atlanta, GA; and 3) Chicago, IL. We won’t find out where they placed us until July, so we’ll have about a month to find a place to live and then move. We put Reno first because Billy is a western boy and because we’re poor. But I’d prefer Atlanta because I’m hoping living there will complete the conversion process. And my mom wants us to live in Chicago because she thinks that my great great grandfather “Moccasin Jim” Stell started the Great Chicago Fire. So, our family owes the city big time. But through this whole decision process, we’ve decided that we’ll be happy wherever we end up, so long as there’s a Target nearby.

Arlington National Cemetery

At the tomb of the Unknown Solder memorial

Billy was giddy about the Air and Space museum. My NASA nerd. 

Sputnik, I think? 

Checking in on Barack.

The Washington Monument is invisible

Thrift shopping with Hadley is my new favorite hobby.

This is where I spent most of my time during the break--sitting on a couch with a niece or nephew on my lap.

Billy also got to join in on watching a couple Redskins games with my family. Which may have scared him away from the East coast forever.

Cutest cheerleader and football player around. Go Skins!