Bronze Stars for Everyone

My husband got a bronze star yesterday at an award ceremony. I wanted to be there, but I had a video shoot planned for that day at the same time. I had to do the story then partially because of deadline, and also because it had been rescheduled 3 or 4 times. I couldn't reschedule it again and still make deadline.

Finals are almost here, and I'm basically done in most of my classes. I'm kind of glad that the semester is almost over. I will have more time with my hubby. The hardest part of having him home is my lack of interest in doing anything but spend time with him. It's probably a good thing that I am taking the summer off from school. I'm having such a hard time focusing. I think I'm also just kind of burned out.

Speaking of burnt, I haven't cooked in ages. My fridge is basically empty. I find that when the hubby is home all I want to do is spend time with him, and cooking takes time away from him. Needless to say I think I've cooked a grand total of 5 times, and I'm being generous, since he's been home. He got home in the middle of April, so you have an idea of how little I've cooked. My lack of food in the house is so bad that I actually ate an entire bag of beef jerky today for lunch, since there wasn't anything else to eat. I'm a bad wife.

Despite my abysmal housekeeping skills my husband loves me, and even likes and respects me. It must be because he would go insane if he spent as much time with our son as I do. I'm not saying that our son is a bad kid, in fact I think he's a pretty great kid, he's just a little boy, and somewhat crazy like all little boys. Taking care of our son and going to school full time while my husband was gone was incredibly hard. I now know why many military wives with kids give up their jobs if hey have them when their husbands deploy.

I look forward to having a job, but I have to admit I'm a little worried about finding work in a military town. Since I'm planning on being a print journalist when I'm done with school I worry about finding a job in newspapers. I'm hoping that I can get an internship with the post paper, so that possibly I can get hired on at a post paper no matter where I go. The pay is probably horrible, but it's doing what I love for a little meager restitution. I'm looking forward to having a job again.

He's here....

Well I didn't finish anything on my list of things to do before my husband got home. In fact I wasn't even home to welcome my husband. My grandfather passed away the Tuesday before my husband came home, so I had to make a quick trip home to Oregon to attend his funeral. I returned home a couple hours after my husband got home. It was three in the morning when I got home. I collapsed into bed and was partially comotose within a few seconds.

I was really looking forward to going to my husbands redeployment ceremony since I'd never been to one before. I guess I'll just have to wait until the next inevitable deployment. Hopefully he will stay safe like he did this time.

Well since he's been back all of the dishes have been finished, my living room is picked up, and our bed is almost finished. I love having my husband back home. Now I just have to wait for him to go on leave, so he can create an office out of complete and total chaos. I know it sounds like he did all of the work, but I'm one of those people who doesn't self motivate, but if someone else starts I work too.

We also went shopping for patio furniture. We bought a perfect set with a small table and collapsible chairs. We also bought a fire pit since we have a ton of twigs and even a few large branches in our yard from the ice storm back in December. Hey, I couldn't move the logs by myself.

That has been the biggest challenge for me. I'm often not strong enough to do some of the big tasks, like getting the giant branch off the roof. I've never really wanted to live on post before, but it is starting to look really good after this past winter. They had power back in a few hours, while I didn't have power for almost a week.

Well despite my being a slacker and having an emergency I was pretty happy with all that I got accomplished, and I've gotten a lot done since my husband has been home. The readjustment period has been going pretty well so far. It's nice not waking up to my son's head in the middle of my back anymore, now I have my husband's snoring to deal with. Mind you I snore too, but hey I don't hear myself. I've got a supply of Ambien, take one of those and a nuclear bomb could go off and I'd sleep through it.

Talking about sleeping through things. I woke up around 4 in the morning one day and my husband was on the computer dinking around. I went to bed and fell asleep again. When I woke up my husband was laying next to me and I commented to him that I didn't remember him coming to bed again. He looked at me oddly and said that I had a conversation with him about YouTube when he came in. Needless to say I didn't remember the conversation. He said I was coherent in our conversation. Who knew I could hold an intelligent conversation in my sleep. Heaven only knows I'm hard pressed to hold one while awake.

I'll keep you updated on our transition. We have our first date night coming up on Friday. It's with another couple who are friends of ours, but at least there won't be children. I have often felt starved for conversation during his deployment. I'd talk to anyone about nothing, I'm sure I seemed like a whack job a good lot of the time. I blame it on the isolation. It has nothing to do with the fact that I'm certifiable. And if I'm crazy the Army made me that way.

Down to the wire

Well the hubby is due back any day now. I still have things to do around the house, but I got the taxes done and at least 3 loads of laundry done. I still need to get a new battery for the truck, but that won't take too long. I think I'm going to try to finish my bed tonight. Tomorrow morning I'm going to get my dishes caught up once again.

Friday I am going to spend working my but off because Saturday I leave to go to my grandfather's funeral in Oregon. I was surprised that I managed to get relatively cheap tickets at the last minute. I think I'll make it home before my hubby, but I'm not sure. I'm going to leave keys with one of my friends, so my husband can get in the house and drive our truck if he beats me home. I'm not looking forward to the funeral, but it is important for me to go.

I'm taking my son with me. I'm not going to bring him to the funeral, but I think seeing my son will do my grandma good. I'm so glad that I took my son to visit my grandparents a few years ago. He was too young to remember the trip or his great-grandparents, but they got to meet him.

This is the hardest part of being a part of the military. Leaving your family home sometimes means that you rarely make it back. Since I left Oregon in 1998 I have been back to Oregon twice. The second time was just for my high school reunion, so I didn't have time to see family. I wish I had taken the time to see them, but it was my husband's first time, and I wanted to sight see with him. I also wanted him to have a chance to eat at some of my favorite places.

That is another thing that stinks, I miss Roake's hot dogs, Burgerville fish and chips, Buster's bar-b-cue. I also miss Powell's book store. It's the biggest bookstore in America I think. I could be wrong, but that's what I'm claiming. Sadly enough I think most of the places that I really want to go to in Portland or the metro area are restaurants. I also miss a really excellent Mexican restaurant called Tacho's from Oregon City. Or at least I think it's called that. It's been 10 years since I ate there, so it's easy to forget.

Speaking of easy to forget, it's really easy to forget to send cards, phone calls, letters, or any other type of communication to your extended family when you haven't seen them in years. Don't get me wrong I love my family, I just forget to stay in touch. If I call anyone from my family, other than my mom, more than once a year it is a miracle. I just get caught up in my life, and we only have so much vacation time a year, and the Army tells us when we can take vacation.

Lately my husband and I have had to take separate vacations with our son because I was in school when he had time off. My husband will take vacation and take our son, then I'll take a vacation with our son. So not only do I not see him for 14 months, but we can't even get mutual time off to take a vacation. I'm so glad my hubby only has 6 years left until retirement.

We decided to stay here at Ft. Riley instead of moving to a new base when he gets back. If we moved there is no guarantee that he won't deploy to Iraq the minute he gets to the new unit, so we decided a year of stabilization with a pretty much guaranteed deployment in a year is better that the unknown. Besides I'll be able to finish my degree before it is time to leave for another base this way. It also means that more than likely our next move will be our last for the military. We then have to decide if we want a dream assignment like Hawaii, or if we want to try to get based in the state that we want to live in for a long time. I won't say forever, because we might get wanderlust.

Preparations start...or is that continue

I hate cleaning. I guess that is why my house is such a mess. I have a list of tasks that I need to finish before my husband gets home, or else I will feel such shame. I have almost completely finished all of my dishes. I don't know why this is such a big deal. I mean, I do have a dishwasher. Not only do I have my dishes almost caught up, but I also scrubbed my toilets, and I mopped my kitchen floor. I had to scrape gum off my floor. Once I figured out it was gum I got it off the floor easily, but first I had to figure that out. I can't tell you how long I scrubbed at that spot. Now I just have to get my laundry caught up.

Housework is a constant, and not very exciting, but those aren't my only projects. I have a dead battery on my truck, so I need to go buy a new battery. Luckily I can jump-start it, but there isn't enough charge to restart it once it is shut off. I found this out yesterday when I finally got around to jumping my truck. Is it sad that it has taken me almost 3 months to get around to jumping my truck? Despite my taking forever to jump my truck, I feel handy. I also refilled the windshield wiper fluid on both my truck and my car. I'll probably make a run to Sears tomorrow morning, or sometime on Friday. I need to take my car into the dealership because the light for my airbag system is on. I swear my car is always breaking.

The other project isn't something that NEEDS to get done, but it would be nice to finish my bed. I bought a king size platform captain's bed, and it has to be completely assembled. I even have to build the drawers. Mind you, I bought this bed back in June and it is now April. I figure one more full day of assembly and I will have it finished. My back is just really sore by the time I'm done, so I avoid working on it like the plague.

I only have like a few weeks more until my husband returns, and I have virtually nothing done. I had planned on losing all 70 pounds that I needed to lose before my husband got home. So far I've lost 15. If I work really hard I might be able to lose 10 more before he comes home.

One of the things that I always try to do before my husband comes home is beautify myself. I haven't worn earrings since my honeymoon over 8 years ago. Part of the reason is because I used to get really bad infections in my lobes every time I wore earrings. I decided last week to buy a pair of earrings just to see if my ear holes had closed. Turns out they haven't, and I can now wear earrings again. I feel so girly.

Now I just need to make an appointment to get my legs, eyebrows, and lip waxed. The pain we women go through for our men. I'll probably do my legs a few days before he comes home, but I'm getting my mono-brow and upper lip done this week. So much to do and so little time. I hope I can get everything done in time.

First Blog Ever

I have always hated journals. I normally can't even keep a diary, so this goes against my nature.

My husband comes home sometime in April from Iraq. I'm really looking forward to seeing him again. He left Feb. 4th, 2007, so he's been over there for about 14 months. This isn't our first deployment, but it is our first one over 6 months.

When my husband and I met we were both going through training for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for the Army. We were stationed in the same unit after training, so we deployed together. Working for your husband can be difficult sometimes, but we managed, and I think did pretty well most of the time.

When I got out of the Army after our son was born I had to learn to function without a husband, and take care of an infant. I decided to move back to my parents place for the deployment. They were a lot of help, and probably kept me from losing my sanity. Especially since my son got really, really sick while my husband was gone. Not deathly sick, but it came close a couple of times.

My second deployment was again only 6 months, but it was my husband's first time in Iraq. I again stayed with my parents. It was pretty uneventful, my son was healthy, I took some math classes over the summer, and then went home.

Because I was taking classes I couldn't get back to Texas where we were stationed and set up our house, so we ended up staying at a motel for a week or two. That was stressful, because we knew that we were going to be moving to a new base, so we lived with as little as possible. Instead of pulling our furniture out of storage we sat in folding chairs and we got a beanbag for our son. It was like we were camping inside of a house for 3 months. It really sucked, but it could have been worse. Knowing what I know now we would have pulled all that we wanted and needed out of storage and not lived like transients.

From the time of the last deployment in summer of 2003 to the current deployment start in Feb. 2007, more that 3 years passed with no deployments. During that time I got my associate's degree in English and started my bachelor's in journalism. We also moved states, twice. We started in Killeen, Texas at the end of 2003, moved to Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, then Moved to Ft. Riley, Kansas in March of 2006.

This deployment was different than the previous ones, I was enrolled in school, my son was no longer a baby, and I even had a few friends here. I was just too tied to Kansas temporarily to move.

There have been times that I wished I had moved to Arizona while my husband has been gone. Like when I broke my arm 9 days after my husband left. I couldn't shower, I couldn't put deodorant on, heck I couldn't even get my bra on or off. I can't tell you how hard it was to even put on pants. I considered going without for the first week. I had to ask my neighbor to put deodorant on for me and unhook my bra for me. Talk about humiliating.

I am now trying to prepare for my husband coming home. I've started with simple things like trying to get my house clean, but it doesn't go very well when my son makes a mess faster than I can clean. I'm looking forward to my husband coming home, just so I don't have to do dishes anymore. bwahahahaha.

Well I'm done for this post, the rest of my posts should be much shorter. My life is pretty boring, so there won't be too much to tell. Thanks for reading.