Yes, I aptly named my blog.  I shouldn’t be so worried.  These are my friends afterall.  They love me because of in spite of all my irrationalities.  I don’t even know what it is that I’m so worried about.  I’ll just do the best that I can and we’ll have a great time visiting.

I know that they don’t expect me to be a gourmet chef.  That’s not me.  They’ll appreciate whatever I can offer them.  Well, that’s the case with my friend’s step-mom anyway.  He, on the other hand…is outspoken, like my own father, but I can deal with that.  My friend is non-judgemental, which is one thing that I absolutely love about her.  She’s just really happy to be in Germany, starting a new job and of course, getting to stay with me for a few weeks!  😉

Rob was a huge help today (he is everyday) but I had him do some of the heavy lifting that I would rather NOT do, considering that I was born with the clumsy bone.  He carried several rather heavy boxes up to the attic for storage.  There will be more to go up there, but at least it’s out of my way for the time being.  He also helped me get a bunch of the cardboard recyclables out to the curb this evening.  I normally don’t ask for his help when trash day comes around, but there were an awful lot of boxes that needed to get out and he dutifully helped break down the boxes and carry them to the curb.

But I can proudly say that it’s almost done…well, not almost, but a significant portion has been done.  Only about 6-7 more loads of laundry to be done, dusting, sweeping, mopping and windows still need to be done, but that’s pretty simple stuff to get taken care of.  It really shouldn’t take too long to get that done.  I’d like to do that on a cooler, less humid day so that the floors will dry quickly.  I haven’t even started in the living room yet.  I’m still sorting through boxes of books and deciding what to do with them, but so far, I have a pretty large box that is about 1/2 filled with books that are going to be given away.  I want a few of my friends to rummage through the box first before I donate them to the library.   I can’t believe the amount of crap that I’ve accumulated in the last 3.5 years.  Honest to goodness.  When we moved to Germany in May 05, we had about 10 or 12 boxes of stuff, which included clothes and dishes.  Now, I can’t even count how many boxes of crap that I have and most of them are downstairs in the basement because I don’t know what I’ll do with everything once it gets unpacked.  The Christmas stuff is different and I have gotten a lot of that stuff since we’ve been here.  Some of it will have to go because it’s 220v and the US uses 110v.  I’ll have to give it away after the holidays this year.  I really don’t know who will buy it after the holidays, but I won’t be here to sell it NEXT year.  Ah, the life of a military spouse.  Gotta love it!

Well, it’s about 10:30 pm and it’s bedtime.  Thanks for reading and have a great day!  TTFN

I received an email late last night from one of my best friends saying, “I’ve been trying this number xxx, but it doesn’t work.”  So I emailed her back explaining that the 0 button on my keypad sometimes gets a little flacky.  I gave her my cell phone number as well and this morning at 10 am, I get a phone call from her saying, “I’m in Germany!!!”  She explained that she was worried about where to stay and that she needed to find a hotel room and so on and so on while she was looking for an apartment.  I thought I had offered her a place to stay, but perhaps in the chaos, I forgot to mention that she was welcome to stay with me while she was house hunting or whatever.

So, now, not only is she coming, but so are her parents.  I know them well.  We’ve stayed at their home on numerous occasions during OktoberFest and other times, so as my husband says, “I would never say no to them.”

Now, I have to cook for 5 people.  I can barely cook for two, how I am going to do this for FIVE?  This is like having a dinner party that goes on for two weeks!  Anyone have any suggestions on how to handle this situation?  This is completely new to me!

Please help!

Well, I’m finally getting around to getting rid of my piles that have seem to taken over ever single surface available in this house.  I actually found this pretty cool website that has a cleaning list for everyday chores, weekly, monthly and seasonal.  It doesn’t have some of the stuff that I do daily, like clean the litter box and stuff like that, but other than that, it’s great.  Here’s the link!  The planners are right above the comment section.  My husband was very impressed when he saw that yesterday.  He said, “Oh, that’s cool!”  He wondered where I got it from and I said that I downloaded it from a website and he sort of smiled and said, “That’s really cool.”  After a few beats, he wrinkled his nose and said, “How much did you pay for it?”  I chuckled and said, “Nothing.  It was free.” 

All I know is that I have a hard time knowing where to start, so, if you’re anything like me, this is a great tool.  I know, it must seem silly to some other people who don’t have this problem to have such a list and trust me, I wouldn’t keep it posted if I had company (because that just looks strange to them).  But it’s not that I don’t know how to clean, because that I do know how to do.  My parents made sure that they taught me (except that we never cleaned house after my brother and I had gotten over the age of 10).  We lived in piles of papers and everything was stacked into usually not-so-neat piles.  The floors were almost always clear, but never clean.  The dog that we had was never fully potty trained and frequently urinated on the floor.  The bathroom in the house that we grew up in was only cleaned when it got REALLY bad, but the kitchen was cleaned daily.  I know, because my brother and I did it (at least until I started working, and then he pretty much did it on his own)

For me, I just get overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.  Then, I become paralyzed because it gets in such bad shape and then I get a bit depressed.  My husband liked it because he likes to-do lists.  He likes to be able to see things checked off–even if you really can’t see much progress, you can look back on the list and say, “Yeah, I did that already.”  I’m not really a list kind of gurl, but I found this to be helpful.

What’s cool about this list is you can pretty much start anywhere you want to.  I go from top to bottom and it starts with the “wet areas”–the kitchen, then the bathroom.  Then, moving on to the bedrooms and laundry, to the living room/den and finally the hallway and stairs.  Once everything’s cleaned up, it should just be maintenance cleaning and that’s pretty easy to deal with.  I can totally handle that.  They say it takes 3 weeks to form a habit, so if I get into the habit, the list shouldn’t be necessary anymore.

But anyway…

I know that many of you are praying for my BiL and I just want to say thanks.  He’s doing much better.  He’s going to start seeing a nutritionist and other doctors in the next couple of weeks.  I think they are going to wait for a couple of weeks to make sure that everything has stabilized.  It turned out that he didn’t have a heart attack at all, so that was good news.

Today has to be one of the stranger days that we’ve had since Rob’s been in command.  There was a bomb threat in the building where all of his Soldiers live, so we had to go and take care of that.

But, that’s not the strangest part of the day.  First thing, we got up and I had a weird dream.  I don’t remember exactly what it was about, but I know that I was pretty concerned about where we’re gonna live when we get to our next duty station.  Right now, it’s a pretty safe assumption that we’re going to end up in the DC area.  I checked my email and then, started to research apartment complexes that take dogs (esp large dogs).  We have three animals and most apartment complexes are pretty strict about the two animal rule and we realized that we’re going to have a heck of a time trying to find a place to live that is pretty big and allows us to bring all of our fur-babies.  It’s so frustrating.  I did find a couple of neat places that are extremely pet-friendly–except that I don’t know anything about these neighborhoods and if they’re safe!  So, that concerns me a little bit.  Then, Rob said that I needed to start researching universities and get my GRE taken!  Ugh!  Where am I going to get 3 letters of recommendation?  I can think of only 2 people to get them from, but what about the 3rd?  I’m completely lost.  If we do end up in the DC area, it’s looking like I’ll probably go to the University of Maryland.  It’s only 53 miles away from Ft. Belvoir.  Maybe about 60 or so miles from places that we are looking to live.  Rob’s pretty sure he wants to live in Virginia.

Then, we went to the PX for lunch and went to buy baby gates.  We’re going to start using them next week, before Codiak comes.  We don’t want Casey to think that it’s because of the new puppy that he’s being restricted to the new area (even though he is…he hopefully, shouldn’t associate the two!)  After that, we went to go wash the car.  There we were told that Rob wasn’t allowed to follow behind me with a bucket of water and his wash mitt.  We rinsed the car, didn’t bother to dry it and drove off.  He was mad as hell they wouldn’t allow him to use it.  Never again, he says, we’ll never go back there again.  We’ll just have to go to a German place from now on.

Then, he drove off forgetting that I wanted to go grocery shopping so he turned around and we went back to the commissary.  He started to get frustrated, so I snapped at him and I told him that I understood that he was frustrated with the car wash place, but he couldn’t take it out on me.  He calmed down.  We got home and barely sat down to check our email when he got the call that there was the bomb threat.

After that was resolved, we went to the coffee shop and Rob and I enjoyed each others company.  We stayed there until it was time to meet our friends for dinner at a local Mexican restaurant where were basically told that because someone lost a very sentimental item that was in my charge got lost, it’s being held against me and my husband.  IT’S not our fault.  I don’t know what to do about it.  I offered to buy her a new one or give her money for it, but she said, no because that particular item was extremely sentimental to her.  I may not be a very smart woman, but I know that I would never bring something that was that important to me to an FRG function and expect to get it back.  I never use my good dishes or silver for stuff like that.  I know better than that.  I also know that I would always bring money with me to a function even if the function was free because there’s always something to buy.  It’s so frustrating to me.  So, any suggestions on how to deal with this would be greatly appreciated!

So, in a nutshell, that’s our crazy day!  How was yours?

Today, Rob and I went to go see Codiak.  He’s getting so big.  I brought my camera, but I forgot to bring it inside with me, so there are no pictures of him this time.  Casey also joined us on the trip. He had a great time.  He got to meet Codiak’s older sister, Amy.  He had more fun playing with her than with Codiak.  It was funny because Codiak wanted to play with Casey, but he was so aloof, it wasn’t even funny (okay, actually it was really cute…but I can’t show you!)

What was really funny was that as soon as Casey came into the yard where the puppies were.  Codiak peed and then, Casey peed right on the same spot that Codiak did!  Casey’s such a beta dog, but you wouldn’t know it…he was with Amy, anyway and Amy is only 10 months and Casey is 15.

Aww, I really wished I had remembered to bring the camera inside.  Oh well.

We had a lot of fun playing with the pups.

Well, more later.  It’s bedtime.  Thanks for reading!

Hi!  At the request of my friend Pam, I started a blog to showcase my photographs.  It’s up and running, albeit, I haven’t uploaded nearly all of the photos that I would like.  I don’t have time right now.  Hubby’s home from work!  He’s been getting home earlier and earlier these last few days and I’m basking in his presence right now.  We just finished dinner and it’s not even 8 o’clock yet!  I’m absolutely beside myself in happiness right now.

Rob got a belated Christmas gift from T & J–the 1st season of Eureka and we’re barely finishing the first disk!

So, without further ado, I present to you:  (drumroll, please…)

Irrational Exposure

Have fun!

Hi all! Last week I celebrated my 33rd birthday and I got some really cool toys that I wanted to share with everyone. First of all, one of the things that I got is NOT a toy, but is in fact a pair of the MOST gorgeous earrings I’ve ever laid eyes on. My husband’s parents got them for me, along with a very stylish top (I’d show you that too, except that it’s in the wash 😉 )

Then, my friends T & J got me this really cool thing called “Bamboo” and I love it~except it’s really hard to play Dash games on it. 😦 Oh well. Other than that, it’s great. It’s like a pen and paper, except that it’s your mouse and navigator all in one! You can write with it and blog with it, but it’s actually just faster for me to type, so I seriously doubt that I’ll be using it to blog with. And, I have really enjoyed the freedom to sit back on my couch to do some of the surfing that I would be doing sitting up. I love it. It’s time to get comfy!

And, from myself, I got a pedometer. A REALLY NICE pedometer, at that. It’s got software that you load into your PC (there might be a MAC version, too, I don’t really know) and it counts every step, remembers 42 days of info, has a clock, separately counts aerobic steps, measures distance, and calories burned and the software tracks progress for like 4 years or something crazy like that. You can put it in your pocket, purse or attach it to your belt and it’s still supposed to work. On the display, it has a 7 day history. It also has a security strap to attach to your clothing so that you won’t lose your little gizmo. Now, I found this little doo-dad on Amazon.com for UNDER $30. I couldn’t believe it! I’m really excited to start using it.

Well, Dad!  Today’s your day!  I really hope you had fun at that baseball game.  I’m really jealous that you got to go.  I L.O.V.E. baseball.

Funny, everyone I talk to says, “Baseball’s boring.”  I say, “It’s too fast!”  Case in point–this morning at the gym, they had the Sports channel on and they were doing a recap of all the games that were played yesterday.  They actually had to make the film STOP-MOTION because the plays happened way too fast for anyone to actually see.

Blah, blah, blah…you don’t want to hear read all that…I know what you’re thinking…”Where’s my video?”  Well, Dad, it’s funny you should ask.  I was trying to find something REALLY unusual for you, but something that you would like.  So, I searched and searched YouTube and I found this…although, it’s not really what I was looking for…

(Binky is a clown that had a local spot on TV in Denver.)

But I decided that wasn’t good enough, so I started looking for something else…when I came upon this this gem…

And I know that you want to see some fair weather again.  I’m sure that singing this song will help!  So, then I seriously started searching for a birthday song…but this is all I could find!

No, but seriously…

We DO wish you a very happy birthday and I hope this post brings a smile to you today!

****SPOILER ALERT!****

I don’t know how many of my readers watch “Army Wives” on Lifetime, but I download the episodes from iTunes so I can stay on top my one of my favorite shows!  I am a little behind in my episodes, but things have just been too crazy to keep on top of a TV show, much less my life!!

So, a friend of mine, whom I highly respect had some interesting view points on last week’s show and I think it’s worth while to discuss my view point on this.  Please check out her blog here.

On the episode that aired July 14, the character of a female sergeant is about to deploy, but her husband has eight months left in Iraq, and she has a daughter at home.

“Surely you have a backup in your family care plan,” says General’s wife Claudia Joy. But she doesn’t. When Claudia Joy tells her husband she fears the sergeant will refuse to deploy, the General – who really should know better – says that if she does, “She’ll get arrested.” Again: if the sergeant doesn’t abandon her daughter, she’ll go to jail.

Yes, those words happened, but I didn’t take it that way.  The sergeant’s daughter had been caught stealing alcohol from the Exchange.  Claudia’s daughter was with her.  This is when it comes to light that a Family Care Plan is not in place for this family.  Husband is deployed, been gone what, 4 months already?  This is mom’s 3rd deployment, so it is safe to assume that the rotations worked out between mom and dad and there had been a valid Family Care plan in place.  Claudia Joy is at home and she starts talking to her husband about the sergeant’s situation. The General’s absolutely right.  You refuse to deploy, action will be taken against you.  It’s called “missing movement” and the Army does not take kindly to this act, especially during deployments.  Could very well end up in an arrest, especially since then, you’re AWOL.  Then, he said, “She needs to go through her chain of command.”  And he’s right about that, too.  A post Commander really can’t do anything about that.

Now, normally, if you don’t have a valid family care plan, you’re given 30 days to get a valid FCP and are put on a Non-Deployable status.  If you are unable to get one, you can be chaptered for it.  It doesn’t mean that she would lose all of her benefits.  Generally speaking, a Chapter 5-8 (failure to have a valid FCP) results in an Honorable discharge.  If this sergeant had 20 years, which I’m guessing she does, since she’s an E-8, then retirement would probably be the best solution if this type of chapter were going to be initiated.

Later in the episode, we see that Claudia Joy had written a letter on the sergeant’s behalf to her chain of command.  This is, in my opinion, valid.  If Claudia Joy is in charge of the post FRG, then she is well within her boundariesto write such a letter, since it deals with a young family member.  I don’t believe that Claudia Joy was trying to overstep her bounds.

In the July 14 episode mentioned above, for example, Denise’s deployed husband Frank doesn’t like Denise’s sudden “trolling around” on a motorcycle. He fears she’s becoming too independent. In other words, he’s stuck in sandbox-limbo and is afraid his wife’s life is gliding along without him, if not ahead of him. To create an understanding of what these people go through, the writers could have easily left it at that: Frank’s increasing frustration with what he imagines might be happening, and Denise’s hurt and frustration at having done nothing wrong and not knowing how to convince her husband. When any conversation could be the last, it is this need to be understood that causes incredible emotional friction. Instead, the writers throw in an extramarital attraction. Next week, one of the wives will tell Denise, “I know what it’s like to have a husband away.” As if the creation of an unlikely attraction is necessary, as if the audience is too base to appreciate a more complex conflict.

I believe that I have some authority to write on this, as I experienced a similar situation.

We saw in the episode before this how Denise was at her cafe when one of her attractive colleagues walks in.  He receives a page from the hospital saying that there was an emergency.  Denise offers to go with him, only to find that her motorcycle is out of gas.  He offers her a ride to the hospital.  She appears to be uneasy about this, but goes with him anyway.  In the July 14thepisode, Denise and Roxie are in a cafeteria when this snotty woman says something about her riding on the motorcycle with the cute doctor.  Roxie says, “Gossips are like cockroaches.  If you see one, there are a thousand that you don’t.”  Roxie’s nailed on the head!  Later in the episode, cute doctor and Denise have to work together and he orders someone to get some medication for the patient.  Denise said that she’d get it.  It was obvious that she was uncomfortable in his presence and leaves quickly.  Then, Denise gets a call from her husband, Frank.  He’s calling from a satellite phone.  He was calling to tell her that it was okay to keep the bike…but then he misspoke and said, “I let you be a nurse, didn’t I?”  I honestly don’t think he meant it that way, but it sure did come out wrong.  She’s understandably upset and she practically hangs up on him.  We see later that she wants to remain friends with the cute doctor.  She’s explained her position and he KNOWS that she’s married and it appears to be innocent.

While my husband was deployed in 2006, he thought I was leaving him behind, too.  He wanted to know all of my movements, no matter how mundane.  He wanted to know what I had eaten for lunch and what I had bought at the PX.  There were things that I had done while he was deployed that I hadn’t done before and I think he felt a little left out.  He thought that my world was changing and he was afraid that when he got back he that there wouldn’t be any room left for him in it.  I know that Rob could probably relate to Frank’s character, even though he doesn’t know anything about the show.  Denise’s character has gone through a lot of changing in the last year and I’m looking forward to seeing how she’s going to develop. 

As for the extra-marital stuff–that stuff is REAL!  My friend T said that when her hubby deployed for the first time, the ladies kept each other company…and a few of them ended up having lesbian affairs and when their husband’s returned, they left their husbands to be with each other.  While the guys are deployed, they worry ALL the time that their wives are going to find someone else.  Of course, many wives worry about the same thing…while he’s in Iraq, is he going to cheat on me with another Soldier?  Trust me, it happens.  A lot of Soldiers have the mentality of, “What happens on a deployment, stays on a deployment…”  I also had another friend who had I don’t know how many affairs while her husband was gone.  I suspected that she was, but was confirmed to be true later.  Another thing that people don’t think about is the association factor.  If you associate with someone who has been naughty during the deployment, everyone knows and if you’re hanging out with that person, you must be, too.  I know, I was associated with that person.  So, of course, everyone thought I was having affairs, too!  The power of gossip!  Funnily enough, I had quit smoking during my husband’s deployment, I already had the bad association and about two weeks into quitting smoking, all I wanted to eat were french fries.  I couldn’t get enough of them (and the cravings lasted for about 3 weeks).  So, then, the rumor started that I was pregnant!! PLLLLUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEAAAAAASSSEEEE!!

Personally, I think Army Wives is an excellent show.  Yes, it is Hollywood-ized to some degree, but in my opinion, does a good at showing these difficult situations such as the FCP and adultry sequences outlined here–and they DO happen.  Please don’t get me wrong, because there are other things in the show like the stealing of the weapons and then going to the local bar to blow it up because you’re an abusive husband who’s jealous beyond belief because your wife is leaving you for another man…or the sergeant who had just returned from deployment and gets a 9mm gun and is holding people at gunpoint!  Not so much!  But other than those types of dramas, it’s well done.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend that you start with the first season.  It is currently available to own on DVD, rent from Netflix, download from iTunes and to watch on the lifetime.com website.