Not a Soldier but not a civilian

MQ over at Wordwell has a great post about the transition they are going through from demob'ing back to a reserve unit.

"We are a reserve family. I feel that now more than ever. At an FRG roundtable today, I felt almost like an intruder. All our soldiers are home, most are back to work. Of course I know that life is not normal for all of them. If our family's experience is anything like theirs, it is a daily battle to keep “Iraq” at bay in our minds and our hearts. Post traumatic stress is a very real thing. We say it so much sometimes I think it loses it's impact. "

Go read the rest of her post... she's got my sense of humor...

It's never to early...

to start shopping for Christmas. And it's never to early to send goodies down range. Please check out Soldier's Angels current info on sending goodies to the guys & dolls in the sandbox for Christmas or Hannukah.

Holidays for Heros

ANNOUNCING HOLIDAYS FOR HEROES - Christmas 2006
"Holidays for Heroes

"We will strive to make sure that every soldier deployed in a combat area receives a gift bag stuffed with small but welcome items and a card with Holiday greetings."
The bags will contain a coffee mug (With SA logo and name on it!), hot chocolate and cider mix, candy, an AT&T calling card (at least a 250 min) and a pair of socks.

How can you help?
You could help us get some of these items?
You could help raise funds to help with the postage costs?
Offer a challenge within your work group, club, church, etc. to who can get the most

calling cards?

Do a bake sale or home made items sale for help funding some holiday bags.

Do you have a LARGE group of people in your church, club or at work that would be able to assemble and pack 200 or more xmas bags ? We would send you the mugs and you would get the other items in the bag. You can mail direct to heroes

Remember postage.

There is a flyer in the documents section you can use to take to a group, party etc., and ask them to buy one or TEN of the holiday bags!

YOU can help us get these flyers out in to public's hands.

Email hht2006@gmail.com if you can help!!!!!

Where's Waldo?

I'm here, I promise I am. I took a week to run away from home and hang out with some dear friends. With all that's going on, on the baby front I needed a week to just sit on someone else's couch and ruminate what I want to do.

I was a bad girl though, I didn't tell my parents or my brother that I was there. I stayed at a friend's with her boyfriend and daughter. I read a ton of books, got in tickle fights with the kiddo, went on a crazy shopping fest to find the perfect clothes to NOT wear on TV, spent the day shopping with another good friend and made obscene (well I didn't know they were until after everyone started laughing) comments to poor ole Wubbie.

This week was great, a ton of belly laughs, snorts and chortles. It also gave me the time to think about babies, meds and all that crap. The meds he wants me to take, Lupron...I don't wanna take it. There are some serious icky side effects and pitfalls to taking the medication. I reviewed several studies on treating endomitriosis and none, NONE of them advocate the use of hormonal supression to treat endo patients who are trying to conceive. Oh and this stuff has to be back treated with estrogen (eventhough it supresses estrogen) in order to keep it from causing serious bone density loss. The thing that scares me the most is that some women with Lupron have ovarian failure - meaning that after treatment their ovaries don't get a clue and don't start to function again. I sure as hell wouldn't want to fake menopause to turn around and have it happen for real because of a drug I took.

So I plan on asking him not to use it, that I refuse to take it and want other alternatives for treatment. Well really I want is for him to look around in there and if there isn't widespread endo, remove it surgically and send me on my way. If he doesn't agree or won't work with me on a treatment that I am comfortable with my PCM (I talked to her last night) will send me on for a second opinion.

Oh poor, poor Unkie Wubbie.....I swear I didn't mean what I said at least not in the gutter way you all took it as....

How far do you go?

So how far do you go in a quest to have children? Some folks would go to the ends of the earth and some would give up in the place where we are now.

We haven't made our final decision yet and are still open to how far we are willing to try to have children of our own. We are also still very much in a place of unknown too. Nothing has been confirmed and won't be until surgery, which won't be for a couple of months.

It is emotionally hard to deal with this whole thing. I am a little angry that my mother never told me exactly why I was a mircale baby until just a few months ago. If I had known about the difficulties there were, we would have tried much earlier for children and had more time for medicine to treat what is probably ailing me. And I am scared, what if this doesn't work out? What if we can't have kids and that's what he's really ever wanted? He's told me otherwise but what if he's just being nice?

If it's everything the doc says it is, then we are dealing with endo. This means surgery to identify it positively, medication for 3-6 months to kill off the endo and then we try. If there are other complications due to my age (almost 35), our health insurance could make us wait a year after the endo treatment to then go see a reproductive endocronologist.

Endo comes back too, so not only could we be pushing trying to have kids in my 36th or 37th year, but we could be treating the endo again and not to mention that he could end up being deployed right in the middle of the times we are supposed to be trying.

We haven't ruled out adoption but there is just something that calls us to having a child of our own and adopting the second.

So how far do you do go? And how hard do you fight? Fertility treatments can be extremely rough on a couple, so just when do you give in and go by just what nature has given you?

Others before self....

...That's what 25 year old Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor did when a grenade was thrown near him and other SEALS in Ramahdi. After getting hit in the chest with an unexplored grenade, his first instinct was to cover the grenade and protect his fellow SEALS. The two SEALS closest to Michael sustained some injuries and the third, was unhurt.

"He never took his eye off the grenade, his only movement was down toward it," said a 28-year-old lieutenant who sustained shrapnel wounds to both legs that day. "He undoubtedly saved mine and the other SEALs' lives, and we owe him."

Others before self - what a characteristic to have. Thank you Michael Monsoor & Godspeed.

ARTICLE

Wrong side of the bed

I guess I woke up on the wrong side of the bed...I am sure I will probably get some lovely hate mail for this but I am failing to see a problem with people not always agreeing with a decision the President makes or made and how disagreeing in a sensible fashion makes you unpatriotic?

While tooling about reading gossip crap off of the net I found a whole site (well a few actually) that reems celebrities for comments they made that were "unpatriotic." While I do find some of them to be really bad, in poor taste, made by being ill-informed or just based off of absolutely no logic what so ever, some of them really weren't that bad. But there were pages and pages of comments on the fairly normal responses on how these people were dim witted, uninformed, fascists and should be hung for heresy.

Although I don't always agree with all the decisions the President's made I hardly think I am not patriotic. Haven't these people ever disagreed with their spouse, their parent, hell their instructors in college? Isn't that the point in most classes, to create discussion, to foster investigation, to possibly change a person's opinion by the facts you provide?

So if Edward Norton says that from observation the President doesn't appear sincere to him and is possibly a mouthpiece why is that unpatriotic? Here's the full quote:

"I know in my gut, watching him, what a low-quality mind he has. Because I've been doing this since I was five years old, I know when a person is saying words that aren't their own - and it's as apparent as it could possibly be to me that he's a mouthpiece, and not even a good mouthpiece. Reagan was a B-movie actor, but at least he had the ability to touch certain emotional notes. Bush is just utterly incapable of it."

I personally don't think the President had enough foreign affairs experience at the time he was voted in for his first term. I didn't think the little tax breaks the middle class got were really worth it either to stimulate the economy. Does this make me unpatriotic? Because I don't agree with some of the choices he made? No one is perfect not the President and not Ed Norton either and sure as hell not me.

No one wants war, no one...not even Bush. Even to fight the good fight to do what's right, no one wants to be there forever stuck in constant conflict and turmoil. I don't want my spouse there forever, to be constantly separated from him, separated from his family, to see death or to have to kill. What pisses me off is that the celeb basher site fails to include the prior remark Norton made which says the same sentiment as me - that war forever or for and extended amount of time is hard. Its hard on me, my spouse, on Americans, just about everyone.

"When you have a vice-president saying that this is something that could go on for 50 or 60 years, invoking this perpetual phantom enemy, it's appalling," he argues. "I have family in the military. I support them and resent their being casually drawn into that kind of situation."

I disagree that my spouse or the military was casually drawn into this -that portion of the remark I think is really off. Saddam and his sons needed to go - period. Their ideas of justice and how to behave were appalling. How Udae and Usae treated women, not only violating them as females but violating their religious values, a faith that they apparently only meant to have apply to their "subjects" but not them was disgusting and foul.

But disagreeing with something someone says or something someone does isn't always bad, it doesn't make me an American Hater, unpatriotic or a flag burner. But when I disagree, I am reasonable about it. I don't do Code Pink crap and stand in front of Walter Reed Medical Center and play, no pick on the vulnerabilities of the wounded service members. And I would never protest at a funeral like Felps. I believe that everyone has the right to believe what they like as long as they don't harm those around them or shove their ideals down my throat. Pink and Felps both cause harm by inflicting emotional damage on those during their weakest hour. That's just wrong.

So by disagreeing with subjecting his family to a long standing war, constant conflict and strife or by thinking from personal observation the President isn't someone he finds very intelligent this makes a person unpatriotic? Its an opinion, I don't see him standing up in front of a military hospital protesting or holding up signs at a funeral that that says they died because God hates gays. He spoke out loud, in concern and disagreement - simply, calmly, and reasonably.

Those commentors bashing Norton as a halfwit, fascist were stating their opinion too but apparently, they are the only ones allowed to have a contrary opinion. The rest of us, must keep our mouths shut and agree with everything. Blind faith I guess? Or is it that we are expected to behave more like lemmings or 'yes men?' I am not 'yes man' and I never will be. I don't always agree and haven't always agreed with the President but I'll be damned if I am unpatriotic.

I will not be strung up for some deranged version of Heresy by stating a reasonable, logical, opposing opinion.

Project Valor IT

This may be a PSA, but this is a really, really good cause:

We need 25 laptops (we have 25 wounded troops requesting them that are Wait-Listed RIGHT NOW) with voice recognition software for our wounded troops to stay in touch with their family and friends.

Most of these troops either have severe burns or wounds to their limbs or have been paralyzed and can't use a standard computer set up. Communication with loved ones is paramount to a successful recovery and Valour-IT seeks to help facilitate that essential communication.

Please help Valour-It with a donation.

"Project Valour-IT, in memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss, provides voice-controlled software and laptop computers to wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand and arm injuries or amputations at major military medical centers. Operating laptops by speaking into a microphone, our wounded heroes are able to send and receive messages from friends and loved ones, surf the 'Net, and communicate with buddies still in the field without having to press a key or move a mouse."

Please lend a hand or a dollar or two for pretty neat techno geeky uber killer cause!

H/T - YankeeMom

Chicken Little

More like Chicken Shit. I called the Ed Norton look-a-like on Tuesday. He never called back. He was a chicken shit and couldn't call one professional to another - instead he just updated the automated system to let me know I wasn't selected. Wasn't that nice?

Oh and I got blocked by vets for the two other positions I applied for so management won't even get to see my resume.

I sooo need a job, I'm bored stiff over here.

October 3, 1998

As the piper played a tune I didn't recognize, I took the arm of my father and started to walk towards the man I would spend the rest of my life with. The weather was nice, geese wandered behind me (I worried about them taking a poo on my dress) and I stood in front of my best friend, the man who makes me laugh and told the world that he was mine.

Eight years later, he still drives me nuts. He takes the last of the creamer and doesn't tell me until after I have poured my coffee, he leaves his socks under the coffee table and uses the last of the dental floss on the day I have to be somewhere.

He turned down a command for my health and my job, which could have been detrimental for his career. He picked duty stations that would foster my ability to continue my career. He's picked up soda I like "just because." And with my current medical things going on he told me that regardless of what happens, that I will always be enough family for him to grow old with.

I love you...Here's to another eight years laughing our asses off all the way!

Can't sleep....spiders will eat me

Like I didn't despise living in Toto-town already then the KC Star had to have this in the paper.

There is supposedly a brown recluse problem with some housing areas here on post. We had a ton of bugs here but not too many spiders. Of coures as soon as I say that, the article comes up and well I just had the hubby kill one in the living room, one in our bedroom and tonight I killed one coming out of our guest room closet.

Brown recluse are evil little things in the sense that their bite causes your flesh to die off. It really bugs me because the dog likes to sleep on the floor in the guest room, her blanket is on the floor there as well. According to the article you shouldn't do:

Don’t pile clothes on the floor. Spiders love clutter.

Don’t use bedskirts or comforters that touch the floor. They’re bridges to the bed.

Don’t store stuff under the bed. Spiders hang out in boxes.

If you leave your shoes on the floor, inspect them before putting them on.


Um...crap I do all of the above! And now I can't sleep thinking that I could get bitten in my sleep from some creepy crawler and have half my flesh fall off.

Blech, I just get goosebumps thinking about it. So after I am finished freaking out, I will attempt again to go to sleep and wake up to remove our bedskirts and the sweater boxes under the bed. I am also going to buy a bunch of those spider sticky traps to place in the basement, and under our major furniture in the guest room.

Ewww, I really loathe this place, I do.