For my sanity to return, my boy to bring me a frog from the yard, a new little to join our family and what the Army holds for my Soldier as we get closer to retirement.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
I'm homeless
See you once we get settled!
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Blog troll invades mil spouse support site
Now to the credit of the Admin's there they don't believe in censorship and won't kill a membership for having a differing opinion. This guy though is a nuttjob to be honest, with a crap load of misinformation that Moonbat herself would be proud. I mean he's not a nuttjob for being against the war - okay no problem don't agree with it and don't agree with Bush either. I am the first person to say as I have a dozen times over in my blog that I don't like President Bush. I have never liked him from the very beginning when he was first running for that first term. He's a nuttjob for spreading misinformation - aka Bullshit information.
Calling himself "disgruntled" he blogs several posts about how crummy the Army is, how they all lie and then finishes with a post about the mil spouse support site on how we are all slaves, incapable of independent thought. I have no intention of actually giving his link mainly because I don't want this nuttjob to get the traffic if googled. Besides even if you wanted to send hate mail or tell him what a jerk he was on his blog you can't - he turned off his comments.
His first post speaks of sending his wife off after her blood pinning of her new rank to her orders to Afghanistan. He also states that she is a non-combatant and that she checked in her M16 and the Delta Airline's agent was weirded out. Okay I have heard of checking in your weapon on board, but um if she's a non-combatant she would not have been issued a weapon in the first place. Secondly from some postings he made about his wife's job she's a psychologist which means she's an officer. Very few officers are issued a M16, they are usually issued the Beretta .9mm.
His second post is a bunch of statistics about mother's or female soldiers being killed down range and how its some sort of forced abandonment. He also quotes this bit:
74 American "non-combatants" women have been killed thus far.http://icasualties.org/oif/female.aspx
First of all this page does NOT identify the branch or MOS of these soldiers therefore there is NO WAY to determine that these women fell into a position that was covered under the Geneva Convention as a true non-combatant such as clergy or combat medics. The second issue I take with the website and his choice of words is the simple fact that at least 20 of those deaths although no less sad were not due to hostile actions. Some of them were due to illness, mental illness and vehicle accidents. Again I am not making light that their deaths were not important but he's using their deaths to make a point, well to spread a point of misinformation.
His next post is just as bad, complaining that the military has abducted people and forced them to go. Well guess what they enlisted or or accepted a commission, this is a volunteer Army - force isn't correct either. He also has no clue about who or what in the military is actually a non-combatant as well as claiming that by making his wife draw a weapon they are violating the Geneva Convention.
Stateside non-combatants, previously non-deployable personnel are now being culled at a moments notice and sent to basic combat survival training to prepare for long term deployments to hostile war zones. Accountants, social workers, clergy and psychologists are having to qualify with 9mm Berettas and M16 machine guns. It has now become kill or be killed for these patriots, who largely enlisted to help soldiers rather than be forced into doing the killing themselves.Some of these people, my wife included, are being trained in violation of the Geneva convention, as well as the Hippocratic oath which requires she ‘first do no harm.’
Accountants, Social Workers and Psychologists aren't non-combatants as far as the Geneva Convention is concerned. While a doc is performing life saving duties yes he is not to be considered a combatant but outside of that, he can carry a sidearm and is trained to use them. Sorry but accountants are trained to fight when they go to basic - period. Working in an office doesn't keep you from firing a weapon as far as the Army is concerned.
His last post the one that he penned after several days of baiting the spouses with his bullshit rhetoric, he proceeded on several occasions to call the women there too stupid to know any better. I nearly shat myself considering I have a masters, so do at least 10 other women on there. Not to mention there are two women who have Phd's - but we are uneducated and too stupid to know the "truth."
Here were thousands of women with deployed husbands, many of whom were just teenagers, who were also so angry... angry and naive. Over and over again I was reminded that it was because of the American pillaging of middle eastern desert villages that I was able to safely lay my head on my pillow at night...It seemed like their ideology had been lifted off of the many bumper stickers that graced the military base.
I also learned that all of them were suffering as well... from depression, anxiety, and were unable to eat or sleep normally for months while their family members were at war. Some were grieving recent losses, all were greiving the losses to come. Hundreds of us spouses 'left behind' were typing into the wee hours of the night out of fear and desperation.
As I read the postings, a deep sadness crept over me. Here was the population that will suffer the most from this, and they don't even know it.
These remarks of his just made me laugh.
- First of all there are only 700 members not thousands.
- There are a dozen or so deployed at this time.
- Blessed be none of the members have lost their spouse, yes some were injured but thankfully there have been no losses.
- My husband was in Afghanistan 05-06 and well they didn't plunder a damn thing - they built roads, schools, power plants, provided shoes, clothing and medical supplies as well as treating local folks.
- I am not suffering, neither are the majority of other women on the board. I am pregnant and therefore forgetful of my arse had it not been attached to my backside but I am not depressed nor filled with anxiety.
- Its also pitiful that he claimed we wrote until the wee hours of the morning in desperation for relief. We have board members that are in Australia, Germany, England, Japan, Korea - its called being on a time difference.
- Lastly, his remark that we just don't know any better at the end there just makes me want to beat him for his own stupidity. You should see the politics forum - for a bunch of uneducated, naive, stupid chicks we know more and discuss more (and in depth) about politics, other cultures, the upcoming elections, economics, etc. You name it we have probably touched the subject at least once. Hell we have even talked about why many of us are against or for the war and why we do or don't agree with the President. Yet at one point he labeled some of us as Idiot Republicans (I need to check that term and is subject to change).
So alas, disgruntled you are actually disillusioned and totally misinformed. The military spouses are not as dumb nor naive as you think. And I don't take kindly to your belittling comments to those of spouses that are enlisted or officers. You really should learn what you are speaking of before you speak out of turn and make yourself look foolish. Lincoln said "It was better to remain silent and appear the fool, than speak and remove all doubt." You Sir, could use a little education about what your wife does, what the Army asks of her, and what are her obligations.
Your spouse is IRR or NG and was mobilized. She used the Army to pay for her school and after 10 years of one weekend a month and two weeks a year she was mobilized as part of repayment of her debt for a free ride to college. When you are a female officer, pregnancy does not allow you to shirk paying back your debt. The Army paid thousands of dollars to put her through school, a baby doesn't change that she signed a commission and a commitment to repay that debt as the terms within that agreement state.
I hate trolls, they annoy me -as if you couldn't tell with the really long post refuting his own naivety.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Manic Thursday
Also I ask that you say a prayer, karmic thoughts or just all around give some good ju-ju to my friend. Her son was born on the 27th (my shower day), but at 34 weeks. He has a name but we shall call him Frog. Frog is having some respiratory issues, his lungs are little bit under developed. He's at a Children's Hospital in the Bay Area and will probably be there a month. Even a little early he was still 6 pounds, so he's got the fighting spirit of his Mom & Dad. He just needs a little bit of time to get his lungs into good working order.
Oz has not moved his little head. Thankfully, my muscles have stopped spasming over the fact that there's a head in there pushing them all out of place. This means I can actually sleep now, no unisom to sleep at all. I can't even lift 5 lbs though which really sucks but the hubby is being a trooper and is being really patient knowing I can't prep the house the way we usually do. We did have the schrunk disassembled yesterday. Which was funny because in a 10 foot radius we have lost one of the keys. I still think the Master Craftsman we had come show us how to take the thing apart took the key home by mistake. Which sadly means we will never see the damn key at ever again. I will have to contact the furniture company in Belgium, send them a key and have them send me my key and a replacement.
So the next ummm 3 weeks will be little to no blogging. I just have too much going on to be creative. I could just tell you what I ate for breakfast each morning if you like but ummm that would be pretty frickin' boring. (Speaking of which I have a giant bag of Marshmallow Maties and eat those every morning to make sure I get enough milk in my diet)
Monday, May 28, 2007
Memorial Day
With several codes already broken by the German's the US needed something that couldn't be broken and keep their service members safe. The Navajo Code Talkers Program was established in September 1942 as the result of a recommendation made the previous February by Mr. Philip Johnston to Major General Clayton P. Vogel, USMC., Commanding General, Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, headquartered at Camp Elliott, California.
Mr. Johnston, the son of a missionary to the Navajo tribe, was fluent in the language, having lived among the Navajos for 24 years. He believed that use by the Marine Corps of Navajo as a code language in voice (radio and wire) transmission could guarantee communications security.
Mr. Johnston's rationale for this belief was that Navajo is an unwritten language and completely unintelligible to anyone except another Navajo, and that it is a rich fluent language for which code words, in Navajo, could be devised for specialized military terms, such as the Navajo word for "turtle" representing a tank.
Joe Morris Sr was one of over 200 Navajo recruited and served during WWII. He lied about his age and joined the Marine Corps at the age of 17. “At first the Marines didn’t believe that the Navajo code would help,” Morris said. “The Japanese had broken every other code that the Marines tried to use. The Marines started to like us. They said we were saving a lot of lives with our code.”
After the war ended, the Navajo Code Talkers were forgotten and the majority of the general population knew very little about them. In recognition of their dedicated service to America during World War II, the Navajo code talkers were awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the President of the United States in December 1981. It was only in July 2001, more than half a century after the end of the war, the original 29 Navajo Code Talkers who developed the code were given the The Congressional Medal for Meritorious Service in Communications during World War II in Washington, DC. Only 5 of them were still alive. A few months later, the remaining 400 Navajo Code Talkers received the Silver Congressional Medal of Honor in Window Rock, AZ. Unfortunately, most of them did not live to see the recognition.
Please remember all those that have served during our history but please take a moment to remember the courage and ingenuity of the Navajo who helped to save lives of those that fought during WWII.
All information contained can be obtained from the following articles:
Navajo Code Talkers
Code Talkers (Part of the Story)
WWII Windtalker Sets the Story Straight
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Bad baby, bad bad baby
Tuesday night after my OB appointment, I vacuumed the house really well. I felt a small twinge in my belly but figured I over did it slightly and took it easy the rest of the night. About 3 am I awoke to a pain in my belly that nearly knocked me on my ass. I spent the rest of the night on the couch trying to find a comfortable position in order to sleep. It didn't improve and I was having serious issues walking or standing up straight. I called the nurse and left a message. It was nothing major I thought, just the baby moved into a bad position that is poking the crap out of me.
As I waited for a return call, I tried all the things people had suggested. I took a frozen water bottle and placed in on the sore spot because the baby would move away from the cold. All the little buggar did was kick me on the opposing side. After about 45 minutes of that I gave it up. I then tried putting a heating pad where I wanted the baby to be as supposedly they would gravitate towards the heat....yeah like that worked or I wouldn't be bitching about it today. I then tried putting a flashlight up to my belly since they are supposed to move away from bright lights. I was getting tempted to do voodoo shortly if something didn't work. I even tried the cat pose from yoga but no luck either.
Finally I get a call back from my OB nurse and I was told to lie on the floor and have the hubby rotate the kid to a better position. Neither one of us wants to hurt the kid, or make him stupid by cutting off his blood flow so we did it rather gentlely. He moved about an inch maybe an inch and a half. I had relief, until about 5 minutes later when the buggar moved right back!
I didn't sleep Thursday night either. I spent the night tossing on the couch watching adult swim on the Cartoon Network. The pain was to the point where I literally could not walk, sit or stand for more than about 3 minutes and needed to change again. I called the OB office and asked to come in. They for some reason sent me to L&D probably because I said I can't get this kid to move in tears.
When I am in pain I am a royal shit. I have a high tolerance for pain so when it makes me cry then you know you better run and hide. I try to make jokes to keep me from ripping heads off and slamming them on pikes, but unfortunately one of my jokes backfired and now I probably look like a drug addict seeking to get high.
While in L&D I teased the nurse by saying when is the doc coming I want a shot of demerol in my butt. This was after answering that I don't drink, smoke or take drugs at all while pregnant. I was really hurting and I was tearing the ACU sleeve off of my husband's arm. I figured that I was too calm and she probably didn't understand exactly how much pain I was in. In general I've noticed those that act like a cat on a hot tin roof get treated better than the quiet ones. Finally the doc comes and the first thing out of his mouth is "Well I think we will treat this like last time and only give you tylenol. There's no need for narcotics when a baby is involved and demerol is not a good idea." I could have killed the nurse and I tersely told him in the middle of his speech I was being a smart ass, rather than verbally abusing the staff.
He blatently refused to move the baby himself. I know they can do it, they do it all the time for kids that are breech in an effort to get them out vaginally without doing a C-section. I looked at him and told him I can't stand what the hell am I supposed to do? I haven't slept in 2 days and I really just wanted to get some sleep. I was told to wait it out and deal with it. Here I am supposed to fly to CA on Friday and I can't stand, there was no way I could sit for 4 hours for a plane ride.
I called my friend hosting the shower late Thursday and told her to call and cancel the shower. I called my mom to have her cancel the cake but she had already ordered it. They are going to take a picture for me and let me have the stuff off of the top of it for later. I was in tears. I just wanted to have a shower, to be with friends to be normal and not a military wife who knows no one in the area. I was lucky to have a shower at all had my nieghbor not been kind enough to put something together. This just sucks, I just wanted to be normal especially knowing this is probably the only child we were going to have.
My host had suggested that we have a welcome to the world party later about 3 months after Oz is born. Its a great suggestion, I'm just not up to not feeling sorry for myself yet. She had her shower yesterday and probably had a great time and I was stuck sitting in my PJs on the couch moving constantly to keep from crying out in pain. I wanted what she got and it sucks to feel jealous even over something as stupid as a shower. I'm happy for her (believe me hon' I am) I just wanted that too. I should consentrate on the fact that I will be having a baby when over a year ago I thought it would never happen, but you know how pity parties work - they don't stop until you want them to.
So I still can't stand for more than 5 minutes and really can't stay in any position more than 5 minutes without moving. I would have never made the plane ride and probably would have really hated the shower had I had to deal with the MIL pulling the crap she could have. I only sleep because they gave me Unisom to take. I don't know how long I can take it, but I will take it until I can sleep on my own. He still hasn't moved and this still really sucks. We move in 3 weeks and I just can't WAIT to see how the car ride is going to go with his little head resting on my ovary as a pillow.
It comes in threes
Three Things That Scare Me
1. Currently buying a "money pit" house that we can't sell 4 years from now
2. Getting bit by a brown recluse while pregnant and not able to take the heavy duty meds for fear of making my kid retarded somehow
3. Having my parents go to soon
Three People Who Make Me Laugh
1. Robin Williams
2. My neighbor's son who's just about 2 but for some reason calls me 'Ney-ney'. He walked into my house the other day, crawled up on the couch with me, stood on it with his shoes on, shows me his two cars that he won't let go of, smiles and says "Hi Ney-ney!"
3. My brother Chuck
Three Things I Love
1. My husband
2. Spending time with good friends (you could throw in a bottle of wine MamaLuxe :-))
3. The smell of the ground right after an early morning CA rain
Three Things I Hate
1. Intollerance
2. Arrogance (its one thing to be ignorant and not know any better its a another to just not care that you are ignornant)
3. My lack of a quick wit since becoming preggo
Three Things I Don't Understand
1. Cruelty to animals or children
2. Why people to fail to accept differences and embrace them
3. How our current political system is such the failure to me that it is
Three Things On My Desk
1. A jar of change
2. Two pictures I printed with our new printer
3. Sticky notes
Three Things I'm Doing Right Now
1. Changing positions because my 5 minutes of comfort are up
2. Watching the boob tube
3. Looking the schrunk that needs to be cleaned out and figuring out how long this gimpy will take to do it
Three Things I Want To Do Before I Die
1. Watch my children grow and better themselves like my parents set up for me to better myself
2. Travel a little bit more - India, Thailand, Japan (stationed there would be great), China, back to Africa
3. Move back toward and ocean East Coast or West but live near the ocean again
Three Things I Can Do
(well? or just do?)
1. Raise my right eyebrow
2. A mean assed roundhouse kick
3. Speak 20 words in 6 languages (meaning 20 in each language)
Three Things I Can't Do
1. The splits (even at the hight of my karate days I could never get back to the splits)
2. Throw a baseball with my right arm
3. Spell
Three Things I Think You Should Listen To
1. A little bit of good punk each and every day (I am a child of punk)
2. Your gut - its there for a reason, don't ignore that squicky feeling
3. Your friends and family but still make the decision for yourself
Three Things You Should Never Listen To
1. Your mother in law (unless you actually like her)
2. Doubting Thomases - too much negativity drags you down
3. Know it alls who have never walked a mile in your shoes
Three Things I'd Like To Learn
1. To forgive more quickly
2. To go back to learning more karate & Shin Kendo
3. Professional photography - I've got blind talent but knowing what I was doing would be nice
Three Favorite Foods
1. Sushi
2. Gang Dang
3. Anything pretty much in Asia (Thai, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Mongolian)
Three Shows I Watched As A Kid
1. The Brady Bunch - both the show and the cartoon
2. Mork & Mindy
3. The Love Boat - Yeah my taste did improve
Tagging always seems to get me in trouble but I'm thinking.....
Nicole - Itzy Bitzy Me
MQ - Word Well
Christie - Im Miei Pensieri
Monday, May 21, 2007
Eureaka we found shelter from the impending storm
Being a grown up is scary, just thought I'd let you know. I met with the Realtor, went over the 18 houses I had lined up to look at and broke them down to make the best plan to save time going logically from one subdivision to another. You can tell by seeing the property if something will be done in time or if the property is crap. Those you don't even get out of the car. Sad part, was that one set of like 7-9 houses were beautiful. I loved they way they looked, they were in a nice subdivision too. Bad part was that you turn around (they were all on one street) and look to the other side of the street to see those big electrical transformer towers - there were a whole fucking row of them, 15 or so. There's no resale value in property like that so there was no point in even getting out of the car. By the end of day one, I had looked at 28 houses when you add the additional 10 she thought I'd like. We went back to her office, and selected another 10 or so to look at the next day. So for day 2 (the day the hubby was in town too) we had about 15 houses to look at.
I went back to the hotel and freaked out on my brother. I was totally frustrated. Looking for houses sucked big time. Anything that was within our price range or at least close to BAH was crappy. Either the walls were small and couldn't fit a 10 foot entertainment centre, there was no where to put the dining room table or the property was nasty, slopey or looked like we'd lose our fence every 5 years due to erosion. I was not looking forward to explaining to the hubby that if we wanted a nice home that fit our wants then we would have to go up in price.
When I picked up him from the airport, I went over all the issues I ran into. I had made notes on all the houses we looked at already and went through all the notes. I took pictures of some things like the gully at the edge of his favourite property - which probably would have meant losing the fence once every 5 years due to flooding or erosion. As we ate dinner, he was coming around to the fact that we would be paying more for a decent home that we thought.
Day two turned out to be pretty good. I had my favourite house, but something was odd. The builder put in a fence already so I asked the hubby to look over the fence for me. Guess what we found - a pond, or possibly a sink hole. It was pretty far away from the house and foundation but still, bugs and the chance of the thing growing was a bad idea. As the hubby hopped off the fence, Nine Inch Nails starts blasting from the tree line. We all look at each other and try to figure out what it is. Its a Saturday so no construction workers should be working. We get in the car drive around to find an apartment complex, but its not coming from there. Finally we find this tiny dirt road that we drive down only to find Joe Dirt and his 3 friends drinking beer at 10:30 in the morning. That pretty much rules out that place. It was too bad too because the floor plan was beautiful. Ranch style with no stairs except for the bonus room over the garage. It would have been perfect, had it been two streets over.
We went to this subdivision where most of our friends have bought their homes. It was about 10-15K out of our range, but there were two houses we wanted to look at. It was a pipe dream for me really considering the house I wanted to look at he kept rolling his eyes telling me how frickin' expensive it was. The first house was nice but the fools painted, the rooms upstairs some crazy assed colours - lime green, burnt umber, a blue/grey slate, some kinda chocolate colour - why the hell you do that right before you try and sell your home is beyond me. They spent all this money replacing the kitchen floor with this really nice tile but then paint the house funky colours. Not to mention that one of the rooms that appears to be a teenage boy's room smelled funny. Yeah, yeah I know boys rooms can smell, but with the super preggo nose I noticed a musty, moldy smell. It didn't smell right at all.
The second home we walked in the door and the hubby tells me he wants it. The one he just spent the last two weeks telling me how expensive it was, he really wanted. We measured the dining room, wandered up the stairs, peaked at the man's uniform to figure out what his rank was and his branch (he's an aviator), turned on faucets, flushed toilets all that kind of good stuff. We then wandered the back yard, looked at the deck, noticed how close the trees were or weren't to the house and if the property was pretty much flat. We then went back one more time to pick a second home in case our bid wasn't accepted and picked one of them.
Back at her office, we started working on the bid. Man that contract is a pain in the arse to read. I read them, no matter how time crunched we are but when we our purchasing something that is about the next 3.5 years salary I am going to read what I am getting into. I asked her if she knew what the other people were bidding - she either didn't know or couldn't say. All she mentioned is that they have countered twice. So I wanted to offer $500 less than full price but the hubby and the Agent said go ahead and ask full price, ask for the carpets to be cleaned, and to have the seller fork out $3K in closing costs. We set up the paperwork and went to dinner.
About two hours later we got the call, we won the bid! Funny thing about it was that we beat them out over a frickin' shower door and an additional $1K in closing costs. We priced the shower doors and install fees at Lowes the next day before we left. The folks wanted to bicker so bad over $300. Seriously, the shower door and install would have been $300. We laughed and figured we'd use a curtain for the first month or so and then put in the door later.
So now we are working the finance angle, looking for the best lender we can find. Gosh I thought kids were scary but this is worse. With kids you can pick them up and move them where ever, but you can't pick up a 2000 square foot house.
So now if we can figure out why the dog has gone completely neurotic things would be perfect (I can't believe the dog would be this nuts over me being pregnant but that's what its looking like).
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Last train to Clarksville
Looking around Clarksville this weekend. Send some mojo or prayers (whatever your religion) my way that we find a nice home, at a decent price, and on a good, level lot.....no money pit houses allowed!
Take the last train to Clarksville and I'll meet you at the station....
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The Slanted Screen
Anyways, last night I was flipping through the channels and landed on the local PBS station. I grew up as a kid watching PBS, either Sesame Street, the Electric Company or something my mom wanted to watch. I loved seeing the RSC plays of Othello or King Lear and learned to like opera from PBS. So when I landed on the PBS station last night a new program was starting - called the Slanted Screen.
It was a great one hour documentary about Asian males in the American Cinema. It covered the changes of Asian males & their roles through American cinema from the early 50's to present. I was really impressed that Asians are trying to change their current status in American cinema. But I was seriously taken a back that I didn't realize that Asian males don't really hold mainstream roles and definitely not romantic ones in American Cinema. Most often they hold character roles, comical ones usually being the clumsy idiot or they play the Yakusa gangster.
Yes there's Jackie Chan or Jet Li, but they pretty much only stay in one or two genres - basically either Chinese films brought to America or American martial arts films. Ken Wanatabe (who is yummy BTW) has stepped up some with great roles in The Last Samurai or Letters from Iwo Jima - but then again they were films about Japan or Japanese related themes. What really surprised me (and frankly seriously bothered me) was hearing how certain roles in The Fast & the Furious - Tokyo Drift the financiers kept pushing the writer to change from a Japanese person to either black or white. A scene at the end of Romeo Must Die was changed to remove a kiss between Jet Li & Alyiah because the test screening failed so miserably. Romeo Must Die was an adaptation of Romeo & Juliet so they are supposed to end up together as some point in the film. Apparently the American test screening audience couldn't handle the thought of romance between them.
I guess I am really fortunate that my parents really did raise me to not see colour. Ken Wanatabe is a good actor regardless of the fact that he's Japanese - I just like his work. I just like the work of Morgan Freeman (Sidney Poitier if you want old school) or Edward Norton as well. They are all males and all could hold their own on screen. I hope that the American cinema quickly gets over only putting certain people in certain roles just because of their nationality and places them based solely on their ability.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
May Showers
My friend decorated it really cute, well I just had a nice time. I didn't think I knew enough people here to be fun but well it was! Here's a few pictures, no people piccies of course....