Friday, January 28, 2011

Back with Mil-Spouse Friday Fill-Ins

R&R is unfortunately way over, and now I'll be counting down these fill-ins till we see each other again. Shouldn't be more than 13 weeks that I have to do these...and yes, I'm restarting my numbering. Deal, you chronological freaks like myself!

Thanks to Wife of A Sailor for the questions!

1. If you were a famous movie star, what types of movies would you star in?
Drama! Some people may or may not tell me I am a little dramatic at times. I don't know what they are talking about.

2. What is a vacation you would like to take if money were no object?
Oh geez. All over the place. Every single continent in the world, all the countries in the continents. All the states. I would love to take a cruise to Antarctica, but that place is hella cold (from what I imagine and see on TV). I can't wait to go back to Germany. I want to travel all over Europe.

3. Did you have pets growing up?
Of course! We had Muffy, a little terrier dog. We won him at a fair. Really, we did. But he ran away a little while after that. We had a cat named Cinnamon, another cat I can't remember, we had a dog named Little Bob. He was the coolest dog ever!! We named him Little Bob after the Harry and The Henderson's movie. They had a dog named Little Bob and we went to the pound to get our Bob and my sister saw him in his cage and she yelled, "LOOK MOM! IT'S LITTLE BOB!!" And so the name stuck, and he was honestly the best dog ever. So cool and so smart and so energetic. We had Kara (a mean cat, I liked cats until we got her), Carter (a dog, named after a lumber yard), two birds (Shoehead and another name I can't remember), guinea pigs (Teddy and Kewie), a few garden snakes, a rat named Splinter after the rat on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (he was my brother's). Right now my parents have a cat named Pancake and a dog named Harry. Both are from the pound and I love them both. I can't wait till we have a house and we're able to get our own pets (although that's a whole different post for another day!)

4. What do you do for exercise?
I go to the gym at least 4 days per week. I usually do 30 mins on the elliptical, do some weights and then do another 15 or 20 mins on a bike. I wish I could be a runner, but it's not for me. I take at least one strength training class per week, I do squats and/or calf raises when I'm doing my hair in the morning, and when it's nice weather, I love to ride my bike. I actually really like the gym...and I'm excited to go tomorrow because I have a new pair of headphones! (Right before I went to my parent's house for a few days for Christmas, I hid my ipod somewhere in my apartment. I was robbed a few months ago...yes, where someone helps themselves into my apartment with a crowbar, steals my camera that Seth got me, goes through my bedroom closet, through my night stand, through my dresser drawer where my panties are. I hid my ipod because these burglars were looking for "small electronics" and my camera was sitting on my table...at the time I had my ipod in my gym bag, but ever since this happened, I have been hiding my small electronics when I leave. Yeah, so anyways, I still haven't found where I cleverly hid my ipod from myself...about a month ago. So now I have some sweet purple headphones with no ipod...at least there are TV's in the gym).

5. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received as a MilSpouse?
Mostly to stay busy while he's deployed. Two of my favorite quotes though are:

Distance is not for the fearful, it is for the bold. It's for those who are willing to spend a lot of time alone in exchange for a little time with the one they love. It's for those knowing a good thing when they see it, even if they don't see it nearly enough. ~Unknown

It's hard to be the one always waiting. I mean, there's something to be said for the hero who charges off to battle, but when you get right down to it, there's a whole story in who's left behind...


Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Wedding Wednesday!

Another edition of Wedding Wednesday!

We got a few things wedding related accomplished while Seth was home on R&R.
  • We went cake tasting. We're going with a local lady who actually lives just down the street from me and she works out of her home. She came highly recommended from some of my coworkers (and my dad's boss, whose daughter is getting married the same day as us, is going with the same lady!) It'll be octagon, or hexagon...I can't remember, but it has sides, I do know that much! It's not a circle, oval, rectangle or square. It will have ribbon on it and a series of three little dots. It's three tiered and each tier will be a different flavor: red velvet with a cream cheese filling, chocolate with red raspberry filling and french vanilla with Bavarian cream filling. We tasted her vanilla cake with French vanilla filling and it was heavenly!! (Before we walked into her house, I asked him, "do we eat the entire piece of cake?" thinking we'd have a few different flavors and plus, I've seen plenty of wedding shows and they only have a bite or two typically. He said he didn't know, but he didn't care, he was eating the whole piece. haha And to be honest and fair, we both finished off the piece of cake. Etiquette? What's that?)
    (Sorry for the very poor quality...this is a picture of a picture of a picture. The baker lady had a picture of it, and Seth took a picture on his phone so I wouldn't forget it, and then I took a picture of the picture on his phone. The black will be replaced with green ribbon, and there will be green dots on it and we'll have fresh fuchsia flowers on it!!!! Plus, it will only be 3 tiers and it will be hexagon or octagon..whichever it is!)

  • We picked out his wedding band....I assume he probably won't be home in enough time for us to order it before the wedding, so we have it now :)
  • Last Sunday, my sister and I went to Barnes and Noble and looked at wedding bouquet books. She's a flower connoisseur and knows what is in season when, if they're a good cut flower or not, what they look good with and what they don't look good with and she even knows like, all of the Latin names of plants. I'm not kidding. We spent a few hours at B&N, I found a HUGE pink and white polka dotted wedding planning guide/book, and we were brainstorming ideas. My bouquet will be dark pink peonies, some flower that has white little buds and then bright green leaves. The guys will most likely have white orchid boutonnieres. And for the table center pieces, I'm thinking dahlia's! There are so many different varieties of them and they come in lots of different colors. They even have a variety that is called a dinner plate dahlia that is as big as an adult (human) head!! They're gorgeous flowers and Seth likes them too. How can you not like these pretty little (or big) things?!
It was really fun and felt good (and real!) to actually do wedding stuff with him in person, instead of sending lots of emails back and forth. I do miss that part of wedding planning, honestly. I wish we could do lots more of these kinds of things, together in person, but I guess we'll save that for our 5 year vow renewal.



P.S. I promise a post about R&R is coming soon!

Happy flowers

I got Cheer Me Up flowers yesterday, with a little note that said we've had a rough few days and he hoped these flowers cheer me up. They were sent to me at work, of course... That's just what he does :)








Sunday, January 23, 2011

Wonderful Tonight

My night* has been decent, to be honest, but that's not the point of this blog.

Seth called me last night to let me know he made it to stop number 1.

When he leaves, it's weird. Duh, right? I'm the one that shows my emotions big time prior to him leaving...making a scene crying, big, red puffy eyes and nose. You can tell I'm sad. He will get a little emotional, but he conceals it much MUCH better than me. I spend a few days crying off and on at random times, during random things. When he first began his journey home, we were texting during his layovers. He told me a few times that he loves me so much, he can't put it into words. He said that he hates doing this to me, making me feel the way I do when he leaves, and I know when I cry, it makes it that much harder for him to leave. I seriously cannot help it. I try hard to not cry...I even tell him, "look, I'm not crying! no tears right now!" And I'm genuinely proud of myself. But when they hit, they hit hard and I can't stop them. I feel bad for making him feel bad for leaving, and I know he doesn't have a choice. I know in a few days, I'll be coping with it better and I'll get into my routine. When we talked on the phone yesterday, he said how much he misses me. He whispered it though. He didn't want the other soldiers around him to hear. He told me that I make his heart grow soft :) Excuse me while I cry right now while thinking of that. He said he listened to two songs when he got on the plane. I told him I knew what songs he listened to: Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton and Dear God by Avenged Sevenfold, which is our deployment song. Those are our two songs. I listened to the Dear God song too (I don’t have the Wonderful Tonight in my car).

I guess the weird part to me is that I show my emotions leading up to the days and the day of departure, and he shows his in the days after he leaves. It’s not a bad thing that he doesn’t show them as he’s leaving, it’s just different than how I show mine. It’s been like this between us since we had our first “see you later.” Once we have our last hug, I’m in full on mode of him getting home safely and doing whatever I can to make it easier on him. It’s not any easier one way or the other, departures suck in general, we just show our emotions at different times.

*I started this on Sunday night, but have been working on it since then.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

My tear ducts are like....

The Hoover Dam.

I have so much pressure from tears built up in my head, I've got a headache. I think I cried myself to sleep last night. That always makes me look like a damn hot mess in the morning.

I wish I could use a little tiny needle and poke my tear ducts and slowly make this pressure go away without displaying my red, puffy eyes and nose.

My sister just called me. She asked if I wanted to go to a chili-cook off downtown this morning. I really only planned on going to the gym today and coming home and getting in my pajamas and playing learning Wii video games all day. But I'll suck it up, put on a happy face and go to the chili-cook off with her. I know it'll be good for me. She said she wants to go to the gym and run too, so we're going to my gym after wards. I also told her if she wants to do any strength training, I have a new Wii game for the Biggest Loser and we can do that at home. She said, "do you want to work out, like all day long?" I told her I did, because the last 2 weeks I have majorly slacked in the work out department. It was worth it though. I just need to do it double time now.

Operation back to "my normal" begins now.

Friday, January 21, 2011

As soon as it starts....

it's over.

I desperately want to go to bed right now. I'm so tired. We've been up since 3:45 AM.
But.
I desperately do not want to go bed right now. It's a cold (literal) reminder that I'm going to bed alone.

We didn't make the bed today before we left for the airport and now the bed is going to be extra cold with all the sheets all messed up and exposed. Plus, it's only 10 degrees outside right now and the windchill is 0 degrees. I'm already freezing cold and I just want a big warm hug from him. I've been wearing his slippers since I got home from work today. I picked up some of his random clothes that were thrown on the living room floor last night. I smelled them and they smelled like his Chanel Cologne and the cigar he smoked last night. I'm not washing them. (Yes, I'm a creeper, babe, and I'm going to sleep with them tonight). His shoes are still by the door. His razor blade on my purple razor is still on the counter. His sunglasses are still on the table. We still have alcohol on the counter. His jacket is still on the back of the chair.

We didn't really sleep well for the first few nights. It's weird adjusting to sleeping with someone after 10 months of sleeping with no one. During our separation, I got used to sleeping alone, so I'd wake up sweating from him curled around me in the middle of the night. I got used to his warmth very quickly though, and now he's gone again. Already. I love R&R because it helps to break up a long deployment. I dislike R&R because two weeks is just not enough. Is it spring time yet? Is this deployment over yet? I've been so over it for a while now, not going to lie.

I somehow managed to go to a 4 hour training today at work. I don't have any idea what took place, what we talked about or what was asked. I was busy tracking his flight the whole way to ATL, and then texting him when he landed. I left the training a few times and we talked on the phone. I got caught up on emails and phone calls for the last few days but was not successful training wise. Someone at work said to me, "we all appreciate what you're doing." WTF does that mean? They're happy it's me going through this and not them? Maybe it was meant to be a compliment. I really don't know. I didn't take it as one though.

I want to go to bed but I don't. Maybe I'll go play the Wii he bought us. It's sort of boring play by myself though. Maybe I'll go to bed and enjoy a new book on my Kindle he got me as a Christmas present. Cold. Alone. Bed. Neither option sounds really fun.

I love you babe. Come home soon. I miss you already.


Monday, January 17, 2011

R&R :)

Seth is home on R&R (finalllllllllllllllllllllly!!!!!!!!!) Reading, commenting and blogging for me has been on R&R too. Hey, I have good reason though!! I’m actually working today….first full day in a good few weeks…and here I am blogging. It will take me approximately 23094820967.5 days to catch up on reading blogs and update you all on the stuff that happened on R&R. I hope to do more picture posts than writing, because lets all be honest…pictures are more fun to look at and they don’t take up nearly as much time.

Until then though, I’ll leave you with one picture. Excuse the red puffy eyes and nose…10 months is a really REALLY long time to be apart and I couldn’t stop the tears from coming….

Monday, January 10, 2011

Where in the world....

I got this fun idea from my blogger friend, Poe, at Many Waters, who posted this on her blog recently. It's a map of all the states that I've been to!! Clearly I need to visit a lot of states on the east coast, and I hope to knock a few of these off my list when Seth and I go on our roadtrip honeymoon there this summer!! The map can be found here.

I've been to 64% of US states, 46.1% of Canadian states, and .44% of the worldwide countries (sad!! I need to get my butt in gear and start traveling outside of the US!).


visited 32 states (64%)
Create your own visited map of The United States


visited 6 states (46.1%)
Create your own visited map of Canada


visited 1 states (0.44%)
Create your own visited map of The World

Friday, January 7, 2011

Military Spouse video

Ahhhh, this lady is my new idol! For all you civilians out there, yes, these are the kinds of questions we get ALL the time. No, they are not enjoyable. Yes, they get very old REAL quick.




Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Princess Diana

There's a local museum that is featuring a Princess Diana Celebration of Life Exhibit. A few girls at work mentioned that they'd like to go, and their husbands would not, so we planned a girls trip. We went Sunday, before we all went back to work/school on Monday.

To be honest, I've never really been a huge Princess Diana fan, but as I read and learned about her, I fell in love with how nice and caring and amazing she was. I liked that she used her celebrity status to help others. She seemed like such an amazing lady, whose life was taken way too soon. I'm not going to lie, I also fell in love with all of the diamonds on her tiara! I also LOVED that when our tickets were stamped, they used a Princess Crown cutout!! Such a clever idea!! (I didn't get a picture of the tiara, because it was right at the beginning of the exhibit and there were docents watching. But when I turned the corner and saw the crown, I literally gasped at how sparkly and gorgeous it was).

(My ticket)

(This is some jewelery that was in her family. The necklace on the right had diamonds that were as big as my pinky finger nail! The necklace could be taken apart and worn as a bracelet. Gorgeous either way!)

(More jewelery that belonged to her family).

(This is the front of her wedding dress. It isn't my type, but the size of it is impressive. It cost $1,900 to make by an unknown designer at the time. I also found it interesting that she had an umbrella that was made to match her dress, in case it rained on her wedding day. That isn't the odd part, this is: her train was 25 feet long and the umbrella was normal size, so even if it did rain, there was no possible way even her dress would fit underneath it, let alone her train! It was a sunshining day though, so she never had to see how this small umbrella held up. Her wedding shoes had suede on the sole to prevent her from slipping).

(The back view of her train. It was a whopping 25 feet long and I'd guess at least 4 feet wide. It had sequins sprinkled throughout the tulle. Do princesses use tulle, or do they use something much more royal? Whatever it was, it had just the right amount of sparkly sequins).

Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed in this exhibit, but I was able to sneak a few with my camera phone (so sorry for the poor quality). As I was getting one of these pictures, I apparently told my friend Sarah, to "cover for me." I don't remember that part, but she must have listened to me because I didn't get kicked out! That's all that really matters.

There was also a room with 28 of her designer dresses that I'm sure were beautiful...in the 80's. She was gorgeous...and had a hot body.

If this exhibit comes to a town near you, I would highly recommend it!


Sunday, January 2, 2011

To-Do list for the week

My to-do list for this week consists of:
  • Be patient
  • Mail Cell Phones for Soldiers package out
  • Go back to work on Monday
  • Be productive at work
  • Be patient
  • Charge camera battery
  • Pick out one outfit in particular
  • Be patient
  • Go to the airport :)