Thanksgiving and some other junk.

   
     It's been a little while since I've bothered writing anything here lately.  Blame Thanksgiving, my birthday, and one hell of a "vacation," ha ha :-)




    The husband and I decided that we would spend both my birthday and Thanksgiving(since my birthday was a day before Thanksgiving) this year up in Portland, where I'm from. Two words: Never. Again.


    Okay well, maybe not *never* again, but we'll definitely have to do some better planning the next time we decide to head back up there, and we more than likely will never drive during this time of year again. The trip up was absolutely hellacious, to say the least. It was gorgeous all the way up until we hit Oregon, and after we stopped to visit my great aunt & uncle in southern Oregon...that's when the "fun" started. I may or may not(I probably did though)have messed with our GPS and changed our route a bit-it was shorter the way that I changed it to. Problem was, the "shorter" route included the most ridiculous mountain pass in the whole damn state, and(just our luck!) we got caught in some freak snow storm that was completely unforeseen by any weather forecast. So, we get a little bit up the mountain, ran into some crazy snow and wind, decided it was too much for our car(which we didn't have chains on), and back doooowwwn the mountain we went. Talk about epic.freaking.FAIL. 


   Long story short, we finally made it up to portland the next day, spent about 10 days, had the usual mother-induced drama that apparently is a must-have with any visit we make to Portland(the kind where your mom gets SUPER mad that you don't revolve your schedule around her 100% of the time you're in town, not to mention a bunch of other petty dramatic antics), packed up and headed back to Texas. We took the I-5 route home, which was MUCH easier(with the exception of a few areas where there were some really strong winds-mostly in California and Arizona), and made it back here just fine. I can't say I'm overly thrilled to be back "home" here, but it is what it is and I'll make the best of the time we need to spend here.  


    This last week I was able to get mostly caught up on school work and get into the doctor's appointment I've been slacking on making. It was interesting, to say the least.  I've had all of this anxiety the last year or so, that I wasn't 100% sure where it was coming from. Obviously the cause for some of it was the mister's deployment and all of the stress that went along with that(you know, hoping he didn't die that day and trying to keep that whole "no news is good news" idea in my head when I would go days and sometimes weeks without a phone call-that sort of stress),  along with the stress that came along with him getting hurt earlier this year and then the fire that destroyed our home a month after that.  Not to mention the things that happened while he was still deployed-my back injury from work, my Papa passing away a couple of months after he deployed, etc.  I was in the doctor's office no more than 40 minutes before she said that she thinks all the anxiety I've been experiencing is more than likely due to some form of PTSD. I have to tell you, I about cracked up when she said those for letters. My husband, for the last 10 months, has been experiencing some PTSD himself, which is totally understandable, if not expected, after everything that he has been through and seen in his almost 8 years in the military, and 3 combat deployments. They've told him each time that he doesn't have it. I found it rather ironic that I myself, as a wife, never having been to any of the places he has or seen a fraction of what he has seen, can be more easily diagnosed as having something that shouldn't even be in question for him to have, than my husband can. It almost makes me thing that they are just refusing to say that he has is because they simply just don't want to pay him what would be owed to him. Since he is going through the MEB board process right now due to his injuries, a PTSD diagnoses automatically earns him a 50% rating-meaning that he automatically gets 50% of his retirement pay should he be MEB boarded out or when he retires. It seems a tad ridiculous that they would have an issue diagnosing someone who's done 3 combat deployments with something as basic as PTSD, but that's an issue for a different blog :) My doctor wound up putting me on an extremely low dosage of a medication called Effexor that is supposed to keep your anxiety in check, without making you feel all zombie-like. So far, so good. I've managed to not be so high strung and moody since starting it, which is definitely a good thing :-)


    Another thing I had in mind to blog about.....being put on medication for things like anxiety. There are some people who would rather not talk about things like that, simply because of the stigma that tends to accompany it. That whole "taking medication means you're crazy." No, no it does not-not at all. I've been guilty of those same thoughts myself, but it's so far from being true.  A lot of time, it just means that you need a little help getting your emotions in check. For me, it means I get to sleep much better than I was before, because I don't have as much difficulty  "shutting my brain off" when it's time for bed. People seriously underestimate anxiety-it can actually cause some serious problems. Personally, it's been an exhausting thing-to be "wound up" all the time. After everything that has happened in the last 15 months or so.....it's been really hard to calm down and just relax. It's almost been like I've been waiting for the next bad thing to happen. I've been moodier than I care to admit, and bless my poor husband-he's been having to put up with it. The medication I was put on earlier this week has been a blessing. It means I get to relax and quit lashing out at people and just enjoy things a lot more than I was able to before. It doesn't make me "crazy,"  it just lets me be better-functioning because I'm not exhausted constantly. If you need a little help to deal with things, so be it. There's nothing wrong with it, and there certainly shouldn't be any shame in it. We're all human, needing help is a totally normal thing and nobody should be embarrassed or afraid to admit that :-)


   Okay, now that I've written ya'll a nice long novel....I think I'll head to bed :-) Hope everybody has a great week! :-)

Disposable friends.

This topic was brought up this week....again. For like...the zillionth time. I feel like I'm a little weird at times for my opinion on it, because it doesn't *quite* seem to match up to some other's opinions of the same issue. The fact that people are so "all or nothing" about friendships, meaning you're there either 100% of the time or not at all....that idea is stupid to me. I had a couple of  "friends" back in high school that had that idea of what a friendship is in their heads....it doesn't work. If I required someone(aside from my husband) to be there 100% of the time in order to be my friend...I'd be friendless, it's as simple as that, haha. You can't expect people not to grow and change and take different paths and move away and go on with their lives. That's what visits are for. Sorry to say, if you require someone to be there 100% of the time to even be considered a friend....you have some serious co-dependency issues. Maybe that's why I don't feel the need to be attached at the hip to people. I like "me" time, even a little time here and there without Jeff, where I can just relax and do whatever I want to without being bothered(not that he bothers me, but everyone has those "I need me time" days-it's a natural & normal thing). I've always needed at least a little time to myself, and that works for me, and for us. I really feel sorry for people who need attention and someone by their side 24/7....What could you possibly learn about yourself that way? You can't learn how to be independent without being on your own sometimes. You can't learn how to *not* rely on other people unless you are without those people for awhile. That was something I learned when I first moved across the country, away from home. Amazing how responsible you become when mommy or daddy aren't there to bail you out or pay your bills. If you're constantly looking for someone to bail you out, to take of things for you.....you're not going anywhere, I hate to break it to you. How are you supposed to know how strong a person you are if you're constantly pushing things off to other people and making excuses for yourself? You learn nothing from that. Friends are NOT meant to be around 24/7/365, but just because they're not around that much-whether it's due to distance or work schedules or really, just life-that doesn't mean that they don't care or don't value you as a friend, that they're "disposable." There are a lot of people who I absolutely adore that I don't get to see but once a year, but you know what? I don't love them any less because of that. It just means that I live far away and have my life to deal with, and let's face it-travel is expensive. Who can afford to just hop a plane as often as they want these days? Not a whole lot people, really. That doesn't mean throw relationships down the crapper because they can't be there as often as you'd like. It means that you need to adjust and learn to be self-sufficient, and realize that it might be nice to get your way 100% of the time, but unfortunately for you-this is real life, and it just doesn't work that way.

9 months and 25 miles.

   Quite a few of  my friends have been doing this thing on Facebook these last few days.....posting one thing that they are grateful for each day of November. I thought about this, and I suppose I could do the daily posts, but I think I would rather just do them all in the same post, in one blog entry. So, here goes:


  I am absolutely beyond grateful that we, and more importantly, Jeff, made it through this deployment. Maybe not the way that we had planned or wanted him to, but he did it nonetheless. There have been a few times, especially when all the homecoming photos and schedules were being posted months ago, that I was *just* a tad bitter that we weren't going to get that....Go figure, the *best* part of deployments-getting to see them get off the plane and being marched into the hangar, waiting through the speeches and finally getting released to the families and getting that first kiss after so many months-is the *one* part we got robbed of. But in the end, I got my husband back and I know of far too many wonderful ladies who are not able, and will never be able, to say that they got the same. 


   We had an amazing support team of people that surrounded us in those weeks and months after he was sent home. From the liasons at BAMC, to the people with the Warrior/Family Support Center, the Warrior Transition Battalion, family that was constantly checking up and visiting and friends who were endlessly checking on his progress and what was going on, we've been very blessed to find such a wonderful community that has done and continues to do so much for us. I had really become quite resentful of people in general prior to this(for reasons I'll leave out of this entry, it's an entirely different story), and after this year I have to say that my faith in humanity has been restored 100 times over. There is no repayment enough for that.


   I've gained an entirely new family this year, even before we got married back in September. Jeff's mom is pretty much the best mother-in-law I could have asked for, his sister Brittany and her husband, Eddie, are a blast to hang out with whenever we go to visit and Brittany and I talk super often, so she's just a text/call away-I love that about them :) That's not even to mention his cousins, his dad, etc....they are all wonderful people and I lucked out to gain them as family.


  Jeff's recovery. I honestly didn't expect, after the injuries he sustained from the IED blast he was in, that he would recover as well as he has. Today, 4 days shy of 9 months later, he went out and rode in a 25 mile bicycle ride for the Wounded Warrior Foundation(If you haven't already, look those guys up. They do a TON to support both the warriors and their families, are in constant need of donations, and most importantly-they're awesome). He went from being in a wheel chair and unable to bath himself in a matter of less than 6 months-that to me is pretty amazing. He was lucky to have walked away from the blast alive, I would have been content with just that. But he wasn't, and he showed that today. I could not be more proud of his progress and determination if I tried :-)




  In just a couple days, we will be packing up and driving to Oregon to spend my birthday and Thanksgiving this year, since they fall within a day of each other. At Christmas, we will pack up again and head to Missouri to spend the holiday with Jeff's side of the family. I spent both holidays last year in Tennessee, while Jeff was still deployed and with my family over 2,000 miles away. It pretty much sucked, as I'm sure Jeff's did as well, considering he was in Trashcanistan(because really, who LIKES having to spend holidays in that dump?)  We are so blessed to be able to spend both holidays with one part of our family or the other, to get to spend that *time* with the people who we love and mean the most to us....that is a truly priceless thing, as cheesy as that very well may sound. 


Overall, we've been blessed with a ton of things that we can say we are grateful for this year, but the biggest one is simply that we get more time together(we even got our 2 year anniversary together this year-first time ever! Mind you, it was also our wedding day :-p). Time is something that is more than priceless and can never be replaced, needless to say the biggest blessing of all.

Day 9

                      {Day #9-A picture of the person who has gotten you through the most.}

Without going into grave detail, my grandma is hands down this person for me. Lord help the person who gets in her way or messes with her grandbabies(glad to say I'm one of those! :-p), I am more than certain that this woman would fight to the death for either of us and she's gone to bat for me on more than a couple occasions. That's in addition to making sure the whole family is taken care of at all times, no matter what. It makes me so angry that some people take advantage of that. She's the best, and I couldn't ask for a better person to be my grandma :-)

Day #8

       Yes I know, I'm just a *tad* behind on this little photo challenge. Sorry, life gets in the way sometimes....and I let it, because really? Who wants to live their entire lives on a computer? It's nice to do things that don't require me to touch this keyboard at times ;-) Anyway, back to the point of the original post here.....




                       {Day 8-A picture of someone who makes you laugh.}

Rosie.

 I freaking love this woman to pieces, and she is really one of the only people I get along well with here at Ft. Sam. As hectic and ridiculous as things may get around here, she's always up for a little girl time. There's also that whole matter of our husbands being wounded in Afghanistan on the same day, around the same time and then flew out together when they were flown out for treatment. So, I like to think it was meant to be :) Not to sound cliche', but the fact is that there are not too many people on this earth who understand what it is like to be in our position and everything that we have & continue to deal with given the circumstances that brought us here to Texas...She makes this whole "wounded warrior wife" thing much easier to stomach at times, simply because she's been there. And for the times that we can't quite seem to stomach whatever it may be that is going on.....there's always beer night ;-)

Day 7

                    {A picture of your most treasured item.}


Clearly, I have to choose my darling husband, even though *technically,* he isn't an "item." :) 2 years and counting, just over a month of marriage, and he is my favorite "thing" in the world. I love that I'm married to my best friend and wouldn't have it any other way :)

(Oh, and he's incredibly goofy when he chooses to be......also something that I adore about him :) )

Day 6.

                     {A picture of someone you'd like to trade places with.}

I had a bit of  a hard time with this, but this is the one I settled on: a child. Simply because as an adult, your eyes are so much more opened to the problems and the dangers in the world around you. As a child, you're taught certain things ie: don't talk to strangers, tell someone anytime you go anywhere, don't do certain things, etc,.-but for the most part, you're oblivious to the things that happen around you. As a child, all you know is what's in your immediate sights, the day-to-day things. You aren't really subjected to the negative things going on right now in the economy, the war, political groups arguing back & forth. Adults worry about how they're going to pay their bills, going to work, etc, but as a child your biggest concern is probably something like whether or not your best friend will be over to come over and play that day, or what you're going to dress up as.....simple little things like that. There are no worries when it comes to money, or where you're going to end up living, or whether or not you'll get laid off-there's just this simple little world you live in, where you call the shots and your parents can somehow solve anything. What I would've give to go back to that, even for just one day :-)

Day #5

I've been slacking a bit the last few days on this challenge thing....forgive me, I've been sidetracked :-)




                             {Day 5: A picture of your favorite memory.}

Anyone who knows me even a little bit, knows how much I love & adore this man, his music, and the way

he carries/presents himself.  I could pick pretty much any Garth song, and as soon as it came on, could probably describe a vivid memory of what it reminds me of as far as being back home and growing up. I was pretty much raised on Garth, and Lord-willing, our children will be the same. Not to mention, the man is well into his fifties and *still* rocks  out in his live show....it was money well spent ;-)

{This last one was outside of the arena in Nashville the night that we saw him live.....you know Garth is in town when the crowd *outside* of the arena waiting exceeds the number of people*inside* actually getting to watch him! :-P }

Day #4.

                                           {A picture of your night.}

     This one, to me, seemed a little vague. So, since it is currently almost 11am, and certainly *not* nighttime, I decided to just do a photo of one of my favorite nights :) 

                  


      I took this photo at the beginning of this night. There's a pier down at Padre Island-a few hours from where we live and visited on this weekend-that you can rent poles at and fish off of 24/7. We didn't get the idea to go until late that afternoon, and we wound up sitting there most of that night, just fishing and relaxing and enjoying each other's company while we waited for something to bite on our lines. We ended up catching nothing but a bunch of little fish that we got off the line and tossed right back in. I've never been too big on fishing because it always seemed boring, and maybe a little gross to me(really, who wants to bait their own line and then sit there and wait and wait and wait? :-p), but after that weekend, I think it's definitely something we will be doing more of in the future :)

Redecoration.

           Just wanted to jump on and post a few photos of my little weekend project, now that it is finished.....Hopefully hubby likes it! :)

Oh, and  Franklin turned a whole 1 year old today.....As usual, he had something to say about that! :)

Day #3

                             






               {A picture of the cast from your favorite show.}

I absolutely adore this show, and have since I was probably still in diapers. There is nothing that can make you laugh quite like an onry little old woman who has no problem letting everyone know what she thinks about everything, and who doesn't hesitate to put someone in their place as the situation calls for it. It only ran for 5 seasons and hasn't had a new episode on the air in almost 20 years, but it's still one of the most re-ran sitcoms on t.v.

On another note, husband comes home todaaaaayyyy! I'm a tad excited about this, as I fully detest sleepimg

by myself. That whole "scared of the dark" thing is a really big pain in the ass when you're home alone for 3 days, which makes me grateful that it's *only* for 3 days. Oh, and because I didn't want to be bored in those

couple of days? I completely redecorated the bedroom. It may or may not have taken me 5ish hours to get four shelves up(the screw anchors and I had issues last night-they didn't want to stay in the wall :-/), but damnit it got done! And it looks pretty awesome, if I may say so myself(and seeing  as how this *is* my blog....I may.). Funny how things like new wall decor, bedding and taking a vanity mirror out can change a room so much. It was much in need of some brightening up....happy to say that is exactly what it got :)  Now all that's left is a few quick changes to the living room and the house will be done. Then again, knowing our luck, as soon as we get it *all* done, THAT will be the time that we're told we're moving....HA. 

Day 2.

        {A picture of you and the person you have been close with for the longest.}




This girl & I have known each other since we were 11 or 12 years old. We met during the summer before 6th & 7th grade, went to different middle schools and then went to the same high school. There have been through some serious rough patches in the last year, but she hung in here with me through all of the craziness that has gone on, and I could not be more grateful to have her <3

Photo Challenge

          A friend of mine told me about this project the other day...A photo a day, for 60 days, with some type of question to go along with it as a blog post each day. Usually, I'm not a big fan of these types of posts and lists and whatnot, but I looked at the questions and thought it might actually be kind of fun to just go along with it & try it for the next 60 days. I'm a bit late with the first one today, but better late than never-or so I'm told :-p

                .......:60 photo challenge:.......

     {Day 01 - A picture of yourself with fifteen facts.}

                                    {15 Facts}

 {1} I married the love of my life less than one month ago, on September 7, 2011, which was also our 2 year anniversary, and after surviving 2 years, a year-long deployment, and a whole lot of bull crap.....I am happy to say I have never been more sure of anything in my entire life :-)


 {2} I adore our fur kids, Franklin & Mollie. They & my husband make up my entire world, and I love that they are so silly & make me laugh so much.


 {3}We  only live in Texas because someone blew my husband up. I hate this state, but I am slowly adjusting and learning my way around. It's far from my favorite place I've lived in, but I'm doing my best to make the best of it, even if I complain a lot(and trust me-I do!).


 {4} I am ridiclously terrified of the dark. 

 {5}I'm also ridiculously terrified of airplanes. I love travel & would love go overseas one day, but I am so utterly scared of airplanes that I cannot bring myself to set foot on one at any point in the foreseeable future. It's not so much as the plane itself I am afraid of, but the fact that your 35,000 feet in the air....and there is nothing underneath you, aside from a 35,000 foot gap between you & the ground, and if that plane should for any reason, drop out of the sky, you are pretty much screwed. Yeah-it's definitely the crash that scares me more than the plane.


{6} I get annoyed extremely easily. It's something that I work on everday, but sometimes I can't help but get worked up over stupid things. 


 {7} I favor animals over people, any day of the week. There is a quote that reads something along the lines of  "I want to become as good of a person as my dog thinks I am"....Dog are extremely forgiving creatures and are content with very little. If the entire would could function the same....I imagine we would live in a much better place than we do. But the fact is, is that most people I've come across are for the most part, worthless & selfish, and if that is how most people are....I would rather hang out with my fur babies.


{8} I moved away from "home" in Oregon when I was 19.....I've never really missed it there.


{9} The fact that my husband is in the army has forced me, more than once, to try to imagine what my life would look like without him. When I first received the phone call informing me he had been wounded, I thought he was dead before I was told exactly what had happened. I hate the fact that I am 24 years old and have to think about things like that. We are young & should be worrying about what we have ahead of us and what we want to do with the rest of our lives together, not about things like the possible death of the person I 
adore the most in this world. 


{10} I would love to go into journalism at some point before too long. There are way too many stories in this world that need telling. I have a few more courses to finish up, and then I will be starting school for it :)


{11} I love small towns, and can't imagine raising our family anywhere but in one. 


{12} I'm a complete sucker for some blue jeans, a pair of cowboy boots and a cowboy hate. Jeff wears blue jeans and his boots almost daily, but when he throws his hat on? Oh dear........that's just game over :-p


{13}  I love photography. The fact that you are able to capture a single moment in time and keep it forever is something that kind of amazes me at times.


{14} I get bored super easily, and super quick, which causes me to constantly find new hobbies and keep things to occupy me in our home at all times :) 


 {15} I'll use any excuse to go to the coast, even if it's just for a day. It's been a few years since I've lived in a place where I can just drive a couple of hours away and be at the beach, but now that we are not too far, I take every opportunity to go. I love how quiet and peaceful it can be, and how relaxed it makes me to go and spend a little time there. We started fishing off the pier there not too long ago-there's nothing quite like kicking back with a beer and waiting for something good to jump on the other end of that line ;-)

What a day.

                    Looks like I have some editing to do with my photos, since they came out GIGANTIC-sorry :-) I didn't realize they were *so* big when I posted the last entry here a couple of weeks back. I'll get on top of fixing that soon :-)

                    So now for the latest. I've been looking into colleges here in town, looking into which ones might provide the journalism program that I've decided I want to pursue, and I found one that offers it :-) Not at the level I'd like, but I can start out with it and then keep at it when I'm through. Hopefully then, we will be moved to wherever(as long as it isn't Texas!), a little more settled in, and I'll be able to get into a more involved program than the one offered here. I  can go as far as a master's degree here, but I would rather obtain it from a school with a better reputation than some local school in BFE, Texas ;-) But, as I said, the program here in town is a good start. I got enrolled for a few classes that I need to take/finish beforehand today, and should be done with those and ready to move on within a couple of months :-)

             Going back to our mini-vacation for a minute.......We got married September 7th, a day after my grandparents came to visit and just after we got back to town :-)  We decided to just keep it simple, went to the courthouse and did the paperwork(which was minimal, I was actually surprised that it literally only takes you signing your name once and bam! You're hitched :-p), and then the judge came over and took us out by the fountain beside the courthouse, and in front of this beautiful old cathedral, and about 5 minutes later.....I officially became the Mrs :-)  There is nothing that compares to the feeling of knowing that your best friend will be by your side for the rest of your life and promising that to them......I might complain about a lot of things(give me a break-I'm working on it! :-p ), but having the amazing husband that I've been so very blessed with will never be one of them, nor will it be something I take for granted. We've been apart, and we've seen what can happen and how quickly your life can change so drastically. After the year that we have had and everything that we have been through, I have never been more convinced that God made the right decision when he chose us for each other, and I have never been as grateful for something as I am for His decision to entrust this amazing man's heart to me :-) 

         Oooooookay, I think I'm finished with all of that "mushy gushy" crap....ha. Mister and I decided this week that November looks like a good month to visit Oregon. He's got a whole new family to meet, and I sort of miss everyone back "home," too. We are thinking it will probably be the last half of November, so we sort of get to spend a holiday there, and then we'll spend our first Christmas together here at home. When I say first, I mean the first that we have physically been together for, and first that we have as a married couple as well. We got married on our 2 year anniversary, and the last 2 Christmas' he has been away and we've been apart, so it'll be nice to *finally* get to celebrate one together :-) 

         As for today.......we took Franklin into the vet for some eye boogie issues. He had a bit of green stuff in the corners of his eyes, and, with his being mostly cocker, I've been told to watch for eye/ear issues, so I didn't want to let it slide. So, I scheduled an appointment and took him in to the vet, and we found out that he basically has puppy pink eye. No bueno! The vet gave us some eyedrops for him and said it should clear right up in a day or two. We also decided, while we were at the doctor and because Franklin will be turning 1 year in about a week, that it would be okay to go ahead and get his annual vaccinations/flu shot done. He got kennel cough(Bordetella) while he was away at obedience school, and canine influenza is going around terribly here right now. Good thinking, right? BIG mistake. We got home from all of that, and about 7:30 tonight, it was storming outside(lighting and thunder type storming), and Franklin was acting funny. Thinking he was nervous about the impending weather, I got the Benadryl out and as I was giving him a dose, I looked at his face and noticed it was completely swelled up. I finished giving him the medicine(knowing he was having an allergic reaction to his shots, the antihistamine helps reduce the swelling), scooped him up and drug Franklin, Mollie, and my darling yet oh-so-confused husband out the door and off to the vet hospital. The tech at the front desk tried to force about a zillion pages of paperwork on me before she could even touch Franklin(according to her), and in not-so-nice words, I may or may not have told her to "shove it" and yelled at her. What do you expect? His swelling had become worse during the car ride to the hospital, and I was pretty sure his throat might close up if he didn't get treated right away. Taking an hour to fill out paperwork while my pup lay in pain and suffered was just not on my agenda! Luckily for the stupid tech, my darling husband came in and intervened, and she took Franklin back to get steroid and antihistamine shots while Jeff filled out what needed to be. Turns out(as I already knew) mister Franklin had an allergic reaction to one of the vaccinations he was given today, or maybe was just on overload with being given 6 of them at once(one of them is a 5-in-1 shot), and the reaction is what caused his face to swell so severely. Poor little guy, his little cheeks were all puffed up and his eyes were swollen completely shut by the time we got into the hospital. Thank God it wasn't far away from where we live! I'm now up for the night with him to administer medication, but he's a tough little pup and is expected to make a full recovery :-)

Pictures from our little vacation :)

It's a wee bit late to be writing anything more than a quick few lines here tonight, but just wanted to post a few photos from this lovely little vacation we've taken this weekend to North Padre Island, Texas. So far(this is only our 2nd night here), we've gone down to visit the beach and I was able to get a few amazing photos of the coast and birds that are down there, today we visited the USS Lexington, a ship that was attacked multiple times during WWII up in Corpus(I got to go up on the flight deck, LOVED it!), and this evening we rented some poles and went out on this huge pier to do some nighttime fishing-I caught three itty bitty fish, and of course they all got tossed back in :-) Hopefully, when we get home I will be able to update a little more thoroughly, but until then...... :-)

Sometimes, you just need to vent.

Sometimes, it just feels good to let it all out. That's what my last post was about a few moments ago. I have, for the last year at LEAST, needed to just let this girl have it. Maybe some of my anger toward her isn't fair, maybe it's just pent up anger at other events that have happened these last 6 or 7 months, but there is honestly a LOT there to be angry at her for, and sometimes it just feels good to vent. I just started using this blog because I had posted a few things on my last one that I was not comfortable with everyone reading, so I guess I'll have to back up and explain a bit about the "last 6 or 7 months." 

        First of all, Jeff was wounded in combat in Afghanistan on February 16, 2011. Notification of that is something that I will never in this lifetime forget, much less all of the emotions that it kicks into gear. Our lives were turned completely upside down in a single moment, and we have been in Texas ever since, so he could recover. 

        On March 21st, he & I were out at the store to pick up a few things, and received a phone call where we were told our home was currently burning down. Yet again, in a single moment, everything was turned upside down, and we were going to have to start from scratch.

        Now that we've had time to get settled into a new place, life has slowly begun to slow down and we're working on regaining some sense of  "normalcy" in our everyday. With that, all these new emotions have begun to come out as well. On my part, it's a lot of feeling extremely blessed that Jeff walked away from an IED blast the day he was wounded, feeling lucky that none of us were back in Clarksville the day our home burned down. In the same breath, there's a lot, and I mean a LOT, of anger, that's come out as well. A lot of "why did all of this happen to US? What did we do to deserve all of these horrible things that have happened?" The only answer I have come up with is that the purpose of it has been to force us to realize how strong of a relationship Jeff & I have. I've never experience anything close to what has happened in these last months, and the fact that I have someone I can go to and cry & vent to, who understands everything and tries to understand everything that he doesn't....I absolutely love that I get to experience all of this craziness with this person who is both the love of my life and more importantly, my best friend. I don't believe we would be anywhere near as close as we are right now had these things not happened, and for that I am unbelievably thankful.

     But then I come back to this anger. I know it's awful to hate entire races of people, but I absolutely detest anything Muslim after what happened to Jeff. Any sense of empathy toward what happens to them, toward what happens to them in  their disgusting third world countries....that is completely gone. Do I care that we have men & women fighting in their countries and killing them because they can't take control for themselves and then they turn around and blame us and kill our soldiers? Absolutely. I care for each man & woman WE send over to fight these useless "people" who are incapable of doing nothing for themselves. It blows my mind that we send our people over to BETTER their disease-ridden country, and they do nothing but turn around and kill our soldiers. So do I care that they are dying everyday because they are too stupid and refuse to educate themselves to the point of being able to have a self-appointed goverment and a peaceful existence? Hell no. As ignorant as it may sound, I still say one big, well-placed bomb would be better than risking all of the American lives that we do just to be able to say "hey, we HELPED those people." And anyone who disagrees with that? Come to our house and listen to my love talk about his experiences over there in Iraq and Afghanistan, watch him struggle in dealing with the things he's seen and done in those places, watch how much he hurts when he talks about his friends who lost their lives because those Taliban "fighters" know nothing but violence, watch how angry some of those things make him and just how much it affects his day-to-day life.....and then tell me how much YOU would empathize with those people if you were in my place? I could try to be more open-minded to what goes on in the middle east, and the Muslim religion, but you know what? I don't feel any need to because of what I watch daily. So take that and think what you will of it, but that's my stance on the matter, and it will NOT change at any point in the foreseeable future. 

      There's a LOT of things I could sit here and choose to vent about, to be angry about. But at the end of the day, all I can really think of is how lucky I am that we are all still here. Does it make me angry that we lost our entire home to a fire? Absolutely. There were family mementos of both Jeff & I's that will never be able to be replaced. Does it make me angry that he has had and still has such a long recovery that he struggles with? Um......duh. I feel like I have no energy to deal with this stuff some days, honestly. It makes me angry at times to think that we had no say in us moving to Texas, and that some cowardly Taliban guy laid one halfway well-placed IED and dictated this change in our lives. But between him being wounded and the house fire, some days I look at it as 'well, I guess our slate has been wiped clean and we can start fresh.' That to me is a really good thing. I have this bad habit of being unable to let things go, of getting comfortable in certain routines and being afraid of diverting from those. This way, I've started trying new things I never would have before, of sort of stepping our of my personally set boundaries. I've gained a lot of confidence these last months that I'm not sure I would have ever gained otherwise. So when I think of what all has happened....I guess I tend to remember how blessed we are and how much I enjoy this crazy life that we've been given.