Where Does The Time Go?

Truly. It's already practically mid-April?

I really fell off the blogging train. I thought getting a new computer would fix that, but it just caused more headaches. I mean, why is my wireless-enable desktop not recognizing my wifi?? And Windows 8? How does that work?? How much does Microsoft Office cost these days? It took me longer than anticipated to sit down and figure the darn thing out. Honestly, I still haven't. I haven't used it nearly as much as I thought I would. The touchscreen is pretty cool, though!

So, how about I hit the highlights?

I just published my end-of-2013 posts....FOUR months late. Oops. So, those pretty much recap last year.

This year...

Disney World was equal parts amazing and exhausting. Those were some of THE longest days, but we packed so much into those five days. Not much had changed in the seven years since I had been there last, but it was incredible experiencing it with Brian for the first time. Plus, we got to spend quality time with my brother and his better, more handsome (haha!), half. I may have needed a vacation to recover from my vacation and I know I didn't take enough pictures, but it was awesome nonetheless.

I am six weeks away from the end of my second year of work. I'm not sure how many more years I have here (doubtful it'll be more than one) and it's hard to believe the last two have flown by. I signed up to do summer school in June, so I won't be completely free until July. The extra money will be nice though! Maybe I should start thinking of some way to treat myself.

Brian and I have been pretty rock solid. We have friends and go on dates (impromptu dinners out count, right?) and get away every now and then. I even agreed to go camping for his birthday. There was a fire a tent and everything! Now, I am in no way a camper now, but it can be fun occasionally. Next time maybe I can win a round or two of horseshoes! Ha!!

We celebrated seven years in the Army a couple days ago. It's gone by rather quickly. There's a possibility of another deployment at the end of the year, but Brian has a number of things up in the air, so we'll wait and see how it plays out. No matter what happens I know we'll be fine. I feel at peace about the whole thing.

Next weekend is Easter weekend. Instead of going home to see family or even to stay here and chill out (since I don't get a single day off between now and the end of the year), we are heading down to see Brian's grandmother. She's crazy, but she's always been good to us, so we owe her a visit while we're still relatively close. We're staying at a hotel about 45 minutes away from her and I doubt she's all that happy about it. She made sure to remind Brian that she has a bed and we can stay with her. Of course we know all of this and definitely made the conscious choice to NOT stay there. I have a feeling it'll be an interesting and probably tiring weekend.

Despite Brian being in the country this summer, I am ditching him in July to accompany my parents to the Northeast once again. I'm conflicted about leaving Brian behind, but the thought of two weeks on the lake again is too enticing to pass up. It is good for my soul to be there. By the time summer school is over, I think I'll really really need the break to recharge before getting back to work in August.

So there's the quick and dirty update. No promises moving forward, but I have high hopes.

Round Three

October 26th marked the one year anniversary of Brian's homecoming from his second deployment. A lot has happened in those 12 months. We've moved a lot and I got a job (finally applying for licensure - hoping to be fully employed by Thanksgiving!). We've put countless miles on my car driving back and forth to our hometown. We are at a good place in our lives and in our marriage.

The Army is a cruel mistress, however. Deployment #3 is here, folks. Yes. Already. There is still a small chance it won't happen, but preparations are under way. We are planning on it happening. It's a weird deployment that will send Brian to various countries in the Middle East. He's not too excited about it. Did I mention there's a decent chance he'll be gone before Christmas? Or that by the time he gets back we will have literally spent half of our 6 year marriage apart?

I am not quitting my job or moving home. I will stay here and figure out how to do the working-married-single-girl-with-no-friends routine. Luckily my folks are 3 hours away.

Last week when this news was fresh, it would regularly take my breath away throughout the day. It hit hardest while driving to and from work. "It's not fair," I thought. "I don't want to do this again," I whined. I am better this week, though. Ironically Brian is in the field until next week so I'm already getting a trial run at living without him. So far so good.

I needed to wrap my brain around it before I wrote about it. Maybe something will happen and it won't proceed. Or maybe I'll put on my big-girl-Army-wife panties and deal with it like I dealt with the other two.

Here we go again...

Happy Anniversary

Don't ask me where the time went, because I have no idea.

It seems that I blinked and five years have gone by.

Five years ago today, Brian and I got married.

With a deployment on the horizon, we did it in true Army fashion: at the courthouse on a Friday afternoon.

We had been together for 15 months and engaged for less than 30 days.

It was a supremely stupid idea.

There have been days - many of them - that I have wondered if we made a mistake.

We have spent nearly half of those five years apart.

We survived two deployments.

We moved more times than I care to think about.

We have fought and cried.

We have laughed until we cried.

We were lucky enough to "parent" the sweetest Great Dane.

We had to say goodbye to him much too soon.

We've struggled through couples counseling.

We've dealt with painful family drama.

We've had many weekend adventures.

We bought a boat and almost instantly regretted it.

At some point we even managed to have a proper church wedding.

I'm not sure when it happened,

but at some point in our five years of marriage

that stupid decision to get married

has become the best decision I ever made.

9.21.07

8.1.09

6.8.12

Happy Anniversary, babe.

It's been a crazy ride, but I don't regret a minute of it.

I love you.

6 Years Ago

Six years ago tonight I met Brian.

I wrote our How We Met story here.

We "celebrated" tonight by eating Taco Bueno for dinner and grabbing frozen yogurt on the way home.

Six years sound like such a long time!

Now I'm watching the Yankees on TV and Brian's back in his Man Cave watching who-knows-what.

In other news: I have a dirt dauber/mud wasp problem. The black and yellow variety to be specific. At least a half dozen of them have made it into the house in the last week. I accidentally found one of their dirt nests yesterday, but I'm still not sure how so many of them are ending up inside. They creep me out! I squeal like a little girl when they're flying around. I don't care that they hardly ever sting, I just want them to stay outside!!

Also, I'm happy to report that the boat is fixed. It still has a truck engine in it which is still annoying, but Brian was super manly yesterday and did everything the boat mechanic told us to do. Hopefully the little issues we've been having with the dang money pit have been solved.

Vacation starts in a little over 3 days! :)

Two Years Ago

I'm Alive

Yeah, I'm still here. Life's been absolutely crazy.

(This gets long...feel free to skip it if you'd rather not read about family drama...)

On the 15th my in-laws were in a motorcycle accident a few hours from town. I found out through the grapevine. When I called my sister-in-law to find out what was going on, she was rude to me. Brian was (understandably) worried and upset...and angry that his sister hadn't called me right away. Both my father- and mother-in-law have been in and out of surgery for the last week. My father-in-law almost lost his foot, broke two bones in his arm, and broke his clavicle and his scapula. He was discharged today, but will need more surgery on his ankle/foot. My mother-in-law had a partially collapsed lung, lacerated liver, and a broken clavicle and scapula. While putting her back together they discovered she had kidney cancer. They refused to tell me what was going on until after they told Brian. They gave me cryptic clues for over 5 hours including "it's not life-threatening." My sister-in-law clued me in after Brian finally called them. When I asked if it had spread or was only in the kidney, she got flustered and put the phone down so she could talk to her dad. I could still hear everything she was saying. It was obvious she either didn't know if it had spread or didn't want to tell me what she did know. She finally came back and told me it was only in the kidney and hadn't spread. Brian had a feeling that they were keeping something from him, so I texted my SIL to ask. She answered "No we have told him everything and he's not out of the loop I promise." (I actually just looked that up on my phone so I would get it just right.) We trusted her when she said this and focused on what was happening to Brian's parents. My FIL had two surgeries on his ankle/foot, one on his arm/wrist and one on his clavicle/scapula. My MIL was slated to have her kidney removed on Wednesday of this past week. I booked a hotel and made plans to go down there Tues-Fri.

Fast forward to Wednesday. I thought my SIL and I were sorta bonding. (We hadn't spoken or seen each other since I moved home almost 6 months ago despite living in the same town.) My MIL made it through surgery and everything looked good on the cancer front. We were all (me, my SIL & BIL, my FIL's cousin and aunt) in my FIL's room waiting for my MIL to return to her room after recovery when my FIL calls me over to his bed and tells me that they basically lied to Brian and me. They have known since Saturday (when the cancer was discovered) that the cancer was also in one of her lungs. It is a small amount of cancer and would likely be easily treated, but still...the cancer was not just in her kidney like we had been told.

I was so shocked that everything sorta slowed down. I looked at my FIL and told him "Brian't going to kill you." He said, "That's fine." He really didn't get it. I looked around and realized that my BIL (SIL's husband) had known this all along. He married into this family just like I did...why did he get to know everything, but Brian and I were left in the dark? I told my FIL that Brian had a feeling something was wrong and I turned to my SIL and told her that she promised that we knew everything. Apparently that was the wrong thing to do because she broke down. She whined about me blaming her (which I was) and then stormed out of the room. My FIL's cousin ran after her. My FIL seemed to think that I was upset because they hadn't told me (which I sorta was), but I was really upset because they lied to their son. He is deployed, working his butt off, worried sick and they thought it was a good idea to lie to him?! I assured my FIL that I was not upset for me. I told him that I had to be Brian's advocate because he is not in the country. He still didn't seem to understand.

I returned to my corner of the room where I frantically tried to get my computer to connect to the hospital internet so I could talk to Brian on Skype. My FIL's cousin returned to the room after consoling my SIL and I asked if she was ok. I got the icy response of "She's just reeealllly tired and reeaaallyy stressed." Um, no shit. But she needs to take responsibility for what she did. I never could get the internet to work, so I had to settle for telling Brian that his father and sister lied to him using the Skype app on my iPhone. It was really annoying, but got the job done.

He was pissed (surprise surprise). He called his sister's phone and made her cry (because he said "What the f*ck" when she answered) and then reamed his dad for a good 10-15 minutes. I sat there minding my own business listening to his dad's side of the conversation. I don't think his dad ever really understood that Brian was mad that they had kept this extra cancer information from him and that Crystal had lied about there being something he didn't know. Brian was annoyed with the way they had treated me and how they refused to tell me anything about the accident or the cancer, but the main issue was how they chose to keep this tid bit from him. His dad just didn't get it. Brian finally got off the phone with him and called me. He sounded so broken hearted. Half his family had lied to him and he didn't know who to trust anymore. All he wanted was reliable information about his beloved mother who had cancer. To him, if they were lying about this, what else could they be lying about? They kept swearing that we knew everything now, but they'd basically said that before and we'd believed them only to find out later that they were full of crap.

After I talked to Brian, I didn't stick around too much longer. I had to get away from them. I think we all calmed down and the next couple days passed without incident. No one ever spoke of the showdown that happened on Wednesday. Brian's mom still doesn't know any of it happened. Things are sorta icy between me and my SIL again. I'm relying mainly on text communication with my MIL (who is doing much better every day). I text or call my SIL when absolutely necessary. My FIL was discharged today and they expect my MIL to be discharged in a few days. They might be home within the week.

Brian and I are in the homestretch to R&R. The deployment was just getting to the point that we were getting on each other's nerves. This accident has brought us back together. We're in sync again. We're more a team now than ever before. I have his father and sister to thank for that.

This month has been crazy. We passed Brian's (and my) 4 year Army anniversary. We're right around the halfway point for this deployment. I can finally count the days (instead of weeks or months) until I see him again. I'm thisclose to finishing this semester of grad school. I have so many things to look forward to in the next few months.

I'm sorry the blog has been slacking. I don't know what it is...maybe my blogging days are numbered. Maybe it's run its course. Or maybe my life is either too interesting or not interesting enough to blog about.

Either way, Happy Easter, Y'all! May you have a wonderfully relaxing Easter Sunday with those you love most.

About Our Weekend...

This weekend we took off for Lake Sam Rayburn in East Texas. We were looooooong overdue for a mini-vacay.

^^The trees as seen from the porch.

^^He's so adorable.

^^The little lake inlet near our cabin.

^^I'm gonna miss him. :(

^^Tiny spent most of his time running wildly through the trees in front of the cabin.

^^We decimated a 1000 piece puzzle in 48 hours. Too bad 2 pieces were missing.

^^In honor of our 1 year church wedding anniversary (Aug. 1st) and our 3 year courthouse wedding anniversary (Sept. 21st) we dug into our cake topper from our big wedding last year. It still tasted good and neither of us got sick from it. Score!

^^Then I got to come home to this beauty. I promise to ration my watching this time around. :)

So This is 2010...

Is it already the 4th? Of 2010? Wow.


We've been back in LA since Wednesday night. We had a low-key New Year's Eve at home. We didn't watch the ball drop. Brian was actually playing his new video game when I noticed the time. We opened our bottle of sparkling cider and toasted to the new year.


Saturday was the 1 year anniversary of Brian coming home. We went on a date to celebrate although I didn't really realize what day it was until halfway through dinner. We saw Sherlock Holmes and followed it up with a hearty meal at Wendy's. What can I say? We're a classy duo. We both really enjoyed the movie even if the theater here leaves a lot to be desired. It'll be nice when we live somewhere with a decent theater that has more than 6 screens. Just sayin'.


It's weird that I can finally remember things that happened a year ago and Brian is included in the memories. It's been a very long time since I was able to do that.


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I generally don't make resolutions for the new year, but this year I decided to make a couple. I've vowed to exercise on 120 different days this year. I've set a goal of doing some form of exercise (walking, wii, dvds, or gym) 3 days a week. If I stick to that then I'll hit my goal easily. I have also vowed to read as many books as possible. I've started a list on the right side of my blog of books I've read in 2010. I finished my first one today! I'm really interested in seeing how many books I read in a year. I know it's a decent amount, but I've never kept track.


Hopefully a year from now I'll be well-read and physically fit.


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So, we've got a quiet week around here. Brian's back to work and I'm just trying to get the house in order. I'm behind on laundry and such. I keep blaming the holidays! This weekend will be crazy for us and I'm sorta not looking forward to it. Well, I'm not looking forward to the travel anyway. Brian's sister is getting married on Saturday. This requires us to drive into the night on Friday and return on Sunday. It'll be nice to see my family again so soon, but it'll suck to do all that driving, especially after Brian works all day on Friday.

A Special Day.

Today is Brian and my anniversary. One year ago today we were married at the Taylor County Courthouse by Justice of the Peace Bryan Smith. I had a new dress and new shoes. I had a pretty bouquet. In front of our families we promised to love each other forever. Today, on our anniversary, I didn't even talk to my husband. That's the sort of crazy relationship we both signed up for when he joined the Army. It's been an interesting year. Thank you honey for making me the happiest girl alive from thousands of miles away. I look forward to spending this day with you next year. I love you!

Today is also the last home game in Yankee Stadium. I've been to a game in that stadium twice. I hope somewhere I actually took some pictures. I bought my $75 child size authentic Yankee jersey in the Yankee Stadium gift shop during the choir trip to NYC my senior year of high school. Of course the jersey has a big number 2 on the back. I love the Yankees. Most people can't understand this. I love the Yankees like I love Cooper High School...maybe even more. I haven't been as faithful of a follower in the last few years, but I still take in at least one game on tv every season. I can name every starting player from the '98 season. The Yankees were a good friend to me through middle school and early high school (the crappy puberty time of growing up). I love the history, I love the pinstripes, and I love the camaraderie. I hope one day I can witness a game in the new stadium.

So today I celebrated one year of separated wedded bliss and I mourned the end of an American baseball fixture.
S.

Here's to TWO years!

My Dear,

Two years ago today you asked me to be yours. I don't remember the exact words you used, but I remember being excited about what was to come. I'm not sure what I expected from our relationship, but I couldn't have imagined where we'd be today. It hasn't always been an easy journey. We have fought, argued, "broken up", and even used some words we later regretted. Through all of this we have grown together and built a strong foundation for our future. You are my best friend. You understand where I am coming from, but aren't afraid to challenge my thinking if you would handle something differently. You make me laugh and always make me feel beautiful. I cannot wait to see what the next two years has in store for us. Thank you so much for loving me and making me your wife. I love you forever.

Love,

Your Wife <3