– One who rarely drinks should not take an ativan before an early morning flight, eat nothing all day then grab a couple glasses of wine and questionable calamari unless one would like to be vomiting in the bushes outside the Eastside Mario’s at 11pm. Happy 11th Anniversary, babe, I thought for good measure I’d make you hold my hair like we were 17 again. – Living in a city on a lake means beautiful views, amazing weather and absolutely no chance of me having a good hair day for the next 3 years. 12 hours in the city and my hair sprung out in curls no chi iron will ever hold down. – This was the first time since Freckles was born almost 10 years ago that DH and I have been alone for more than one night. All the good intentions in the world aren’t getting me up in the morning to run during that. The alarm went off each morning and every single time finding DH in the super huge king-size bed and cuddling back for a few more minutes sleep next to him seemed infinitely more appealing. At the time I felt guilty. I got over it. Now that we are back to life I am so glad I did. – I have been spoiled by rental cars, heated seats and climate control. My 2002 Winstar with the broken key fob and the back gate that only occasionally unlocks just isn’t stacking up anymore. – I am completely and hopelessly in love with the man who still opens my car door, holds my hair back when I’m sick in public and instinctively takes the side of…
This weekend, on May 19th, is mine and DH’s 11th Wedding Anniversary. And I’m going to let you in on a little known fact. It’s actually not. It’s true, even ask my husband who had his security clearance papers returned because he used this date as his wedding date. If you look at our Marriage Certificate, our actual anniversary is in March. Why, you ask? Because we were 19. We were broke. We couldn’t even afford an apartment and if we were going to be married and actually live together, we needed to live in military housing. Military housing required a marriage certificate to place us on the waiting list for a house. The waiting list was one month long. Before we were married, I lived with my parents in a city about 3 hours away from him. He lived in the single quarters on base. It was not an option for either of us to move in with the other, so had we waited until our wedding to put in our names for a house, we would have had to wait a month in order to live together. A month still being apart after our wedding. We were unwilling to do that. So we went to the office of our Pastor with 2 of our friends and signed papers. In our jeans a t-shirts. With no one there but the required witnesses. We didn’t invite our parents. I think we might have gone out for lunch with a friend after. And that was that. When I walked down the aisle at that fancy dream wedding I mentioned here, I wasn’t scared he’d run. Technically, he was already my husband. The army, it…
Dear Edmonton, In a couple months, we will be moving away. Now, I know you don’t really care. You’re a big city. People come and go every day. I’m sure you have better things to think about, like trying to recruit hockey players that might help your team win. We’re just one family. And technically, we don’t even live inside your city limits, though we shop, work and play there. But we thought we’d let you know, we’re leaving. It’s been fun. Even though I had lived the 10 years previous in Calgary, I have to admit I had never been to see you before DH was posted here. And living those 10 years in Calgary, well, honestly? I wasn’t expecting much. Once I spent 18 months back and forth visiting DH before our wedding, I learned a few things. You have a big mall. You have a little tiny zoo. You have roads named after hockey players and I hear you also have a team. I never understood why but you have a really big rotating baseball bat but no baseball team. You have Save on Foods, but no Co–op. You have a beautiful river valley, your people work hard and it used to be really frustrating to get from the north to the south quickly. Thanks for making that ring road right when we leave, by the way. You also have a Canadian Forces Base. And it is for that reason that in 2001, after I wed my love, I came to call you home. Edmonton, I fear I knew as little as you…
This week, fancy pictures, slide shows and virtual tours set to music made their way on this Internet in an effort to sell our home. Our Realtor came and looked around, decided the ‘market value’ and all the things he could write about on MLS. Then he sent a photographer to come and take pictures. And voila, just like that, our home is out there, showcasing it’s best features for the world to see and (hopefully) someone to want. Quickly. Anytime now. That would be great. But the ‘features’ of our home could be up for debate. While I won’t argue that new paint and wainscoting and laminate floors are all well and good, none of my favorite things about my house are listed. 9 years ago right before DH left for his first tour in Afghanistan, we found out we were expecting. We lived in this tiny little PMQ at the time and it just wasn’t going to cut it with a baby. Base housing was phasing out to a civilian company so an upgrade was not in our future, we started looking to buy a house. We had virtually no money and it seemed a loss cause as we looked at places in the city. Then another soldier DH worked with let him know they were selling their place. We could afford this place, it was a starter sized home out of the city in a little town. The best part was they wanted to move out when they returned from tour, which was when we wanted to move in. Perfect! We never even had a Realtor or looked at another place. We walked through…
There’s this girl I know…. And by know, I mean, met on the Internet. Does that make me weird? Meh. Anyways, in the bloggy world she’s a rarity like me. A Canadian Military wife. But that’s not what her blog is about. It’s about clay monkeys and stuff. Which is way funnier. Lately, she has been doing this series where she writes about a letter of the alphabet each day. So far, it’s been in order but I’m just waiting to see when she’s gonna go ahead and switch it up to throw us all off. She’s crazy like that. Well, this last post was awesome fantastic. Read it here. Then come back. Please come back? I promise you can go back to her blog after….. Clay Baboons So, I mentioned to her after that when I read this post, while waiting an unrealistically long time at Service Canada to submit passport applications, only to be told that my two youngest’s pictures were rejected because it ‘looked like they were trying not to smile….‘, I may have laughed out loud and peed my pants a little. That’s right. I have never had the experience of struggling to conceive. I feel a little guilty about that, if you remember this post. Possibly because of that, I don’t have the urge to pee on anything. BUT, when I mentioned my pants-peeing incident to Stephanie, she said she didn’t know that happened to people, cause, you know, people don’t talk about those things enough. So, since…
So, I randomly at the recommendation of others, download music to run to. I rarely listen to the radio or watch TV, so I never know any new music. If they don’t play it in Spin class or while I’m at the grocery store, chances are I haven’t heard it. So my repertoire of music written after 1999 is generally techno and elevator music. So I usually google running music and download what people suggest. Then if I don’t like it, I just delete it. Eventually. More likely, I never get around to deleting it and then get annoyed with myself every time I’m out and have to listen to it again. Well, for some bazaar reason, someone recommended a country song. And it’s really more of a love song, not a very fast song… I have no idea why they recommended it for running. And truth is I have heard it before, vaguely, it’s Lady Antebellum (which I never understood, it’s not just one chick that’s the name of the whole band?). I don’t generally listen to country music, but this one is decent, as far as the whole genre goes. It came on my headphones on my run this morning, and while I was thinking of things I needed to get done as this week DH heads training for several weeks, I couldn’t help but think that while the song is all well and good, their reasons for needing their love differ from mine on a daily basis. Sure, I can be all romantic and such, but I am pretty sure I would write the song differently…
So I have these friends… And lately, things kinda really a whole lot suck for them. I wish they were closer. I could bring over chocolate and coffee and just BE their friend. But a while back they followed God’s call somewhere else. It makes the suck that much…. suckier. (I should really invest in a thesaurus.) I was thinking about these friends while I was running this past week. Lately, I’ve been getting up really, really early to run. I have no idea why the time change had the opposite effect on me than it should have, but I get up earlier than I ever did before. Last Friday, I was up before the clock hit 5. That’s right, my alarm was set to a time that started with a 4. How sick is that? But I need to get out and back before my hubby leaves for work. And apparently I decided to start that habit the week DH had to be at work a little earlier than usual. So to be home for him to leave at 6, I needed to be out the door before 5. It’s a different little town I live in before 5 a.m. Dead silent. Dark. But not the 8p.m. dark when it still feels like the light is lingering even though it’s long gone. 5am dark is even darker. It’s the dark with the anticipation of the sunrise that’s still a couple hours away. I wanted to share with my friends what I have learned on these early morning runs. And just for fun, lets share that with you, too. My big epiphany…
Inevitably, as posting season rolls around, we hear, think and talk a lot about different homes, different jobs, different cities. As it currently stands, this spring we are heading to another end of the country where DH will have a different job, away from his home unit for a few years. Now, I’ve spent enough time around the Army that I am not willing to confirm anything until that moving van pulls away. Plans change. Military plans change more. But, assuming things go as they are looking at this moment, we will be somewhere new this Summer. Somehow, someway, we have spent the last 12.5 years in the same posting. And life has looked very much the same year after year. Predeployment. Deployment. Training Exercise. Course. Predeployment. Deployment. Domestic Deployment. Exercise. Course. Predeployment. Deployment…….. You get the idea. Now, with a new location comes a new job. Most of the time when soldiers who are a part of DH’s unit get a job away, they go somewhere to teach. It’s a few years in country at one of the schools. So, after being in a deployable position for his whole career this far, the most common response I get when people hear about our tentative upcoming move? “It’s nice he’ll have a few years home.” Well, sure. But this isn’t a teaching posting. It’s just a different kind of deployment posting. Trust DH to find one of the only jobs he could get posted to that still deploys. And that’s ok. Because I think he’s going to…
Some days you feel like a good mom. Lunches are made, homework is done, kids are bathed and in bed on time and it feels not only like you got everything done, but like you know them. You connected with each other them. You feel like you have accomplished what God had planned for you in their lives. And then there is, well, the other 363 or so days a year. Or maybe, that’s just me. But then you have other nights where you are scrambling to throw together remotely nutritious lunches they probably won’t eat anyways, realizing at 10pm you never asked about homework and can’t remember the last time they all had a bath. You feel disconnected with them and at a complete loss as to what it is you are supposed to be doing in their lives. There are lots of those days. At least, for me. And then, there are days like I had this week. Sitting in the emergency room at a rural hospital near my house, rubbing my dehydrated and flu-ish Monster’s back when I realize I can feel his spine distinctly through his shirt. And I think ‘has that always felt like that?’ And lifting the shirt of his fevered little back I see that he’s like…. fuzzy hairy. And I think “did he always have this much hair on him?” And I look at his ribs and think ‘how much skinnier is he than usual right now?’ I can tell them he weighed 12kg at his last trip to emergency last week, but before that? I stopped weighing my kids a while ago. I don’t…
Friday, I turn 31. I’m not in my 20s. I’m not even ‘barely 30’. I’m 31. That means, if you can do math (which I cannot), I was born in 1981. Which really was not that long ago, in theory. I know I’m being super refletive about a pretty insignifcant age, but I needed something to write about for my birthday. And besides, being 31 means more than you might think. It means I remember handwriting class papers. It means I remember Saved by the Bell, Colour Me Badd and Amy from before she was on Big Bang Theory. It means I married a soldier before 9/11. It means I had a pager once. (Try explaining the point of a pager to someone now. It told you to call someone. Without providing the phone. Why?) It means my cellphone once weighed more than my purse. Not that it could have fit in it. It means that, while barely, I can remember when all the stuff that’s in fashion now, was the first time. It means I remember what I was doing when I heard Kurt Cobain, Mother Theresa and Princess Diana died. It means I remember BEFORE the Internet. No joke. Before Google. Before facebook. Before you could lose a whole day staring at a computer without making any money. And yet still, 31 is far from old. This past week, we got the opportunity to attend a Gala. Like an honest to goodness Gala, Black-Tie Formal with a million forks and amazing food. It was a $500 a plate fundraiser on Valentine’s day that some companies bought tables for and…
