AireHead

Come On Over!

2006-09-19T11:41:00.000-05:00

For the next few weeks/months/years....or however long our wait for travel approval lasts.....we can be found regularly at our family website. oneblessedfamily.com Our blog there is in the "Travel With Us" section.

So, come on over & leave a message in the guestbook to let us know you're following our journey to our precious Lydia.

Thank you!

Avast there, ye land lubbers!

2005-09-19T12:43:00.000-05:00

Ahoy! Today is September 19. What? That day is not significant to you?

Clearly you are missing something big! It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

So, go! NOW! Shiver me timbers and blah blah blah.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2005-08-28T16:24:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the 27th, I turned the big Three-Aught. Yes, that would be thirty. Twitch twitch. Shudder.

Doug has never been one to, say, roll out the red carpet on birthdays and such. He's a quiet, steady man who doesn't like a disturbance in his routine. And a birthday party would be a disturbance.

But this birthday was, well, very significant for us right now. And you can see why when you look at this page. If anyone else had been interested in adopting Lydia, we would not have been approved to be her parents. But as of yesterday, we officially meet all requirements!

One fun little birthday present, that really wasn't a birthday present, so much as someone giving them to us coincidentally on the eve of my birthday, was this. We were given these three gorgeous and so beautifully odd looking roosters. They were given to us because they had formed a tiny little mean mob over at the farm they were living on, so the owners thought they should split the mob up, with them essentially keeping the Sharks, while we took the Jets. An Aves-like West Side Story.

So, yesterday, we packed up the car and headed out for a long long long day. First we went to Mansfield, MO, where Laura Ingalls Wilder spent a majority of her adult life. It was fun and interesting, but in the tradition of many small Missouri towns, most of the houses looked like they were about to fall over. Except for Laura's. Hers was well manicured and beautiful.

Then, we drove to Branson. Now, we haven't spent a lot of time in Branson. The last time we did go there, I was still in a wheelchair and we spent hours (literally, hours!) waiting for various people to stop shopping in the outlet malls. This time we avoided all outlet malls and mall-type activities. Instead, we visited the Shepherd of the Hills Fish Hatchery, which was completely spontaneous and so much fun! I got a little squeegy watching all those baby fish writhe beneath the surface. I don't know why, but I did.

Then we went to the main event. Doug got tickets through MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) to go to the Dixie Stampede. This was way more fun than we expected and so worth the money. We ate and ate and ate. Every time we thought we were done eating, they came along with more food. Doug was thrilled, not being a Yankee, that we sat in the Southern section, and when our side ultimately won what was apparently a "once and for all decision on the Civil War", he was happy. Gwen enjoyed the ostriches and buffalo, the pig races and the chicken races, but was a little overwhelmed with all the noise.

Today, at church, very dear friends finally brought home their adopted son, only 2 weeks old. I held him and cried and just thought how amazing it will be to bring Lydia home to this church that is so supportive of our efforts.

2005-08-18T20:49:00.000-05:00

What can I say? I haven't updated in a very very very long time.

We've been busy. So very busy. And yet, I can't think of a thing that I'm actually doing. Besides *still* waiting on pre-approval for Yonghua. Did we mention in the last post that her name will be changed to Lydia?

So, as soon as we get pre-approval for her, we can start the homestudy process. That's the part that scares me the most. We are restoring a 150 year old house. And someone has to come in and inspect? I'm fairly confident that we've found a remarkable social worker who has no issues with our restoration and she trusts that by the time Lydia comes to live with us, her room will be completed and ready for a 5 year old.

Let's see what else? I'm reading a book that has changed my life. It's called Created To Be His Helpmeet, by Debi Pearl. Yes, it's controversial. Yes, she does use some examples that are over the top for a woman married to a very steady man. But the fact is, for the past 6 years I've struggled with putting responsibility in Doug's hands. I have no no no idea why this is. I trust him implicitly. I've never been in love with someone the way I am with him. He has been there emotionally when he couldn't be there physically and he's always found a way to let me know I'm loved.

And maybe it can be chalked up to the military deployment thing....having to be the one to make *all* the decisions when your spouse is called away and you don't hear from him for 67 days, thank you Uncle Sam...or maybe because I have always been a very independent person, but I have a hard time trusting him in the little things.

Almost 1 year ago, we disagreed about something. If I had trusted him, followed his preference, a lot of heartache would not have happened. And he picked up the pieces, and I'm not sure, but I don't recall that he ever said, "I told you so."

So, while some of you may be twitching at my references to submission and the word "helpmeet", the fact is, changes were needed in our marriage. And I'm going for it, 100%.

2005-08-05T10:34:00.000-05:00

I realize that I haven't updated in a while. And the subject of this update.....well, it's not really an update. And it will pin me as a reality tv fan, but....

Look! You can vote for Kaysar directly from my blog! So, GO VOTE people, even if you don't watch Big Brother.

The Big Announcement

2005-07-09T19:28:00.000-05:00

I've told you all that there are big things happening in the Morris household. They are so big, in fact, that the earth is practically shaking from all our running around and excitement. Below is a picture of what has had us in a tizzy.

Her name is He Yonghua. She will be 5 at the end of August and she's living in a foster home in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. And, Lord-willing, within a couple of weeks we will be initially approved to adopt her.

I (Mary) have wanted to adopt a Chinese girl since I was 7 years old and a friend who had been a missionary explained to me the One Child Rule and why a majority of Chinese families would prefer to keep a boy. And I've told various members of my family since the age of 7 that I would be adopting many many Chinese children.

Doug and I started talking about adoption months ago, and after he looked at all the programs from all the countries (including the US), he expressed his preference for a Chinese daughter as well.

So, here we are. Many hurdles to go over and probably difficulties to overcome (a house being renovated and bringing a daughter into our family older than the 3 year old we now have), but with the Lord's grace and help, we can do this!

If you would like to help in some way, you can do this. Go to allthingsadoption.blogspot.com and click on a Google ad that catches your interest or click on one of the Google ads on this page. We receive a very very small amount of money for each ad clicked, and every bit will go into our adoption fund.

Thank you!

2005-07-03T22:44:00.000-05:00

We've posted Independance Day pictures on our other blog! Come on over and take a look!

Yeah, so I'm stupid

2005-06-29T21:45:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, I had problems with my left hip. Bad problems. It resulted in multiple surgeries and over 3 years of hospital time and physical therapy. And body casts.

When I started going through this at age 4 or 5, my parents were really worried that it was going to affect the way I looked at life. And my dad prayed that for whatever reason I would see it as fun. I don't know how many months later, we headed down for a game night with some families at that commune place I grew up in, and on the way down, as I was being pushed on my belly board, I looked up at my dad and said, "You didn't tell me how much FUN this was going to be!"

As I look back now, I don't remember any horrible things about those 3 years. I remember my mom making up lots of fun things for me to do. I remember having lots of kids to play with on the same ward. And I remember physical therapy. I had the best therapist EVER. She played games with me and I didn't even realize that I was learning to walk all over again. It was so fun! Chasing a slinky down the stairs. Kicking soccer balls against a wall. Wow!

So, maybe somewhere in the back of my (apparently TEENY) brain, I thought that physical therapy would sort of be like that this time.

HECK NO! There's no fun with an Army PT! When I started yelped and sort of cried (after the PT wrenched my knee in the recumbent bicycle) 5 hefty Army men wheeled around and stared at me with "She's My Cherry Pie" blaring in the background.

This is SO not what it was like 25 years ago!

2005-06-27T20:21:00.000-05:00

Phew! It's been a long couple of weeks. So much has happened and hasn't happened, and is about to happen, it's just exhausting. 3 dear friends/relatives have gotten married in the past 2 weeks, or celebrated their marriage that took place a couple months ago, and we weren't able to attend any of them. The doctor laughed in my face when we asked if we could make the 7 hour drive to Chicago, the closest of the 3. I didn't want to even suggest a 2 day road trip to Ontario or Virginia! But, wow, if we had been able to go, it would have been a really fun 2 weeks!

This morning I had my physical therapy consult. It looks like everything is going very well in the healing process and I might only be about 5 months out from recovery at this point instead of the normal 8-9. A normal tibial plateau fracture takes months and months to heal, even if no surgery was needed. Tomorrow I head back to base for my first session on a stationary bike.

Doug's dad and family were here visiting for the weekend. We took a whirlwind trip to Branson and shopped (and shopped and shopped). Serena, Doug's stepsister, stayed for this week, so once again God has provided an extra pair of hands to get through a rough week.

We will update more soon, and with more pictures.

Happy Father's Day!

2005-06-20T10:28:00.000-05:00

DandG
Originally uploaded by airehead.

7 years ago I fell in love with a man. We met on July 3 at his father's house and we spent the weekend getting to know each other. On my drive from Texas back up to New Hampshire, I called my mom and said, "I've met the man I'm going to marry."

Doug proposed on New Year's Day, 1999, and on October 2 of that year, we married. After a 3 week honeymoon to Scotland, we settled down to life in the military. Well, I settled down. Doug had already been in for 9 years, so he was pretty much settled.

We had all the usual struggles that come with a couple that dated long distance. And the struggles that go along with being a military couple. But, on New Years Eve of 2001, the best thing happened to us. We had a fight. I recall there being some voices being raised. And possibly a dish got broken. I don't really remember. But, Doug went out for a walk, and brought home a pregnancy test. And 20 minutes later, when I tested negative, we sat down to eat dinner. 30 minutes after that, when I glanced at the test before throwing it in the trash, our lives changed. Completely and utterly changed.

September 5, 2002. Gwenivere Hope was born at 7:27 in the morning. She was born into the hands of a midwife who didn't really know enough English to give me any instruction, but she did know enough to tell us that "Gven ist long. Like spaghetti noodle."

When I try to think back on that morning, I remember three things clearly. Doug's arms were around me. His face was close to mine. And we cried like crazy when we saw Gwen in the arms of the midwife, although he has been known to deny this last part.

The presence of a father is so important to a child. I have been so blessed to grow up with a dad that knew the importance of family. And to marry a man who believed the same.

Happy Father's Day, Doug. And Dad. :)

2005-06-15T12:43:00.000-05:00

If we had any worries about buying one house while still owning another, they have all been resolved today! We have a renter on our other house! A sergeant in the Army, an MP. With a chihuahua. I hope she likes that house as much as we did, and still do.

Chasing Geese

2005-06-15T08:17:00.000-05:00

Chasing Geese
Originally uploaded by airehead.

If you're ever looking for a way to exhaust your toddler, just send her on a goose-chasing expedition.

I've been tagged

2005-06-14T07:09:00.000-05:00

I had all intentions of actually blogging before now but things keep getting away from us. There are huge things going on in the Morris household! Eventually maybe I'll fill you all in. :)

Anyway, I was tagged by The Prattling Pastor's Wife so here are my answers:

Q. The most books I've ever owned:

Okay, I have no idea how many books I own. But I do know that Doug said the 4 moves we've made in the last 2 years would have been so much easier if I were illiterate. Let's just say tons. Tons and tons of books. :)

Q. The last book I bought:

I honestly don't remember. We've been on a serious frugal kick since buying one house and owning another. There's that 2 mortgage thing that's kicking us in the tush.

Q. The last book I read:

I have just recently re-read all the Shopaholic books. And the Mitford books. And everything ever written by Rosamunde Pilcher.

Q. The five books that mean the most to me:

* The Bible
* The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
* Through Gates of Splendor by Elizabeth Elliot (and many more of her books as well)
* The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan
* My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers

Now it's my turn to tag some people. Forgive me if you've already been tagged, or you just hate me for doing this.

Maria - I see she's already been tagged though.
Shannon
Kimberly

2005-06-03T21:44:00.000-05:00

This last week we have been involved in a process that Dooce likes to call "reconvening the procedure". (I'll warn some of you. Dooce has a way with words. And while that way makes me laugh until I cry, or pee, or both, it also involves words that I don't personally endorse. :)

This time wasn't nearly as scary as the reconvention after childbirth, or after the super-long deployments. This is mainly because the reason for the temporary termination of the procedure didn't have to do with anything directly related to the parts required for reconvention. And also that the slight hiatus we have taken was only 8 weeks. Not 30, or 52, like would be common with a militarily induced separation.

But, the odd thing is, we didn't even think about....ahem....until my grandmother came to visit and she was sleeping in a bed 2 rooms away in a creaky old house. Floor boards squeak, people! It's not recommended. Take my advice and learn from it!

If you *must* break your leg, and you *must* wait 8 weeks to "snuggle", then just wait another 3 days until you have the house to yourself again!

A Shameless Plug for a Great Blog

2005-05-16T19:26:00.000-05:00

My brother in law, Derek, is a US Army chaplain deployed to Iraq from Ft Benning, Georgia. He has a big heart for Jesus Christ and his ministry in the Army. He's been sending updates to family members, and in turn, we pass them along to lots of others. Recently, my sister decided to post them all on a blog. So, without further ado, may I present...

Derek Murray, Chaplain Racer

A wee bit of complaining, which you can choose not to read

2005-05-12T17:47:00.000-05:00

The reality of 7 more weeks in a bed/wheelchair/on crutches is starting to kick in. It's been hot here...almost 100F, and I just want to not be in bed. Just for a day. To go take a walk, pick flowers, explore the property, fix a place for Gwen to play, fish in the pond, collect the eggs, unpack boxes, clean rooms other than the kitchen, kill a few dozen moths that have seemed to have taken up residence in the many bouquets of dead flowers still inhabiting the house.

None of this is happening, and it's really discouraging. Our dining room is boxes stacked up to the ceiling. There's a path to the bathroom, the living room, and Gwen's temporary bedroom just wide enough to get my wheelchair through.

Update: A little bit of a bright spot. Doug put in the window air conditioners. It's cool in here! I can breathe and sleep again!

Anyway, I'm just discouraged. I would never ever again have moving coincide with breaking a leg. I would choose to stay in a hotel for weeks on end instead of going through this again!

2005-05-10T22:13:00.000-05:00

Okay. I'm in tears. The finale of The Amazing Race had me ready to spring from my wheelchair and jump around the living room. I didn't. But I *really* needed some other way to express how happy I was, besides the tears, and the pumping of the arms in the air, and clapping my hands. I believe there was a very white bread "Boo-yah!" shouted at one point and some kind of weird gyrating dance.

But, what do you expect from someone who can't walk.

Uchenna and Joyce. Oh. I just love them. I want to have them over to dinner. I want to rub Joyce's head.

Ron and Kelly. Well, they placed higher than they deserved to. I hope they've watched these episodes and realized that they *so* do not belong together. The rest of America knows it. Just realize it soon, please. No offense to anyone who may be reading this, but Ron is the typical jackass officer, always ready to talk about everything he's done and how he is far superior to the normal human being. And Kelly. Well, I think she's been a horrific example of Christianity. I hope it takes more than a week for her to live down her comment about Ron managing to get out of the Army by being a POW.

Uchenna and Joyce. Yes. I know I already talked about them, but I was just so happy that they stayed to earn money to pay for their cab. It would have been so easy to just run.

Rob and Amber. I've really enjoyed watching them play because they played well. And hard. Although, not always honestly. But they knew how to play. And if Uchenna and Joyce weren't just an awesome couple with a great reason to want some money, then I would have been wholeheartedly routing for them.

Okay, I can take the percocet I've been holding off on and climb into our new bed. Did I mention Doug bought us a Select Comfort? It's the best choice we've made in a while, and certainly the only large bed that will fit up our dwarfy new stairs, since it comes in several pieces that you assemble in your bedroom.

Night!

URL ABC's

2005-05-10T11:45:00.000-05:00

This seemed fun, and I stole it from my super cool and awesome friend Dana. So, I thought I'd give it a try. The deal is that you type the abc's into your address bar and see what your browser suggests. Aw heck, Dana says it much better: the idea: type each letter of the alphabet into the URL bar on your browser and report what the result is.

Now that you have the idea, comment and tell me where I can find your list!

A - Audible
B - Quiet Life
C - Chaplain Racer
D - Dooce
E - EbombMom
F - Scratchmittens
G - Gmail
H - Not So Virtual Homestead
I - Lickety Split
J - The Long Journey Home
K - Kitten War
L - Long Commute
M - Miss Zoot
N - NY Daily News
O - Otter Green
P - The Prattling Pastor's Wife
Q - Quizilla
R - Rosie's Coveralls
S - At Home in Virginia
T - The Forgiveness Project
U - U.S. Postal Service
V - VeggieGrrl
W-Z - I didn't have any!

2005-05-07T08:02:00.000-05:00

This morning is so perfect and so beautiful I don't want to go outside for fear I will do something to break it all.

Doug got up early to go to base for a Class A inspection and so we were up about 6:30 or so. The sun was starting to rise through my kitchen window and I'm just in awe that I get to live in this paradise.

Just now, at 8:00, the roosters are starting to crow, and the goats are making their morning trek down to the pond for a drink. The ducks we brought with us from our other house are attempting to make a place for themselves in the pack, but they haven't yet been accepted.

And inside the house, Gwen is watching the baby sun rise on Teletubbies and I'm trying to see how much I can accomplish before Doug gets home from work.

Huge sigh

2005-05-05T23:13:00.000-05:00

Well, we're moved. Finally moved. Yay! The house is the biggest disaster known to man at this point. I've been in dirty houses and nothing compared to this house when we walked through the doors on Saturday. I've posted lots about it on our family blog, and more pictures will be put up this evening.

I really want to get out of bed and start exploring. Gwen has come in with lots of little "treasures" that she's found. Guinea feathers (*so* pretty!), eggs, sticks, and pretty rocks. And I desperately want to be out there finding them with her.

The neatest things so far has been watching the dogs have 20 acres to run, play and wrestle on. Zoe's a bit of a flight risk, if you can remember from last year, but since she's so food-oriented we make sure we have pockets full of treats if we let her off her leash. She's done very well with that system so far. Nothing, not even the promise of yummy duck or scrumptious goose has allowed her to wander too far from us.

Doug's a bit frustrated with me at this point. My wheelchair rolls nicely down the driveway, so it's very easy to get from the front door down to the pond, but I get stuck when I get down there. Of course, I don't really want to ask for help back up to the house, because it's uphill and mushy spring grass, and well, do you know anyone who enjoys pushing a wheelchair against all those odds? But he sees me struggling and comes running and pushes me out of another bad situation. That's my man, eh?

The first room should be finished tomorrow. The kitchen has been bleached several times over and tomorrow we start lining the shelves and unpacking. Think of us, will you?

Last minute notes

2005-04-29T20:42:00.000-05:00

Well, the house is packed except for my little bubble. An absolutely wonderful friend showed up this afternoon with her 2 daughters to clean my house. Angels of mercy they were! They Mr Clean Magic Erasered my walls, mopped floors, scrubbed toilets and vaccuumed carpets. They washed windows, played with Gwen and packed boxes. And we are left with a mostly clean house and very little to do before tomorrow morning.

We as a family can now be found here, at our new blog home. I will still be posting here, and the other blog will mainly be about our further attempts at sustainable living and restoring the house.

Come over, visit, put your feet up and grab some coffee!

The Whole Story

2005-04-28T10:37:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning, we woke up excited. Only 8 hours until closing! Eight hours! Then six hours! No word from our realtor, things were still going! Yay! Four hours! Three hours! We're all good! Two hours, things are great! One hour 45 minutes. The realtor calls. We need to bring $500 more than expected to closing. Now, normally this wouldn't be a huge problem. We have a decent savings account. Enough to pay expenses if, say, Doug were suddenly fired from the Army. Yeah, right. But, because we would own 2 houses and have to make mortgage payments on these 2 houses until one of them sells or rents, we have our budget down to the dime for the next few months. Rental truck, mortgage, electricity on one house, and on the other, several weddings to attend. It's all going somewhere, and not into savings.

So, Doug said to the realtor, "We can't do it." She suggested many things, including taking out a credit line on our credit cards. Doug and I don't use credit cards. At all. We are a cash/debit card only family, and that just didn't work for us. So, after telling them that we thought it was really stinky that they only gave us 1 hour and 45 minutes to come up with $500 more than the 5% downpayment we had already needed, we headed off for the realtor to get the exact number and contemplate if it was even possible.

When we saw Angie, she said, "I'll pay for your moving truck if you can come up with the money for the downpayment." So, we headed to the Fort to dip into our savings account. After passing through the checkpoints we went to the bank to get the precise amount on the cashier's check. We did this, left the Fort and went back to the realtor. She said, "I tried to reach you but I couldn't. The amount you have to come up with is only $220!" Yay! But we still had the wrong amount on the cashier's check. After making a quick call, she found out that the title company would just cut us a check back.

Minutes later, we're at the title company, sitting at the closing table, and we look at the interest rate on our loan. It was 1/4% higher than it was supposed to be, because we had locked the loan more than 5 days previously. After calling our mortgage officer and her reading the fine print, it turns out that the day of locking and the day of closing don't count. Grrr....

We sign papers. More papers. Still more papers. We sign our lives away.

Congratulations, we officially own a(nother) house! Give them the checks and RUN before anyone changes their minds! Oh, what? The checks are made out to Doug when they were supposed to made out to the title company? We have go to BACK to the Fort and change them? Grrrr....

Back we go, through checkpoints and inspections and get to the bank, where it takes an act of Congress to cash almost $6000 in cashier's checks. These bankers were starting to wonder who the lady in the wheelchair was and why she had been in 4 times in the last 2 days. Getting a cashier's check every time.

Finally we were done. We do own another house and we're moving on Saturday to what my mom called "the most peaceful retreat on earth".

4 Days and Counting

2005-04-23T18:47:00.000-05:00

In four days we will be closing on our dream property. And we will be inheriting these watchdogs. Errr....watchgeese.

The big white one to the left is the one that attacks while your back is turned, and the moment you turn around to find out WHAT THE CRAP bit your ankle, he's gazing innocently up into the sky, like, "Do I feel rain?"

He might find himself chopped up into pieces in our freezer if he ever attacks Gwen. I've been told by people that we should start new with goslings. They will grow up with us and not attack us but still let out all the warning honks if they see anything strange in the yard. However, don't geese have a reputation for being kind of cranky and out of sorts, and sort of backstabby?

Doug is wanting to start turkey hunting. I don' t have a problem with this, except that he'll have to wear something like this and doesn't he wear stuff like that every single day to work? Only without the little fake leaves hanging off it, of course. And normally, his uniform doesn't look quite so.....fuzzy.

Also, this means that I'll become the very common Missouri Hunter's Widow....a breed of woman sort of like the Hunter's Widows in say, Wisconsin or Minnesota, but we have fewer teeth.

10 weeks to go!

2005-04-22T21:32:00.000-05:00

The last 2 weeks have flown by in sort of a daze. I've gotten care packages! Tons of books, candy, and gadgets for Gwen to play with. Oh, and knitting needles, books and yarn. And I know that more books are coming soon. This is good because I need more books to read the end of and decide if I want to spend my time on the rest of the book.

Gwen is doing well. Very well. Doug has gotten a significant amount of time off work and Gwen's just loving all the time with her Papa. I've been forgotten a bit. :)

And Doug....well, Doug would appreciate prayers and well wishes! He's a little worn down, since not only does he have to take care of Gwen,me, and all the animals, he's also left with the packing of the house, loading the truck and getting us over to the new house. So far he's doing a superb job.

Thanks everyone for the comments, and especially for the e-mails I've gotten from a lot of you!

2005-04-21T21:50:00.000-05:00

Just a quick update. Closing on our house is on Wednesday. All papers have been signed by the underwriter, we have our deposit, and we cannot wait to be there! There's just a mandatory 5 day hold for the mortgage company to get the papers to the title company.

My mom is coming for a visit on Sunday, just for a few days. Flying all that way to get me through a day when Doug has 24 hour duty. What a mom, huh?

I need to sleep. The pain is still quite bad at times, but then sometimes it's like nothing ever happened.

My Little Punkin

2005-04-19T00:07:00.000-05:00

Doug and I aren't huge fans of the headband, but recently Gwen's been spending lots of time with my friend Marjorie and her family, who just happen to be huge proponents of the stretchy fabric headband, and since they are gladly taking Gwen as we make numerous trips to the doctor and such, we can't argue.

And honestly, even if I wanted to argue, I couldn't. The percocet is just heavenly. It doesn't so much take away any pain. It just makes me not care at all about whatever pain I'm in at the moment, even if that pain is seeing my daughter with a yellow flower plastered to her head.

(Marjorie, I won't even remember that I wrote this in the morning, so you can't be mad at me. :)

I'm learning to knit. I've already thrown the needles across the room a few times and shouted, "Bah!" at the entire process, but then, 20 minutes later, I pick it back up on the way back from the toilet, and I start muddling through it again. I'm afraid my hands look a bit like Gwen's in the above picture while I'm knitting. Sort of all bunched up to my chest and I peer through groggy eyes at the lines swimming in front of my eyes.

I can't remember who wrote this as a comment, but I've gotten a couple e-mails as well saying how nice and cheerful I sound, taking it all bravely and without complaint. I have to say, it's not totally like that in real life. I'm a wuss with pain, and as I launch up off the couch every time I need to, it's accompanied with tears and gasps of pain. I spent a chunk of my early morning hours yesterday crying about how long 11 weeks sounds. And we're moving to a house surrounded with berry bushes and lilac trees, and I won't even be able to enjoy the spring.

So, there's not any braveness. I am trying to remain firm in the fact that God doesn't give anyone more than they can handle, and that everything that is brought into my life will somehow be used for good. And that with a good pair of scissors and a bucket, Doug can bring the lilacs and berries to me.

2005-04-17T09:45:00.000-05:00

So many things have been happening that I haven't been updating them like I should. So, here are lots of notes all coming to you from the bottom of my percocet filled heart.

The house. Everything is completed. Due to a few snags it pushed closing back to the end of last week. And then, due to some stuff the realtor didn't share with us, it pushed it back again to Tuesday or Wednesday. But, we're nearly there!

The leg. It's still broken. And it hurts like the dickens right now. I think things will get better in a couple weeks after the initial healing starts. But, right now, ouch. We are looking at complete bedrest until at least the end of May. Only getting up to use the bathroom and sometimes sit in the wheelchair, even though the doctor actually didn't say anything about that. I just added those directions in. After the end of May I can sometimes be in a wheelchair and sometimes be on crutches, but there must be NO WEIGHT put on the leg.

The MRI was okay. Nothing looks great, but I don't need surgery. My MCL is severely sprained, my miniscus has some small tears, and it will probably take longer to heal than the bone. But praise God! No surgery!!!

Doug has set up a little station for me in the living room. TV, XBox, DVD player, VCR, my favorite video games, and all my library books. I'm swimming in things to do, and yet so bored. And, I think I'm starting to get bedsores on my rear.

The goats. Everyone is fine. Fitzwilliam fainted for the first time yesterday and of course we all laughed and he lay stiff on the ground crying for his mama. That has to be scary the first time it happens, but to us watching, it's a laugh-til-you-pee moment. I had just come out on the back deck in my wheelchair to get some sun and there was Cyrus chasing the goats. When Fitzie fell over, he stopped in his tracks and looked very perplexed.

Okay, I must get back in bed. I can feel my leg starting to swell again. And when that happens, it's time for more Simpsons Road Rage. Heehee! That game makes me giggle!

Because you asked for it....

2005-04-16T19:47:00.000-05:00

Here is the newest member of our flock. Fitzwilliam.

I think he looks like a member of my family. No one else agrees with me, so I'm going to keep my opinion to myself and not tell you all who. But he does. I swear!

Them's the breaks, kiddos

2005-04-12T23:15:00.000-05:00

On Friday evening, Doug and I went on a date. The first in almost a full year. We went to go see Fever Pitch. My review?

I don't have one. Halfway through the first preview (Star Wars), I went to go get seasoning for the popcorn, tripped up the stairs, and hyper-extended my knee. It locked up, and I screamed for Doug. Crying, screaming, intermittently.

We went to the emergency room and spent 5 hours there with no pain medication, and left with instructions to see my family care provider on Monday.

Monday was spent at Family Practice trying to get a referral to Orthopedics and in x-ray where they had me sit in obscene positions to get a good picture of the knee. Monday evening we received a phone call telling me NOT to get out of bed, NOT to work on my range of motion, NOT to do anything except lay in bed. Why? I broke my leg.

Specifically, I have a lateral tibial plateau fracture....the part of your tibia that hides under the kneecap has a big ole' floating chunk of bone.

Tomorrow I have an MRI and if nothing else is wrong, I begin a 12 week bedrest period.

Yes. 12 weeks. Everyone is welcome to send me any books they may have lying around doing nothing.

Growing up

2005-04-07T18:49:00.000-05:00

For most of my adult life I've been a whiner. I try not to be. Really. But inside there's just something that whines when something goes wrong. I don't always show it. Doug's usually the one who gets to witness these wonderful childish moments, if they come out at all. They usually do, about 3 days down the road when I just can't hold it in any longer.

In 2003, when we found out that instead of going to our new duty station, we would be staying in Germany and Doug would be deploying to Iraq. And, oh yeah, sorry, we couldn't get our household goods because they were already on a boat to America. I whined. I called our congressmen. I fought and struggled and cried and complained. Doug made his commander's life a living hell as inquiry after inquiry rolled in from the congressmen from every state we had any association with....New Hampshire, Texas, Montana. Oh, didn't we zip through a bit of Nebraska once? Let's call their governor!

I should clarify that we weren't fighting Doug's deployment so much as the fact that he was being deployed and Gwen and I were being left in an apartment with no bed, 1 suitcase of clothes, no kitchen utensils or cooking supplies and a couch that we had pulled out of the dumpster. It just didn't seem fair. There were other soldiers who just happened to be in units that supported them, and they were allowed to leave. Especially when their cases involved small children. But not us.

There are family members that I listen to when they talk (and talk and talk) and eventually my eyes start rolling back in my head because I just can't listen another second about their lives. Their ups. Their downs. What they ate for dinner last night? What it did to their bodily functions today. And recently I started to realize that somewhere along the line, my internal grumbling had turned into vocal whining. I recognized the tones in people's voices when I called them. In person, I saw their eyes start the climb upwards.

It shocked me. What turned me into this person? Why do I feel like every single person on this earth needs to know that I was forced to live out of a suitcase for 11 1/2 months?

In reading an article that I linked to a few entries ago, I read, "The future is not something God is working toward. It is where He is working from."

I have not had a rough life. There are certainly things that have happened that I wish hadn't, most of which have been caused by my own thoughtlessness. But, I have parents that love me, a husband that adores me, a daughter who freely gives me hugs and kisses. And anything that I've dealt with has been a piece of cake compared to what some are handed.

For whatever reason, things like our experience with deployment have happened. But, God, working from the future, sees me, a daughter, struggling along a path. And He's given me what He knows I need to get through this life accomplishing what He wants me to accomplish. For some reason I needed that experience.

Lookee there....I'm growing up!

------------
Farm news: closing has been pushed back. We are waiting for various parties to sign a road maintenance agreement. Our realtor says she's working on it, but then she does things like take days off to go to the zoo.

I have no problem with the zoo. It's a fun place. You should go visit. But please don't go visit if you've promised to go get signatures for me that day, and then you just decide not to do it.

5:19 PM

2005-03-29T19:50:00.000-06:00

It's a boy! Fitzwilliam was born right when we were outside watching the chickens and feeding the ducks.

It was *so* awesome!

2005-03-27T20:42:00.000-06:00

So, today was Resurrection Sunday. In my opinion, the happiest day of the year.

I go to a very *very* small church. Well, actually, we halfway go to a small church. The other half of the time we go to a huge church that we get lost in quite frequently, and Gwen stays in the nursery for an extra half hour because we can't find our way from the elevator to the nursery. (That's actually only happened once, but when it did, it was really scary!)

So, we went to church, with Gwen dressed in all her Easter finery. We always sit in the back pew, because, well, isn't that what you're supposed to do? (The first time we attended, Doug cracked up because there are only 15 people there, and only 8 rows, and we all crowded into the back 3 pews.)

So, we all ate breakfast and then had a time of singing and testimony and snake-handling.*

And a man got up to sing. This man always forgets that we come to church there. Every Sunday he introduces himself again and asks Gwen's name and where we live. He's even said, "Oh, there's another family that comes here sometimes and they live on the same road you do." And I always want to ask, "Do they look like us? And talk like us? 'Cause you know, IT'S US!" It makes me wonder if he thinks there are just LOTS of people that come to the church, but they just never all come on the same Sunday.

So, he got up to sing. A few Sundays ago, he sang that song about the 4 people in the car, and 3 of them died, and how the one of them that didn't die was the prostitute, and how that was his mother and how she became a Christian because one of the people that did die was a Christian and left her his Bible. What's that song?

So, today I wasn't sure what he was going to sing. And he sang You Can't Keep a Good Man Down. A fitting selection for Resurrection Sunday.

And while he was singing, we thumbed through the hymnal looking for good songs to request. And we made fun of the fact that we must be in Missouri because, look, there's The First Nowell. And, heheh, any idiot knows that it's spelled Noel! Except, it's not.

Easter always makes me happy. I cry when I sing Christ The Lord is Risen Today, and my feet always tingle when we sing Up From The Grave He Arose.

I hope your Easter was meaningful and happy.

------------
*Kidding. I've only actually held a snake once, and it wasn't in a church. I just mention it because when we found out we were moving to Missouri, I was a little scared. Ever since I took my freshman Personal Evangelism class at Moody Bible Institute and saw the film on snake handling, I've just associated it with all the states that are in the Ozark or Appalachian mountains.

Things which I've been reading

2005-03-21T17:37:00.000-06:00

Because I no longer have a links section, I decided to post the things that have made me giggle this week:

Chez Miscarriage - "...Which raises the question: why do all cult members everywhere, regardless of whether the cult is benign or malignant, look like they need a good scrubbing in a hot shower? What is that all about?..."

Finslippy - "...Speaking of hypochondria, my husband spent last weekend obsessing over a mole that had suddenly sprouted on his wrist...."

Go Fug Yourself - "...You know that game they sometimes force you to play at wedding showers, where you have to dress people as brides using only toilet paper?..."

Some new blogs I've discovered:

Rurality - "... Living in rural north central Alabama. Currently overstocked with pets and poultry...."

360 Degrees of Sky - Life in Rural Zambia - "...I arrive in Namibia. I am tired after the long flight, but decide to spend my first evening there in a Traditional African Restaurant. The kind of restaurant where they don't rush to put bread on the table upon your arrival. Oh no. Instead you get a large basket of mopane worms. Which are of course, big hairy caterpillars..."

The Long Journey Home - "...But for some reason the boys find her irresistable..."

Fixer-Upper - "...Let the games begin!..."

Out of curiosity....

2005-03-20T16:54:00.000-06:00

I've been wondering, how many of you have family members that read your blog? I'm not talking about a spouse, but other family members.

Do you feel it's right, if someone discovers it, or is given the link by someone else who has discovered it, to politely ask them not to read? Would you count yourself fortunate if all, or say, 80% of them respected you and understood the need for privacy and venting, even if it maybe included them?

And while you're answering my questions, add a note to my sister, Sarah, who has just started reading*, and tell her that she and her husband need to blog too! Because there is clearly a shortage of Deployed-Army-Chaplain-Married-To-Homeschooling-Mom blogs.

2005-03-20T11:14:00.000-06:00

Still no babies. And I'm a little scared my neighbors think I'm a pervert. I go out to check on Bennet and check her udders, her tendons, and make sure she hasn't started contracting. All of these checks are done on her back end and since Doug comes home from work and checks her as well, and then we keep circling around her staring at her private parts, or the parts that we keep private but she doesn't really seem to care if anyone sees. Lastly, there's Gwen, squatting down behind her, pointing to her huge udders, finger touching Bennet's tiny tail. "Wha's dat, Mama? Wha's dat? Papa? Ew!"

I really want to be there when Bennet pops this baby/babies out! I want Gwen to see and be amazed at a new life just instantly there, but the chances aren't very good that this will happen. Fainting goats are quiet when in labor and giving birth, probably stemming from the fact that they haven't been a breed that has been protected very much. Therefore it's a matter of self-preservation. The quieter they are, the less likely a coyote or wild dog will hear them and attack a helpless mother and baby. A pregnant dairy goat would traditionally be in a barnyard, and later on, a stall. Fainting goats were normally used as a distraction for larger herds of other animals. If an animal attacked, they would fall over and would be eaten instead of the other animals, the farmer's livelihood. So, Bennet will most likely be normal when I go out to close things up in the evening, and when I stumble out the next morning in my pajamas and purple boots, there will be one or two more goats just waiting there for me.

So, anyway, no babies. But we have to have 2 boys names and 2 girls names picked out. So, the boys names we have are Fitzwilliam and Wyckam. There aren't that many surnames for girls in Pride and Prejudice, so we'll have to use the first names. So the names for the girls are Charlotte and Lydia.

Speaking of names and babies....I started a rumor that turned out to be true! How amazing! My friend Robyn, on WNET, made a comment that things were a little stressful and I said, "Robyn's pregnant!" and the next morning she peed on a stick and there were 2 lines!

If only I could do that with myself.

2005-03-18T14:59:00.000-06:00

This is a very good read!!! Thanks to Mike for passing it along!

2005-03-18T07:02:00.000-06:00

We are not a 3 dog family. I do not enjoy having 3 dogs. I don't like the chaos that ensues when a squirrel comes up on our porch, or a bird lands on our windowsill. I hate walking by the dogs' food bin because all of them start jumping up in the air and yelping and it's just loud and obnoxious and my ears hurt.

We've been watching a friend's dog for over a month now. Actually, next week it will be 2 months, and we only have 3 1/2 weeks left to go.

I like to blame all the problems on the dog. Oh, we ran out of dish detergent. That stupid Buddy, I wish he'd leave soon. What? Zoe dug a hole under the fence? Stupid Buddy. Hmmm? Gwen dumped a glass of milk on the floor. Oh man, get rid of that dog!

I had the utmost patience with this dog. He actually is nice and friendly and bouncy and curious and very unlike the dog that we watched in Germany who peed on our furniture and jumped out our living room window. But 3 months is too long to watch a dog. Really. It is.

2005-03-17T16:04:00.000-06:00

Last year we got 3 goats. They are Tennessee Fainting Goats, and about the only things I've educated myself on about them are the new and interesting ways to scare them into a faint. We've used umbrellas, food dishes, sticks and waving sweatshirts, but the only guaranteed way to make them faint is to send come out with a bucket of food and then drop it and charge straight at them. This always works. Especially on the youngest goat, Bingley, who is less than a year old and quite nervous about everything. He's so wary that it used to be when you approached him he would crawl on top of the other 2 goats to get away from you.

It appears now that maybe he was crawling on top of the other goats for another reason.

Bennett is within 2 weeks of giving birth to another baby. Any other good Jane Austen names?

2005-03-15T07:21:00.000-06:00

I started this particular blog 8 months ago. I had a couple before this, but my father kept finding them. So, I asked him not to read, and then I started a new one. This was done as sort of a collaboration with my friends at WNET. All of them have blogs as well, and it was a good way for us to keep up with each other's daily lives and thoughts.

More recently....about December, maybe earlier....this blog branched out a bit because I started reading more homestead blogs. Like Shannon and Maria.

Around November/December I discovered that Christian women have blogs too! I wasn't the only one! It's been a blessing to read these blogs!

And, in light of our pending home purchase, I've started reading more restoration blogs. Like this one.

And I constantly see someone signing the guestbook and I go, "Who is that? I don't know someone named _________." And they sign it like they know me so well that I feel guilty because surely I'm supposed to know them!!!

So, if you're reading this, drop a note in my comments, or e-mail me and let me know who you are, and how you came across my blog! I know you're reading, because I'm getting over 100 hits a day. Of course, 50% of those come from the same person who constantly reloads the pages and obsessively reads all my comments and then reads all the archives again, over and over again, but there's 50% of you out there that come from lovely places like Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Jackson, New Jersey. Exotic places like The Woodlands, Texas, and Tujunga, California.

Speak up America! (Also, the Canooks can speak up too. And that person from Norway who keeps reading. Who are you?)

Oh look there! I is a expert at speaking that there English language

2005-03-13T09:37:00.000-06:00

I would like to state, however, that I don't understand the graph below. It doesn't match up with what it says up here at the top.

English Genius
You scored 93% Beginner, 86% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 83% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I
can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon
intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You
have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly!
Way to go!

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 28% on Beginner
You scored higher than 11% on Intermediate
You scored higher than 47% on Advanced
You scored higher than 87% on Expert

Link: The Commonly Confused Words Test written by shortredhead78 on Ok Cupid

Take the test and tell me how you did!

Here we go!

2005-03-10T15:28:00.000-06:00

Our appraisal came back, and it is good. There may be some small "snags" but with the underwriter. Apparently having a house with mainly wood heat can be a problem, but there is a backup gas system already installed so everything should go smoothly from here.

I drove up there today and met the neighbors. They are mule farmers. Yes, mules. They are so cute....the farmers and also the mules! And I definitely think they'll make great neighbors. Both the mules and also the farmers.

When I drove up to the house it was so beautiful. There's a very long driveway...at least 1/3 mile. Probably closer to 1/2. But anyway, the bigger of the 2 tiny ponds was shimmering, and the ducks were splashing away in it. The trees are in the beginning stages of new growth. And once again I could see myself there.

Only this time, it will only be in a week or so!

Things of beauty

2005-03-09T11:11:00.000-06:00

Today has been so beautiful here. The tips of the branches all have that little pod of leaves that comes out several weeks before spring really hits. The flowers are starting to poke their heads out, and the dead patches of grass are slowly turning green.

Out behind our house things are still as wintery as ever. The ducks have churned their makeshift coop into a mudpit, which they seem to be enjoying. The goats are loving the chicken scratch, which I've been told is okay, but it's more expensive to feed them that way. So, I've taken to bringing their food waaaay out to the back of our property along with hay, and dashing back to the coop to feed the chickens. It's been 2 days of this, and the goats haven't caught on yet, but I'm sure it's coming soon.

Indoors we have a big mess on our hands. We started tackling the garage a bit before we looked at the new house, so it's not necessarily the joys of moving that have sparked this, but there are boxes everywhere. I have so much crap. Really. Crap. There is so much stuff that I've held onto for years and years and I don't remember why. It will be a joy to toss it all and start again with less clutter. And if we should happen to stay in this house, it will be wonderful to be able to park a car in the garage.

Another beauty of my life has been the internet. My friends at WNET are constantly supportive and encouraging and ready to listen. And it's a blessing to be involved in their lives as well. There's a certain pleasure that comes in being real and open over a medium that doesn't normally translate that realness. It's a break from the anonymity of the internet.

But that's one thing I love about the internet. Just when you think you're anonymous, it turns out you're not. For instance, today, thanks to my stat machine, I know that I got a few freaky European hits. Someone from Budapest, Hungary found me under "littl sex" and another person from College Station, Texas found me using "kinky sweats". Some people have way too much time on their hands.

I hope your day is filled with beautiful things!

2005-03-07T13:12:00.000-06:00

Things are on track with the new house. The owner is renting our current house from us until he moves to Germany in June, so that gives us a few months to sell it.

We have our financing.

We have a moving date.

We have the inspection.

Today is the appraisal. The property was appraised only 2 months ago, so there should be no big surprises, but you never know.

Am I supposed to be pleased?

2005-03-06T22:01:00.000-06:00

Someone searched for "budapest girl fart" and found me. I'm at a loss for words.

Ebay wenches

2005-03-03T20:41:00.000-06:00

You know how people act different online than they do in person? Well, I've just witnessed the Probably-Nice-Girl-Turned-Ebay-Wench routine.

I asked about a pitcher. A pretty little handmade pitcher. The shipping was more than the pitcher was being sold for. I looked up where the seller was...less than an hour from my house, very near a city we visit almost weekly. So, I e-mail to see if she allows local delivery.

She says no.

I should have dropped it and paid the stupid shipping. But I e-mailed back and told her that she had just lost a bidder and asked if she was really making all the much off the shipping that she couldn't just meet up at a store. (Note: I never asked her to meet at her house. I suggested a store.)

She responded with all sorts of things. I'm too cheap to pay shipping. Don't you know it costs "$$" to put gas in a car to get there? Why don't I just pay the darn shipping and stop being so cheap. If I really wanted to meet people, go to a flea market. Haven't I read the news? With all the murders and such, she wouldn't let us meet at her house, which, again, I never suggested. Oh, and good luck finding someone to go out of their way for a $6 pitcher.

Having just a wee bit of experience with eBay, what with it being my job and all, I would just like to state that selling stuff on eBay is still a job. If you're selling stuff, shouldn't you actually still treat people like customers? Is it professional write them accusations of being too cheap to pay shipping, dumb enough to drive when you could just use the mail.

I have run into this so many times. And not with the shipping issue. The only reason I wanted to pick up the pitcher was because we are up there *so* much. Although, thinking about it now, I should have just asked her to mail it to General Delivery at her local post office and I could have picked it up there.

Anyway, I have dealt with people being rude, even though they never would be in person. There's no face for them to see. The person on the other side of the computer is just words, not a stay at home mom with a baby, working extra jobs to make things good at home.

A big reason why I'm less enthusiastic about the internet.

2005-03-03T13:04:00.000-06:00

I've been hesitating on posting all about our new house because I hate getting my hopes up. Everything, however, seems to be sailing along smoothly towards a March 31 closing, and let me tell you, if that goes smoothly, you will hear my screams of joy from wherever you are in this world.

Despite my trying not to get my hopes up, we have still made plans for everything we're going to do. Carpets torn up, *any* color paint being put over the orange walls, electricity being run to the barn, garden planted, etc. We went to a lot of old antique stores last weekend and found a vendor who sells a lot of architectural salvage. Old doors, windows, etc. If we do buy this farmhouse, we will measure all the doors and keep the measurements in our car so we can replace all the new icky interior doors with old wood ones when we run across them.

The land is mostly pasture. There are pockets of trees here and there, and little areas for Gwen to hide out and be by herself as she grows older. The pasture is beautiful. It is used for hay right now, so that's a little bit of income each year. The garden area is huge, or at least I think it is! The current owner's wife likes to garden a lot, so there is a huge plot, surrounded by fence where she also has many raspberry and blackberry bushes.

There are guinea hens as well, and I've heard various things about them. They're noisy. They poop a lot. They're mean. None of that matters to me. I like that they eat ticks and there are enough of them to completely demolish all tick activity on the property!

I like that we are going to be closer to church, closer to friends, and also far enough in the country that no one will find us unless we want to be found. There is a certain joy in knowing that you're hard to find.

Things to say to me if you don't want my business

2005-02-25T08:55:00.000-06:00

We've been having realtors come look at our house. They've been giving all sorts of helpful suggestions on what we need to do before we decide to sell and how to increase the value.

And yesterday we had one such lady come out to the house wearing a really nice pantsuit. And it's been muddy. And rainy. And snowy. And I have 3 dogs (2 are mine, one is being loaned to us) who have been running around in that mud and rain and snow. The realtor came in and looked at the dogs and insisted they go outside. She didn't want mud on her pantsuit. That was okay, since I was going to put them outside anyway, but still, I don't like anyone looking down their nose at my dogs, ya know?

So, she walks through the house, and makes lots of constructive comments, but most of them focused on the rug. "Of course, you'll want to clean this spot here before you sell it." "This muddy dogprint here will have to go."

Does she seriously think that I am going to just pack up the house and leave it with mud on the floor and places where my darling daughter stamped the date on the walls? Erm, no!

We walked into Gwen's room where she was napping, and the realtor's face curled up into a grimace. "What a....what a....dahling baby." With no expression. Like she was reading it off the back of a cereal box.

I am *so* not one of those parents that insist that you say something nice about my child when you see us, but, come on, don't say it if you don't mean it! My brother Pete jokes that when he sees a baby that's not all that attractive and its mother says, "Isn't my darling the cutest baby?" he says, "Well, he sure is a baby!" or "That sure is a baby you've got there!"

So, after the tour of my house, I sat down with the realtor and apologized that the house was in the middle of being cleaned and also that it was a huge laundry day yesterday so lots of laundry was on the couch waiting to be folded. She said, "Oh yes, I remember what it was like when I didn't work. It's difficult to get going in the morning! Just wait until your daughter is in school and you start a real job. You won't believe how much more there is to do."

Um...Buh-Bye!

2005-02-23T15:30:00.000-06:00

This is beautiful.

2005-02-23T10:32:00.000-06:00

I've been having lots of fun with Benjamin Moore's Personal Color Viewer. Go try it, if you have as much fun as I do with experimenting with different colors in your house!

What to do?

2005-02-21T15:15:00.000-06:00

Doug is working all night tonight. It's put a damper on our President's Day festivities...mainly munching on goodies, curling up on the couch, and giggling at Judge Judy.

However, once again I am in amazement at the wonder that is Freecycle. I have acquired a swingset for Gwen! It's not the wood swingset that I originally wanted, but you know what? She's 2. Those big wooden swingsets could be really dangerous for a 2 year old! Also, you can't argue with this one, it's free. It has all the necessary components for a 2 year old. You know. A swing. And a slide. Anything else is beyond Gwen's capability at this point.

Tonight I will be partaking in my favorite When-Doug's-Away-I-Can-Play activity. I will be sitting in our tv room, eating ice cream and watching Anne of Green Gables.

Anne has been a very steady thing in my life over the past 5 years. She and I spent many a lonely rainy afternoon together in Germany. When Doug deployed to Kosovo, we spent every weekend together. And then, during the deployment to Iraq, she was my constant buddy. To be fair, Anne has also shared me with the lovely girls from Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. And Emma. And anything else from Jane Austen.

By the way, Freecycle is just as good for helping you get rid of things that you no longer want cluttering up your life. I ridded myself of 7 boxes of stuff today. Stuff. Just stuff.

Why, oh why?

2005-02-21T06:56:00.000-06:00

Why am I up at 6:30?

Today is President's Day. A day we spend thinking about all our past and present presidents. The good and the not so good. A day to focus on what we want for the future.

Kidding, of course. We don't put that much meaning into President's Day. I did tell Gwen the obligatory Washington-chopped-down-the-cherry-tree story, and she was duly impressed.

Speaking of cherries, Doug and I have been trying to come up with a name for our new house. We probably won't decide until we've lived there a bit and gotten to know the home and land a bit, but we've still been talking about it. I want something that means peaceful or restful, and everything I suggested was not fine with Doug. So I threw out ideas. "How about something having to do with all the wild cherry trees on the property?" So, Doug said, "How about, 'It's the Pits"? And I refuse to own my dream house and property and name it "It's the Pits".

Suggestions anyone?

And on we go....

2005-02-19T15:06:00.000-06:00

Last night we had a 3 hour inspection done on our farm. Yes. Our Farm. Long story short? We'd be "hard-pressed to find another house that old in such great shape." There were suggestions on things we need to do. We need to fill in the cistern. We need to lay a vapor barrier in the crawl space, and more insulation in the attic surely wouldn't hurt. A fuxe box needs some work. But all in all there are no structural issues. "This house will still be standing firm in another 150 years."

It was such a good time, too! We got to take a lot more pictures of the house and property, become more informed on the feeding of all the animals that we will be inheriting and learn more about the house.

Closing is in 42 days. I've got so much to do before then that I'm grateful we have that much time!

2005-02-17T09:18:00.000-06:00

I'm enjoying the Google Adsense program. I love the thought that maybe someday I could buy something with all the dough I earn. However, I've been with it for 2 weeks now, and I don' t even have enough to buy my daughter this. At this rate we'll be getting that in 25 months, since Google requires that you earn at least $100 before they send you any money. So, Gwen will be almost 5. That's depressing.

I'd love to be more popular. Not really popular. Just popular enough that I could buy a DVD occasionally with all my popularity earnings.

2005-02-16T15:17:00.000-06:00

I may have been blessed with retarded chickens.

This reminds me of a story that was told a lot in our family when I was a child. I have a sister. She is smart, wise and very intelligent. She was sort of ditsy as a child though and that has reputation has stuck with her especially with one member of my family who will remain nameless but is a Complete Putz. So, when Sarah was a toddler she did funny things, like most toddlers do, and my grandmother, who has a very strong opinion about everything and everyone, was visiting. She watched Sarah doing whatever she was doing and then turned to my mother and said in a low voice, "Wendy, I believe you've been blessed with a retarded child." Needless to say, my sister actually isn't retarded. And she's also no longer a ditz. I believe I carry the title of that now in our family, even though The Putz still finds lots of reasons to put her down. I have my own reasons about that, but to air them would fuel the fire.

So, anyway, I was given chickens and ducks through Freecycle (it's wonderful! Go sign up!) and today is their first day of being Official Free Range Birds. I was advised to wait another couple weeks, but because it's wet here and they spend all day pecking the dirt, their coop is one huge mud pit. Seriously, my stripper neighbors would feel right at home out there. So, I opened the gate and let them out and only the ducks waddled through. The chickens watched. When the ducks had made it through the gate to All the Glories Beyond, the chickens got it through their tiny little brains* that they also wanted to be Official Free Range Birds, and all started walking. But, no, not towards the gate did they walk. They walked repeatedly into a fence. Over and over and over and over again. They are still at it. Oops, here goes another one. Bam!

*I, like this man, tried to find out exactly how tiny a chicken's brain is, but I spent way too much time Googling something that apparently isn't out there.
PS. I would like to state that I do not take an official stance on whether or not chickens are killed humanely or inhumanely. But I personally would rather be beheaded than gassed.

It must have worked....Let's try it again!

2005-02-15T07:16:00.000-06:00

Thanks to all 2 of you who wrote wishing us good luck. :) Our offer was countered with another offer which we accepted. It all works out wonderfully (!!!) because our original offer was contingent on us renting our property, and the counteroffer basically just states that we will be switching houses with the owners of the other house on March 31, closing date.

So, we have a renter for 5 months, and we have enough time now to get this house ready for sale when the renter moves out, and we are in our new house in a month and a half.

Doug and I laid in bed last night dreaming of all the fixups and cleanups we're going to do to the property. It's not really the house. I love the house. There's a slight issue with the fact that you have to bend over to go up the stairs, but that will be fixed almost immediately (hopefully). Outside, there's not a lot that needs to be done either, but we have to make one of the small pastures ready for the goats, somehow integrate our 12 chickens in with their flock of 40, and also make friends with the geese, who I'm sure could murder us in our sleep if they were so inclined.

Any ideas Shannon? Also, any info about guinea's? There are a flock of those too, and they said that guinea's eat ticks, so it's good to let them free range in the spring and summer.

Further down the line we'd like to dredge the pond and make it bigger and deeper and find out what kind of fish live in it.

Okay, let's see if we can have more than 2 people respond this time. Here are some ready-made phrases to just cut and paste into the form:

Mary, I'm rooting for you guys!
Doug and Mary, congratulations on the offer!
Mary, you're oh so brilliant and smart. I admire you beyond any other human.

Perhaps a very strong collective finger-crossing from all of you will help?

2005-02-12T18:32:00.000-06:00

Well, we put in an offer today. We'll find out Monday if it was accepted or countered.

And we got awesome financing. So good, in fact, that it's actually going to save us money to move to that house.

So, I guess I could tell a little more about it. Erm...what have I not told?

This house was built in 1850. Right now its floor is covered with shag carpeting and then some of the current owner's oriental rugs. Yeah, it makes for quite the combination, let me tell you! Underneath the carpeting are wood floors. I doubt they are original, but I adore wood floors, and I have plans for them.

The owner put in new windows last year. $8,000 windows with the flip-down panels that you can wash from inside. They are so efficient it's almost scary. The only other place I've ever lived where you didn't have to go outside and stand on a stepladder to wash your windows was Germany. And these are almost as cool as German widows. Er...windows. And widows, I would venture to guess.

There are a lot of things I want to do outside. I have dreams of a large cottage garden and not a lot of ornamentation, which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what is there right now. I'd love to have big flowering bushes and a walkway to the house where a flowering branch bats you on top of the head as you step up onto the porch.

I'd like to have a sunflower area for Gwen with a secret clearing in the middle where she can play.

I'd like to have a path out to a quiet area where I can see for miles and read my Bible and pray and be alone for a few minutes each day.

And I'd like a pony. Maybe a horse, since I've gotten considerably larger since the last time I wished that wish.

All about Doug

2005-02-11T07:25:00.000-06:00

Due to the hundreds of questions I receive daily asking for more information on my husband, I have decided to tell you all more about him. Okay okay, those hundreds of e-mails are just one from my mom asking what Doug was up to today. But, give me a break. I can't blog about certain things because those certain things haven't happened yet, and I don't want to jinx the certain things from happening, because those certain things are the most perfect place I've ever seen to live in my entire life!

And, we move on.

To answer the question to my mom who doesn't even read this blog, Doug is working today. And doing something regarding a certain thing, which we'll disclose later.

Also, just on a sidenote. Melle, since I'm sure you're reading this, you're a snitch. :)

Okay, and on we go.

I'm sure one of your questions is: What does Doug look like?
And the answer is:

Doug is in his thirties. His birthday is in the Spring. He's been in the Army for almost 14 years. He's a man. A manly-man (in our house, pronounced monly-mon).

Doug has quirks. Lots of quirks. He hates grammar mistakes. He can't stand misspelled words. Before he dated me, he had been known to take a nice friendly romantic letter that a girl wrote him and correct it with a red pen and send it back to her.

Doug had to marry a girl with brown eyes. He loves brown eyes. And, fortunately for me, I have them. I know! PHEW!

Doug is able to talk himself out of speeding tickets. Unlike my loser ex-boyfriend. (Note: There were many many manymanymanymanymany other things that made my ex a loser. Like, the fact that he sold drugs, which I *so* did not know! And, like the fact that he and his brother constantly tried to come up with ways to cheat on their girls and justify it.)

Doug has gotten stopped for speeding in Montana, a state which, at the time, didn't have a speeding limit.

Doug got pulled over by a cop in Tennessee whose tag said, "Sgt Morris", and Doug handed him his military ID which also said "Sgt Morris" and he got out of a ticket.

Doug married ME! Yay!

My apologies if you are reading this and you flagrantly misuse or mispronounce words

2005-02-10T15:08:00.000-06:00

I have a huge pet peeve. Huge. Ginormous!

It's annoying to me when people say "supposebly". I realize that many a blog entry has been written about this, and possibly even more so supporting the word "supposebly", but it just annoys me.

Sidenote: I once dated a guy that thought this was cute. We were clearly not meant to be together, although that was the least of our problems. For further proof of this, I was googling his name a few minutes ago (Doug, I swear I was just googling it to support this entry), and the only mention of his name on the internet was 2 court appearances for speeding. I could never marry a man who sped and couldn't talk his way out of a ticket!

So, what was I talking about?

Ah, yes. I mentioned this peeve to Marjorie (my friend! Did I tell you I have a friend? She's cool! And fun! And raises ShihTzu's. Her young and SO CUTE son has been known to refer to them...once...as his little Shi*'s. It was an accident. He's really adorable! Yes Marjorie, I will remove this reference when you read it and send me an indignant e-mail.)

Wow, I totally lost my place again. Let me start over.

I mentioned this peeve to Marjorie, my friend, and she told me about something her mom says. And there's very little hope of her mom ever finding this blog, because I doubt she knows how to google, and probably doesn't even know about my Super Secret Blog World. So, her mom uses the word "featured" instead of "pictured". And Marjorie's example was:

If I said to my mom, "Doug and Mary are getting an apartment in New York City," my mom would say, "I never featured Doug and Mary living in NYC."

If Marjorie's mom ever says this around me, I will have a hard time keeping my mouth straight and my eyes from rolling so far back in my head that it looks like little baby marshmallows are peering out of my eye sockets.

I'm a hypocrite. A huge one. I have been known to tell Gwen to stop causing a fit. (That's a Missoura phrase if I ever did hear one). And that if she causes one more fit she will be sitting on her bed for a long period of time. And then she causes another fit. And I send her to her room. And she causes a fit all the way there.

**UPDATE** Marjorie is cool. She sent me this in reply to this post:

No, really, you can leave it. It's fine, funny, and true. :)
If Matthew causes a fit over it, I'll just tell him I never
featured him to be such a baby.

**NOTE** Marjorie would never EVER call her son a big baby.
**NOTE 2** The update is NOT that Marjorie is cool. We already knew she was cool. For being my friend.

Lest you wonder what we've been doing...

2005-02-08T11:17:00.000-06:00

And lest you think that I've been sitting on the couch eating bonbons and sipping red wine...

We've been arguing over this. And this. And this.

These are all snapshots of my dream property. The property that takes my breath away and makes me gasp with all the dreams of what could take place.

It may not look like a lot here, and it the house certainly doesn't in person, what with the orange paint and pictures of Marilyn Monroe everywhere, but the fact is, brought back to the basics this house will be amazing. And it will be a house that we grow old in, raise children, chickens and goats to thrive and be happy.

Doug is understandably more hesitant, mainly because the man selling the house also thought everything I think now. He thought that he and his wife would live here and be happy until their dying day. And now the Army won't let him retire, and, just to screw with his happy life, they're sending him off to Germany.

20 acres. 2 barns. 2 (very small) ponds. Fenced pastures. Wood heat. Main house built in 1850. Apple trees. Peach trees. Cherry trees. Grapevines. Loonnnnnggggg private drive. No other houses visible from the property. Only 15 minutes to base.

*sigh*

A post which proves that Mary is WAY behind on her TiVoing...

2005-02-07T22:03:00.000-06:00

People, I would just like to say this. Let's say a cute little kid is born in your family. And that cute little kid is just an angel. A dollbaby! A gift from heaven! And you spend time with that child and you try to foster all these good things in him.

As that child grows up, you encourage him to try new things, to step out in faith, and to be the best he can be. You tell him he CAN do anything he puts his mind to.

So, he gets bigger. Like 16. And over the past 16 years you've been building him up to the point where is head is now so big he can barely walk through the door. And you've told him that his artwork is wonderful. His athletic ability is wonderful. His singing is wonderful.

When in fact his singing stinks. It stinks so very badly. And the poor kid goes on tv convinced that he is wonderful because his family, who loves him too much to ever lie to him, has told him that he's a great singer. Right on key. Yup.

Dude, all y'all gotta stop lying to your cute little kids. What's cute at 2 isn't so cute at 16.

2005-01-31T08:10:00.000-06:00

I'm officially from Missouri. Yes, we bought a house last year. In just a few weeks, our cars will be registered here and not in Montana. *sigh* We paid taxes here. We own property. And animals. In Missouri.

But this does not make me a Missourian. This does:

Last week, in the middle of a really really cold day, I realized that the goats were probably really hungry in their shed. So, I changed from my pajamas into sweat pants and a sweat shirt. And a plaid hunting coat. And boots. And I went out to feed the goats. On my way back in, I heard the phone ringing, so I ran to answer it, and in the middle of the phone call I realized that I really needed to go to Walmart. We had no food in the house. So, I checked the time and realized that we had just enough time to go and be back before Doug got home from work. I put Gwen in the car and drove the 8 miles to Walmart. And shopped. And drove home. And while I was carrying groceries into the house, I realized that I hadn't ever changed my clothes. I was still wearing sweatpants. A sweatshirt. A red plaid hunting coat. And these.

The thing is...it's Missouri. No one even gave me a second look.

2005-01-28T08:42:00.000-06:00

Out my window I see a green green lawn and hundreds of robins picking out worms. I wish just one of these robins would build a nest right one of my own trees in my own front yard, but it seems like our trees are bare.

Every day seems like we're getting closer to planting day, but I have been informed that the Farmer's Almanac states that we're in for a rough March. With loads of snow. Now, don't get me wrong, I love snow. I grew up with winters that blow away the winters this country has seen in the past few years. I love it. But March??? March is supposed to be balmy and breezy. That's the time for robins, not January!

And speaking of gardens, for about 6 weeks we've been trying to come up with something to line our raised beds with. We've thought about railroad ties, but in order to do everything I want to do, it's going to cost over $400. We thought about cinder blocks, but that would be over $300. We thought and thought and thought, and just when it seemed we couldn't think anymore, I headed off to church on Wednesday night to lead the Awana games. Sitting by the front door of the church were hundreds of cinder blocks. They were left over from an appearance by The Power Team a month ago, and I marched straight into the pastor's office and asked him if I could buy them.

And so I am. For roughly $.30 a block, not $1.25 like I could at Lowes. I was floored! I knew something would come up, but how cool was that???

In other news, the garage has still not been tackled.

2005-01-25T21:32:00.000-06:00

After speaking to a doctor today and doing a little experimentation of my own, we might have an idea what is causing some of this depression I've been sinking into. The doctor thinks I may be dealing with a partial case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. I say partial because it's not really the darkness that's emotionally getting me down, or the gloomy days, or not being able to spend a lot of time outside. It's the lack of actual sunlight. And apparently people actually need sunlight and a lack of it can cause various physical reactions in different people.

So, over the next few days when it's sunny and nice, I plan to be outside digging my garden. And soaking up lots of sunlight, and hoping that's really the answer to my problem.

Oh, and Amazing Race. Why Lori and Bolo?!?! I liked them, and now I only have Kris and Jon. *sigh* Kendra drives me crazy with her typical snotty American attitude. Oh, the breeding. All the breeding is just too much for me and my limited American brain. I can't handle anything that isn't like America. I have bets with my friends on how many times Adam will mention his mother each episode. And Hayden? An actress? Seriously? I'm right, right? That's what her little blurb says every time, right? I wish during some Philimination night, he would boot Hayden and Kendra and let their much better halves finish the race.

Enough griping. Did anyone watch Numb3rs? I Tivoed it and am off to watch it.

Goodnight all.

2005-01-23T21:29:00.000-06:00

This is the funnest thing I've done in quite a while.

2005-01-22T13:54:00.000-06:00

I struggle to write today because I am trying to overcome this feeling of complete hopelessness that has come over me lately. I've been very undermotivated, growing more anxious by the day as friend's husbands deploy and my sister's husband deploys. And then, after feeling like maybe I was on the upswing, I hear that my best friend in Germany, the girl who traveled with me for 4 months across the States, is dealing with her husband deploying again. For another 18 months. After he was already gone 20 months through this last September. Her son will have no idea who his father is.

I'm so sick of this war. People around me can debate until they are blue in the face about whether or not we really went in there to fight terror. Or get oil. Or bring democracy. Or yada yada yada. I happen to have my own very strong opinions, but I don't care anymore. I don't feel like standing up for either side.

I long to be one of those people who says, "I might not support the war, but I sure support the soldiers!" And that's the extent of my support, except for maybe when I head off to Walmart and there happens to be a mother of a soldier that's asking everyone to sign a banner that's going off to Eye-rack that tells all the soldiers that happen to be reading it that God Bless America, You are in our thoughts DAILY and our prayers constantly, Thanks for giving us freedom. I want to drive home, carefree, whipping around corners until I arrive at my cookie-cutter house in the suburbs, so big on its tiny lot that I have just a dot of yard space. I will read the newspaper and think about hundreds of Americans who have died in this War on Terror, and I will sigh a sigh of discouragement for them while my gardener prunes my hedges outside and my maid cleans my toilet. I want to be one of those people who know all about the war, but only from the media. Not from my own soldier who's actually been there, seen it, cleaned up bodies and vomited because of the horror of it all.

I think, though, that if my wishes came true, I'd be miserable.

How do you support our troops?

2005-01-20T13:41:00.000-06:00

I woke up feeling very motivated this morning. Actually I was so motivated that I woke up at 4:30 when Gwen told me she was wet, and I lay in bed for about 45 minutes making a mental list of everything I want to accomplish today.

Confession. Our garage is hideous. There are barely 2 pathways through it, one to Doug's section which is very organized with all these fun tools and stuff, and another sort of pathway to my area. In between these two areas are heaps of boxes and things I'm scared to get rid of lest I find out I'm pregnant again.

I have books. Many many books. Doug stated when we moved here to this house (the only move we've ever had to do without the official Army packers) that life would be so much easier if I were illiterate.

I have homeschool supplies. Why? Gwen's only 2, you say? Well, my best friend and her husband moved to Saipan and because books and paper don't last long there if your house isn't air conditioned, she passed everything to me that she didn't need anymore.

I must straighten up this mess. If only to be able to walk freely through my garage, but more because I like the burden that is lifted off my back if I can tell you exactly where something is.

2005-01-19T13:26:00.000-06:00

Something I've been pondering for a few days, in the back of my vastly unused brain, is my relationship with my daughter. Gwen was born 2 years ago and I have never fallen in love with someone so quickly and wholeheartedly as I did with her. Being a Christian, there were just so many things that came together with me through the entire experience. Learning to trust God in every aspect is not necessarily easier but more understandable when I look at the picture of Gwen and myself.

Looking back on spending time with friends who had children when I didn't...well, there's so much I learned and didn't learn from it. I have learned that it's very easy to say that my child will never be snot-nosed and dirty, but sometimes it's unavoidable. I had the unfortunate experience of spending time with loads of angry shouting mothers while living in Germany. I don't know if living in Army housing in Germany makes you angry and loud, or if these mothers would be mean and abusive no matter where they lived. But I saw mothers beating their children (yes, beating. Not spanking, not hitting) for playing in a mud puddle. I saw mothers screaming at their 3 year olds for playing in the street, even though these 3 year olds were outside unattended. Potty training always seemed to bring on the abuse. One mother in our building hauled her child up 3 flights of stairs by his ear and screamed about he was now 3 years old and he's too old to be having accidents in his pants. Ermmm....I'm almost 30 and I have some close calls sometimes.

Ahem. And on we go.

I knew a girl...we'll call her Kasey...whose husband worked with Doug. She had 2 boys and lived in a town called Butzbach, about 10 minutes from where Doug and I lived. Her oldest son attended the American elementary school in that town and one day he came home from school while I was talking to Kasey on the phone. She was in the middle of telling me that the school had called her up to tell her that her son had fallen off the slide. She asked if he was bleeding and they said no, and it was so cold she didn't want to go up and find out that it was just a bruise. So, she told them to send him home from school. When her son came home, she put the phone down and I heard the conversation as clearly as if I were standing in the room. "Tyler, take off your coat." "I can't take it off!" "I SAID, take it off!" "But mom, I can't. The sleeve is stuck on my arm." "Tyler, cut the bull#$& and take off your f-ing coat!" "Mom, I..." Suddenly there was a loud smack and crying and then Kasey exclaimed, "Holy crap, I have to go."

It turns out that Tyler's arm was broken. The teachers had sent him home from school and his arm had swollen up inside his coat on the walk home. Kasey felt badly that she had yelled and hit her child in the head, but she excused it all saying that he should have told her that his arm hurt.

Things like this scare me. I guess I wonder how easy it is to go from stressed and slightly frazzled to abusive. I'm sure Kasey never thought she'd be the mom that smacked her kids around and brought them to tears with a single word. But she is.

How many things do I remember that were said to me out of stress and thoughtlessness, and sometimes just utter ignorance? A lot of them. And I'm trying to be that parent that doesn't lash out because of frustration or selfishness. It's hard sometimes, though.

2005-01-17T10:04:00.000-06:00

So pretty!

I'm in love with my new kitchen. Suddenly I want to cook and clean it and wipe up the counters and spend hours pouring over cookbooks. I want to create new and beautiful things in my new and beautiful kitchen. I want to lovingly polish the new drawer handles every day.

It's red. Bright red. With polished silver hinges and handles.

Within the month (hopefully) there will be new flooring, and painted walls. The last thing to do this weekend is paint the wall of the dining room that faces the kitchen. Also red.

2005-01-13T22:45:00.000-06:00

Painting. Painting painting painting painting.

paintingpaintingpaintingpaintingpaintingpaintingpainting.

We're busy this weekend.

2005-01-12T13:06:00.000-06:00

I was going to write something long and eloquent. Something that would have people laughing and crying, sharing in all the pain and joy I have in my life.

But it's almost 70 F outside. I refuse to sit inside on a day like this.

2005-01-11T13:32:00.000-06:00

Doug and I have a little more work to do on the chicken coop and then hopefully Friday we will be acquiring our new brood. I cannot wait! Fresh eggs! Lots of them! Oh the cholesterol I will add to my diet!

On a happy note, Tertia (of previous dream fame) had babies. Two of them! So squeezable, huggable, and wonderfully beautiful!

2005-01-10T08:19:00.000-06:00

I'm finally settling back into the swing of things. The house was so dirty....dust everywhere, and hardly a moment to relax, as we had friends over for Epiphany. We ate, laughed, played games, and talked. What a perfect evening!

Yesterday was warm. Being from New England, and then Montana, I never saw a day in January when you could waltz around in shorts and a tank top. And that day especially didn't come 3 days after getting pummeled by an ice storm! But, yesterday was warm, and we went to Lowes.

By the end of this weekend our kitchen cabinets will be red. A muted red, not bright and shiny, but red all the same. And one wall of our dining room will be red as well. And there will be new shiny polished silver handles! In a few weeks we will also have new tile on the floor and the other walls painted, and it will be fantabulous!

Our small pasture is still slightly soaked, but today I will be putting up fencing for our chickens, which I hope to go get on Wednesday or Thursday. When we were in Texas, there was a woman down the road from where we stayed who had a rooster. Every morning around 4 or so, that rooster would start crowing and Doug would pull the sheets over his head and say, "I'm not so sure I can handle a rooster!" But Doug says he doesn't remember the rooster after the first couple nights.

So, hopefully by the end of this week we'll have a few more animals and a really nice kitchen to cook them in.

Halfway kidding!

2005-01-08T10:19:00.000-06:00

In the year 2005 I resolve to:

Get all my belongings repossessed by the government.

Get your resolution here

Oh sheesh...not again!

Anyway, we are home, and it was a beautiful drive, except for the masses of tractor trailers and cars stranded by the road all through Oklahoma.

The Panhandle of Texas, Oklahoma, and parts of Missouri were hit by an ice storm. And the temperature never got above freezing. So for about 300 miles of our trip home, all the trees along the road were outlined perfectly by shimmering, glittering ice.

Thursday was Epiphany, and being that we were with a non-Christian branch of the family, we didn't celebrate it. Tonight, Marjorie and her family will be coming over to eat and play Apples to Apples and exchange simple presents. I have a house to clean before they get here!

2005-01-04T07:42:00.000-06:00

We're here in Texas and are getting set to go home tomorrow. It's been quite the experience thus far.

Last Thursday we drove the 13 hours here and went straight to the hospital to see Doug's grandma, hereafter referred to as Mamaw. (Southern people call their grandparents all kinds of cool things, apparently.) Mamaw entertained us with grumpy renditions of her nurses and doctors and insisted that she had been forced to stand up during her angioplasty, and then, later, that she had been strapped to her bed all night. She was embarrassed and humiliated, and will never forget in all the long days that she has left that her children and husband just stood by and let this happen to her.

In reality, she was not forced to stand during the procedure, and when she was told later that she had to stay lying down due to the chance of a blood clot making it's way into her heart, she jumped out of bed with the speed of a cheetah, thus alarming the nurses and making them strap her to the bed for the 4 hours after the procedure.

As usual, we are torn between two families that divorced over 20 years ago and still cannot stop taking it out on their kids. Every time we come here, Doug swears that he will never come back and then a year later we find ourselves back again.

Hopefully the next time I write, I will be back in my comfy living room.

2004-12-29T14:31:00.000-06:00

In 1994, I moved to Montana.

I was alone there. I lived with a group of people that I didn't relate to. They did drugs in my room. They played odd drinking games. They made fun of naive little me.

I came across a dog one day. He was limping and really dirty. After giving him a bath, my one friend, Brian, and I dug into his leg and discovered a bullet. We named him Max and he illegally lived in my National Park Service housing with me throughout the year. He hiked with me, slept next to my bed, and wouldn't let anyone else into the room unless he knew it was okay with me.

Months and months later, I was accepted at a college in Chicago, and I sent Max to live with my parents in New Hampshire. A year later, my mom had claimed him as her own, so he has spent the past 11 years living at their little retreat in the woods.

Today my dad called me because Max has cancer. His abdomen was filled with blood and the tumors were filling his body. I said goodbye to him over the phone, and now he's gone.

It feels silly to mourn the loss of a dog when so many millions of people across the world are in shock over recent world disasters. What right do I have?

2004-12-28T21:55:00.000-06:00

Doug's grandmother had a heart attack today. We are leaving for Texas in the morning.

2004-12-28T14:11:00.000-06:00

Have I mentioned how much I like Freecycle? I adore Freecycle. I lie awake at night dreaming of what miraculous items will find their way to my house via Freecycle.

On Friday we will be picking up our next acquisition:

> > I have several mixed breed hens and 3 roosters. 1 is a Buff
> > Orffington. All the birds are 2 yrs old or less.
> > Ozark area. Will deliver if close enough or you can pick up.

Tomorrow is supposed to be about 60 F, so we will be setting up a chicken coop. How exciting!

2004-12-27T08:43:00.000-06:00

I hope you all had a happy Christmas. We did....very relaxing, fun and....did I mention relaxing? We napped and lounged and watched tv and napped some more and stretched.

My husband got me a brand new Kitchen Aid mixer for Christmas. This was waywaaaaayway over our budget, but he did it anyway, leaving me to feel like a stinker for getting him a few measly DVD's and a CD.

For the first time in our married life Doug opened all his presents and didn't receive even one pair of socks or underwear from his mother. What is going on? His entire life has been composed of Christmasses filled with socks and underwear. His mom has even been known to wrap them all individually so as to give the appearance of more gifts. The lack of underclothing beneath our Christmas tree this year has caused us to go into shock, has sent shockwaves all through the house, and I suspect through the world. Those tsunamis? Not what you may think! They are caused by the breakdown in the Morris family structure.

What will happen now that Doug has no new socks or underwear? I shudder to think!

For now I will snuggle on the couch, covered with a blanket, waiting for more bad things to happen.

2004-12-25T14:35:00.000-06:00

"So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.
"He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
"While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. And she brought forth her first born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

Today we are celebrating our Saviour's birth. Join us!

From the desk of Someone who spends way too much time on the Internet

2004-12-22T08:39:00.000-06:00

I have the flu. Or something like it that involves projectile vomiting. I was having contests with myself last night. I can hit the toilet bowl from up to 7 feet away.*

In my flu-induced haze, I went to bed, right after having watched The Amazing Race. And I had one of the oddest dreams I can remember.

7 of us bloggerettes (and one blogger) were all teamed up with our spouses. We were racing around something. The world maybe? Not sure. But we were *so* *very* serious. These teams were Doug and me, Layne and P, Mike and his wife, Shannon and E, Janna and some exchange student from Switzerland, Dana and Coffee, and Tertia and her spouse.

Most of these made sense in my brain. Doug and I had formed an alliance with Mike, Layne, and Dana. These are people I talk to, e-mail, spend time thinking about and praying for, on a regular basis. Of COURSE they would be in my dream. But Shannon and E had a very strange team. Shannon was cracking us all up, talking about her new house, but then, every once in a while she would double over with extreme stomach pains. We all just acted like this was normal. Janna and her exchange student were speaking in horribly strong German accents. They rode their bikes everywhere.

Now, this is the one that gets me. Tertia was there. With her spouse. I have never e-mailed Tertia. I've never talked to her. I've never imagined that Tertia and I were friends. I just read her blog. And cry and laugh while I'm reading. Why was she there?

And we all stumbled up to a challenge that involved those ceramic houses that you plug in and they light up. We had to sell them to a deserving buyer. A buyer that wasn't going to exploit them. A buyer that would treat them all fairly, giving them all equal show-time in his house.

Doug and I lost. We lost badly. We were still selling ceramic houses when Tertia broke free from the group and dashed to the finish line to claim her prize of 250,000. There was a huge discussion about how she won 250,000, but no one said what she won 250,000 of.

And then I woke up to severe stomach pains.

What is wrong with me?

*Kidding. It's more like 5.

This isn't me at all. ;)

2004-12-21T21:08:00.000-06:00

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.

What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

2004-12-21T09:53:00.000-06:00

Someone read this on my previous blog and asked me to post it here as well. So, here we are: an article written for my small town newsletter in New Hampshire.

Texas gets hot in late Spring. I know this. I just didn’t know how hot it could get while frantically searching for a cat that may or may not have jumped out of my car at a much needed ice cream stop.

While my friend, Alana, desperately tried to quell the screaming of our babies, I crawled through our station wagon jamming my hands into every miniscule crevice hoping to feel something that even remotely felt like my cat, Willis. Alana’s dog, a miniature Pinscher named Samson, begged to be let out of his kennel stuffed between the two rear-facing car seats.

I finally gave up the search for Willis, resigned to the fact that I had lost my cat. A cat who has more money invested in him than the upkeep on your average car. There were all the flights, Dallas to Atlanta, Atlanta to Boston, Boston to Frankfurt, Germany 3 years ago. And more recently Germany back to Boston, by way of Pittsburgh. Think at least $110 per leg of each journey. Plus the shots, checkups, etc. needed for the international flights. Now he was gone. 6,000 miles from our home in Germany. 4 weeks into a 10 week road trip.

The story really began 6 months earlier in Germany. Doug had been stationed in Germany for 3 years, and we had just received new orders for a recruiting station in Montana. In late January, we had everything shipped from our home in Germany to a holding station in Utah, where it would wait until we got to Montana in March and found a home.

5 days after we shipped everything, the Army imposed a stop-movement saying that everyone who was moving after March 1 now could not, due to the upcoming war. Our scheduled date to move was March 9. To make a long story short, after many pleas and Congressional inquiries, we were informed that we could not get our household goods back, and we could not move to our new duty station. So, for at least six more months, we were to live with 1 suitcase per person, no beds, no furniture, no kitchen supplies, etc. All this with a 4 month old baby.

I kept hoping against hope that for some odd reason, Doug wouldn’t have to deploy. That he would be there to help me with all those sleepless nights Gwen had that began after her bed was sent back to the States. I guess sleeping on a blanket on the floor will do that to you!

Our life in Germany was odd. You’d think, because we are in the Army, we’d know that we would be deploying for sure. However, we only got 5 tv channels, lumped together under the term AFN (Armed Forces Network). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. For there being only 5 English channels, we got remarkably assorted programming. PBS, NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News, the best of Sports. And all we saw on the 3 hours of news that we got was how many thousands of people were rallying against the US Troops and the war. When the bombing actually started, I felt horrible that one of my only thoughts was, “Thank God Doug isn’t over there right now.”

Doug eventually received orders to deploy to Iraq, and his unit starting packing up and getting ready to ship out. It was then that a plan started to form in my head. Previously, I had sat in Germany through a 7 month deployment to Kosovo, and then again through other 3-4 month field problems and deployments, and I was not going to do that again. I had a baby now, and I was determined that she would not see me crying through every day of the separation. I called friends and relatives everywhere in the US and asked if I could come visit for a week or two, and everyone was extremely welcoming. My plans were to fly into NH where I had a car sitting at my parents’ house, and then to drive all summer, staying with friends and family, and eventually ending up in West Glacier, Montana, where I would stay with Emily, a good friend I hadn’t seen in 3-4 years, and her son Ezra, hopefully getting in some good hiking in Glacier National Park. One evening, Alana came over for dinner with her 3 month old baby, Gunner, and I showed her my plans for the trip, and it came up that she wanted to end up in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, and she thought a road trip would be wonderful! So, after a lot of thinking for a week or two, we finally decided to do it. It was wonderful having something to take up the waiting time. We mapped out our route, contacted friends and relatives again, figured out mileage, gas costs, and food costs. Doug was very supportive of the fact that we were doing this trip, even though it meant that he didn’t see me mourning his loss very often. I think he realized that he didn’t want me sitting around moping anymore than I wanted to myself.

Doug’s deployment was scheduled for May 11. Every time I think about this day, I want to cry. In every other case in which Doug has deployed, he has been given orders to be at the company around 4 AM, which worked for us. You could actually sleep, then wake up to an alarm clock, and then be busy getting ready to go. This time, his orders were to arrive at 4 PM. We spent the whole day pretending that he didn’t have to go. Sitting around playing with the baby. Talking about really mundane details. And every time we would sneak a peek at the clock, it was only 30 minutes later. Finally it was time to pack up. I dressed Gwen in her cutest and prettiest dress, and talked unendingly to her about how important it was to make Papa know that we loved him and that we went all out for him. When we walked out of the building to the car, Doug loaded down with duffel bags and trunks, I felt eyes on us from every apartment in the area. Doug’s unit was the first to leave out of the several units on post. Over the next few days, more and more people would be leaving, but so many people told me that seeing him actually pack and up and leave was a reality check. It meant that their spouses would be leaving too. It was inevitable. A couple other neighbors whose husbands were leaving were also loading bags into their cars, and we drove the 10KM to the post. When we arrived at the company, we were told that we had 2 hours to say goodbye, and then everyone started gathering around taking pictures. Doug and I took Gwen off to a quiet room to say goodbye. We took lots of pictures of the 3 of us, and then walked to our car, a full hour before we had to. Somehow we just couldn’t stand to put it off any longer. Doug broke down while saying goodbye to Gwen, and we just wrapped our arms around our little family and cried for a while. Finally, we put Gwen in her car seat and I drove away, with only 1 backward glance.

When I arrived back at the housing complex, I saw some of my friends waiting outside the apartment building for me. Alana came to the car and got Gwen for me while Sara just hugged me and cried. Both of their husbands had left at the same time as Doug, but they had chosen not to drop them off on post. As we ate supper at Sara’s, we all felt relieved that the waiting was over and now we could start the countdown and planning for the return.

4 days later, Alana and I descended on the Frankfurt Airport with 2 babies, 12 checked bags, 4 carryon bags, a dog and a cat. The 8 hour flight to Pittsburgh sped by as we fed babies, got them to sleep and walked them up and down the plane aisle. The fun began when we landed in Pittsburgh. We wrestled 3 carts of luggage and animals through 6 checkpoints and eventually won the help of even the security guards. As we boarded our flight for Boston, both of us were in tears from utter exhaustion.

After the last leg of our flight, we waited for an hour, watching the baggage claim go around and around and around. Without our luggage on it. We were picked up by my mother and left for NH minus 2 of my bags, one of Gwen’s, and two of Alana’s. Fortunately the animals had been put on the correct plane!

We spent a week in NH getting rested and adjusting to the 6 hour time difference. We bought a rooftop carrier for the station wagon and figured out a way to get everything packed in. On May 22 we left on the first leg of our journey - a 5 hour drive to Carmel, NY. I stayed 3 nights with friends of our family and Alana met up with another friend of ours from Germany.

When we met for the next phase of our trip - a 7 hour drive to Warrenton, VA - we found that we had misplaced our map. We eventually stopped to replace it, but it was too late. Our 7 hour drive had turned into a 9 hour drive because of all the backtracking and detouring we had to do. When we did arrive at my aunt and uncle’s house in VA, it was all we could do to stay awake through supper. We had arrived on Memorial Day weekend, and the house was packed with family and friends, but we were welcomed with open arms.

It was here in Virginia that I received my first phone call from Doug. I had set up a national calling plan on my cell phone in NH and e-mailed the phone number to Doug. One night, on our way to the theater, my phone rang. After a 10 second delay, Doug came on the line! We got to talk for about 30 minutes, and he kept repeating over and over to send him anything that would possibly cool him down.

It hadn’t hit me that Doug was gone....really in Iraq...until I received that phone call. I wanted to do anything I could to help him with the heat, and it just killed me to know that anything I sent the next day would take over a month to get to him.

That evening, Alana and I bustled off to Walmart where we each easily spent $150-$200 on contraptions that may possibly cool them down. We collected fans, misters, instant ice packs, water pistols, water balloons, and, my favorite, a hand-crank snow cone maker with all the flavors. It was the first box I sent to Doug that I felt actually had anything worthwhile in it.

3 days later, we left Warrenton to drive 3 hours to Charlottesville, VA to spend the night with another cousin. Halfway through the night, I woke up to find Gwen fussing and very feverish. We rushed her to the hospital to find that she had a urinary tract infection and spent 3 hours trying to bring her temperature down. Arriving back at my cousin’s apartment, we packed our bags, loaded Gwen up with medication, and headed out for the longest part of our trip so far, a 12 hour drive to Columbus, GA.

By this time, we were all settled into a driving routine. Alana took the first driving shift of the day, leaving me free to handle Gwen during her fussiest hours. At the first gas stop, usually 3 hours later, we switched drivers, and Alana was free to take care of Gunner, who, having woken from his morning nap, was at his fussiest. Samson would snuggle down between us on the front seat and Willis slept along the top of the back seat.

Over the next 2 weeks we stayed in Columbus, where we stocked up on cheap, tax free food from the commissary at Ft Benning, and spent a week in Anniston, AL visiting old friends of Alana’s. It wasn’t exactly a restful time. We were heading to Inlaw Land in the next few days, and it would be my first trip without the protection of my husband.

In late June, amid soaring temperatures, we finally cruised into Texas. The temperature gauge in the car continued to go up, so right near Longview, Texas, we stopped at a Dairy Queen. As we grabbed a rare treat of milkshakes and burgers (most of our meals were eaten in the car....peanut butter and jelly, chips, and apples) I noticed a leak under the car. I went back to the car, put Gwen in her car seat and knelt down to find out what was dripping. We figured out that nothing was wrong....we think it was just water dripping...and hopped in the car. 15 miles down the road, I looked in the rearview mirror and realized that Willis was not lying on his usual perch, overseeing the babies. I pulled over immediately, and, as I described earlier, frantically searched the car. When I finally gave up, Alana suggested turning around and driving back to the Dairy Queen. “What are the chances he would still be around?” I wondered, but decided I couldn’t just leave poor Willis to wander around in the heat. We whipped the car around....as fast as you can whip an overloaded Oldsmobile wagon...and headed back at a steady clip toward the Dairy Queen. As we reached the exit and pulled off on the ramp, I rolled down my window and started looking everywhere for Willis. A yellow pickup pulled up next to us, and a woman shouted, “Are you the folks that lost your cat?” “YES!” Alana and I both screamed. “Go to the DQ. The folks that picked him up left their telephone number!” We could not believe this! As we pulled into the DQ, a lady came out waving a piece of paper. “Do y’all have a cell phone? Here’s the number to call!” Everyone knew who we were! I called the number on my cell phone and when a lady picked up I tried to explain who we were. We agreed to meet at a rest stop, about 10 miles back down the highway. As we pulled into the rest stop, I saw a couple in their own beat up Oldsmobile, cuddling my cat on their lap.

That’s how we got my cat back. I really do want to know...what are the chances?

After a 2 night stay in Dallas, visiting Doug’s great-aunt Dorothy and her poodle, Cinderella, we drove 8 more hours to Doug’s hometown. Dalhart is a town of about 5,000 people (and many more cows) located in the northwest corner of the Texas panhandle. It’s in the plains, 40 miles from the nearest town, Dumas, and on a clear day, you can see the skyscrapers of Amarillo, 80 miles away. This is where Doug grew up, and where his parents grew up, and where his grandparents grew up. Alana and I would spend 4 nights with Doug’s mom, Bonnie, and 4 nights with his Dad, Tom and Tom’s wife, Ronda. Tom and Ronda had also graciously offered to keep Willis until Doug and I found out where our next duty station would be. This was in part because they felt sorry for us traveling with a cat and also because we would be adding Cyrus to the station wagon. Cyrus is Doug’s dog, a 60 lb Lab/Rottweiler who we had shipped back from Germany in March and had been staying with Bonnie.

We started reevaluating the rest of our trip. 4 weeks of constant travel and change had begun to take its toll on the babies. At each stop we had to take 2-3 days to get the babies adjusted to new beds, and in some cases, new time schedules. Gunner was beginning to get fussier in his car seat. He had been a very premature baby, and required some special, and almost constant, attention. Gwen, at 9 months, was getting more mobile by the day and had a new tooth every week. Every time we would pass a Walmart, one of us would run in for another toy to keep the babies amused in new ways. The back seat was an explosion of stuffed animals, rattles, teething rings and board books. Every time we hit a bump, an electronic gadget, which, to this day, has not been identified, made a boing or a growl. To add to the confusion, every stop we made, a grandparent, aunt or cousin added more toys to the mess. Because of all this, we made the decision to skip our planned 1 week visit in Salt Lake City and instead to stay longer with Alana’s parents at Fort Carson, CO.

So, we left Dalhart in mid-June and headed for CO Springs, a 5-6 hour drive. It was good to be back in a military town, where the deployment was a way of life. The reports from Baghdad got worse with each letter I received and when Doug would try to keep things from me so I wouldn’t be worried, I found them out from Alana. Now we were back on a post where we could get more detailed information on the units.

On June 30, we left CO Springs at 3 am for our longest leg of the journey - a 16 hour drive to Dillon, MT. Alana wanted to see the Grand Tetons, so we took back roads through Wyoming and Idaho, finally arriving in Dillon around 7 PM. It was there I was informed by my friend, Emily, that our month-long housesitting job fell through, and that I had no place to stay once we got to West Glacier. She would be staying with her parents, but they (understandably) didn’t relish the idea of me, a baby, and a large dog being added to their already crowded house. They did offer to let us stay for 2 nights while Alana was in town.

At the end of the 2 nights, I had pretty much made up my mind to just turn around and head back to NH without Alana, and spend the remainder of the deployment with my parents. At this point, I would even welcome returning to Germany to wait it out in an empty apartment! But, when Emily and I returned from taking Alana to meet her in-laws, we found that her uncle had offered to rent me a camper that he had on his property, a stone’s-throw from Emily’s house. So, we hiked up to the house, and “toured” the camper. As we all squeezed into the 8 foot trailer, we noticed a distinct smell of rotting mouse. We opened drawers and cabinets, and found a squirrels nest, complete with 4 baby squirrel skeletons. As I was about to tell Emily’s uncle, “No way”, I realized that my 2 nights with her parents were up. I would have to leave that evening - a thought I definitely did not enjoy. So, instead, what came out of my mouth was, “Can I pay half now, and half on the 15th?”

The first 2 weeks living in the camper were great, probably because I didn’t actually spend a lot of time in it. Emily and I hiked most days,babies on our backs, and spent a lot of evenings swimming in Lake McDonald, a glacier-fed lake in Glacier National Park (average summer temperature - 53o ). We rode Emily’s horses, Daisy and Custer, and taught Gwen to say her first real (not mama or papa) word, “Daisy”, which, to this day, is synonymous with horse or any horsey-looking animal. It was wonderful....each morning, around 5:00 we would wake up and peek out the tiny camper windows, and be greeted with elk on the lawn, or moose coming through on the way to the river. One evening, I was walking from supper at Emily’s house up to the camper with Gwen on my back, when Emily’s brother, Michael, came tearing up the road in his truck, completely out of breath. “Mary, get back down here. You’ve got to come back!” He yanked me into the truck. “What’s wrong,” I asked, expecting to hear that Doug had called, or even worse, that his commander or chaplain had called. No, nothing like that had happened. Instead, Michael had been sitting outside and saw me leave for the camper. Less than a minute later, a mama grizzly and her 2 cubs came wandering by, heading our direction. He drove me up to the camper, waited while I grabbed changes of clothes, and Gwen and I stayed safely in the house that night.

Two weeks into our stay, we had a rainy stormy day and Gwen and I were stuck in the camper for the day. While Gwen napped, I started reading up on the hike that we were planning to take the next day. I heard a rustling noise beside my head, and lo and behold, there sat a mouse. Actually, more than one. It seemed that all the mice in the camper had decided to come out of hiding at exactly the same time. 2 ran across the floor. One came up out of the sink drain. And the one by my ear ran up the bed, over Gwen (shudder), and into a hole in the mattress. The message couldn’t have been clearer if they had been holding picket signs. They were fed up with someone taking over their space. They were taking it back.

And take it back, they did! Over the next week, I had to come up with new ways to keep the mice off Gwen while we slept. I tried mosquito netting, tissue paper...anything that wouldn’t smother Gwen while we were sleeping. And still, I would wake up and find mouse droppings on the sheets, or on my pillow.

You may wonder why we didn’t just pack up and start heading back to NH. Well, because only days previously, Emily and I had been heading back from a hike on the eastern side of Glacier National Park, and the engine in my car blew up. Literally. The hood hit my windshield. We found engine parts 40 feet away from the car. Fortunately, we had the baby backpack and we walked 2 miles to the town of St. Mary, only to have a mechanic tell me to “Suck it up, ma’am. The car is a goner.” I had pretty much figured that, but I had a little breakdown anyway. I sat in a diner and cried for what seemed like hours. Emily had called a friend to pick her up, and we waited (and waited and waited) for him to get there. Funny though it may seem, the possibility that the car would break down had never occurred to me. Maybe I had convinced myself that Doug being gone was the worst thing that could happen, and surely it couldn’t get worse than sleeping in a cold, mouse-infested camper.

Less than a week later, thanks to many people driving me to many different car dealerships and dealing with increasingly dishonest salesmen trying to pull one over on the innocent lady with the baby, I found a new car. New to me, at least. Buying the car was slightly difficult considering that I had only held volunteer positions for the past 3 years and had no income except for my husband’s regular paycheck. After reviewing all the options, we called Honda and explained the situation to them, and after a few days they agreed to finance the car using a power of attorney from my husband. Fortunately, we had followed the rules and gotten one before my husband deployed. Otherwise, I may have still been stuck in Kalispell.

1 week after the official purchase of our new car, I gave up and headed back to New Hampshire. Every day, more and more mice were turning up in the camper and I was starting to feel rather irresponsible for keeping Gwen in that disgusting environment. So, I packed everything we owned into our new Honda, and left for Salt Lake City to stay with friends for a week. Friends that had a bed, and a shower, and, most importantly, no mice.

When I arrived in SLC, I spent several hours pouring over news on the internet. One of the first things I learned was that the Army was thinking of putting another stop-movement into place, meaning that Doug would be kept in Iraq for another 6 months. So, when I received an e-mail from him with the title “You’re going to be really mad”, I didn’t even open it before I burst into tears and started worrying about where I would go. My friend, Denise, sat next to me while I opened the e-mail, and we both started laughing. “Hi sweetie. You’re not going to like this, but today I found out that our orders for the recruiting station have been canceled. Instead, I got orders for Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri at a hospital there.” I found this hilarious, especially considering I had teased a friend only months earlier about having to go to Fort Lost in the Woods, Misery, as it’s more commonly known in the Army.

My parents very kindly put me in my old bedroom in their house and let me stay through the months of July and August, and partly into September. Their kindness grew when I acquired yet another dog - an 8 week old Airedale named Zoe in early September. Every day brought us closer to our reunion with Doug, scheduled for September 15. On the 10th, I drove to Knoxville, TN with Gwen, and left the dogs with friends there who would take care of them while Doug and I vacationed in Florida.

At 4 in the afternoon on September 15, 12 excited family members equipped with signs, flowers, flags, and balloons gathered in the international terminal at Baltimore Washington airport and waited for Doug to come home. Person after person came out of the terminal, and time after time, it wasn’t Doug. I don’t remember the actual details, except that when he finally walked through the sliding doors and we saw him, I screamed, and my whole family cheered. Gwen, who had started walking only days before, toddled up to Doug and stretched her arms to be picked up. It was amazing....she acted like he had never left and clung to him the entire evening. The rest of my family had fallen back, and when we turned from our little family hug, all the women were crying and the men were sniffling, glad that they all had video or digital cameras to hide behind.

So, that’s how we made it. There are so many more things I could share. The scare when I would hear that a medical platoon was attacked. I tried very hard not to cry my way through the deployment, and in one way I’m glad I didn’t because I think it made for an overall happier baby (and a happier me). However, because of this I also didn’t keep a steady journal. Every time I would start writing, I would cry. And now, I wish I had those memories.

Someone once said “Freedom belongs to those who defend it.” I would like to think that it also belongs to those who sent their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, or husbands and wives to defend it. To those who gave something of themselves to keep the wheels turning smoothly. Both of my grandfathers were decorated war veterans, and I was raised with stories of their captures and escapes and adventures all over the world. I realize now that my grandfathers were scared young guys just like Doug who left crying families, and wrote letters and came home to balloons (maybe?) and crowds of happy cheering families. And I’m glad to be a part of a legacy like that.

2004-12-15T17:42:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow will mark the end of my 3 week sprint through the Christmas season. The first week was the Christmas Parade float fiasco, followed by some Hardcore Set Designing. Tomorrow will be a 15 hour day in the car.

When this is over I will breathe a huge sigh of relief that all I have to do is wrap presents and make the house smell pretty.

2004-12-08T23:13:00.000-06:00

Gwen is in love. Not with her normal people/dogs. Not Doug, or me. Not Cyrus, Zoe, Willis, or an endless line of fish that parade through our bowl and die mysteriously in the middle of the night. (Why in the middle of the night? Never during the day. Is it the dark that kills them?)

Gwen is in love with Matthew. Matthew is a 9 year old boy that has (mostly) the utmost patience with her. Matthew is the son of my friend Marjorie, the giver of the goats.

Actually, on another side note, Marjorie's husband, James, played Jesus in our huge church production a few weeks ago, and since then we tell people that Jesus gave us our goats. Not funny? Okay, let's move on.

So, Gwen has spent 2 of the last 3 days with Marjorie and Matthew, frolicking on their farm. She's been getting her hair done, something she never gets here at home, because, if you know me at all, you know that I cannot be called a girlie-girl.

She's been playing with dogs (like TEN of them! I swear!), petting horses, chasing chickens, and the list goes on. She has been known to call Marjorie "Mama", which surprisingly doesn't make me jealous or bother me. Apparently, that makes me weird, though.

There's a lovely picture of Marjorie on her website, which I could show you all, but she might kill me. Worse yet, she might say she will never ever watch Gwen again, and that would cheat Doug and I out of the first date we will have had in over a year.

I have spent the last 3 days constructing sets for our church Christmas play, and it's about done now. I've been working with one really cool older guy, and one really super annoying chick.

Yesterday, I made a comment about how I couldn't wait to work alone that evening because I get more done when it's quiet and there's not music blasting, and it started a whole round of teasing from the other helpers about me needing quiet and on and on. Well, eventually, I joked back and said, "Aw, shut up everyone. I need to go to the bathroom where I can get some peace and QUIET!" Later that evening, this girl comes to me in tears. Literally, tears!!! She apologized for teasing me to the point where I had to say "shut up" and she wanted to see if those words were directed at her, and what could she do to make restitution.

I told her to go away so I could have some quiet time. ;)

SSHHHHH Virgil!

2004-12-05T20:42:00.000-06:00

Tonight was our church's children's program. It was very well done by the lady who does everything well. Her perfection makes my head spin.*

So, Doug and I sat about 4 rows from the front, and couldn't help giggling through the entire thing. A typical Missouri dude was sitting directly in front of us with his wife and multiple children. His son, a cute curly haired kid, would lean over toward his dad and whisper, "I'm thirsty," whereupon his father would turn on him, his shoulders hunched up, and say, "SSSHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" or "SIT DOWN!!!!!!!!!" The first time this happened, our pastor's wife whipped her head around wondering what in the world was going on. After that, it was pretty much old hat for the rest of the evening.

Also, not to be obnoxious, but I'm not sure who typed out the overhead material, but it was sometimes so hilarious that we ended up singing what was written. We sang wonderful songs about Chrismans Angles (we figure that's sort of like an obtuse angle), and about shepherds their Virgils keeping. About ricks and hills. About rods and trees. Ahh, the beautiful words of Christmas.

*Heheh...originally I mispelled that to read, "Her perfection makes my head spit."

2004-12-03T14:35:00.000-06:00

We have real live honest-to-goodness breathing people coming over for dinner tonight! Can you believe it? A year in Missouri, and we finally make friends!

So, Doug will have a fun night of playing video games and eating pizza, and I will be trying to figure out how to finish this silly banner for our church's float on Sunday.

Comments about Comments

2004-12-02T09:04:00.000-06:00

Everyone was so spot on with their comments! I knew something that I felt from the very core of my being could not be as wrong or derogatory as I was told.

The difficulty is, I think the feminist movement has been grossly misinterpreted by some as not doing anything within the house, not being the nurturer, when, in fact, it was about the freedom to be able to do other things if one so desired. There have definitely been times when I've had those desires, but right now I am so blessed to be able to stay home with Gwen, not to have to pay for her childcare. Instead, I get to experience the day to day workings of her mind, which is sometimes a scary thing since they mimic Doug and me so much! :)

(The following bears no relation to the previous.)

When we lived in Germany, I always felt like we lived in a college dorm instead of my own apartment because everyone was always running up and down the stairs knocking on the door, walking right into my apartment. The girl across the hall from me for our first 2 years was so fun! She had the cutest little girl ever, and she was hilarious to talk to and I really miss her. And I also dearly miss Alana, who is, poor girl, still stuck on the 4th floor of our apartment building. Her hubby keeps trying to get orders but he gets nowhere with the system.

Anyway, that is something I do miss about living here in the States. There is definitely not the same feeling. When someone knocks on my door, it's one of my stripper neighbors all dolled up, ready to go to work, asking me to jumpstart her car. When my other neighbor, Michelle, comes over, I truly welcome her because she's a very sweet woman. But since she's off hunting so much this winter, I never get to see her. I love having people drop by my house, but only if they can understand that my house is never clean. If you drop by, you must be willing to accept dog hair on the furniture, buried Fisher Price treasure in the brown shag carpeting, and stains on the tablecloth. Also, you should be able to handle the sight of my daughter's naked buttocks.

I may have found a friend who will just drop by on occasion. If this is the case, I will be thrilled and overjoyed, ecstatic! Running out with open arms to greet her when I see her car pull into the driveway.

Taking us back a generation or two

2004-12-01T09:35:00.000-06:00

I was just criticized on the phone by a friend who said that I have just set the feminist movement back a few hundred years.

I like to think I'm hip. I'm not of course, but I'm a little tech-savvy. I can turn on a computer. I can type. I have fun with my Mac. I enjoy some video games. I love reality tv. I can't watch Frasier without giggling and spraying something out my nose. I'm pretty up on all the cool stuff, thanks to the hours a week I spend with kids who are indulged on their every whim.

I appreciate my appliances. I'm not sure what I would do if I didn't have a dishwasher. I like my juicer. The toaster is awesome, my Kitchen-Aid mixer (I'll tell you the story on that sometime) is a kick toosh appliance, and this neat little chopper thing that plugs in and dices and slices things is about the best thing ever invented since toilet paper. The electric knife scares me.

All that being said, I really like baking bread with my hands. I have a bread maker; it doesn't get used very much. I love the mixing and the muscle work and the flour everywhere, and my daughter learning how to knead. And the smell. I can't get enough of the smell of baking bread. I love leaving the bread to rise in a bowl under a towel, and seeing the towel kind of cave in. And then, when you come back, the towel is bulging over a mass of gooey sticky dough.

(That last sentence sounded rather erotic, and it wasn't supposed to.)

The comment that got me in trouble with my friend was that when I'm making bread and being quiet and thinking while kneading, I feel like I'm doing what women were supposed to do. *gasp* Now, I think what I really meant is that I feel like I'm getting back to my roots. I suppose if that's what I really wanted to do, I would be out back grinding wheat on my grindstone, but I obviously don't care enough.

There are other things that make me feel that I'm doing what women are supposed to do. When I'm cuddling with Gwen and reading a story, or we're giggling over something silly. When I succeed in cooking a truly wonderful meal. When we're outside cleaning the goat barn or cleaning up.

Or when I'm standing in my kitchen with bare feet and a pregnant belly.

*No, I'm not pregnant.
**Don't take this entire post seriously.
***Don't e-mail me with mean comments.
****Don't think bad thoughts about me.

2004-11-30T08:20:00.000-06:00

Doug and I have been doing some dreaming lately. What would we do to the house if we had a bit extra money? My big dream is to have a jacuzzi tub in the bathroom. *sigh* That would be so wonderful, especially if I was pregnant again. Baths are a daily part of my routine, and while soaking in a jacuzzi might just get a little old if I did it every day, I'm willing to try it.

Doug would love to have a storage shed, someplace besides the garage, where he can put all this manly-man stuff. (very important: prounced MONly-mon) He has stated that for him the hardest part of going on the mission field will be leaving his new lawn tractor. And really, what can you say to that? For me, it would be leaving the dogs, but with the right organization, we can bring them, so that's not even an issue. And I can't see Africa Inland Mission saying, "Well, if you really want to bring your lawn tractor, we can increase the amount needed for your support by $10 a month." Of course, maybe they will say that, which will have me doubled over in laughter.

The other thing we'd like to do is replace our brown 80's carpeting with actual floors. In the laundry room, kitchen and bathrooms, we're going to put slate down. And through the rest of the house we can't decide. Carpet is very nice on the toes in the morning. It's nice when Gwen trips over something and rolls down the hallway. But, wood floors? I love them. And now that I think about it, it's probably just some emotional tie to my childhood. With 2 dogs and cat, wood floors show all the hair and all the dirt and the grime, and you can't use a carpet vacuum on them. And when you walk, stuff sticks to the bottom of your feet. But with the right shade of carpet (probably brown), you can't even see the dog hair that only gets vacuumed every 3 days.

Are you bored yet? These are the workings of my inner mind, so just suck it up and let me ramble!

The next 2 weeks are so busy my head is spinning. There's bunches of little stuff, but next Sunday afternoon is the Winter Parade and I didn't know this until yesterday, but apparently I am supposed to be organizing it. ??? My parents come next Thursday and our Christmas Cantata is on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and sometime before that I have to make myself some type of Renaissance costume and choreograph a dance. ???

I better get busy!

Ranting

2004-11-29T07:14:00.000-06:00

I'm slightly fed up with the postal system. About 3 weeks ago I sent a huge (HUGE!) box of clothes to a friend's wife, and this morning, about 2 minutes ago, what do you think shows back up at my door? I was wondering why I hadn't heard from Beata.

Sheesh.

2004-11-27T10:24:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, after learning that Doug's dad and family were going to be near Tulsa (about 4 hours away), we got up at 8 and decided rather impulsively to drive there for the day.

We arrived around noon, and found them Doug's dad at a restaurant eating catfish.

We spent some time at Walmart and Lowe's, along with, apparently, the entire population of Claremore, OK.

The entire day was full of things like the above. We did nothing that was exceptionally wonderful. We lounged around, visited relatives, played with kids, and met people that aren't exactly relatives but are related to Doug's dad's wife.

Oklahoma is an interesting experience. You can't help but speak like an Okie when you get there. And for some reason, you get there, and you can suddenly understand the Okie language. Like "half as much bigger", which means 1 1/2 times the size of. Also, "why for".

In other news, go congratulate Shannon! She will be a fantastic mama!

Inseparable

2004-11-25T10:17:00.000-06:00

Remember how I said that editing and creating html is really difficult for me? Well, I just now figured out how to put pictures here on my blog! So, you all will be graced with many pictures of our happy family. Starting now.

We're having a relaxing Thanksgiving morning.

Zoe still isn't back to her normal self, but she's starting to invade everyone's personal space again, which means she's well on her way.

Apparently we're a whole family of creatures that invade personal space. Cyrus is looking rather annoyed he can't continue lounging in peace.

Zoe and Cyrus have been inseparable since she returned home Tuesday.

Give Thanks

2004-11-24T20:29:00.000-06:00

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good... Psalms 118:1

There's so much to be thankful for. We are complete as a family. Doug is in this country, and in our home, when he could so easily be across the world. Gwen is a happy, very happy, child, filled with enthusiasm and curiosity and a love for learning. And we have 2 healthy happy dogs and a cat. There's not much we can say about the cat. He's there, he's part of our family. Erm...anyway.

I'm thankful for my circle of friends, both in "real life" and here, on the internet. I will try not to forget anyone, but if I do, forgive me.

Dana, Melle, Naomi, Nicole, all the girls at WNET. I'm thankful for a very great group of women to talk with, laugh with, and vent to. You're all such a wonderful touch of objectiveness when the time is right.

Abby, Maria, Shannon, Layne, Janna, I'm so grateful that I've been able to communicate with all of you, some just right here, and others in person.

And for Doug, my love and my best friend, I give thanks to God always for you. You've been there through thick and thin and good times and bad. I have the sweetest memories of all our years together, and I cannot wait to see what the rest will bring.

What is in your life that you can be thankful for?

....and there was much rejoicing!

2004-11-23T13:41:00.000-06:00

After another seemingly long and fruitless search this morning I stopped by my friend's house for nourishment, and also to see if Zoe had shown up, since that is the place from which she ran away. And I woke up my friend because she had been up with her mama Shih Tzu all night as it gave birth to 5 pups. And as we sat there talking the phone rang, and her son screamed from the back room, "MOM! MOM! THEY FOUND ZOE!" And I burst into tears, or busted out crying as they say here in Misery, and ran to hear the message on the answering machine. It was Doug, calling to see if my friend had seen me that morning because there was a man on our voicemail who had "found me my Arrrdell".

So, I called the Arrdell man back, and he lives about 12 miles from where Zoe ran away. And he heard me wobbling on the radio this morning (again) about her and admitted he was slightly disappointed that she belonged to someone. (That's my charming girl!!)

I was still crying, and laughing and twirling Gwen around in the air, and we jumped in the car and drove (and drove and drove) back to the road he told me about, and then followed his country directions from there. After about 6 miles and crossing 3 streams and passing over what seemed like hundreds of fallen tree branches, I pulled up to the road (long abandoned path) where he was parked. And there, in the back of an old Dodge van was my pup. And she was squirming with happiness, and Cyrus, our other dog, was yelping and crying out the window, and Gwen started shouting and kicking her feet with joy. And, this is the truth, I started crying with happiness and ran over his mailbox that I couldn't see for all the tears in my eyes.

Fortunately, Arrrdell has a great sense of humor and a complete love for my dog as well, and he picked up the mailbox, pronounced none the worse for wear, and he let me have my dog back.

He wouldn't take the reward that I offered him, and he offered to buy Zoe outright for $1,000. He said, "No dog of mine ever sets foot in the house, but I gotta tell you, this girl slept on my bed last night. She's a special pup!"

We are complete again.

Nothing yet

2004-11-22T21:21:00.000-06:00

Today I hung over 30 posters, and passed out almost 100 small flyers with our phone number and a picture of Zoe. And nothing has happened. I'm drained from crying. I called the local radio station during the morning classified time, and I started crying right after I said, "We've lost our family pet" and I blubbered through the part about the reward, and how she was our daughter's first birthday present, and how her coat is all curly and how she's very friendly and happy. And there was silence on the other end for a few seconds, and the host said, "Well, um, I hope you find your dog soon." And I hung up, wondering if the part about my phone number was even recognizably through my wobbly voice.

I'm going to try another town tomorrow, less than a mile from where Zoe ran away, and I'm praying, and hoping, that someone will have seen her.

A funny note: the area Zoe ran away in is mostly Amish farms, and I felt so bad for driving up these long driveways and getting these Amish women all excited that an Englisher was coming to buy their homemade food, that I ended up buying a dozen eggs at each farm. What in the world will I do with 7 dozen eggs???

Minus one dog

2004-11-22T08:52:00.000-06:00

Our beloved Zoe ran away yesterday. We were at a friend's house, helping him reroof his house, and the dogs (our 2 and their 4) were all playing happily. Suddenly, Zoe was gone. We searched and searched and called her name and cried and she has disappeared.

Today will be a long searching day.

A quiet life

2004-11-19T10:27:00.000-06:00

This morning while having my quiet time, I came across this verse:
"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands...." It's in 1 Thessalonians 4.
And I just keep being struck how much I do that is not God-centered. I'm not talking about work or even the daily upkeep that we do, but how little I actually strive for God's plan in my life.
On a very surfacey level I can say that I would like to serve God, to do His will, but then when it interferes with my reality tv, that's when I start having issues.
Doug and I are applying to a mission organization to go on a 2 year short-term missions trip. We're thinking of being dorm parents at an MK (missonary kid) school. We have Rift Valley Academy, Black Forest Academy, and the International School of Budapest in mind. The funny thing about this is that we thought we were staying in the military for another 6 years, Doug's last 6 years. But he got injured, and he's had surgery, and everything still hurts, and now we're looking at a possible medical retirement. And for the longest time Doug maintained that he refused to live outside the US, that he wanted to come home and retire, and sit on his front porch and live out his life. But over the past year and a half we keep being impressed with the fact that we are very well suited for the mission field, being willing to go anywhere and all, and that we have so much to offer.
So, that's where we are. I think that we're leaning toward Rift Valley Academy because the situations at the Black Forest Academy as well as the Intl School of Budapest are not extremely conducive to a family with a small child. And a huge plus of Rift Valley is that not only can we bring our full family, we can also bring dogs! And cats!
Don't get me wrong, I could and would give up my animals for a calling that I feel so strongly about, but it's wonderful to know that we wouldn't have to.